Fillmore-Handlon Phd S2019
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Our Famous Blue Raincoat: The Phenomenon of Leonard Cohen and the Changing Discourses of Celebrity in Canada Charlotte Jane Fillmore-Handlon A Thesis In the Humanities Program Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Humanities) at Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada October 2018 © Charlotte Jane Fillmore-Handlon, 2018 Charlotte Jane Fillmore-Handlon Our Famous Blue Raincoat: The Phenomenon of Leonard Cohen and the Changing Discourses of Celebrity in Canada (Humanities) Dr. Monika Gagnon Dr. Line Grenier Dr. Bart Simon Dr. Valérie deCourville Nicol Dr. Charles Acland Dr. Darren Wershler Dr. Erin Manning December 10, 2018 Dr. André Roy, Faculty of Arts and Science ABSTRACT Our Famous Blue Raincoat: The Phenomenon of Leonard Cohen and the Changing Discourses of Celebrity in Canada Charlotte Jane Fillmore-Handlon, PhD Concordia University, 2018 The history of Leonard Cohen’s career over the last sixty years is also a reflection of the development of contemporary celebrity culture in Canada. One of the main conditions that allowed this culture to emerge is the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences (1949-51). As a result, the Canadian government strengthened cultural policy and developed the Canada Council for the Arts to support cultural production. In 1958, Cohen was a recipient of the new Canada Council Junior Arts Fellowships. Using the celebrity phenomenon of Cohen as my object of research, this dissertation asks: How is the discourse of celebrity constructed in Canada from the mid-twentieth century to the early decades of the twenty-first century? Developing a discursive analysis, I illuminate how we talk about celebrity in Canada at certain socio-historical moments and portray Canada as a nation ambivalent about celebrity. Within the early industrial production of Cohen’s poetic celebrity, discourses of literary celebrity, Canadian celebrity, and cultural nationalism discursively manage his biographical production as a popular and accessible poet. In turn, discourses of intimacy connect Cohen with his fans, as fans seek to discover the “real” Cohen through his poetry and music. However, these feelings of intimacy are disparaged through a discourse of the obsessive and emotional fan perpetuated in the media coverage of Montreal 2000: The Leonard Cohen Event. After Cohen’s death, I discover a shift away from this discourse. The media coverage of Cohen’s death circulates an affective atmosphere of grief and mourning, presents the emotionality of fans as appropriate, and offers socially normative ways of coping with this loss. I explore my own complex emotional reaction to Cohen’s death as a fan and academic through an autoethnographic approach, seeking to depathologize the emotional experiences of academia and fandom. One of the most significant changes in discourses of Canadian celebrity that I identify is a potentially seismic shift from willful avoidance to zero tolerance regarding problematic celebrity behaviour. iii In conclusion, I build on this discourse by exploring the things we do not talk about when we talk about Leonard Cohen. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has supported me on this journey. Without all of you, this would not have been possible. To my major field supervisor, Dr. Darren Wershler, thank you for your expert guidance and your candid and invaluable mentorship. From the beginning, Darren helped shape my research, encouraging me to expand my ideas and directing my research into areas I might not have otherwise considered. During the final stages of writing, he played a crucial role in motivating me to finish. I would also like to thank my minor field advisors Dr. Charles Acland and Dr. Valérie de Courville Nicol. I feel very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to work with Charles as his research assistant and take two of his courses. Charles’s meticulous and thoughtful feedback on my work allowed me to see my own potential and strive to reach it. For that I am truly thankful. I am also indebted to Valérie for her astute and enthusiastic direction. Her own research provided me with an opportunity to expand the boundaries of my work. I am extremely grateful for how her research on emotions has validated my own emotions and intuition as a researcher. I highly value the thoughtful and important insights and comments from my External Examiner, Dr. Line Grenier, and Internal Examiner, Bart Simon, which provided for a lively and memorable defence. I would also like to express gratitude to Lorraine York for her generosity in providing me with an advanced copy of Celebrity Cultures in Canada. This project would not have been possible without financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Fonds de Recherche du Québec—Société et Culture, the Humanities Doctoral Program, and the Faculty of Arts and Science. To my family—my parents, Charlie, Annika, and Clare, my grandparents, my Aunt Charlotte, Jessie and the cousin crew, and Penny and Allan—thank you for your constant love and support. It knows no bounds. To my mother, Catherine, at times I was not sure whether to thank you or blame you for spurring me down this path to follow in your footsteps, but all joking aside, I truly would never have done this without you. You were always a phone call away when I needed to talk or wanted to read my latest draft out loud. I cannot even begin to thank you enough. To my dad, Richard, thank you for always believing in me. Thank you to Grandma Eve and Grandpa Jim. Although you were not here to champion me during my PhD, I know how proud you would be. v To my partner Adam, thank you for your unfaltering patience, love, support, and humour, which sustained me throughout. Thank you for sitting with me when I had trouble writing, for letting the pinball room become my office, for giving me the space to finish this dissertation, for being an endless source of positivity and laughter, and for always being my cheerleader and encouraging me to be the best version of myself. A special thanks goes out to my furry companions for keeping me company while I wrote: Mouse (RIP), Pickles (my main editor), and Sir Snuggles (the original keyboard cat). Thank you to my North Star family. I appreciate all your hard work in giving me the time, flexibility, and confidence to finish this project, especially during the final stages of writing. I could not have done it without your help and understanding. Thank you to my friends for helping me celebrate all the little accomplishments along the way and for all your notes of support. And to Leonard, thank you. vi For Catherine and Clare vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: What We Talk About When We Talk About Leonard Cohen .................................. 1! I cried for you this morning / And I’ll cry for you again: Mourning Leonard Cohen 1! Leonard Cohen is Not Picasso 4! Studying the Cohen Phenomenon: Methodology 9! The Flame Burns On: Findings 33! From Popular Poet to Canadian Legend: Chapter Summaries 39! Chapter One: The Word Made Flesh ............................................................................................ 42! 1.1 Introduction: The Little Jew Who Wrote the Bible 42! 1.2 The Canadian Context: Dominant Discourses of Celebrity 48! 1.3 Literary Celebrity 80! 1.4 Celebrity Theory 91! 1.5 Fandom Theory 101! 1.5.1 Acafandom ....................................................................................................................................... 114! 1.6 Sociology of Emotion 122! 1.7 Circulation Theory 128! Chapter Two: The Con, or the Cohen Watched. The Early Industrial Circulation of the Cohen Phenomenon ................................................................................................................................ 135! 2.1 Introduction: Peering Behind the Text 135! 2.2 The Cohen Industry 137! 2.2.1 Archive as Object ............................................................................................................................. 153! Chapter Three: You’re My Obsession. Am I Your Fan? ............................................................ 166! 3.1 Introduction: Cohen as Media Friend 166! 3.2 Fandom, Intimacy, and Fantasy 170! 3.3 Dear Leonard: Fan Letters from the late 1960s and Discourses of Intimacy 180! 3.4 Cohen Fandom Online: Genesis to Montreal 2000 186! 3.5 Montreal 2000: The Leonard Cohen Event 189! 3.6 The Work of Fandom 210! Chapter Four: Our Eyes are Soft with Sorrow ............................................................................ 214! 4.1 Introduction: A Lullaby For Suffering 214! 4.2 Public Mourning 216! 4.3 Private Grief 243! 4.5 Academic Affect 252! Conclusion: What We Do Not Talk About When We Talk About Leonard Cohen ................... 258! 5.1 Introduction: Crazy to Love You 258! 5.2 Death of a Ladies’ Man 259! 5.3 I’m Good at Love, I’m Good at Hate, It’s in Between I Freeze 268! 5.4 That Don’t Make It Junk 271! 5.5 Travelling Light: Final Thoughts 274! Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 285! viii Introduction: What We Talk About When We Talk About Leonard Cohen If you hang in there long enough you begin to be surrounded by a certain gentleness, and also a certain invisibility. This invisibility is promising, because it will probably become deeper and deeper. And with invisibility—and I am not talking about the opposite of celebrity, I mean something like “The Shadow,” who can move from one room to another unobserved—comes a beautiful calm. – Leonard Cohen1 If I had been given this attention when I was 26, it would have turned my head. At 36 it might have confirmed my flight on a rather morbid spiritual path. At 46 it would have rubbed my nose in my failing powers and have prompted a plotting of a getaway and an alibi. But at 56—hell, I’m just hitting my stride and it doesn’t hurt at all. – Cohen2 No comparison can be drawn between Leonard Cohen and any other phenomenon.