<i>Captain Canuck</i>, audience response, and the project of Canadian nationalism
Why this work is in the frame
A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract This paper addresses the role of comic books in interpellating national identities, locating the process of national identity formation in the interplay between popular culture producers and their audiences as described by Althusser (Citation1977) and McGee (Citation1975). The empirical section of this paper focuses on Captain Canuck, a Canadian-produced comic book originating in the 1970s and sporadically published through the present day. The authors engaged in a qualitative content analysis of the Captain Canuck comic books, searching for themes and markers of Canadian-ness and looking for audience identifications with those themes and markers in the 'letter to the editor' columns published within the comic books themselves. The study finds that through the many incarnations of Captain Canuck various versions of Canadian identity have been projected, with varying degrees of support by the readership. The role of the USA in Canadian identity formation looms large, especially in the positioning of Canadian quality and multiculturalism against the tacitly American lack thereof. Another finding of this research is that there has been a fundamental change in the way Canadian identity is structured as a new, commercially driven Canadiana culture industry has arisen since the 1970s. Cet article s'intéresse au rôle que jouent les albums de bande dessinée dans l'interpellation des identités nationales. À l'instar des travaux de Althusser (Citation1977) et de McGee (Citation1975), le processus de constitution de l'identité nationale est localisé dans le jeu entre les producteurs de la culture populaire et leur lectorat. La partie empirique de l'article s'intéresse au Captain Canuck, un album de bande dessinée canadien sorti dans les années 1970 et paru de façon sporadique jusqu'à aujourd'hui. Une analyse de contenu qualitative des albums du Captain Canuck amène les auteurs à explorer les thèmes et les marqueurs de l'identité canadienne et à rechercher parmi les lettres publiées dans la section éditoriale des albums les thèmes et marqueurs particuliers auxquels le lectorat s'identifie. L'étude constate que les multiples incarnations du Captain Canuck permettent de projeter diverses versions de l'identité canadienne que les lecteurs appuient à divers degré. Le rôle des États-Unis dans la constitution de l'identité canadienne est très prégnant, notamment dans le positionnement de la qualité canadienne et du multiculturalisme qui est en porte-à-faux avec les valeurs américaines. Une autre conclusion qui ressort de cette recherche est le changement fondamental constaté depuis les années 1970 dans la manière dont l'identité canadienne se structure vers une nouvelle industrie culturelle à but lucratif typiquement canadienne. Este papel trata el rol de las revistas de historietas en la interpelación de identidades nacionales, situando el proceso de formación de identidad dentro de la interacción entre los productores de la cultura popular y sus espectadores como lo describieron Althusser (Citation1977) y McGee (Citation1975). En la parte empírica del papel estudiamos el Captain Canuck, una revista de historietas producida en Canadá que empezó en los años 70 y que ha sido publicada de forma esporádica hasta el presente. Los autores hicieron un análisis cualitativo del contenido de las revistas de Captain Canuck, buscando temas e indicadores del carácter canadiense y buscando ejemplos de lectores identificándose con estos temas e indicadores en las 'cartas al editor' publicadas dentro de las mismas revistas de historietas. El estudio indica que varias versiones de la identidad canadiense han sido proyectadas a través de las muchas encarnaciones del Captain Canuck, con varias niveles de apoyo de parte de los lectores. El rol de los Estados Unidos en la formación de la identidad canadiense queda claro, especialmente en la ubicación de la calidad y multiculturalismo canadienses contra la carencia estadounidense de los mismos. Otra conclusión de la investigación es que la estructura de la identiad canadiense ha cambiado de forma fundamental, ya que desde los años 70 ha ido surgiendo una nueva industria de cultura canadiense conducida por intereses comerciales. Keywords: Canadanational identitycomic booksinterpellationpopular culturegeopoliticsKeywords: Canadaidentité nationalealbums de bande dessinéeinterpellationculture populairegéopolitiqueKeywords: Canadá, identidad nacionalrevistas de historietasinterpelacióncultura populargeopolítica Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers as well as the editor for their hard work improving this paper. In addition, special thanks are due to Richard Comely for his permission to reprint images from Captain Canuck, as well as his assistance during this research. Notes 1 One of the most visible instances of an assertive diffidence is Molson's 2000 commercial 'The Rant,' in which a young Canadian named 'Joe' describes why Canada is unique in front of a screen depicting images from the country. Although he begins quietly and deferentially, he slowly gains confidence and conviction, ultimately claiming, 'My name is Joe, and I am Canadian!'
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it