Identity and Nationalism in Canadian Rodeo Karol
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UNDER WHAT FLAG? IDENTITY AND NATIONALISM IN CANADIAN RODEO KAROL ORZECHOWSKI A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS GRADUATE PROGRAM IN COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO JUNE, 2012 © KAROL ORZECHOWSKI, 2012 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-90014-7 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-90014-7 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distrbute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. Canada Rodeo culture in Canada - and North America more broadly - is a relatively non-mainstream and little-scrutinized subculture, but it is one in which its adherents are particularly emotionally and physically invested. I concentrate on three key questions: 1) How can we define rodeo culture in Canada? 2) Is there a coherent set of identity position(s) within Canadian rodeo culture that can be thought of in terms of a nationalism? 3) How can an understanding of the "rodeo nation" illuminate the position of animals used in rodeo sports, such as bulls, calves, and horses? Through historical research, analysis of cultural production related to rodeos and cowboys, a series of ten interviews with "insiders" to rodeo culture (participants, organizers, and support workers) and attendance at rodeos around Ontario, I unpack rodeo culture and begin to explore the tentative definition of a "rodeo nation," and its implications for the animals involved. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS I: Introduction 1 II: Rope, Leather, Beasts, Brawn: Rodeo Then and Now 13 i) Rodeo Then 14 ii) Rodeo Now 18 iii) The Rodeo in Contemporary Visual Culture 21 a) The Belt Buckle and Bolo Tie 23 b) The Bucking Beast 25 c) 192 Frames 28 d) The Ring of Fire 33 e) Wildly Tame 37 0 Only One of Us Walks Away 41 III: Nationalism and Identity 43 IV: The Rodeo Nation in Its Own Words 50 i) Inside and Outside the Ring 53 ii) The Lasso of Citizenship 58 iii) Masculinity, Muscle, and Sacrifice 64 iv) The Question of the Animal 69 v) The National Economy 82 vi) Drawing The Borders 88 V: A Photo/Journal of My Time At The Rodeo 93 i) The Royal Agricultural Winter Fair Rodeo 95 ii) Hillsburgh Bullriding Clinic 100 iii) Lindsay Rodeo 105 iv) Dorchester Dodge Rodeo 110 v) Milverton Dodge Rodeo 115 VI: Conclusions 120 VII: Bibliography 125 1 I: INTRODUCTION In the arena(s) of Canadian sports, there are few activities that draw the kind of cultural opposition that rodeo does. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find another sport in Canada that is regularly protested through pickets, ads taken out in newspapers, and undercover investigations. The ethical debate that surrounds the rodeo in Canada (and elsewhere) stands at the intersection of a variety of cultural tensions: the tenuous relationship between the urban and the rural (including the disconnect between agriculture and the rest of society); the tension between animal use and animal welfare; and the tension between media representation and reality, to name just a few. These tensions are characteristic of other controversial "Canadian issues" (debates about the seal hunt, or the debates about Aboriginal hunting tours for polar bears come to mind), but seem especially pronounced in relationship to the question of the rodeo. At first glance, the debate seems fairly straightforward: from one side, animal rights groups are against the rodeo, and want either welfare reforms as soon as possible or the abolition of rodeos entirely; cowboys, ranchers and other stakeholders, from the other side, seek to protect a source of livelihood and cultural heritage from moralizing outsiders who haven't the vaguest idea of what organizing or performing in a rodeo might entail. Though this may be a tempting way to sew up a complicated issue, it is obviously a gross oversimplification. The story of rodeos and the debate that surrounds them is, in fact, as complicated and difficult to navigate as a ring of angry bulls. In the following paper, I will explore the Canadian rodeo as both a culturally- constructed and material event, and attempt to offer an alternative to the cultural discourses that dominate the debate. Though I do come to this thesis with a particular set of subjective assumptions and positions (discussed in more detail below), it is not my intention to debate the "rightness" or 2 "wrongness" of the rodeo, or to present a series of arguments on ethics; instead, what I hope to do is reframe the rodeo while shifting some of the analysis to the perspective of the animals themselves, and consider how proponents of the rodeo have - to a large degree - obscured who their animals actually are through rhetorics of identity, including descriptions of insider/outsider politics, rurality, and even animal welfare. To that end, I will concentrate on three key questions: 1) How can we define rodeo culture in Canada? 2) Is there a coherent (set of) identity position(s) within Canadian rodeo culture that can be thought of in terms of a nationalism? 3) How can an understanding of the group identity politics engrained in Canadian rodeo culture illuminate the position of animals used in rodeo sports, such as bulls, calves, and horses? While posing these questions, I use Benedict Anderson's (2006, originally published in 1983) definition of nationalism1 to guide my analysis. He defines the "nation" as an "imagined political community" that exists under notions of finite boundaries, sovereignty and fraternity (6- 7). The concept of the nation as "imagined" is vital to his theory, as it highlights the way in which people who are spread out across thousands of kilometers, or with many diverging interests can somehow find points of shared identity: "Members of even the smallest nations will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion" (6). Continuing on this point, Anderson remarks that, "[i]n fact, all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined" (6). This definition is key to my analysis, as it identifies nationalism as a discursive action rather than a fixed political entity or even a fixed State. Though I use Anderson's definition of "nation" in a loose way, to describe the imaginary "nation" constituted by those who organize, participate in, and watch rodeos, I will also be exploring the ubiquity of 1 Though Anderson serves as a touchstone for the analysis of my key research questions, I have provided a more thorough discussion of nation and nationalism in Section III of this paper. 3 symbols and ideas of Canadian nationalism throughout the rodeo itself, and asking questions to rodeo participants about their conception of Canadian identity. In this sense, I am exploring a nation (rodeo culture) within a nation (Canadian culture), and the numerous ways that these nationalisms weave into and intersect with each other, as well as other political positions. Though my study is clearly focused on human discourse and rhetoric, my primary point of concern is the animal subjects of my research: Bulls, horses, and to a lesser extent, calves. As the main animal subjects in the context of the rodeo, I am interested in understanding how they are represented in various forms of texts, from the ways that they are represented in written and visual cultural production, to how they are represented in the actual physical reality of the rodeo. In this sense, rodeo animals are the absent reference to my three key questions outlined above, and the goal of my analysis can be thought of in simpler terms: How does rodeo culture include/exclude/valorize/subjugate the animals that are involved? Can an alternative rodeo culture exist without the subjugation of these animals, and if not, why not? These may seem like simple questions with simple answers, but my experiences speaking with rodeo cowboys and cowgirls, and attending rodeos, does not offer a simple conclusion. To these ends, my paper begins with a consideration of the history of the rodeo in both the US and Canada, and the way that popular cultural forms such as film have played a role in the dissemination and perpetuation of a particular cowboy image.