NOSTALGICNATIONALISMS AND THE SPECTACLEOF THE MALE BODYIN CANADIANAND QUÉBÉCOIS CINEMA A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in partial fulnllment of the requirernents for the degree of Master of Fine Arts Graduate Programme in Film and Video York University North York, Ontario August 1997 National Library Bibliothèque nationale (*iof Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographic Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON KIA ON4 OEtawaON K1AON4 Canada Canada YourlZb Volrsrritérsnce Our Ne Notre dfér8nce The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distnbute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microfonn, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfichelfilm, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fkom it Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels may be pruited or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. Nostalgic Nationalism and the Spectacle of the Male Body in Canadian and Quebecois Cinema by Lee Anne Parpart a thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduatr Studies of York University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of -Fine Arts 0 1997 Permission has been granted to the LIBRARY OF YORK UNI- VERSITY to lend or sel1 copies of this thesis. to the NATIONAL LIBRARY OF CANADA to microfilm this thesis and to tend or sett copies of the film. and to UNIVERSITY MICROFILMS to publish an abstract of this thesis. The author reserves other publication rights, and neither the thesis nor extensive extracts from it may be printed or other- wise reproduced without the author's written permission. Abstract Discourses on colonial masculinity in Canadina cinema after 1972 overwhelmingly positioned the male protagonist as a "victim" or "losef' whose inadequacies were traceable to a colonial culture with an ongoing sense of inferiority relative to Britain, France and the United States. This thesis joins other attempts to re-evaluate that approach, but re-orients the question around saategies for representating the male body in relation to anti-coionial nationdisms. Through close readings of five films - Jean-Claude Lauzon's Un Zoo, la nuit (1987), Joyce Wieland's ParrzortFm. Part One and Pa~rzotzsm.Part Two (both 1965- 1%6), Mireille Dansereau's La Vie rêvée (1972) and Mort Ransen's Murgmet S Museum (1995)-- this discussion suggests that colonial masculinity is not the smoothly functioning, undifferentiated construct that it was ofken irnplied to be in early work on Canadian male protagonists. The films considered here trace out a cartography of merence, suggesting that the notion of a pan-Canadian 'crisis of mascdinity' is shot through with contradictions. The 'problem' of the colonial male body is not the same for a young male director in Quebec; a woman coming into her own as a critical nationalkt in New York in the mid-1960s; another woman struggling to assert her own voice at the dawn of first-phase feminism in Quebec; or a former documentarian adapting a tale of econornic desperation in Cape Breton. iv Discourses on colonial mascuLinity are shaped by and in particular social, political, ethnic, geographicd and enunciative contexts, and benefit fkom readuig strategies stresshg discontinüity and difference. Moreover, such discourses have differed substantially according to their investment in (or opposition to) anti-colonial nationalisms. The nostalgia for a pre-colonial past which structures certain nationalisms around a sense of masculine loss and humiliation has at times coincided with strategies for keeping the male body veiled or dramatizing both its vulnerability to destruction and its hoped-for irrvulnerability to threats nom the outside. Meanwhile, a different experience of neo-colonialism cm lead to a more oppositional approach, as we see in Wieland and Dansereau, who route their cornplicitous critiques of Canadian and Québécois nationalism through representations of the male body that subtly undermine empowered masculinity by calling attention to the humble, material basis of phallic power. Acknowledgements Elephants take less theto bear offspring than I've taken to produce this thesis, and 1 owe an elephantine debt of gratitude to many people for enduring and supporting me in this endeavour. Peter Moms, my supe~sor,provided Wlfailing kindness, wisdom, and generosity over more incarnations of this project than either of us would care to think about. Blahe Man, who has been my link to film studies in Kingston from the beginning, proved as indispensable as always in countless areas, not least of all as an eagle-eyed reader and all-around 'knowledge guy.' His sense of humour and e-mail often kept me going. Brenda Longfellow, whose critiques are aiways incisive, pushed me to think more critically about al1 three chapters and is largely responsible for Chapter Two existing at ail. Sincerest thanks are also due to Gerald Pratley, the Film Studies Association of Canada, Telefilm Canada and the Ontario Film Development Corporation for financial assistance towards this project in 1994. Without regular encouragement fiom Christine Ramsay and Marcy Goldberg, there would have been many more lonely nights at the cornputer. Christine is also responsible in a more direct way for piquing my interest in masculinity studies, and has constantly provided a high water mark to try and reach. Donato Santerarno in the Italian department at Queen's University graciously provided help with translation, and 1 am indebted to Sylvia Frank and Rosemary at the Film Reference Library of the Cinémathèque Ontario for their fnendly and eager assistance with videos and written sources. Thanks are also due to Warren Collins, Barbara Goslawski at the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre and Linda Abrahams of the Women's kt Resource Centre for help tracking down Wieland's early work and for providing access to out of the way resources. Peter Harcourt was a peach to read and comment on an earlier version of Chapter Two. 1 am also grateful to Zuzana M. Pick for telling it like it is, and for the rerninder that sometimes it is best to jus "start with the films." Queen's University's Film Department generously provided access to films and videos, and Derek Redmond kindly devoted his time to help create slides for a talk based on Chapter One. Kathryn Kearn supplied a blizzard of helpfùl and fiiendly advice in the final stages of this project, and Lynne Wood was there for the long beginning. Jane Parpart, my role mode1 in al1 things (including writer's block), believed firmly in this project even when 1 was having my doubts, and Arthur Parpart was a constant source of love and support, as were Nix and Madeline Wadden. Finally, there are ways too numerous to mention in which my husband, Ron Wadden, provided help, and 1 owe him enormous thanks. This thesis is dedicated to the late Jean-Claude Lauzon, who may not have agreed with everything in Chapter One, but who deserves my gratitude for making such an intriguing film. He will be missed. Contents Abstract iv Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 ONE / Reading the Permeable Male Body in JeamClaude Lauzon's Un Zoo, la mit 24 TwO / Tube Steaks and Tiny Men, or Feminist Remappings of the Colonial Male Body in Patriotism I and II and La Vie rêvée 78 THREE1 Pit(iful) Male Bodies: Masculinity, Class and the Deconstruction of Folk Innocence in Margarel 's Museum 126 Conclusion 166 Bibliography 182 Appendix / Filmography 195 Introduction Ouebec feminist Madeleine Gagnon once commented that "the men here are aerthan elsewhere" due to their experience of colonialim,' and the same has been said about men in other parts of Canada. Both English Canada and Quebec have supported and produced styles of masculinity which merf?om each other and fkom those lived or 'performed' anywhere else -- and these difrences have arguably had a profond effect on representations of men in Canadian ~inerna.~From Pete and Joey, the hapless Maritimers in Don Shebib's Goin ' Down the Road, to the tnunpet playing barber, Pokey Jones, in Highway 61 and the opera-loving introvert in Yves Simoneau's Peflectly Normal, an overwhelming number of male characters in Canadian nIm have been aligned with subordinate -- or what Kaja Silverman tenns "Iimp"3 -- versions of rnasculinity. At various times, this absence of a 'Canadian macho' within the nation's cinema has been taken to signal a sort of crisis. Robert Fothergill delivered the clearest expression of hsconcem in his 1973 paper, "Coward, Bully, or Clown: The DreamLife of a Younger Brother," which identified recurring patterns of helplessness, foolishness and desperate aggression towards women among a large number of male characters in Canadian film.' The primary version of la condition canadienne reflected to Canadians by their own feature films, he concluded, is "the depiction, through many different scenarios, of the radical inadequacy of the male protagonist - his moral failure, especially, and rnost visibly, in his relationships with ~ornen."~He explained the pattern in terms of a now famous psychologicd analogy that figured Canada as a permanent "little brother" to its domineering southem neighbour, the United States: Aware of his more powerful brother as a feature in the landscape, in a way that has never been reciprocated, the younger brother has grown up with a painfully confined sense of his own capacity for selfkealization. An abiding sense of himself as inescapably dimini- shed, secondary, immature, has become second nature, has indeed shaped his nature and bred into it a self-thwarting knowledge of personal inadequacy .