MAKING SENSE OF HISTORY: CANADA’S NATIONAL MUSEUM
BY: SUMITA S. CHAKRAVARTY
At a time of increasing fragmentation of civic life and thought in many western societies, it is instructive to ponder the role of national museums in articulating a culture’s collective history, goals, and aspirations. Museums, like sports, are perhaps the mediated experiences still remaining that appeal to our sense of belonging that goes beyond an awareness of differences. White settler societies such as Canada, Australia, the United States, and Argentina have been narrativizing the past in ways that conform to contemporary versions of an inclusive nation willing to confront past injustices and exploitative colonial policies. A worthy but nevertheless difficult, even daunting undertaking.
For instance, one exhibit label notes, “First Peoples are not the “first immigrants.” They are the original peoples, and the fastest growing population in this land. Over 1 million Indigenous people live in more than 600 villages, towns, and cities across the country. They speak more than 50 different Indigenous languages, some as different from one another as English is from Mandarin.” Indeed, the belated recognition of the presence of Indigenous or First Peoples far predating the arrival of Europeans is amply visible in many of the exhibitions. There is one about walking called “Footprints: A Walk through Generations”; another on the ways in which legends, songs, and stories communicate lessons from the Elders of an indigenous community. The Canadian history hall, possibly the architectural and thematic centerpiece of the museum, has three galleries, each devoted to a separate time period: early Canada, colonial Canada, modern Canada. Going back 10,000 years, and ending with present-day Canada and its diverse population, one tablet shows, under the heading, ‘Canada becomes a more inclusive and diverse society,’ the following text: “Political and social struggle, along with changing social norms, helped to broaden rights and social inclusion over the last century. The challenge of negotiating differences remains a constant in Canada today.”
A timeline of Canada’s immigration policies was also useful and revealing for this visitor. We learn that Canada maintained a carefully-defined category of ideal immigrants till after the second world war. Asians were barred, as were Blacks from the southern United States. Gradually, restrictions were eased, and a “point system” was instituted which was seen as more merit-based. Canada’s immigration story ends on a happy note, with a familiar newsphoto of prime minister Justin Trudeau welcoming Syrian refugees in 2015.
I liked the fact that the histories of non-Western peoples in Canada, starting from its indigenous populations down to the groups arriving today are all part of a national “mosaic,” the term Canadian children are taught depicts their native (or adopted) land. While I did not get a chance to stop at the Children’s Museum, the website described some activities designed for children: “They can clamber aboard a lavishly decorated Pakistani bus and a three-wheeled auto rickshaw from Thailand. Or step inside a Bedouin tent and homes from India, Indonesia and Mexico. The Museum’s diversity and richness engage children of all ages, allowing them to explore and learn through play at their own pace.” While this may smack of the “multiculturalism” that many Canadians have come to be wary of, it can also certainly make children curious about the world from a very young age.
The Canadian Museum of History reminds us of the urgency of constantly revisiting the national past for fresh insights, new conceptions of culture, and renewed understandings of collective life. What I found particularly striking, and innovative, is a view of history that integrates but does not assimilate, that treats all of its numerous racial/ ethnic constituencies –black, brown, white– as well as women, athletes, singers, and others as contributors to an unfolding story in which nation and world, local and global are simply versions of one another.
THE CRIMINAL IMMIGRANT: MYTH, ENEMY, ICON (PART 2 of 4)
BY: JEN EVANS
Part One of this four-part series poses a (seemingly) simple question: How did ‘the criminal immigrant’ figure migrate from enemy to icon in American culture?
The initial immigration of the Sicilian Mafia in the late 1800s and early 1900s caught America’s attention. Newly founded Italian-American Mafia syndicates became infamous for practices such as kidnapping, extortion, and murder; and mediamakers were quick to depict these villainous migrants in films such as 1906’s The Black Hand and 1912’s The Musketeers of Pig Alley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2jjTmRclFM
Despite these early iterations of ‘the criminal immigrant’ and ‘the Mafioso,’ it is perhaps the era immediately following the release of these films which most significantly shaped modern depictions of the Italian-American ‘gangster.’ 1920 saw the introduction of American Prohibition, a law which forbade the consumption of alcohol across the nation. Although the associated temperance movement, which broadly promoted moderation and prohibited the consumption of intoxicants, was popularly supported in public, many Americans were privately unwilling to abstain from alcohol.
Just as modern immigration laws fail to prevent desperate parents from crossing borders in an effort to protect their children, Prohibition-era laws were likewise ineffective in deterring those who felt they had a need for that which was officially forbidden. With millions of Americans seeking outlawed alcoholic beverages, the Italian-American Mafia became entrenched in the nation’s legitimate neighborhoods through the production and sale of illegal liquor (“bootlegging”) and the operation of illicit drinking establishments (“speakeasies”). Al Capone, the son of Italian immigrants, was the Prohibition era’s most famous bootlegger and amassed a personal fortune of approximately $100 million by 1927—the equivalent of nearly $1.5 billion in 2019.
The criminal immigrant had suddenly become a great friend to the American people.
Films of the era reflect the Italian-American Mafia’s move towards bootlegging, as well as shifting perceptions among audiences. Howard R. Hughes’ 1928 film The Racket—which was nominated for Best Picture at the first-ever Academy Awards—depicts an ‘honest’ Irish-American police captain taking on a notorious Italian-American bootlegger. Where The Racket and its contemporaries differ from their predecessors is in their more complex portrayal of good and evil, criminal and government. Abandoning previously-employed binaries of ‘us’ and ‘them’—a concept well-known in modern studies of media and migration–The Racket depicts corrupt police and government officials operating in conjunction with Italian-American bootleggers, while 1931’s Little Caesar sees Italian-American gangster Rico morally unwilling to kill his friend, even after being betrayed by him.
‘The criminal immigrant’ was becoming a complex, sometimes even relatable, character.
Depictions of newsmedia also became a powerful theme within Mafia films. In The Racket, Irish-American police captain McQuigg uses newspaper reporters to continue targeting Italian-American bootlegger Scarsi, even after Scarsi’s corrupt connections have McQuigg transferred to a different jurisdiction and a different caseload. Meanwhile, Little Caesar—adapted from the William R. Burnett novel of the same name—sees Irish-American police sergeant Flaherty insult Italian-American gangster Rico in the newspaper, leading an enraged Rico to emerge from hiding and ultimately be killed by ‘good guy’ Flaherty.
In both examples, the media is utilized—whether intentionally or unintentionally—by the good and the powerful to manipulate ‘the bad,’ ‘the criminal immigrant.’
This theme of media manipulation is neither novel nor unique to the Mafia film genre. But it does raise an important question: Just as Prohibition-era films mirror shifting attitudes towards mafiosos, how does media manipulation of ‘the criminal immigrant’ affect true-life affairs? Films such as The Racket and Little Caesar see the powerful, the political, harness media to enrage, exploit, and even kill the criminal immigrant. Certainly, in many such film iterations the criminal was a true ‘bad guy’, perhaps deserving of such harsh penalty. Yet, we should be cautious in painting these cops-and-robbers tales with a simplistic, binary brush—or of celebrating a brand of ‘justice’ which occurs in conjunction with representatives of the newsmedia, rather than as part of a nation’s standard judiciary process.
The Racket and Little Caesar serve as dual cautionary tales of media manipulation. Just as the powerful are able to harness the media to control the criminal immigrant, these films themselves successfully shape audience definitions of ‘good guy’, ‘bad guy’, ‘criminal immigrant’. And so, as immigration persists as a key political and social issue in countries around the world, we must ask ourselves: How are we influenced by representations of ‘the criminal immigrant’? Who controls these depictions? And to what end?
Paradoxically, these films of the Prohibition era, in subsuming the Italian-American Mafia figure within a familiar historical chapter of American national life, may have started the process of rehabilitation for this immigrant group. Still, by focusing on crime and its outsider-perpetrators, filmmakers established a trend that continues to the present day.
We will continue to explore such representations—their evolutions, motivations, and consequences—in the July 2019 issue of this newsletter.