Written under the supervision of Klára Kolínská, PhD, and submitted on 3 January 2012, this essay was part of my total coursework at the Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at Charles University’s Faculty of Arts. The essay is published with the kind permission of the faculty.

Contemporary Canadian Cinema

In spite of Canada being one of the most economically prosperous countries in the world, its art of cinema has, throughout the history, been generally rather poor (Pratley, 15). For a European especially, but perhaps for Canadians themselves also, there does not seem to be a single Canadian film that would gain world-wide glory and bring recognition to the movie industry which, for a long time, seemed to be on the verge of extinction. The question which remains to be asked is: Why is that? Considering that the art of filmmaking is a “powerful form of cultural and artistic expression” (Magder) and with regard to Canada’s multiculturalism, there are surely plenty of topics and materials to work with and to cinematically express. Also, Canada boasts one of the most beautiful large-scale sceneries in the world, as well as countless brilliant actors and actresses. Bearing all this in mind, the question may be all the more difficult and confusing. Why, given all of this, is Canadian film not so visible either in the world or even in Canada itself? This essay is to discuss precisely the reasons of the more or less poor status of Canadian cinema.

Let us tackle the American elephant in the room first. Right from the earliest days of motion pictures, it was Hollywood that has provided all the films necessary to keep Canadian cinemas open and to please the Canadian public (Pratley, 15), and it is still to Hollywood the Canadian film is subordinated. To be fair, next to the international cinematic giant that is the American dream factory, any other movie industry (perhaps with the exception of Bollywood whose very name, however, already raises inquisitive eyebrows) would seem a tad anemic. Nevertheless, the American dominance is still staggering. Already in 1982, American film and video distribution companies accounted for some 73% of Canadian gross revenues (Yacowar, 14). Nowadays, the share rate has been elevated up to 83% (Leong). It is equally interesting that this American dominance is very much the same in television as well. Less than 3% of primetime television features original Canadian dramas or sitcoms (Yacowar, 14). The American influence is simply to be found in all spheres of entertainment, and there is only very little the Canadian filmmakers can do against it. In order to stand at least some chance against their “enemy” – if you will – they, in the past couple of decades, started to make their films in the American fashion. Unfortunately, as one critic put it, “It was like trying to compete with Ford Motors by building a car in the basement” (Magder). The question arising now, though, is: What is typical of American and Canadian cinematography?

First of all, it must be said that Hollywood makes films for masses of people. In order to lure as many paying viewers as possible into the multiplexes, in order to please everybody and not to offend anyone, Hollywood tends to try to appeal to everyone by their cunning choices of themes and actors in leading roles. Also, Hollywood films are to an unbelievably great extent formulaic, the idea being that people do not go to the movie theatres to think but to have fun (in the eyes of the film producers, those two concepts seem to exclude one another). Due to the fact that Hollywood films have such a broad appeal, the studios get much more money in the box office and, in turn, are able to invest more money back into their subsequent films. In effect, American film industry is the only one in the world capable of producing such a large number of the typical and, indeed, expensive-to-make blockbusters.

What is the situation with the Canadian film, then? As Maurice Yacowar puts it, “Canadian film shows all the characteristics of the American ethnic minority film. The central characters are identifiably outside the cultural mainstream. They look, sound, and act different from the traditional norms” (Yacowar, 13). It is no wonder that the Canadian film industry has a minority quality, considering the multicultural nature of the Canadian society. In a society so varied, it would be impossible to make a film with such a broad appeal that everyone would want to go see it. This also has to do with the question of nationalism or, to be more precise, the lack thereof. Bruce Elder explains this as following: “The much debated national identity is less important to the average citizen than the comfort of his or her niche in a well-protected multicultural mosaic” (Elder, 59). In other words, since Canadians in general have no sense of Canadianness, there is nothing in the films themselves that would draw them to the movie theatres, unless they have to do with issues of their own ethnicity or some other point of interest. This is not to say that Americans flock to the cinemas because of the distinctly American quality of their films. The point is that the Hollywood films, unlike the Canadian ones, are made in such a way that even if the genre does not appeal to everyone, or the main character, there is always something else that has the potential ability to draw one in.

Even though it has already been suggested that less Canadians are interested in Canadian cinema than Americans are in their own, it is worth elaborating on a bit further. Not only is this caused by the fact that the Canadian film-market is fragmented into a myriad of smaller markets, in simpler words being “too small to support many players” („The Film Distribution Industry in Canada“), it also has to do with the very population number in the state. Whereas in America, in the ideal scenario some 300 million people may go see a movie, in Canada it is a mere tenth of that number. Furthermore, we have to take into account the so-called “lost audiences”, that is people “fed up with being unable to tell a good film from a bad one by reason of mendacious press advertising” (Pratley, 127), who had therefore given up going to the movie theatre altogether. Not only do many people feel disgusted by the misleading advertisement, in the case of many of them we may observe what sociologists call “cultural cringe”. This term coined in 1950 by the Australian literary critic and social commentator A. A. Phillips describes “an internalized inferiority complex which causes people in a country to dismiss their own culture as inferior to the cultures of other countries. A country with a cultural cringe will tend to discount a lot of its own culture, and embrace another country’s ‚better‘ culture instead“ (TV Tropes). In other words, because people have been disappointed so many times in the past, they now believe that anything on the screen which is of Canadian origin must undoubtedly be bad. This, of course, does not apply only to Canada. We may observe the very same phenomenon in other countries as well. In comparison to the big budget American films, the domestic cinematic output, which mostly tends to consist of conversational dramas or quirky comedies, simply seems to fade away, an embarrassment rather than a national pride.

The overall situation, however, is not as catastrophic as it may seem. Thanks to the “greying” of the cinema-going population, there are still some people going to the movie theatres to watch original Canadian movies. This more demanding 40-plus base represents precisely the kind of audience that would seek the marginal types of films the mainstream simly cannot offer („The Film Distribution Industry in Canada“). There is another advantage connected to this – due to the fact that these crowds advertise good films among themselves mainly by word of mouth, the distributors do not have to spend fortunes on expensive marketing campaigns („The Film Distribution Industry in Canada“). That is a crucial point because money is in relation to the Canadian cinema an issue of an immense importance.

Even though filmmaking is a powerful form of art, it is also, and perhaps in the first place, “a business, involving large sums of money” (The Canadian Encyclopedia). The problem which arises in Canada is that the domestic films, due to the lack of interest from the side of the audiences, do not make enough money to cover their basic costs, not to mention any additional expenses on advertisement. For example, the film called “Men With Brooms” made approximately 4,2 million dollars in its domestic release which, by Canadian standards appears to be quite a lot („Men With Brooms“). Nevertheless, its budget was 7,5 million which means that – due to the fact that half of the box office money goes to the movie theatres themselves – the film would have to make at least 15 million dollars to cover its basic costs. The lack of demand for native films, of course, results in the lack of interest on the part of banks and other investors to risk putting their money into the film production (Pratley, 16). Even if they do, they try to cut their potential losses to the minimum, investing as little money as possible. In effect, the filmmakers simply cannot afford to make the big-budget American-like spectacles the audiences are so used to seeing, and in return, the audiences do not feel drawn to their films, thinking that there is nothing in them that may potentially interest them. The vicious circle is thus free to uninterruptedly continue.

Another reason Canadian film is not so much popular even in Canada itself is its famously poor marketing and distribution. Having such a bad reputation, the distributors do not want to risk losing more money on the domestic films than they necessarily have to. Not to mention the fact that in an area as large as Canada, any sort of large-scale distribution would inevitably prove to be financially devastating. Therefore, as Maurice Yacowar aptly puts it: “A small Canadian center will see the latest Chuck Norris film (and everything worse) but can rest secure that it will not be assailed by a Canadian film except perhaps on television. […] In most countries a native film is released; in Canada one occasionally escapes” (Yacowar, 15) In spite of Canada producing dozens of feature films each year, it is estimated that Canadian films as such get a mere 2% share of screen time both in cinemas and on television (Yacowar, 15).

So far, it may seem that the amount of actual filming in Canada is next to none, but that is not true. After establishing a North American cinematic monopole, luring in huge numbers of great Canadian actors and filmmakers like David Cronenberg, Michael J. Fox, Ellen Page or Ryan Reynolds to name a few (who have realized that they will have much greater chances of getting recognition and acclaim in Hollywood than in Canada), Hollywood has been moving north; increasingly so in the past years, taking advantage of “tax breaks and lower dollar” (The Canadian Encyclopedia). Let us mention, for instance, Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” or the TV show “Fringe”, both of which were shot in Canada in the past two or three years. With the influx of American money, Canadian film industry had the chance to invest in professionalizing its crews, building a couple of state-of-the-art studios and infrastructures (The Canadian Encyclopedia). We have to ask ourselves, though, whether taking part in American productions could be considered a truly Canadian cinema. I would argue that a mere fact that a film is made in Canada with the help of a Canadian crew does not necessarily make it Canadian.

All of what has been said so far does not apply to Canada in its entirety, the exception being the province of Quebec. There seems to be a “viable and loyal audience” (The Canadian Encyclopedia) for Canadian films of a certain sort in Quebec. What sort of films is that? The French-speaking ones – Quebec’s “separate language has protected it against the American dominance” (Yacowar, 15) We may notice the very same phenomenon also in other non-English-speaking countries all around the world. In spite of having much less money to invest in the making of the films, they have managed to develop viable film industries of their own, more or less capable of competing with the American production. They are successful mainly because they manage to satisfy the desire of their people to hear films in their native language (Pratley, 15). Here lies the key difference between Quebec and the rest of the country. Here, people are willing to go and see a domestic movie simply because it is spoken in French, the quality of it being perhaps sometimes rather questionable. The film industry in the rest of the country, however, cannot make this offer and so, hunched in the shadow of its American neighbor, it mostly has to fail.

Let us not be pessimists, though, for we may face the new dawn of the Canadian cinema. After all, in 2010, the Canadian-German co-production of “Resident Evil: Afterlife” became the highest grossing Canadian film of all time (The Canadian Encyclopedia). The film was shot in its entirety in Canadian studios, using Canadian crew and Canadian visual-effects company. It appears that the times when Canadian cinema could only envy America are gone. Even though this one big success does not mean that, all of a sudden, Canadian cinematic scene will drastically change, it is a step in a new direction, proving to everyone that Hollywood is not the only place in which big films can be made.

Bibliography

 

“Cultural Cringe.” TV Tropes 27 December 2011. 27 December 2011 <http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CulturalCringe>

Dawson, Anthony. “Motion Picture Production in Canada.” Hollywood Quarterly Autumn 1950: 83-99.

Elder, Bruce. “Image and Identity: Reflections on Canadian Film and Culture.” Film Quarterly Spring 1990: 58-60.

Leong, Anthony et al. “The Film Distribution Industry in Canada.” 22 June 2002. 27 December 2011 <http://www.mediacircus.net/filmdis1.html>

Magder, Ted. “The Canadian Film Industry.” The Canadian Encyclopedia 27 December 2011. 27 December 2011 <http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0011672>

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“Men With Brooms.” The Numbers 27 December 2011. 27 December 2011 <http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/2002/0MNWB.php>

Pratley, Gerald. “Canada’s National Film Board.” The Quarterly of Film, Radio and Television Autumn 1953: 15-27.

Pratley, Gerald. “Furthering Motion Picture Appreciation by Radio.” Hollywood Quarterly Winter 1950: 127-131.

Yacowar, Maurice. “The Canadian as Ethnic Minority.” Film Quarterly Winter 1986-1987: 13-19.