Filosofická Fakulta Masarykovy Univerzity

Masarykova univerzita Filozofická fakulta Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky Magisterská diplomová práce Andrea Valenová Andrea 2014 Andrea Valenová Hřbet 20 1 4 Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Andrea Valenová Cowards, Bullies and Clowns, or Crippled Victims and Born Losers: Behavioural Characteristics of Male Heroes in Selected Canadian Films Master‟s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Dr. 2014 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Author‟s signature Table of Contents Introduction 1 1. Definition of “the nation” 2 2. National Cinema Definition 4 2.1 Aesthetic and Production Movement 4 2.2 Critical Technology 5 2.3 Civic Project of State 8 2.4 Industrial Strategy 10 2.5 International Project Formed in Response to the Dominant International Cinemas 11 3. Rooted in Realism 12 4. Technology – Response to Realism 14 5. Nationhood, Gender and Masculinity 15 6. Victimization Thesis 17 7. Goin‟ Down the Road by Donald Shebib 20 7.1 Plot 21 7.2 Main Characters 22 7.2.1 Pete 24 7.2.2 Joey 25 7.2.3 Other Male Characters 26 8. Mon Oncle Antoine by Claude Jutra 27 8.1 Plot 27 8.2 Main Characters 29 8.2.1 The Coward and the Clown 29 8.2.2 The Bully 29 8.2.3 The Victim and the Loser 30 9. Family Viewing by Atom Egoyan 30 9.1 Elegy 31 9.2 Ethnicity 32 9.3 Technology 33 9.4 Tragedy of Patriarchy 34 9.5 Memory and history 35 9.6 Loss of Mother 36 9.7 Plot 36 9.8 Main Characters 38 10. Videodrome by David Cronenberg 39 10.1 Genres 39 10.2 Anti-realism 40 10.3 Narrative Notion Resistance 40 10.4 Individual vs. Community 41 10.5 Victimization 42 10.6 Plot 43 10.7 Main Characters 48 10.7.1 Max Renn 48 10.7.2 Other characters 49 10.7.2.1 Scientists/Fathers 49 10.7.2.2 Villains 50 11. Comparison of Male Characters 51 11.1 The Coward 51 11.2 The Coward Incarnating into the Clown 52 11.3 The Bully 52 11.4 The Bully Incarnating into the Clown 55 11.5 The Semi-Bully Incarnating into Victim 57 11.6 The Loser and the Victim 58 11.7 The Coward/Loser Incarnating into the Clown 61 Conclusion 64 Introduction In 1972, under the influence of Margaret Atwood‟s Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature and Robert Fothergill‟s essay “Coward, Bully or Clown: The Dream Life of a Younger Brother”, the thesis of victimization emerged in criticism of Canadian film, making Canadian cinema a negativist one. According to Atwood, this negativism is manifested through gender, with male heroes being depicted as crippled victims and born losers. In Survival, Atwood raises a question if it could be that Canadians have a “will to lose” which is as strong and pervasive as the Americans‟ will to win. She comes to a conclusion that Canadians have an ingrained “will to lose” which makes Canada a “collective victim”. Atwood argues that Canadians could overcome this “will to lose” by identifying “the real cause of oppression”. Fothergill considers the main oppressor the United States, i.e. the stronger brother, and urges development of an energetic resistance. Similarly to Atwood, Fothergill concentrates on weaknesses of the main male protagonists around whom, as Fothergill claims, the narratives revolve. He comes up with two different interpretations of the function of men in the narrative structure: a coward, bully or clown on the one hand, and an envious younger brother on the other. Canadian film characters, according to Fothergill, are doomed to “dreams of failure and defeat”. This thesis is to deal with behavioural characteristics of male heroes in selected Canadian films, namely Goin‟ Down the Road, Mon Oncle Antoine, Family Viewing, and Videodrome. It is Atwood's “will to lose” that is projected in the films and a search for revealing “the real cause of oppression” that drives the main characters of the films. Hence Atwood‟s Survival is a crucial source to derive the conclusions from, as well as Fothergill‟s essay, whose ideas are to be compared and confronted with those of Atwood‟s. The thesis is intended to be built up upon the following four pillars. Firstly, it should support Fothergill‟s thesis and label the male characters either cowards, bullies and clowns; or envious younger brothers. Secondly, based on the sorting, the main protagonists are to be compared to one another in order to discover the forces which drive them to doom. Then, these forces are to be confronted with what Atwood calls Canadians‟ “will to lose”. Thirdly, reactions of the main protagonists to the above analyzed dooming forces are to be researched, and subsequently qualified as either “dreams of failure and defeat” or an energetic resistance. Fourthly, it is to be proved that each main male character in the examined films may receive one of the labels proposed by Atwood and Fothergill, namely the Coward, the Bully, the Clown, the Victim or the Loser. Finally, their possible resistance is to be assessed. 1. Definition of “the nation” In his book Theories of Nationalism, Anthony Smith claims that “every society has to face the familiar „problem of meaning‟” (236). “Western societies,” Christine Ramsay explains, “have historically addressed the problem of social and personal identity through the concept of „the nation‟ as an ideal imagine of an ordered universe.” According to Ramsay, the nation is “that place where the collective and individual questions of belongings and self-definition get „solved‟, sewn-up, stabilized”. The nation, in Ramsay‟s opinion, “fixes limits […] to secure identity”. Nevertheless, Ramsay discovers a drawback of “the nation”, namely the non-existence of “a neutral and transparent or absolute „nation‟ that easily and naturally provides a source of identity for all members of a society and makes their lives meaningful”. Referring to Christopher Faulkner‟s lectures on nationhood in French national cinema of the 1930s, Ramsay claims that “the myths of national unity and national identity are always secured at someone‟s expense” because “with the formation of nations; borders are drawn in the construction of geographic, social and personal identity, setting up a dynamic of centre and margins”. The problem, as Ramsay sees it, is that “the centre is always an ideal, ordered universe to be gained, [while] the margins are variously coerced, disavowed, disallowed, or ignored”. The nation imagines sovereignty and freedom for itself, and must incorporate and/or dominate its peripheries. In this way, the nation is imagined as what Benedict Anderson calls “a community of horizontal brotherhood”, despite conflicts, inequalities and exploitation. For Benedict Anderson, the nation is “imagined because its citizens will never individually come in contact with, let alone know, each other; nevertheless, they live together mentally in an image of shared communion” (15-16). Homi K. Bhabha adds: “The nation as an imagined community works to fill the voids and emptinesses it creates for the margins by turning the loss into metaphors, narratives, representation which work to empower the controlling centre. […] Centres construct affiliation to stable social knowledge through cultural activity, [i.e.] through texts” (292). Examining the novel as a central apparatus in the creation of national cultural fictions, Timothy Brennan writes in his “National Longing for Form”: It was the novel that historically accompanied the rise of nations by objectifying the „one, yet many‟ of national life, and by mimicking the structure of the nation, a clearly bordered jumble of languages and styles. Socially, the novel joined the newspaper and the major vehicle of the national print media, helping to standardize language, encourage literacy, and remove mutual incomprehensibility. (49) “As a „mass ceremony‟”, Brennan adds, “the novel allowed individuals in isolation to imagine the nation”. The explanation Brennan proposes is as follows: “one could read alone with the conviction that millions of others were doing the same, at the same time”. Then, Brennan expands on the impact of the novel: “What the novel affected in its rise throughout the nineteenth century was the location and narration of the subject within the field of imaginary identification and meaning called „the nation‟” (52). In the twentieth century, this role of the novel has been taken over by the cinema, which, as Stephen Heath claims, has got in charge of “mapping twentieth century subjects onto the fictional construction we call the nation through each nation‟s set of standard representations and their determining social relations” (8). 2. National Cinema Definition Tom O‟Regan defines national cinemas as “an aesthetic and production movement, a critical technology, a civic project of state, an industrial strategy and an international project formed in response to the dominant international cinemas (particularly but not exclusively Hollywood cinema)” (41). 2.1 Aesthetic and Production Movement As far as the aesthetic and production movement is concerned, the Canadian film has moved from the dogmatic insistence on documentaries production to feature film production acceptance as a legitimate way of formulating the Canadian experience. Both genres, as well as other areas of Canadian culture from painting to literature, have resulted from the realist tradition, which, according to Piers Handling, “deserves a great deal of attention when one approaches Canadian cinema” (81). “Those who have worked against the dominant practice, [i.e. the realist tradition], have suffered the ignominy of total rejection,” Handling claims (82), being supported by Robert Fothergill: “Canadian filmmaking has been artistically most successful when it has sailed close to the wind of realism” (“A Place Like Home” 348).

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