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Media
Hillary, Obama, McCain, Huckabee: they’re all in front, too in front
An obscure, foreign, and convoluted political process of little importance to Canada dominates daily headlines and captivates minds
By Kevin Potvin
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It’s not hard to see how modern media technology has become by far the most effective instrument of cultural hegemony ever contrived in human history. For the past few months in the United States, political parties have been holding small local meetings to select a few delegates to send to party leadership conventions in September in preparations for a national election scheduled for November. The national election is arguably—but just barely—an event of some significance to Canadians. The party leadership conventions are only of marginal significance and only to serious students of international politics. The individual county-by-county delegate selection meetings, in a ranking of things Canadians need to know about, come somewhere below the price of pork in Poland. And yet, every day for the past few months, these local delegate selection meetings have dominated the headlines and newscasts of all Canadian media as though life and death were in the balance. The British also have convention delegate selection meetings, but Canadian media only begin reporting days ahead of the national election, appropriately enough, and the outcome, unless it’s somehow surprising, is relegated to inside pages. Same with the French national election process. And yet these two countries have influence over Canada at least on the same order of magnitude as the US. We aren’t even told that there are elections in any other country, let alone what the results are. And yet, what a coffee shop-bunch of hangers-on in Pin Prick, Iowa think of a third-string candidate for one party a year before elections in the US is top item even on the CBC News and is writ large across the tops of all our daily newspapers. The results are not surprising. People who cannot name three out of ten city councilors, who don’t know who their MLA of 20 years is or what function they serve, who can’t remember what “MP” stands for and who aren’t even aware of Canadian party leadership conventions, ask each other with desperate urgency whether this or that American will persuade the eleven black female voters in a US state delegate selection meeting in backwoods Missouri. Why would people care more about the minutia of obscure, foreign and purely academic political processes than they do their own government’s day-to-day legislative assaults? The answer is, they don’t. But the dominance of US media over our own media, the hegemony of US culture over our own culture, is so insidious we don’t even know that we’ve been completely caught up in events that could not matter less to us, while those events that do matter have been completely erased from our consciousness. The same displacement of our own cultural concerns by a foreign American culture has been happening in every aspect of our cultural lives. Canadian audiences for the US football championship game dwarfs Canadian audiences for our own Canadian football championship game. Canadian films do not qualify as great films for Canadians unless US audiences flock to them in US theatres first, while mediocre or worse US films play on every screen in the country to large Canadian audiences every night of the year. The leaky condo plague that continues to infect Vancouverites, where frequent rain falls sideways through cold air, is caused by good local building plans having been discarded in favour of bad California building plans, where infrequent rain falls straight through warm air. It isn’t just happening to Canada. The same US cultural hegemony is wiping out local culture, tastes, styles and concerns in every country around the world. Lybians, Laotians and Lithuanians also read and argue more about Barack Obama than they do their own reigning president. And just like us, they can’t even step back a moment to stare in amazement at what they’ve become because there is scarcely nowhere to step back to: their own culture, like ours, has withered up and blown away like dust. That’s what makes modern media technology so much more effective an instrument of empire than all occupation armies, puppet governments, torture cells and jails, combined. When land is stolen, leaders are shot or critics are jailed, our minds take note. But when our minds are captured, and they certainly seem captured, there’s nothing left to take note with. No one can plot their escape from prison without first knowing they’re in one.
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The Republic of East Vancouver masthead The Republic of East Vancouver supports no party, advocates for no cause, represents no group, serves no master, and considers problems with no preconceived notions. We hope to afflict the comfortable, both materially and intellectually, and comfort the afflicted—of both kinds as well, and we are trying to do both things at the same time. Publisher, Editor Kevin Potvin Advertising Kevin Potvin Support Dan Crawford, John Daigle, Jack Etkin, Janis Harper, Carl Johnson, Hilary Jones, Chris King, James Mecham, Albrecht Meyers, Peter Miller, James Pope Contributors in this and recent issues Bruce Alexander, Dan Adleman, Toby Alford, Kevin Annett, Santo Barbieri, Bob Broughton, Mike Bryan, Stephen Buckley, Matthew Burrows, Maria Calleja, Ron Carton, Chad Christie, Joshua Corber, Dan Crawford, Gail Davidson, Eric Doherty, Joe Donaldson, Lorena Jara Patty Ducharme, Shadia Drury, Taivo Evard, Reed Eurchuk, Farnaz Fassihi, Thomas Feakins, Anthony Fenton, Reza Fiyouyzat, Andrew Gordon Fleming, Ryan Fugger, Sasha Gagic, Matt Goody, Guy Hawkins, Spencer Herbert, John Irwin, Nick Istvaniffy, Junius, William Kay, Mike Keep, Kate Kennedy, Donald Kropp, Chris LaVigne, James Lindfield, Brian Lindgreen, Karen Litzke, Keith MacKenzie, Michael McLaughlin, Sonya McRae, Rafe Mair, Sonia Marino, Jennifer Matsui, Michael Millard, Isaebel Minty, Michael Nenonen, Wendy Nylund, Derrick O’Keefe, Stephen Osborne, Sean Orr, Evan Augustine Pederson III, Stephen Peplow, Kim Peterson, Kevin Potvin, Mary Rawson, Andrea Reimer, Erin Riley, Phil Rockstroh, Becky Scott, Jason Scott, Chris Shaw, Jeff Steudel, Alex Tegart, Scott Turner, Elbio Grosso Trentini, Patrick Vert, Chris Walker, Sean Wilkinson, Brad Zembic For comments or suggestions, please contact the Republic Webmaster |
