The American Influence in Canadian Popular Culture

1937 Words4 Pages

Many people might have a diverse opinion on the extend of the American cultural influence on Canada, but the truth is, these two countries share a long common border, they use frequently the same language, they watch the same movies, listen to the same music and collaborate on other numerous levels, including economic and political activity. In this paper, I would like to show the extent of the influence on Canadian popular culture that comes from the United States. For my analysis I have chosen four segments of popular culture: television, printed media, music and films. In these are the main sectors where we can see the biggest evidence of this phenomenon. In the first part I would like to shortly introduce the history of this issue. The second part is the analysis of the four sectors. Current state In the last 20 years the penetration of the Canadian market by American cultural industries is still extremely strong. The United States is still the main source of culture products. American products represent 81% of all culture commodity imports. Canadians watch American TV shows, listen to American music, love American sports teams, drive American cars and buy American goods at American stores like Walmart. They eat American food, drink American beer (sometimes). In the 1990s, 95% of feature films, about 70% of retail sales of sound recordings, 60% of television programs come from abroad, overwhelmingly from the United States. 80% of magazines, 70% of books come from abroad, of which overwhelmingly from the United States especially in the educational publication, only 25 %of educational book publishers in Canada were Canadian. At the supermarkets, the shops such as McDonald’s, Wal-Mart chain stores went into Canada on a ... ... middle of paper ... ...anadian-culture-sociology-196-praymond-bretons/ (accessed January 25, 2014). Takeuchi, Craig . "Canadian films seek more screen time." Straight.com. http://www.straight.com/movies/canadian-films-seek-more-screen-time (accessed January 25, 2014). Thompson, John Herd, and Mark Paul Richard. "Canadian History in North American Context." In Canadian studies in the new millennium. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. 37-64. "Tops TV shows in Canada are all American." Digital Home RSS. http://www.digitalhome.ca/2010/06/american-tv-shows-sweep-top-10-in-canada-2/ (accessed January 25, 2014). "Universal Music." Artists. http://www.universalmusic.com/artists?initial=j&page=4 (accessed February 5, 2014). Walker, Ruth. "Canada Stands Up to Hollywood." The Christian Science Monitor. http://www.csmonitor.com/1998/0807/080798.feat.feat.9.html (accessed January 25, 2014).

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