Hurricanes from the South
(To be published in South Korea)
Hurricanes from the South
-On the situations and reasons of Canadian Americanization since World War II
He Jiantao
College of Sociology and History, Fujian Normal University, Fujian, China
Abstract：
Since the beginning of the 20th century, especially since the Second World War, Americanization has been posing a grave threat to Canada. The appearance of such a situation was not accidental but has the deep-rooted political, economic and cultural reasons. In the paper; the Author first expounds the situations of Canadian Americanization and Canadian nationalists’ worrying, and then analyzes the reasons of Canadian Americanization. The Author thinks that although Canada will not lose her cultural identity under the influences of Americanization in future, it is still difficult for Canada to totally avoid it. .
Keywords: Americanization, Canada, America, popular culture.
Introduction
The earliest concept of Americanization appeared in the 1850s, when the Americanization mainly referred to the attractiveness of the booming America to the immigrants rushing to American. After the beginning of the 20th century, this concept meant the process of American mainstream culture assimilating immigrants from other different countries. After the World War I, especially after World War II, with the unprecedented development of American economy, the abundant supply of material goods prompted the rise of the popular culture based on the consumption and entertainment, and since then Americanization has been used to describe the process of American popular culture influencing, reshaping other countries' culture and the latter’s converging to the former. The popular culture mainly refers to the material culture and spiritual culture which are closely related with Americans’ everyday life. American movies and TVs, books and magazines, art and sports, fast food and supermarkets, mass education and theme parks, folkways and customs, etc, all of these belong to American popular culture.
I. The Embodiment of Canadian Americanization
Among all the countries influenced by Americanization, Canada undoubtedly is a typical one. As early as the beginning of the 20th century, the influences of Americanization over Canada were already obvious. In 1901, a famous British reporter named William Stead presented the concept of Americanization. Not long after that, his idea received a strong response from Canada. In 1907, Samuel E. Moffett, who studied in American Columbia University, wrote his doctoral dissertation with the title of The Americanization of Canada. The author investigated how the Canadian society in the late 19th century was influenced by America, and he thought Americans and Canadians speaking English had already merged into a nation driven by the communication and trade, and Americans and Canadians had been linked tightly through the same language, systems and customs. Canadians said they would never become Americans, but they “became” Americans unconsciously at last. Seven years later, another Canadian scholar also published one article to analyze the concept of Americanization, in which he admitted that American popular culture had an important effect on Canadians’ ideologies. After that, especially from the Second World War till now, Canadian Americanization more and more drew people’s attention. Generally speaking, there have been three climaxes of Americanization in Canada since the end of the World War II.
1. The Americanization of Canada in the 1950s
The first climax happened in the 1950s, it could be said that the American cultural product played a very important role in the Canadian cultural market. At that time almost all the bands that performed in the Canadian musical halls were from America. And the American troupes almost took up all the theaters in Canada; the most movies screened in the cinemas were also from America. Canada almost had no its own formal films and formal film companies. In the aspect of TV, when Canadian TV network was found in 1952, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) monopolized broadcasting programs. But after middle period of the 1950s, many large or medium cities such as Vancouver, Toronto, etc, began purchasing a large number of American TV programs, the audience rating of CBC decreased rapidly. Even CBC was unable to make ends meet for a long time.
In addition, Canadian magazines and periodicals could not catch up with American ones either. The annual sales of the American periodicals had already been up to 86 million volumes, and the American magazines such as Times and Reader's Digest had occupied more than half the advertising market of Canada. But the various magazines of Canada printed every year were less than 42 million volumes during the 1950s. Moreover, the Canadian periodicals carried a lot of articles written by American authors. And “Canada was turning into the dumping place of American surplus manuscripts.” In the education, Canada was also influenced by America and paid attention to the mass education, life education, comprehensive education, vocational education, community education.
2. The Americanization of Canada during the 1960-70s
Between the 1960s and the 1970s, the second climax of Americanization happened to Canada. In the respect of radio, film and television, according to the statistics in 1964, there were 56% of the residents listening to the programs of the U.S.A. in Halifax, (74% in Toronto).And accompanied by the popularization of cable television network, The private companies broadcast the movies & TV programs introduced from America in a large amount. Taking the film industry as an example, 864 films were shown in the Canadian cinemas in 1978, among which there were 315 new films of America, whereas only 24 films were Canadian. At the end of the 1970s, Lapresse, a newspaper at Montreal, carried out an investigation on the national films. However, it was very depressed for them to find that 30% of Canadians had not seen a Canadian film and 68-80% of them could not remember the names of the Canadian films they just had seen.
In the respect of school education, in this period Universities of Canada also displayed strong characteristics of America. In the universities, there were lots of American Professors or Canadian Professors who graduated from the universities of America, and half of the professors of social science came from America. What they taught was teaching methods and course systems of America. Even students’ academic theses focused on America. For example, According to the investigation of 260 students’ theses on sociologies in the first academic year of Laurentian University revealed that, among the 50 theses on the ethnic relations, there were only 5 theses related to Canada’s “ethnic problems " and almost half of them were about the " Afro-American ". Among the 100 theses on family, there were only 4 dealing with Canadian family problems. In the respect of publication, America dominated three quarters of the Canadian publishing markets in the 1960s. Even lots of Canadians had more knowledge of America than Canada. For example, a Canadian historian, A.B Hodgetts, made an investigation in some Canadian universities and middle schools in the 1970s. He found that most students’ knowledge about American Presidents was more than that of Canadian Premier and that many students did not take history of Canada as an elective course at all.
Moreover, the literature in this period also regarded Canadian Americanization as its theme. For instance, a novel called Surfacing written by Margaret Atwood in 1972 was a representative one. In this novel, the author created a heroine, who dislikes and fears anything related with America. However, she finds many Canadians around her are eagerly copying American accents and life styles. And there are many American tourists on her way home everywhere, but later it is found that those so-called American tourists are Canadians in fact. And what is worse, those tourists also think the heroine is an American.
3. The Americanization of Canada during the 1980-90s,
The third climax came to Canada between the 1980s and 1990s, as the US-Canadian Free Trade Area and North American Free Trade Area gradually took shape, Some visible trade protections - postal rates for Canadian magazines, film distribution, tax credits for Canadian films, legislation to keep Canadian book publishing companies in Canadian control were being eliminated steadily. American cultural products entered the Canadian market more easily. Canadian culture took up less room than ever.
In the screen culture, the Americanization of the Canadian movies and TV programs first was reflected in the quantity .Under the impact of America, in 1989, though Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) controlled 31 TV stations and 598 TV transfer stations of Canada, its audience only accounted for fewer than 25%. In the 1990s, 95% of feature films, about 70% of retail sales of sound recordings, 60% of television programs come from abroad, overwhelmingly from the United States. the three major television networks contained nearly nothing about Canada, whereas the several main television networks of Canada contained lots of information about American .On ground that Hothi investigated “Percentage viewing time by country of origin of program” in 1981, 70% of the programs the audience aged between 2 to 62 watched were from America . And another poll about “Too much or too little Canadian material on television” organized by Goldfarb Consultant in 1983，only 9% of the respondents thought there were too many Canadian programs on TV, 42% thought it too little.（42% thought it ok, 7% did not answer）. At the same time, when asked opinions about “Amount of television programming featuring Canadian performers” , only 6% agreed that there were too much, 48% select “too little ”.(41% thought it ok. 7% did not answer).
The Americanization also was embodied through the profits. As a result of the impact of American programs, the broadcasting stations suffered a great loss during this period, the loss in 1993 was 48million Canadian dollars，in 1994 was 31 million, in 1996 was 3 million , and the broadcasting stations did not get rid of loss ; As bout TV, the condition of Canadian TV was not good in the 1980s, for example, in summer 1984, only the losses of Pay TV had accumulated to 40 Canadian dollars millions and 2 Canadian dollars millions were lost each month. The performing arts of Canada almost suffered the same. At the beginning of the 1990s, the show business companies’ loss reached 6.5 million Canadian dollars. In middle period of the 1990s, though they made a profit of 100 million Canadian dollars, one third of it was from the government supports. Even in Quebec where French is spoken, the American cultural influences were also mostly felt in the cinema industry. In 1993, movies produced in French in Quebec accounted for 6% of movies featured on Quebec's screens. Whereas this proportion was only 3% in the case of English-language films on English-Canadian screens. In 1998-99, 83% of box-office revenues in Quebec went to American movies.
The market of books was roughly like this too. 80% of magazines, 70% of books come from abroad, of which overwhelmingly from the United States especially in the educational publication, Only 25 per cent of educational book publishers in Canada were Canadian. At the supermarkets, the shops such as McDonald’s, Wal-Mart chain stores went into Canada on a larger scale. Wal-Mart, Wendy's and Pizza Hut, achieved an overwhelming superiority when competing with Canadian competitors. With regard to the education, Canada also was influenced badly by America during this period. For one thing, the privatization and commercialization in American education affected Canada. Formerly Canada's universities and colleges were created as public institutions accountable to the public through the government. However, during this period, several provincial governments like the Conservative government in Alberta were rapidly privatizing many educational and other public services functions. Education as a business is attracting more corporations and entrepreneurs. For another, Canada also copied American curricula. In 1992, the Ottawa Separate School Board hired Texas-based Energy Education Ltd., at a cost of 17 thousand Canadian Dollars a month, to design a curriculum
Under such circumstances, “Canada may simply be the most advanced case of U.S. domination of a foreign-entertainment market”. And Canada looks like America in appearance, Americans traveling to Canada may find that most magazines sold in the newsstands are American, and they could find a lot of familiar TV series in Canadian TV programs. One writer described such a phenomenon as follows: “An ordinary Canadian is woken up by the alarm clock made in America in the morning, brushes teeth with toothpaste and toothbrush made in America, shaves with the American razor, and a quarter of the news that he sees in the morning is about America. The car that he drives to go to work is made in America and the lift he uses to enter the office building is made in America. And most of the official working apparatus he uses every day are also made in America. When he comes back home in the evening after a day’s work, he listens to American radio programs, watches American TV programs, reads American novels and magazines, or determines to drive to the nearby cinema to watch an American film. ” .
4. Canadian nationalists’ deep worrying
Through the statement hereinabove, we can find that it is an undeniable fact that American popular culture has been spreading in Canada extensively. Such a phenomenon has led to Canadian nationalists’ deep worrying. They feel their culture has lost the self-expression ability, because the self-expression tools have been occupied by American cultural companies, and American life styles, ideologies, values and social modes have been portrayed as the universal models of modern life.
In some Canadians’ eyes, the entry of American cultural products has been making the world's longest fenceless border that they felt proud of rapidly disappear, and Canada look like America exteriorly Some scholars like Donald Creighton think, Canada's standards and value orientation have been threatened and Canadian creativity has been weakened by Americanization, so that Canadians are unable to construct a new future by themselves. What is more, some nationalists have proposed more radical views. For instance, George Grant published a book called Lament for a Nation: the Defeat of Canadian Nationalism in 1965 declaring Canada had ended as a sovereign state because of Americanization . A Canadian scholar named Henry Comor also wrote an article in 1967 to stress that Americanization was destroying the Canadian TV, values, and culture, and made Canada almost unable to develop its cultural identity, even he considered America as No.1 enemy in this sense. Professor Stuart H. Surlin and Professor Barry Berlin also pointed out that American programs could assimilate Canadians’ subconscious and interpersonal relationship after they inspected the influences of American TV on Canadians. In addition, Doctor Thomas Axworthy, who is teaching at Kennedy School of government of Harvard University, thinks that the gap of the cultural values seemed to have been so narrowed that Canadians have a painful impression that Canada is becoming Americanized. Maude Barlow, one leader of Canadian nationalists also thinks Canadians are getting one part of America and Canadians’ fighting for the uniqueness is over.
II.The Reasons why Canada is “Americanized”
Facing Canadians’ worrying, we can not help asking what caused such a phenomenon？About this question, Just as president of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) said, “In the world, there is no country like Canada allowing a large amount of external culture to permeate and invade their own country.” Some nationalists attribute Americanization to the Canadian government criticizing the government for its invalid measures to limit American culture. In fact this kind of view lacks enough convincingness，because the Canadian government not only has never opened the door voluntarily to Americanization, but also has taken many measures to sustain Canadian own culture identity while facing each climax of Americanization.
In order to prevent the entry of American culture on a large scale, Canada established some specialized agencies to protect and develop national culture in the 1950s. As early as 1949, Canada established Massey Royal Commission on Culture and Arts to investigate and subsidize cultural organizations such as movie & TV companies, libraries and museums etc which could display "national spirit ". In 1958, the CBC was established. CBC prescribed that 55% of television programs and more than 40% of radio programs should be about Canada. Even just from then on, Canada also began developing all kinds of sports events with Canadian characteristics such as ice hockey and lacrosse in a more cost-effective manner to improve the sense of Canada.
In the 1960-70s, Canada took more measures to prompt the culture industries. In the respect of publication, Canada established "Royal Publishing Committee" in 1960 to promote the periodical industries. In the respect of film industry, Canada established Canadian Film Expansion Company in 1967 and Canadian Film Development Corporation (Telefilm Canada since 1982) to subsidize Canadian films, and the former has already subsidized more than 2000 movies and television plays so far. In1968, Canada established Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to strengthen the broadcasting and telecommunication industries. In 1970, the CRTC demanded that domestic TV and Broadcasts should ensure that 50% of their contents should be about Canada (two years later increase to 60%). 40% of the television programs in the prime time should not come from the same foreign county. And only when a program was produced in Canada or composed or Performed by Canadians, can it be considered to be Canadian. in addition, Canadian Broadcasting Act of 1968 also prescribed that“Canada should build its own broadcasting and television systems not only to better serve the people of Canada but also to promote its own broadcasting industries and the Canadian culture.”
In April 1975, the Canadian government announced that it would take measures to restrict the issuing of American books in Canada and then the Canadian government spokesman, Hugh.Faulkner, also hinted that the government would give grants to local film industries, artists, playwrights, dancers and musicians to encourage them to produce or create works reflecting the national traditions and that it planned to limit the quota on radios and televisions and require that 60% of the programs should be about Canada In addition, in 1975, the Time / Reader's Digest, or Bill C-58 was passed and it prescribed that the foreign magazines published in Canada must add the contents of Canada.
After the 1980s, the Canadian government subsidized the cultural industries to greater degree. Only in the year of 1984-85, the Federal government allocated 14.094 million Canadian dollars to the cultural departments such as arts, libraries, social sciences, broadcast and screen culture. Meanwhile, in the year of 1985-86, Canadian Parliament appropriated 302 million Canadian dollars for the Department of Communication (called Department of Canadian Heritage since 1993) .the CBC also spent the special funds in supporting the domestic film makers, authors and actors, instead of purchasing American scenes of comedy. Only in the year of 1997-98, the CBC invested 150 million Canadian dollars in new films. In addition, some dance groups were also provided financial aids to by the Canadian government and only during 1986-1987 they were subsidized 12.1million Canadian dollars. Since 1989, the federal government has invested 2.9 billion Canadian dollars every year in culture industry, that is, 100 Canadian dollars for each Canadian on average. If all the provinces’ funds were added too, the amount was bigger, for example, only in the year of 1995-96, Canadian governments at all levels subsidized 6.1 billion Canadian dollars in culture.
Besides, Canada also put some diplomatic pressure on America to protect her own culture during this period. In 1988, when negotiating with America about the NAFTA, Canada insisted on excluding cultural products from the agreement. Under Canadian insistence, the NAFTA in 1994 enshrined Canada's right to impose "Canadian content" requirements on radio and television, restrict foreign investment and ownership, and to permit government subsidies of cultural industries such as publishing, music, and cinema. In 1995 Minister of Canadian Heritage Department stressed repeatedly that, “We are Canada, not America. We will not regard the trades of cultural products as those of chicken and potatoes.” He also said that Canada would tax the advertisements up to 80 % in the Canadian versions of American newspapers, and the Canadian broadcasting stations must pay more royalties for broadcasting American songs. In 1995, Canada enacted a law about the royalty which prescribed that foreign magazines printed in the second edition in Canada do not enjoy tax cut. In June, 1998, 19 culture ministers met in Ottawa, to discuss about the importance of maintaining national culture in the globalization, and America was refused to attend. The main American newspapers all considered the meeting as an anti-Americanization meeting. In the first half of 1999, in order to protect its own culture from the attack of American publications, movies, and televisions, the Canadian government even disputed with America, which nearly bred the trade war between the two countries. And in 2000, Canada began carrying out the act of C – 55, which stipulated that the Canadian enterprises are forbidden to publish advertisements in the foreign magazines, otherwise would be fined
Therefore, we can draw the conclusion without question that it is unfair to blame the Canadian government for Americanization. Then, on earth, what are the reasons? I think，about this question, the main reasons are as follows.
1. The similar cultural origins and close geopolitical factors facilitate the massive entry of American culture.
When we talk about the similar cultural origins between America and Canada, we can trace back to the colony period of Canada. Historically, Canada and America were both a result of European especially British colony. The first immigrants to Canada were French. Before seven year's war Canada was under the government of France. After that, New France was taken over by Englishmen, and more and more British immigrants including Americans entered Canada and outnumbered French people and brought British culture and American culture to Canada. And since then Canada had become the region that was deeply affected by French and English culture. Comparatively speaking, American culture and Canadian culture are both variations of European culture, they not only share common ethnic identity, but also share almost the similar languages, the same God, and similar lifestyles, political systems, and value orientations, which make Canadians not respond fiercely against American culture, not like the Arab world and the communist world.
Specially, American culture indeed influenced Canada. For one thing, large quantities of immigrants of America entered Canada in history. Just around the war of independence, nearly 100 thousands Americans moved to Canada. By 1905, American immigrants outnumbered British in Alberta and Saskatchewan by a ratio of two to one: in the years 1897-1912, 785 thousands American farmers came northwards to settle on cheap land. In 1921, 375 thousands or twenty per cent of those of foreign birth living in Canada were Americans. American culture those immigrants brought influenced Canada. What was more, the weak Canada had to depend on America in culture some times. For example, around the early 20th century, a lot of famous writers had to publish their works in America instead of in Canada because of audience and economic rewards. Such periodicals as Atlantic Monthly, Century, and Harper's Magazine were Canadian writers’ main publishing fields. And at that time, if the writers wanted to get publishers’ attentions of the United States, they must add some American factors in to their works such as portraying Canada as French or British colony, the 51st state of America and the inviable wilderness. Such a situation had far-reaching influences on Canada.
As to the geopolitical factors, the influences of the geopolitical effects in North America on America and Canada are completely contrary. To America, the geopolitical position that “two oceans in the east and west and no formidable opponent in the south and north" played an important role in facilitating America to develop into the strongest country. However, that’s another pair of shoes for Canada. Canada often complains that God gave Canada almost the same things as America, but put America beside Canada. In Canadians’ eyes, Canada is a mouse sleeping with an elephant, which fears that the tiniest move of the elephant may crush him. Though this sounds like a joke, it vividly expresses the enormous geopolitical effects on the US-Canada relationship.
Concretely speaking, such geopolitical factors mainly include the following points. The first is population distribution. Because of history and climate, 90 % of the Canadians live in the places which are less than 200 miles away from the Canadian and American border. Therefore, Canadians are unable to get rid of the connections with Americans in space. The second is the physical geography. Rocky Mount, St. Lawrence Mount, and Canadian Shield land are all north-south orientation, which makes the traffic between north and south more convenient than east and west.
The third is the bilateral political relationship. In the mainstream culture of the United States, Americans have a sense of "American Exceptionalism". The so-called "American Exceptionalism" means that the Unite States is Jerusalem that God chose and that Americans are God's chosen people, America bears the mission of saving other nations and of safeguarding democracy and freedom. The libration of the human finally depends on America this concept had been born before the War of Independence, and in the 19th century it evolved into a more expanding theory--- New Manifest Destiny, which advocated expansionism and further emphasized the superiority of American culture. American expansionists hope American culture can take the place of other “backward” cultures. In the eyes of many Americans, "If the world will have a common language, it should be English; If the world will have common standards of telecommunications, safety and quality, then they should belong to the United States; if the world will be linked as an organic whole by TV, broadcast and music, the programs should be American; If the common values will take shape, they should be in line with the wishes of the Americans."
Such an imperial psychology of also influenced Canada, and in history, from the War of Independence to the early 20th century, the American expansionists always wanted to include Canada within the domain of the United States, and set off three waves of annexing Canada. Although such attempts finally vanished like soap bubbles, some Americans did not give up the dream of “annexing” Canada in culture or economy, the two world wars, the Second World War in particular provided golden chances to America.
Since World War II, as European countries such as Britain declined in economy and international status, the Canadian connections with European countries have been weakening and contacts with American have been getting closer day by day. And Canada has been gradually appearing in the international community as a real country of North America and has been tying itself tightly with the superpower. These make Canada and America communicate very close, the border has become the express way of communication. Naturally, it is convenient for American poplar cultural products to be popular in Canada.
2. The Deconcentration of Canada's multi-culture makes Canada unable to form a united power to resist American culture.
Compared with American culture, Canadian culture has a feature in common with American culture. I.e., both of them consist of multi-culture. But it is a wonder that Canadian multi-culture is no match for American multi-culture. Facing the impact of American popular culture, Canadian multi-culture can not unite as a whole to counteract. The reason why the situation appeared, I think, is the deconcentration of Canada's multi-culture. Canadian culture was so scattered that Canada never formed into a cultural melting pot like America, which made the Canadian culture unable to form a strong fort to face Americanization.
Of course, Canada was once tired to be assimilated into a whole body for several times in history. Before the seven year's war, Canada was under the governance of France, and was an area of French culture. After the seven year's war, Canada fell in the hands of the British Empire. Britain planned to assimilate the culture of France with Britain's culture for a time, but the stubborn French people did not accept it. Therefore, the British Empire had to adopt a policy of appeasement allowing the equal status of the French culture. This made Canada split into two cultural areas from the beginning. But America was not like this, as early as after Independence War, American mainstream had formed, not tore into halves.
In the first half of the 20th century, in order to develop the West, Canada enacted many preferential measures to attract immigrants, and only during the years from 1900 to 1920, the number of immigrants entering Canada was 3 million. Most of these immigrants came from Central Europe, South-eastern Europe, Eastern Europe and Northern Europe, so they were different from Canada's already existing British and French cultures. Canada once again adopted the policy of assimilation to these immigrants. It carried out the policy of Anglo-conformity in the English-speaking areas and carried out the policy of “France-conformity” in the French-speaking areas. But this policy did not make much effect either, because the population of Canada was only 6 million in this period, and the immigrants to Canada accounted for about half of the population. It was very difficult for Canadians to assimilate so many new immigrants as America, and this laid the first foundation for the scattered culture of Canada.
After World War II especially after 1960s, with the development of economy, the population shortage became very serious, but Europe could not supply more immigrants. So the restrictions of immigration became relaxed. Up to 1961, 2.1 million non-British and “non-French” immigrants came into Canada. Few of them could speak English or French. Meanwhile, lots of Asian-Pacific and Latin American immigrants entered Canada. The ethnic composition of Canada was changed entirely, in 1871, descendants of the Great Britain and France accounted for 60.5% and 31.1% of Canada's total population respectively, and other nationalities only accounted for about 8%. But in the 1960s the proportion of non-British, “non-French” or non-indigenous Canadian populations accounted for up to 26% of the total population; in 1971 up to 27% and in the 1990s up to 33%. The proportion of the British descendents declined relatively, and it was 48% in 1978, 44% in 1980, and only 25% in 1990. Particularly most of these new immigrants were well-educated brain workers, soaked deeply with their national or ethical culture and had a strong sense of self-consciousness as the Third Force, they strongly required their cultural specialties to be admitted and respected. Finally, Canada had to give up the policy of assimilation, and then announced a multi-cultural policy in 1971, and issued Canadian Multiculturalism Act in 1988 which stipulated that multiculturalism was Canadian national policy.
Certainly, the American society is also a kind of multicultural society, but their focuses are different. Firstly, American multiculturalism only stays at the level of people's values. Whereas the multiculturalism of Canada has already become the state law and the Canadian government has more power to guarantee the equal status of various nationalities. Secondly, the multiculturalism of America is in fact a kind of a large melting pot, it emphasizes the integration of various nationalities' cultures, it "is based on the spirit of mutual respect and shared values", and finally forms the same American culture. The descendants of all nationalities in America are of hybrid distribution and especially European descendants spread all over America. Besides, American society is of high mobility and can not form the phenomenon of a single nationality or race living collectively in one area on a large scale. Some small-scale racial and ethnic streets can not change the spatial framework of the melting-pot. But the multi-culture of Canada does not emphasize the integration of various cultures but living together peacefully and keeping one's own culture characteristics.
Because of the reason, Canada has formed a multi-cultural society. Every culture keeps its strong self-identity and tradition. So much so that, various cultures such as British culture, French culture, German culture, Chinese culture, Indian culture and Inuit culture are isolated from each other like jigsaws. This makes the already small population of Canada divided into smaller units in the cultural field. Naturally, such small scattered units will be unable to unite as American melting-pot.
3. The asymmetry of American and Canadian economies makes Canada lack the economic foundation to avoid Americanization.
As a kind of consumption culture, American popular culture has a close relationship with economy. Economy is a factor that can't be avoided for it. Even to some degree, Canadian Americanization was a result of the asymmetry of American and Canadian economies, such an asymmetry aggravated the Americanization of Canada.
In American economic history, America experienced several astonishing growths. Since the end of the civil war, American economy has been ranking the first giant in the world, whose power is beyond other powers far away. By comparison, Canada is not as lucky as America. Though Canada ranked one of the Western G-7 after World War II, Canada's economy still has been increasingly dependent on America. In the 1920s, America had replaced Britain and became the most important country that influenced Canadian economic development in investment and trade. After the World War II, such a situation has been more obvious.
Above all, America have controlled Canadian some key economic departments through investments. According to the relevant statistics, the American capital accounted for 70% in 1945, up to 76% in 1957, and up to 80% in 1964 in Canadian foreign capitals. And now, the foreign corporations in Canada headed by America have controlled 60% of the manufacturing industries, 75% of the petroleum and natural gas industries, and 60% of the mining and smelting industries. In the other industries such as the mining manufacturing, electric, chemical and automobile industries, American companies also are No.1. For examples, 88.1 % assets of Canadian Ford Motor Company belongs to American Ford, 100 % assets of Canadian GM belongs to American GM. The largest oil company of Canada, Imperial Oil Ltd, its 69.5 % property is in the charge of Erickson oil in New York. In the amount of investments, America has occupied the absolute predominance too. For example, from 1945 to1975, Canadian foreign loans reached 40 billion US dollars, 80 % was borrowed from America. at the beginning of 1981, and American private capitals in Canada reached 44.6 billion US dollars, whereas the Canadian investment in America was only 9.8 billion US dollars .
In the aspect of trade, since the Second World War, America has been playing a crucial role in Canadian foreign trade. In 1955, 60% of the goods of Canada were transported to America, and 73% of the imports were from America. And since then, especially since US-Canadian FTA and AFTA, the percentage has been on the rise, 60% to more than 80% of Canadian exports(mainly natural resource and raw products) are transported to America and about 2/3 of Canadian imports (mainly high-tech products) depend on America.
Under such circumstances, America has become Canada’s speed setter of economic development to a great extent, and the Canadian government has to determine its industrial policy according to New York and Chicago. , Which not only makes the American popular cultural products closely related with the economy enter Canada very easily, but also make America often use economic means to deal with the Canadian restrictions on American cultural products. For example, in 1965, the Canadian government stipulated that the income tax of the newspapers or periodicals advertisements, in which foreigners held more than 25% of the shares, should not be reduced or remitted. After this policy was issued, the magazine offices of Times and Reader's Digest whose 40% of their revenue came from Canada expressed their strong protests. And the American government put pressure on Canada in petroleum import and car trade. Finally, the two magazines were exempted. For another example, in 1994, Canada rejected the American Country Music Channel’s starting Country Music Television in Canada. However, the American companies regarded it as trade protection, and actively lobbied Congress for trade retaliation against Canada. Finally Canada had to compromise. This phenomenon seems difficult to overcome. “Canadians complain of American domination but do little to return to economic isolation, which would purchase greater independence with a much diminished standard of living.”. “As long as the FTA remains the dominant influence in Canadian affairs, the Americanization of Canada will proceed inexorably. Indeed, it will prove unstoppable unless the FTA is abrogated.”
4. The gap of attractiveness between America and Canada cultural products makes Canada deficient in resisting Americanization.
Apart from depending on American super supremacy of politics, economy and military power, that American popular culture has prevailed so widely all over the world is inseparable with the charms itself. As a culture that is created not for the noblemen but for the common people, the voices, imagines and information communicated of this culture has its special attraction. To a great degree, American culture full of modernity has a fascinating side. American popular culture meets the material and spiritual demands of people who live in the fast-paced and competitive modern society. For instance, American movies indeed can meet many different people’s various tastes. Bruce, rock and country music are of great artistic values and it also can not be denied that much pleasure and convenience can be got from Microsoft, Disney, NBA, McDonald’s, American music and supermarkets. The charms of American popular culture have made many foreigners become captives of Americanization. “the tides consisting of T-shirts and jeans, music and movies, videos and software, are flooding out of America. Parents around the world resist this trend in vain, and their children thirst for getting them”
Even American popular culture also can be found easily in Arabian world that dislike America. According to the report of Global Times on Feb.26th of 2006 , “in Cairo, American commodities covering every place are very popular with the local residents. KFC, McDonald's and other fast food restaurants are more and more. Coca-Cola and Pepsi sell faster and faster. American automobiles can be found along the main streets. The most Egyptians think American automobiles are better than European and Japanese ones” “American politicians are bad, but American goods are good”. Even, because of the attraction power of American popular culture, some anti-Americanism people also began liking them. A Egyptian Muslim doctor called Sharif said:“many things that I thought never happened to me took place at last……when I was 71years old, unexpectedly I began to wear jeans and Nike, enjoy rock, Jamaica and Rap music. I also like disco dance hall……I know these things have slipped into my life secretly” although this is just a single case, the charms of American popular culture can be felt too.
American cultural products have also been welcomed by many Canadians. Except Inuit isolated from the modern society and living in the Arctic Circle，Many Canadians are very crazy about American culture. Many Canadians like reading Washingtom Post,Times, Life，like listening to ABC, CBS or shopping in the supermarkets of American styles. American movies, music and television programs have become the fashions during Canadians’ leisure time. 50% of Canadians believe that American TV programs are superior to Canadian, in 1980, Gallup found that 68% of Canadians thought America made the best TV Programs only 15% held the converse opinions many common people of Canada are against that Canada takes measures to limit American cultural products. For example, Goldfarb Consultants made a poll about “Should American TV Should Be Restricted” in 1983, 81% of the respondents answered no, because they thought the audiences had the right to select what they favor. James Dean, a Canada-America relationship expert of Western Washington University pointed that Canadians were infatuated with American culture, they---like the other people all over the world, were the greedy consumers of American culture such as American television programs, movies, popular music, magazines, books, fashions and fast food. With many addicts of American culture in Canada, with the temptation of more profits of American cultural products than the domestic ones, it is no wonder that American popular culture prevail widely in Canada.
Conclusion
To sum up, as a mixture of culture and consumption, the influence power of American popular culture on Canada is obvious and tremendous. Because of the impact of Americanization, Canadian cultural industries have been in a weak status and Canadian cultural characteristics are also being threatened to a great extent. In future, there is still a long way to go for Canada in strengthening the industries of culture, in defending her cultural sovereignty and sustaining her cultural identity.
Hurricanes from the South
-On the situations and reasons of Canadian Americanization since World War II
He Jiantao
College of Sociology and History, Fujian Normal University, Fujian, China
Abstract：
Since the beginning of the 20th century, especially since the Second World War, Americanization has been posing a grave threat to Canada. The appearance of such a situation was not accidental but has the deep-rooted political, economic and cultural reasons. In the paper; the Author first expounds the situations of Canadian Americanization and Canadian nationalists’ worrying, and then analyzes the reasons of Canadian Americanization. The Author thinks that although Canada will not lose her cultural identity under the influences of Americanization in future, it is still difficult for Canada to totally avoid it. .
Keywords: Americanization, Canada, America, popular culture.
Introduction
The earliest concept of Americanization appeared in the 1850s, when the Americanization mainly referred to the attractiveness of the booming America to the immigrants rushing to American. After the beginning of the 20th century, this concept meant the process of American mainstream culture assimilating immigrants from other different countries. After the World War I, especially after World War II, with the unprecedented development of American economy, the abundant supply of material goods prompted the rise of the popular culture based on the consumption and entertainment, and since then Americanization has been used to describe the process of American popular culture influencing, reshaping other countries' culture and the latter’s converging to the former. The popular culture mainly refers to the material culture and spiritual culture which are closely related with Americans’ everyday life. American movies and TVs, books and magazines, art and sports, fast food and supermarkets, mass education and theme parks, folkways and customs, etc, all of these belong to American popular culture.
I. The Embodiment of Canadian Americanization
Among all the countries influenced by Americanization, Canada undoubtedly is a typical one. As early as the beginning of the 20th century, the influences of Americanization over Canada were already obvious. In 1901, a famous British reporter named William Stead presented the concept of Americanization. Not long after that, his idea received a strong response from Canada. In 1907, Samuel E. Moffett, who studied in American Columbia University, wrote his doctoral dissertation with the title of The Americanization of Canada. The author investigated how the Canadian society in the late 19th century was influenced by America, and he thought Americans and Canadians speaking English had already merged into a nation driven by the communication and trade, and Americans and Canadians had been linked tightly through the same language, systems and customs. Canadians said they would never become Americans, but they “became” Americans unconsciously at last. Seven years later, another Canadian scholar also published one article to analyze the concept of Americanization, in which he admitted that American popular culture had an important effect on Canadians’ ideologies. After that, especially from the Second World War till now, Canadian Americanization more and more drew people’s attention. Generally speaking, there have been three climaxes of Americanization in Canada since the end of the World War II.
1. The Americanization of Canada in the 1950s
The first climax happened in the 1950s, it could be said that the American cultural product played a very important role in the Canadian cultural market. At that time almost all the bands that performed in the Canadian musical halls were from America. And the American troupes almost took up all the theaters in Canada; the most movies screened in the cinemas were also from America. Canada almost had no its own formal films and formal film companies. In the aspect of TV, when Canadian TV network was found in 1952, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) monopolized broadcasting programs. But after middle period of the 1950s, many large or medium cities such as Vancouver, Toronto, etc, began purchasing a large number of American TV programs, the audience rating of CBC decreased rapidly. Even CBC was unable to make ends meet for a long time.
In addition, Canadian magazines and periodicals could not catch up with American ones either. The annual sales of the American periodicals had already been up to 86 million volumes, and the American magazines such as Times and Reader's Digest had occupied more than half the advertising market of Canada. But the various magazines of Canada printed every year were less than 42 million volumes during the 1950s. Moreover, the Canadian periodicals carried a lot of articles written by American authors. And “Canada was turning into the dumping place of American surplus manuscripts.” In the education, Canada was also influenced by America and paid attention to the mass education, life education, comprehensive education, vocational education, community education.
2. The Americanization of Canada during the 1960-70s
Between the 1960s and the 1970s, the second climax of Americanization happened to Canada. In the respect of radio, film and television, according to the statistics in 1964, there were 56% of the residents listening to the programs of the U.S.A. in Halifax, (74% in Toronto).And accompanied by the popularization of cable television network, The private companies broadcast the movies & TV programs introduced from America in a large amount. Taking the film industry as an example, 864 films were shown in the Canadian cinemas in 1978, among which there were 315 new films of America, whereas only 24 films were Canadian. At the end of the 1970s, Lapresse, a newspaper at Montreal, carried out an investigation on the national films. However, it was very depressed for them to find that 30% of Canadians had not seen a Canadian film and 68-80% of them could not remember the names of the Canadian films they just had seen.
In the respect of school education, in this period Universities of Canada also displayed strong characteristics of America. In the universities, there were lots of American Professors or Canadian Professors who graduated from the universities of America, and half of the professors of social science came from America. What they taught was teaching methods and course systems of America. Even students’ academic theses focused on America. For example, According to the investigation of 260 students’ theses on sociologies in the first academic year of Laurentian University revealed that, among the 50 theses on the ethnic relations, there were only 5 theses related to Canada’s “ethnic problems " and almost half of them were about the " Afro-American ". Among the 100 theses on family, there were only 4 dealing with Canadian family problems. In the respect of publication, America dominated three quarters of the Canadian publishing markets in the 1960s. Even lots of Canadians had more knowledge of America than Canada. For example, a Canadian historian, A.B Hodgetts, made an investigation in some Canadian universities and middle schools in the 1970s. He found that most students’ knowledge about American Presidents was more than that of Canadian Premier and that many students did not take history of Canada as an elective course at all.
Moreover, the literature in this period also regarded Canadian Americanization as its theme. For instance, a novel called Surfacing written by Margaret Atwood in 1972 was a representative one. In this novel, the author created a heroine, who dislikes and fears anything related with America. However, she finds many Canadians around her are eagerly copying American accents and life styles. And there are many American tourists on her way home everywhere, but later it is found that those so-called American tourists are Canadians in fact. And what is worse, those tourists also think the heroine is an American.
3. The Americanization of Canada during the 1980-90s,
The third climax came to Canada between the 1980s and 1990s, as the US-Canadian Free Trade Area and North American Free Trade Area gradually took shape, Some visible trade protections - postal rates for Canadian magazines, film distribution, tax credits for Canadian films, legislation to keep Canadian book publishing companies in Canadian control were being eliminated steadily. American cultural products entered the Canadian market more easily. Canadian culture took up less room than ever.
In the screen culture, the Americanization of the Canadian movies and TV programs first was reflected in the quantity .Under the impact of America, in 1989, though Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) controlled 31 TV stations and 598 TV transfer stations of Canada, its audience only accounted for fewer than 25%. In the 1990s, 95% of feature films, about 70% of retail sales of sound recordings, 60% of television programs come from abroad, overwhelmingly from the United States. the three major television networks contained nearly nothing about Canada, whereas the several main television networks of Canada contained lots of information about American .On ground that Hothi investigated “Percentage viewing time by country of origin of program” in 1981, 70% of the programs the audience aged between 2 to 62 watched were from America . And another poll about “Too much or too little Canadian material on television” organized by Goldfarb Consultant in 1983，only 9% of the respondents thought there were too many Canadian programs on TV, 42% thought it too little.（42% thought it ok, 7% did not answer）. At the same time, when asked opinions about “Amount of television programming featuring Canadian performers” , only 6% agreed that there were too much, 48% select “too little ”.(41% thought it ok. 7% did not answer).
The Americanization also was embodied through the profits. As a result of the impact of American programs, the broadcasting stations suffered a great loss during this period, the loss in 1993 was 48million Canadian dollars，in 1994 was 31 million, in 1996 was 3 million , and the broadcasting stations did not get rid of loss ; As bout TV, the condition of Canadian TV was not good in the 1980s, for example, in summer 1984, only the losses of Pay TV had accumulated to 40 Canadian dollars millions and 2 Canadian dollars millions were lost each month. The performing arts of Canada almost suffered the same. At the beginning of the 1990s, the show business companies’ loss reached 6.5 million Canadian dollars. In middle period of the 1990s, though they made a profit of 100 million Canadian dollars, one third of it was from the government supports. Even in Quebec where French is spoken, the American cultural influences were also mostly felt in the cinema industry. In 1993, movies produced in French in Quebec accounted for 6% of movies featured on Quebec's screens. Whereas this proportion was only 3% in the case of English-language films on English-Canadian screens. In 1998-99, 83% of box-office revenues in Quebec went to American movies.
The market of books was roughly like this too. 80% of magazines, 70% of books come from abroad, of which overwhelmingly from the United States especially in the educational publication, Only 25 per cent of educational book publishers in Canada were Canadian. At the supermarkets, the shops such as McDonald’s, Wal-Mart chain stores went into Canada on a larger scale. Wal-Mart, Wendy's and Pizza Hut, achieved an overwhelming superiority when competing with Canadian competitors. With regard to the education, Canada also was influenced badly by America during this period. For one thing, the privatization and commercialization in American education affected Canada. Formerly Canada's universities and colleges were created as public institutions accountable to the public through the government. However, during this period, several provincial governments like the Conservative government in Alberta were rapidly privatizing many educational and other public services functions. Education as a business is attracting more corporations and entrepreneurs. For another, Canada also copied American curricula. In 1992, the Ottawa Separate School Board hired Texas-based Energy Education Ltd., at a cost of 17 thousand Canadian Dollars a month, to design a curriculum
Under such circumstances, “Canada may simply be the most advanced case of U.S. domination of a foreign-entertainment market”. And Canada looks like America in appearance, Americans traveling to Canada may find that most magazines sold in the newsstands are American, and they could find a lot of familiar TV series in Canadian TV programs. One writer described such a phenomenon as follows: “An ordinary Canadian is woken up by the alarm clock made in America in the morning, brushes teeth with toothpaste and toothbrush made in America, shaves with the American razor, and a quarter of the news that he sees in the morning is about America. The car that he drives to go to work is made in America and the lift he uses to enter the office building is made in America. And most of the official working apparatus he uses every day are also made in America. When he comes back home in the evening after a day’s work, he listens to American radio programs, watches American TV programs, reads American novels and magazines, or determines to drive to the nearby cinema to watch an American film. ” .
4. Canadian nationalists’ deep worrying
Through the statement hereinabove, we can find that it is an undeniable fact that American popular culture has been spreading in Canada extensively. Such a phenomenon has led to Canadian nationalists’ deep worrying. They feel their culture has lost the self-expression ability, because the self-expression tools have been occupied by American cultural companies, and American life styles, ideologies, values and social modes have been portrayed as the universal models of modern life.
In some Canadians’ eyes, the entry of American cultural products has been making the world's longest fenceless border that they felt proud of rapidly disappear, and Canada look like America exteriorly Some scholars like Donald Creighton think, Canada's standards and value orientation have been threatened and Canadian creativity has been weakened by Americanization, so that Canadians are unable to construct a new future by themselves. What is more, some nationalists have proposed more radical views. For instance, George Grant published a book called Lament for a Nation: the Defeat of Canadian Nationalism in 1965 declaring Canada had ended as a sovereign state because of Americanization . A Canadian scholar named Henry Comor also wrote an article in 1967 to stress that Americanization was destroying the Canadian TV, values, and culture, and made Canada almost unable to develop its cultural identity, even he considered America as No.1 enemy in this sense. Professor Stuart H. Surlin and Professor Barry Berlin also pointed out that American programs could assimilate Canadians’ subconscious and interpersonal relationship after they inspected the influences of American TV on Canadians. In addition, Doctor Thomas Axworthy, who is teaching at Kennedy School of government of Harvard University, thinks that the gap of the cultural values seemed to have been so narrowed that Canadians have a painful impression that Canada is becoming Americanized. Maude Barlow, one leader of Canadian nationalists also thinks Canadians are getting one part of America and Canadians’ fighting for the uniqueness is over.
II.The Reasons why Canada is “Americanized”
Facing Canadians’ worrying, we can not help asking what caused such a phenomenon？About this question, Just as president of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) said, “In the world, there is no country like Canada allowing a large amount of external culture to permeate and invade their own country.” Some nationalists attribute Americanization to the Canadian government criticizing the government for its invalid measures to limit American culture. In fact this kind of view lacks enough convincingness，because the Canadian government not only has never opened the door voluntarily to Americanization, but also has taken many measures to sustain Canadian own culture identity while facing each climax of Americanization.
In order to prevent the entry of American culture on a large scale, Canada established some specialized agencies to protect and develop national culture in the 1950s. As early as 1949, Canada established Massey Royal Commission on Culture and Arts to investigate and subsidize cultural organizations such as movie & TV companies, libraries and museums etc which could display "national spirit ". In 1958, the CBC was established. CBC prescribed that 55% of television programs and more than 40% of radio programs should be about Canada. Even just from then on, Canada also began developing all kinds of sports events with Canadian characteristics such as ice hockey and lacrosse in a more cost-effective manner to improve the sense of Canada.
In the 1960-70s, Canada took more measures to prompt the culture industries. In the respect of publication, Canada established "Royal Publishing Committee" in 1960 to promote the periodical industries. In the respect of film industry, Canada established Canadian Film Expansion Company in 1967 and Canadian Film Development Corporation (Telefilm Canada since 1982) to subsidize Canadian films, and the former has already subsidized more than 2000 movies and television plays so far. In1968, Canada established Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to strengthen the broadcasting and telecommunication industries. In 1970, the CRTC demanded that domestic TV and Broadcasts should ensure that 50% of their contents should be about Canada (two years later increase to 60%). 40% of the television programs in the prime time should not come from the same foreign county. And only when a program was produced in Canada or composed or Performed by Canadians, can it be considered to be Canadian. in addition, Canadian Broadcasting Act of 1968 also prescribed that“Canada should build its own broadcasting and television systems not only to better serve the people of Canada but also to promote its own broadcasting industries and the Canadian culture.”
In April 1975, the Canadian government announced that it would take measures to restrict the issuing of American books in Canada and then the Canadian government spokesman, Hugh.Faulkner, also hinted that the government would give grants to local film industries, artists, playwrights, dancers and musicians to encourage them to produce or create works reflecting the national traditions and that it planned to limit the quota on radios and televisions and require that 60% of the programs should be about Canada In addition, in 1975, the Time / Reader's Digest, or Bill C-58 was passed and it prescribed that the foreign magazines published in Canada must add the contents of Canada.
After the 1980s, the Canadian government subsidized the cultural industries to greater degree. Only in the year of 1984-85, the Federal government allocated 14.094 million Canadian dollars to the cultural departments such as arts, libraries, social sciences, broadcast and screen culture. Meanwhile, in the year of 1985-86, Canadian Parliament appropriated 302 million Canadian dollars for the Department of Communication (called Department of Canadian Heritage since 1993) .the CBC also spent the special funds in supporting the domestic film makers, authors and actors, instead of purchasing American scenes of comedy. Only in the year of 1997-98, the CBC invested 150 million Canadian dollars in new films. In addition, some dance groups were also provided financial aids to by the Canadian government and only during 1986-1987 they were subsidized 12.1million Canadian dollars. Since 1989, the federal government has invested 2.9 billion Canadian dollars every year in culture industry, that is, 100 Canadian dollars for each Canadian on average. If all the provinces’ funds were added too, the amount was bigger, for example, only in the year of 1995-96, Canadian governments at all levels subsidized 6.1 billion Canadian dollars in culture.
Besides, Canada also put some diplomatic pressure on America to protect her own culture during this period. In 1988, when negotiating with America about the NAFTA, Canada insisted on excluding cultural products from the agreement. Under Canadian insistence, the NAFTA in 1994 enshrined Canada's right to impose "Canadian content" requirements on radio and television, restrict foreign investment and ownership, and to permit government subsidies of cultural industries such as publishing, music, and cinema. In 1995 Minister of Canadian Heritage Department stressed repeatedly that, “We are Canada, not America. We will not regard the trades of cultural products as those of chicken and potatoes.” He also said that Canada would tax the advertisements up to 80 % in the Canadian versions of American newspapers, and the Canadian broadcasting stations must pay more royalties for broadcasting American songs. In 1995, Canada enacted a law about the royalty which prescribed that foreign magazines printed in the second edition in Canada do not enjoy tax cut. In June, 1998, 19 culture ministers met in Ottawa, to discuss about the importance of maintaining national culture in the globalization, and America was refused to attend. The main American newspapers all considered the meeting as an anti-Americanization meeting. In the first half of 1999, in order to protect its own culture from the attack of American publications, movies, and televisions, the Canadian government even disputed with America, which nearly bred the trade war between the two countries. And in 2000, Canada began carrying out the act of C – 55, which stipulated that the Canadian enterprises are forbidden to publish advertisements in the foreign magazines, otherwise would be fined
Therefore, we can draw the conclusion without question that it is unfair to blame the Canadian government for Americanization. Then, on earth, what are the reasons? I think，about this question, the main reasons are as follows.
1. The similar cultural origins and close geopolitical factors facilitate the massive entry of American culture.
When we talk about the similar cultural origins between America and Canada, we can trace back to the colony period of Canada. Historically, Canada and America were both a result of European especially British colony. The first immigrants to Canada were French. Before seven year's war Canada was under the government of France. After that, New France was taken over by Englishmen, and more and more British immigrants including Americans entered Canada and outnumbered French people and brought British culture and American culture to Canada. And since then Canada had become the region that was deeply affected by French and English culture. Comparatively speaking, American culture and Canadian culture are both variations of European culture, they not only share common ethnic identity, but also share almost the similar languages, the same God, and similar lifestyles, political systems, and value orientations, which make Canadians not respond fiercely against American culture, not like the Arab world and the communist world.
Specially, American culture indeed influenced Canada. For one thing, large quantities of immigrants of America entered Canada in history. Just around the war of independence, nearly 100 thousands Americans moved to Canada. By 1905, American immigrants outnumbered British in Alberta and Saskatchewan by a ratio of two to one: in the years 1897-1912, 785 thousands American farmers came northwards to settle on cheap land. In 1921, 375 thousands or twenty per cent of those of foreign birth living in Canada were Americans. American culture those immigrants brought influenced Canada. What was more, the weak Canada had to depend on America in culture some times. For example, around the early 20th century, a lot of famous writers had to publish their works in America instead of in Canada because of audience and economic rewards. Such periodicals as Atlantic Monthly, Century, and Harper's Magazine were Canadian writers’ main publishing fields. And at that time, if the writers wanted to get publishers’ attentions of the United States, they must add some American factors in to their works such as portraying Canada as French or British colony, the 51st state of America and the inviable wilderness. Such a situation had far-reaching influences on Canada.
As to the geopolitical factors, the influences of the geopolitical effects in North America on America and Canada are completely contrary. To America, the geopolitical position that “two oceans in the east and west and no formidable opponent in the south and north" played an important role in facilitating America to develop into the strongest country. However, that’s another pair of shoes for Canada. Canada often complains that God gave Canada almost the same things as America, but put America beside Canada. In Canadians’ eyes, Canada is a mouse sleeping with an elephant, which fears that the tiniest move of the elephant may crush him. Though this sounds like a joke, it vividly expresses the enormous geopolitical effects on the US-Canada relationship.
Concretely speaking, such geopolitical factors mainly include the following points. The first is population distribution. Because of history and climate, 90 % of the Canadians live in the places which are less than 200 miles away from the Canadian and American border. Therefore, Canadians are unable to get rid of the connections with Americans in space. The second is the physical geography. Rocky Mount, St. Lawrence Mount, and Canadian Shield land are all north-south orientation, which makes the traffic between north and south more convenient than east and west.
The third is the bilateral political relationship. In the mainstream culture of the United States, Americans have a sense of "American Exceptionalism". The so-called "American Exceptionalism" means that the Unite States is Jerusalem that God chose and that Americans are God's chosen people, America bears the mission of saving other nations and of safeguarding democracy and freedom. The libration of the human finally depends on America this concept had been born before the War of Independence, and in the 19th century it evolved into a more expanding theory--- New Manifest Destiny, which advocated expansionism and further emphasized the superiority of American culture. American expansionists hope American culture can take the place of other “backward” cultures. In the eyes of many Americans, "If the world will have a common language, it should be English; If the world will have common standards of telecommunications, safety and quality, then they should belong to the United States; if the world will be linked as an organic whole by TV, broadcast and music, the programs should be American; If the common values will take shape, they should be in line with the wishes of the Americans."
Such an imperial psychology of also influenced Canada, and in history, from the War of Independence to the early 20th century, the American expansionists always wanted to include Canada within the domain of the United States, and set off three waves of annexing Canada. Although such attempts finally vanished like soap bubbles, some Americans did not give up the dream of “annexing” Canada in culture or economy, the two world wars, the Second World War in particular provided golden chances to America.
Since World War II, as European countries such as Britain declined in economy and international status, the Canadian connections with European countries have been weakening and contacts with American have been getting closer day by day. And Canada has been gradually appearing in the international community as a real country of North America and has been tying itself tightly with the superpower. These make Canada and America communicate very close, the border has become the express way of communication. Naturally, it is convenient for American poplar cultural products to be popular in Canada.
2. The Deconcentration of Canada's multi-culture makes Canada unable to form a united power to resist American culture.
Compared with American culture, Canadian culture has a feature in common with American culture. I.e., both of them consist of multi-culture. But it is a wonder that Canadian multi-culture is no match for American multi-culture. Facing the impact of American popular culture, Canadian multi-culture can not unite as a whole to counteract. The reason why the situation appeared, I think, is the deconcentration of Canada's multi-culture. Canadian culture was so scattered that Canada never formed into a cultural melting pot like America, which made the Canadian culture unable to form a strong fort to face Americanization.
Of course, Canada was once tired to be assimilated into a whole body for several times in history. Before the seven year's war, Canada was under the governance of France, and was an area of French culture. After the seven year's war, Canada fell in the hands of the British Empire. Britain planned to assimilate the culture of France with Britain's culture for a time, but the stubborn French people did not accept it. Therefore, the British Empire had to adopt a policy of appeasement allowing the equal status of the French culture. This made Canada split into two cultural areas from the beginning. But America was not like this, as early as after Independence War, American mainstream had formed, not tore into halves.
In the first half of the 20th century, in order to develop the West, Canada enacted many preferential measures to attract immigrants, and only during the years from 1900 to 1920, the number of immigrants entering Canada was 3 million. Most of these immigrants came from Central Europe, South-eastern Europe, Eastern Europe and Northern Europe, so they were different from Canada's already existing British and French cultures. Canada once again adopted the policy of assimilation to these immigrants. It carried out the policy of Anglo-conformity in the English-speaking areas and carried out the policy of “France-conformity” in the French-speaking areas. But this policy did not make much effect either, because the population of Canada was only 6 million in this period, and the immigrants to Canada accounted for about half of the population. It was very difficult for Canadians to assimilate so many new immigrants as America, and this laid the first foundation for the scattered culture of Canada.
After World War II especially after 1960s, with the development of economy, the population shortage became very serious, but Europe could not supply more immigrants. So the restrictions of immigration became relaxed. Up to 1961, 2.1 million non-British and “non-French” immigrants came into Canada. Few of them could speak English or French. Meanwhile, lots of Asian-Pacific and Latin American immigrants entered Canada. The ethnic composition of Canada was changed entirely, in 1871, descendants of the Great Britain and France accounted for 60.5% and 31.1% of Canada's total population respectively, and other nationalities only accounted for about 8%. But in the 1960s the proportion of non-British, “non-French” or non-indigenous Canadian populations accounted for up to 26% of the total population; in 1971 up to 27% and in the 1990s up to 33%. The proportion of the British descendents declined relatively, and it was 48% in 1978, 44% in 1980, and only 25% in 1990. Particularly most of these new immigrants were well-educated brain workers, soaked deeply with their national or ethical culture and had a strong sense of self-consciousness as the Third Force, they strongly required their cultural specialties to be admitted and respected. Finally, Canada had to give up the policy of assimilation, and then announced a multi-cultural policy in 1971, and issued Canadian Multiculturalism Act in 1988 which stipulated that multiculturalism was Canadian national policy.
Certainly, the American society is also a kind of multicultural society, but their focuses are different. Firstly, American multiculturalism only stays at the level of people's values. Whereas the multiculturalism of Canada has already become the state law and the Canadian government has more power to guarantee the equal status of various nationalities. Secondly, the multiculturalism of America is in fact a kind of a large melting pot, it emphasizes the integration of various nationalities' cultures, it "is based on the spirit of mutual respect and shared values", and finally forms the same American culture. The descendants of all nationalities in America are of hybrid distribution and especially European descendants spread all over America. Besides, American society is of high mobility and can not form the phenomenon of a single nationality or race living collectively in one area on a large scale. Some small-scale racial and ethnic streets can not change the spatial framework of the melting-pot. But the multi-culture of Canada does not emphasize the integration of various cultures but living together peacefully and keeping one's own culture characteristics.
Because of the reason, Canada has formed a multi-cultural society. Every culture keeps its strong self-identity and tradition. So much so that, various cultures such as British culture, French culture, German culture, Chinese culture, Indian culture and Inuit culture are isolated from each other like jigsaws. This makes the already small population of Canada divided into smaller units in the cultural field. Naturally, such small scattered units will be unable to unite as American melting-pot.
3. The asymmetry of American and Canadian economies makes Canada lack the economic foundation to avoid Americanization.
As a kind of consumption culture, American popular culture has a close relationship with economy. Economy is a factor that can't be avoided for it. Even to some degree, Canadian Americanization was a result of the asymmetry of American and Canadian economies, such an asymmetry aggravated the Americanization of Canada.
In American economic history, America experienced several astonishing growths. Since the end of the civil war, American economy has been ranking the first giant in the world, whose power is beyond other powers far away. By comparison, Canada is not as lucky as America. Though Canada ranked one of the Western G-7 after World War II, Canada's economy still has been increasingly dependent on America. In the 1920s, America had replaced Britain and became the most important country that influenced Canadian economic development in investment and trade. After the World War II, such a situation has been more obvious.
Above all, America have controlled Canadian some key economic departments through investments. According to the relevant statistics, the American capital accounted for 70% in 1945, up to 76% in 1957, and up to 80% in 1964 in Canadian foreign capitals. And now, the foreign corporations in Canada headed by America have controlled 60% of the manufacturing industries, 75% of the petroleum and natural gas industries, and 60% of the mining and smelting industries. In the other industries such as the mining manufacturing, electric, chemical and automobile industries, American companies also are No.1. For examples, 88.1 % assets of Canadian Ford Motor Company belongs to American Ford, 100 % assets of Canadian GM belongs to American GM. The largest oil company of Canada, Imperial Oil Ltd, its 69.5 % property is in the charge of Erickson oil in New York. In the amount of investments, America has occupied the absolute predominance too. For example, from 1945 to1975, Canadian foreign loans reached 40 billion US dollars, 80 % was borrowed from America. at the beginning of 1981, and American private capitals in Canada reached 44.6 billion US dollars, whereas the Canadian investment in America was only 9.8 billion US dollars .
In the aspect of trade, since the Second World War, America has been playing a crucial role in Canadian foreign trade. In 1955, 60% of the goods of Canada were transported to America, and 73% of the imports were from America. And since then, especially since US-Canadian FTA and AFTA, the percentage has been on the rise, 60% to more than 80% of Canadian exports(mainly natural resource and raw products) are transported to America and about 2/3 of Canadian imports (mainly high-tech products) depend on America.
Under such circumstances, America has become Canada’s speed setter of economic development to a great extent, and the Canadian government has to determine its industrial policy according to New York and Chicago. , Which not only makes the American popular cultural products closely related with the economy enter Canada very easily, but also make America often use economic means to deal with the Canadian restrictions on American cultural products. For example, in 1965, the Canadian government stipulated that the income tax of the newspapers or periodicals advertisements, in which foreigners held more than 25% of the shares, should not be reduced or remitted. After this policy was issued, the magazine offices of Times and Reader's Digest whose 40% of their revenue came from Canada expressed their strong protests. And the American government put pressure on Canada in petroleum import and car trade. Finally, the two magazines were exempted. For another example, in 1994, Canada rejected the American Country Music Channel’s starting Country Music Television in Canada. However, the American companies regarded it as trade protection, and actively lobbied Congress for trade retaliation against Canada. Finally Canada had to compromise. This phenomenon seems difficult to overcome. “Canadians complain of American domination but do little to return to economic isolation, which would purchase greater independence with a much diminished standard of living.”. “As long as the FTA remains the dominant influence in Canadian affairs, the Americanization of Canada will proceed inexorably. Indeed, it will prove unstoppable unless the FTA is abrogated.”
4. The gap of attractiveness between America and Canada cultural products makes Canada deficient in resisting Americanization.
Apart from depending on American super supremacy of politics, economy and military power, that American popular culture has prevailed so widely all over the world is inseparable with the charms itself. As a culture that is created not for the noblemen but for the common people, the voices, imagines and information communicated of this culture has its special attraction. To a great degree, American culture full of modernity has a fascinating side. American popular culture meets the material and spiritual demands of people who live in the fast-paced and competitive modern society. For instance, American movies indeed can meet many different people’s various tastes. Bruce, rock and country music are of great artistic values and it also can not be denied that much pleasure and convenience can be got from Microsoft, Disney, NBA, McDonald’s, American music and supermarkets. The charms of American popular culture have made many foreigners become captives of Americanization. “the tides consisting of T-shirts and jeans, music and movies, videos and software, are flooding out of America. Parents around the world resist this trend in vain, and their children thirst for getting them”
Even American popular culture also can be found easily in Arabian world that dislike America. According to the report of Global Times on Feb.26th of 2006 , “in Cairo, American commodities covering every place are very popular with the local residents. KFC, McDonald's and other fast food restaurants are more and more. Coca-Cola and Pepsi sell faster and faster. American automobiles can be found along the main streets. The most Egyptians think American automobiles are better than European and Japanese ones” “American politicians are bad, but American goods are good”. Even, because of the attraction power of American popular culture, some anti-Americanism people also began liking them. A Egyptian Muslim doctor called Sharif said:“many things that I thought never happened to me took place at last……when I was 71years old, unexpectedly I began to wear jeans and Nike, enjoy rock, Jamaica and Rap music. I also like disco dance hall……I know these things have slipped into my life secretly” although this is just a single case, the charms of American popular culture can be felt too.
American cultural products have also been welcomed by many Canadians. Except Inuit isolated from the modern society and living in the Arctic Circle，Many Canadians are very crazy about American culture. Many Canadians like reading Washingtom Post,Times, Life，like listening to ABC, CBS or shopping in the supermarkets of American styles. American movies, music and television programs have become the fashions during Canadians’ leisure time. 50% of Canadians believe that American TV programs are superior to Canadian, in 1980, Gallup found that 68% of Canadians thought America made the best TV Programs only 15% held the converse opinions many common people of Canada are against that Canada takes measures to limit American cultural products. For example, Goldfarb Consultants made a poll about “Should American TV Should Be Restricted” in 1983, 81% of the respondents answered no, because they thought the audiences had the right to select what they favor. James Dean, a Canada-America relationship expert of Western Washington University pointed that Canadians were infatuated with American culture, they---like the other people all over the world, were the greedy consumers of American culture such as American television programs, movies, popular music, magazines, books, fashions and fast food. With many addicts of American culture in Canada, with the temptation of more profits of American cultural products than the domestic ones, it is no wonder that American popular culture prevail widely in Canada.
Conclusion
To sum up, as a mixture of culture and consumption, the influence power of American popular culture on Canada is obvious and tremendous. Because of the impact of Americanization, Canadian cultural industries have been in a weak status and Canadian cultural characteristics are also being threatened to a great extent. In future, there is still a long way to go for Canada in strengthening the industries of culture, in defending her cultural sovereignty and sustaining her cultural identity.
canada
2007-12-05 22:10:38
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