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Article Excerpt
Abstract
How have images of immigration and mutticulturalism been depicted on Canadian magazine covers and what do they say about the national politics of immigration and multiculturalism? A discursive and visual analysis of the covers and articles in Maclean's (from January, 1960 to May, 2006), and to a lesser extent in L'Actualite (from 1976 to May 2006), reveals a dualistic pattern depicting multicultural and immigrant representations as either the successful, contributing, and model "other" or the threatening, oppositional, and problematic "other." Our analysis goes beyond this binarism and exposes the intersections of age, class, status, sexuality, and racialization as integral to the multicultural context. Yet, as a concept, multiculturalism has hot necessarily been evident in the public and media imaginary of Canada.
Resume
Quelles sont les images vehiculees par les couvertures de revues canadiennes sur l'immigration et le multiculturalisme et que disent-elles a propos des politiques nationales sur ces questions? Une analyse discursive et visuelle des couvertures et des textes de Maclean's (de janvier 1960 a mai 2006) et, a un moindre degre, de L'Actualite (de 1976 a mai 2006) revelent un motif dualistique des representations multiculturelles et immigrantes en tant qu'un > presente soit comme un modele de contribution sociale et de succes, soit comme une menace, une opposition et un probleme. Notre analyse va au-dela de ce binarisme et met en lumiere l'interconnection de la classe, du statut social, de la sexualite et de la racialisation comme faisant partie integrante du contexte multiculturel. Cependant, au Canada, le multiculturalisme n'est pas un concept evident dans l'imaginaire public ni dans celui des medias.
INTRODUCTION
Stuart Hall (1996, 613) has argued that "[a] national culture is a discourse--a way of constructing meanings which influences and organizes both out actions and our conceptions of ourselves" Media plays a central role in producing and reproducing a national culture. Media is often said to "either inhibit or advance the aims of producing more democratic, egalitarian and truly multicultural societies" (Kellner 1995, 10). The discursive relation between national culture and media was clearly articulated in the celebratory centennial edition of Maclean's magazine. Senior Contributing Editor Peter C. Newman (2005, 7) writes about being "struck by the parallels between the magazine and the country. "Both" Newman remarks, "have journeyed from primitive to possible to prosperous to postmodern" (ibid). Characterizing such mutation, Newman states that "[o]nce an impregnable WASP stronghold, the country was transformed into the most multicultural cultures" (ibid). And, according to Newman, Maclean's "has chronicled every leap and twitch of the country's dramatic sea change ... woven into the dreams and memories of its readers" (ibid).
Media do not simply chronicle or report events. News is the product of a complex process where "newsworthiness" is established according to the organizational practices and ideological values of the media (Hall et al. 2000). Indeed, national news media do not only attempt to inform the largest possible audience, they also socialize their readers by purveying hegemonic ideals that ascertain a shared national culture (Jiwani 2005). However, a national audience misleadingly conceals and reflects divergent interests and a multitude of regional, cultural, and structural differences. This representational challenge is also compounded by the intense concentration of news and entertainment media into a few conglomerates. A handful of large corporations such as Rogers Communications Inc., CTVglobemedia, CanWest Global, Astral Media, Quebecor, and Shaw hold a wide-range of television, cable television, radio, newspapers, magazines, internet, and/or other communication and entertainment operations. Of particular interest here is Rogers Communications Inc., a diversified communications and media company with three subsidiaries: Rogers Wireless (Canada's largest wireless services provider), Rogers Cable (Canada's largest cable television provider), and Rogers Media (offering publishing, television, shopping channel, radio and sports entertainment services). Maclean's (Canada's largest-circulation weekly magazine which has published since 1905) and its French-language counterpart L'Actualite (Quebec's leading public affairs magazine, published since 1976), along with more than seventy consumer, trade, and professional magazines, are published by Rogers Publishing Limited (Canada's largest publishing company), a subsidiary of Rogers Media (Rogers Communications Inc. 2008). Ideologically, both Maclean's and L'Actualite have the reputation of being positioned at the center and right of center in the political spectrum. With its distribution of 356,165 copies and a readership of 2,491,000, Maclean's (forty-seven issues/year) is incontestably the expression of Canadian identity when it comes to news and social commentaries (Maclean's 2008, Rogers Publishing Ltd. 2008). L'Actualite (twenty issues/year) with a distribution of 178,057 copies and a readership of 911,000 plays a similar role in Quebec (ibid.). The hegemonic power of these two magazines as leading national magazines in their respective languages cannot be underestimated. Their iconic covers and anticipated content are an indelible part of national culture.
Covers are the most important component of any magazine. They are conceived to attract the attention of the reader by connecting visually to their audience. Covers combine visual and verbal elements to present a complex and persuasive message. Covers provide the unique identification of the magazine and act as a window into the publication, teasing or luring the reader inside the magazine. Covers are memorable and many of us will remember a particular article or story by way of recalling the cover image (Ryan and Conover 2003).
Leo R. Chavez's book Covering Immigration: Popular Images and the Politics of the Nation (2001) provides a critical cultural history of contemporary discourse about immigrants and immigration through a detailed visual and discursive analysis of seventy-six magazine covers and the accompanying articles published by ten politically diverse magazines in the United States between 1965 and 1999. Chavez's argument is that the United States and the place of immigration, both its past and its future, is being constructed, debated, and contested on magazine covers. He finds that magazine covers reflect the ambivalence of United States society about immigration in the ways alarmist and affirmative characterizations of immigrants are interwoven with the competing and changing visions of immigration policy and management, the charged discourse on the economic and cultural capacity to "absorb" immigrants, and the contested nation's identity as "a nation of immigrants."
If media images, as insightfully demonstrated by Chavez, not only reflect but also play a powerful role in shaping national discourse, how have images of immigration and multiculturalism been depicted on Canadian magazine covers and what do they say about the politics of immigration and multiculturalism in Canada? Identified by Newman in the centennial issue of Maclean's as one of the most important transformations in Canada, the importance of multiculturalism in shaping Canada's national culture was historically established when Trudeau declared that "cultural pluralism is the very essence of Canadian identity" (Canada, House of Commons 1971, 8580). Enshrined in Canada's constitution, the ideology of multiculturalism no longer represents solely a policy reacting to socio-demographic change. Multiculturalism has become a social ideal and organizing national vision. The construction of multiculturalism as a social ideal or as a shared national identity has, however, rested on immigration which was not always from the dominant group, leading to the development of greater diversity and difference.
Given the centrality of multiculturalism in the Canadian national culture, and following...
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