II. Canadian Inuit's Experience of Television

    The notions of "cultural synthesis" or "cultural synchronisation" are common themes in the research literature concerning the effects of television in developing nations around the world but is also relevant in this study because the Canadian North is indeed a developing area that shares some of the difficulties experienced by developing nations with the introduction of television and other mass-media.
    The themes of "cultural synthesis" or "cultural synchronisation" suggest that through television, a dominant area exports its exogenous set of values, way of life and language to the developing areas where its television programs is broadcast thus recreating the culture of the community and overshadowing its indigenous cultural development. In other words, a new culture is superimposed on the existing one, which ultimately leads to an original "cultural compromise". Cees Hamelink defines synchronisation as a process where "choices made in one cultural system are adopted by another cultural system"(1).
    With this perspective in view, this chapter strives to better understand first the different effects of television on pastimes and other forms of sociability, then how a second language was adopted and lastly the cultural clash that arose from the confrontation of a traditional society with southern Canada's modernity.

A) Leisure and Television

    Watching television is a leisure activity, that is to say something we do when we are free from work or other duties, one can hardly deny that. Yet, this medium involves two things: communication (and by extension a message) but also consumption. Why do we watch television? ... What is it in television we like? ... or to be more precise, what needs does television gratify?
    The "Uses and Gratifications" approach, originally developed by Elihu Katz in 1959, proposes a universal answer to this universal question. It investigates the relationship between the media and the people it serves, the consumers, and as communication researchers Werner Severin and James Pankard note, it "attempts to determine what functions mass-communication is serving for audience members"(2). In an earlier study produced in 1944, Herzog had shown that radio fulfilled different purposes for different consumers such as emotional release from their own problems (radio soap-operas) in addition to more obvious missions (pleasure, knowledge, information,escape ...).
    With the booming influence of television, a new classification or "grid" was established to analyse consumption, distinguishing five different reasons to use (or consume) media and consequently five different ways to study an audience's attitude:

    1. Cognitive needs (acquiring information, knowledge and understanding)

    2. Affective needs (emotional, pleasurable or aesthetic experience)

    3. Personal integrative needs (strengthening credibility, confidence, stability, and status)

    4. Social integrative needs (strengthening contacts with family, friends)

    5. Tension release needs (escape and diversion)

    What the "Uses and Gratification" approach does not mention is the arrival of a new medium such as television. These five basic needs and their gratifications are balanced according to the available outlets. When the arrival is as brutal as it was in Rankin Inlet, it certainly upsets the equilibrium that existed. There is a redistribution, the creation of a new equilibrium in the allocation of leisure time. As a logical result, the pre-arrival activities suffer from a relative lack of interest.
    That is precisely what happened in the Canadian North's communities where television had so much appeal that its arrival caused Inuit viewers to turn away from traditional or social activities. After a brief period of adaptation to the novelty, this disruption led to a new balance that included television watching and can be called a "cultural compromise".

    During their stay in Rankin Inlet, Linvill Watson's team from the University of Saskatchewan tried to draw a comparison between Inuit and Eurocanadian tastes (we have to keep in mind that there was only one channel available in 1973-74). The result of this research was that Inuit, in many aspects of their television tastes, were not that different from their fellow citizens (or viewers all around the world) and that the relatively most acculturated of them could be grouped with Qablunait viewers more closely than with those older Inuit for whom English-Canadian language and cultural framework remained important barriers.

Children among both Inuit and Qablunait like the same specific programs, on the whole, and are bored by the same sorts of things. For adults as well as children--and still regardless of whether Inuit or Qablunait--there tends to be a pronounced preference for exciting action on the screen, and only relatively minor degrees of appreciation (but variable on an individual basis) for the talking head, pure dialogue, or serious discussion types of programming. Entertainment comes usually far ahead of public affairs or other informational material (unless the latter is strongly pictorial with eye-holding action, rather than merely verbal), especially if we measure by what people actually spend time watching, rather than going solely by what people say they favour.

(Watson, 1977, pp. 64-65)

    By "exciting action", we are to understand programs in which the flow of visual material is more important than the verbal message, unlike talk-shows or magazines. As far as the Inuit are concerned, it could be said that this particular type of programs is popular because it is within reach of everyone, bilingual or not. However, we also have to take into account the fact that this is a universal preference: the linguistic aspect being one possible explanation but the pleasure or "adrenaline" dimension being relevant as well. For these reasons, action fiction (crime, adventure, Western, thrillers), highly animated comedies, entertainment shows and TV sport were favourites among the Inuit.
    Television sports, especially hockey and Canadian football, were also really popular partly because of the "exciting action" but mainly because playing hockey or football were already long-established and well-liked recreational activities in many Northern communities. Hockey is particularly important and we shall come back to it later because it is certainly the most federative program that television brought into the Northwest Territories.
    Now what did they dislike? Talk-shows and public affairs programs were far from being their favourites but when it comes to what the Inuit disliked, French cross-cultural programs(3) (Les grands films and a few children shows such as Les Pierrafeux) rank first on the list. This was something they would have in common with their Qablunait neighbours and is more generally part of the "Canadian Experience". As for the Inuit, they would experience great difficulties with one of the official languages and dealing with both of them was an additional source of frustration, the more so that the only show in Inuktitut, Tarqravut, would last five minutes once a week.
    On the other hand, it has to be aknowledged that Tarqravut, produced in Montreal for a pan-Canadian Inuit audience, paradoxically received very little attention.
    This phenomenon can be partly accounted for by the fact that it was a talk-show but also because there was no real geographical unity of the Inuktitut language yet and that it was precisely television's concern to appeal to all Inuit viewers that gave rise to the standardisation of Inuktitut.

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