The Glaring Fact

This Hour Has Seven Days - Very personal attacks on issues – controversial – lots of trouble with censorship

• Uses different types of structures: traditional journalism, satire, editorial, documentary
• Goes from light-hearted approach to real and serious approaches to public affairs – because of this regarded as unique – not the norm
• Creates an unsettling affect on the viewer – makes us more alert and aware, more active and engaged –> Reveals the processes behind the news
• Intention of the show: for us to be more politically aware and engaged and hopefully more politically active
• We saw letters from viewers, audience, comments, and man on the street interviews
• All of this reflects a 1960s consciousness/rebelliousness
• Show uses juxtaposition, editorial and satire

Wojeck - Toronto as a space through which national identity and citizenship can be imagined and managed

• Very important because so popular and also because it was so innovative and original and tackled issues of importance in a gritty way
• Based on real coroner in Toronto – the real man had a talk show on City TV -> Storylines often taken from headlines
• Critics often talk about Direct Cinema approach (type of documentary), part of this use of hand held cameras, use of awkward framing, use of improvisation, location shooting, and generally realistic gritty feel –> Doesn’t adhere to standard narrative formula
• References to Canada and setting –> Different attitude towards the cop genre –> Style, Character, Narrative
• Use of handheld cameras, awkward shooting improvisation, location shootingà“Inspired by true events” –> NFB Documentary Style –> ETHICAL – to educate viewers, use TV as a social tool and guide audience to ethical debates that were going on

King of Kensington

• Shaped by multicultural policy and national unity crisis
• English Canada’s first successful sitcom
• Kensington mecca of multiculturalism in TO –> Show had multicultural characters – rare for TV at the time –> Reflected the country back to itself
• Turn towards relevance àFramed issues of Canadian politics
• Shaped by discourses surrounding it, shaped by political and multicultural discourses

Little Mosque on the Prairie

• Follows a culture clash narrative –> Location is not very multicultural – small prairie town with only one mosque
• Tackling post 9/11 issues – media worried that sitcom was a bad idea and worried it would promote negative stereotypes
• Complication of simply Us vs. Them conflict –> Works to demystify Muslim culture
• Incorporates themes of community –> General bridge over differences

Road to Avonlea

• Produced in partnership between Sullivan Entertainment and Disney
• Aired on the CBC in Canada and on the Disney Family Channel in the US
• One of the most successful television series ever produced in Canada – huge success… attempt to continue the success of Anne of Green Gables
• Discussed as a distinctly Canadian story and a national treasure – based on books by Lucy Maude Montgomery
• Took place in PEI – overtly and authentically Canadian
• Avonlea is shown as a middle class protestant family characterized by innocent values
• On Disney – it was not played as Canadian – downplayed the Canadian aspects and framed it instead as a wholesome family show that treasures the values of the past
• Road to Avonlea attracts a large viewership in part because it confirms the desires of an audience that expects the historical moment to be uniformly conservative, sexually repressive and morally monolithic
• Innocence in Disney’s world becomes the ideological vehicle, through which history is both rewritten and purged of its seamy side thereby producing a series of identifications that relentlessly define America as white a middle class –> Road to Avonlea strives to eliminate any religious or cultural tension

Night Heat

• Night Heat is an example of this Industrial television
• An industrial mode of production leads to an industrial type of commodity that leads to this lack of signifiers
• Attempt to reproduce American forms (generic genres)
• Night Heat took slack for becoming American TV – people were upset by this shift in Canadian TV
• Criticized for being violent (like American shows) – using violence to entertain (especially violence towards women)
• While Night Heat utilizes strategies of concealment of place, it also conforms to notions of placelessness both in terms of the locations used and in relation to issues of perspective
• Night Heat presents the city at night as a symbol of urban chaos, where men at work to quell disorder and execute justice. It is a place of action where the presence of people on the city streets signals suspicion and prompts pursuit
• Night Heat’s use of the aesthetics of placelessness and its focus on standardized city spaces appears to be the culmination of the impact of globalization

ENG (Electronic News Gathering)

• Looks at journalists and the different ethical debates that arise around news gathering
• Conforms to mainstream esthetics of television
• Obvious influence of melodrama – dramatic music like in soap operas during contemplation of decisions, emotional discussions, etc
• Documentary realism also present – Leach identifies a particularly Canadian quality about the way the program brings together documentary tradition – a combining of documentary and fiction (a very Canadian strategy) – we see in the clip the live filming mixed in with the dramatic storyline
• Social responsibility is also connected Canadian television – the ethical demands of the news gathering – asks the questions: what role does journalism have in current events, how involved should journalists get?

Traders

• Good example of show that balances economic pressures and social concerns
• Adopts US style and adapts them to Canadian television –> Uses mobile camera style (just like NYPD Blues)
• Situates issues around business in a specifically Canadian context – uses Canadian institutions, laws, dates, etc
• Traders raised ethical questions about the profession

The Boys of St. Vincent

• Docu-drama: inspired by real events, but fictionalized account of sexual abuse
• Violates central genre characteristics
• These violation contribute to particular style and ideological stance
• Not possible on American TV
• Genres operate differently in different national contexts
• Unlike US telefeatures Boys does not have a hero –> The coolness of tone with respect to both of the film’s main characters may also be attributable to the film’s documentary quality
• Boys is nothing if not a thorough critique of middle-class, patriarchic capitalism in its most brutalizing form, and interestingly Smith shows that both the boys and the priests are all victims of this system, that in fact this kind of behaviour is institutionalized and even traditional
• Heroic narratives typically reassure our societal values – we are left with a sense of “everything is okay”
• In leaving this film open, it doesn’t provide that sense of uplift in the end – but in stead asks us to continue to question the institutions that are involved in the problem

Degrassi High

• The show had qualities of authenticity:
• Non-professional actors – ordinary kids drawn from the neighbourhood, a diverse cast to reflect the diversity of Riverdale (TO neighourhood)
• Repertory approach – focused on a group of kids instead of one or two stars – it was about a bunch of stories about a bunch of kids – one kid could be a star in one episode and then not even be in another
• Within the ensemble – there were more than fifty kids involved in the Degrassi ensemble
• This has changed as the series has developed –> The style of acting
• They were unpolished in their approaches – they were honest in their approaches because they were ultimately just playing themselves
• While it sometimes looks stilted, that is what has been hailed as realistic –> Location shooting
• The actual school, actual streets, real homes – it contributes to the idea that it had a gritty aesthetic that evokes a sense of authenticity –> Rejects a stylized orientation in favour of a more gritty approach

Straight Up

• Praised for treatment of youth culture
• Daring program that provided a “more authentic” picture of youth culture – better than Degrassi
• It set itself up against Degrassi and avoided some of the Degrassi tactics
• Featured on the cover of most TV magazines – very well publicized as raw, shocking and powerful
• Used documentary techniques – handheld camera, jumpy scenes, riding around in the cars
• Breaks to cinematic once in a while – use of brightness and colour, use of dissolves between images – use of dissonant sound
• Not an issue-oriented series – not topical, did not take up timely social issues like Degrassi – no educational tone – no clear moral messages like Degrassi –> Rejects the Degrassi formula
• Seeks to capture the mood of the characters to get inside their heads
• Shows what it feels like to be a teen – confused, angry –> This show is about expressing that emotional state