Turn Up the Contrast: CBC Television Drama since 1952 by Mary Jane Miller (review)

HUMANITIES 257 is just a sign of the times in the mainstream of Quebec culture. (DAVID CLANDFIELD) Mary Jane Miller. Turn Up the Contrast: CBC Television Drama since 1952 University of British Columbia Press 1987. 42 9. $34.95 Mary Jane Miller's excellent book on CBC drama, its history, forms, and significance, is so meticulously researched and persuasively written as to convince any Canadian to watch more television. Her premise is that television drama has a social function similar to that of the ancient bard, who tells us the stories which explain who we are and where we live. It is a mirror which should give us back an image of ourselves. But if this bard tells us stories which originate in other lands, if the mirror reflects borrowed images from other cultures, then we will lose whatever sense of self we possess. It is the contention of Turn Up the Contrast that the best of Canadian television drama is distinct. In so far as it imitates the products from the United States, it is inferior. To heighten the 'contrast,' Miller concentrates on those programs which'succeed,' that is, those which are artistically superior in terms of her stipulated criteria: they are innovative in form and content, they have high-quality production values, they challenge audience perceptions and may elicit censorship or controversy, but they may also be popular. In the introduction, Miller dearly establishes a methodology for the dose scrutiny of individual programs which constitutes the body of Turn Up the Contrast: 'I am attempting to begin a scholarly exploration using a set of satellite overviews with doseups of selected areas that might encourage others to join the mapping.' In the first half of the book, Miller's reference point is genre analysis; in the second her approach is chronological. Throughout she uses content and structural analysis, contextualism, archetypal and modal criticism. 'But she deliberately avoids critical jargon, since she aims at a general readership as well as academics and students. The enormousness of her task is compounded by the fact that there exists almost no serious critical appraisal of the area, and by the casual archiving habits of the CBC: many programs have quite simply disappeared . This lament over the CBC'S disregard for its own history runs through Turn Up the Contrast: there is no sense of learning from the past, little awareness of former accomplishments. The focus is always on the present. Rarely is television drama considered an art form, and at best only an ephemeral one. Miller also emphasizes that despite the thousands of hours of material she diligently watched, very little television drama is produced in Canada. Although drama accounts for 68 per cent of total viewing time, only 4 per cent originates here. In her discussion of each 'genre,' Miller tackles many fundamental 258 LETTERS IN CANADA 1988 issues, television images as iconography, for example. She identifies formulas and how these are imitated or inflected by Canadian television drama. Although she carefully defines ~formula' in a non-pejorative sense as 'structures or narrative and dramatic conventions that are very widely used, archetypes adapted through specific cultural materials to particular shapes,' Millerincreasingly uses the term in a negative way. Only in so far as Canadian television plays invert, inflect, or parody American ~formu­ las' are they 'successful': they are ironic, satiric, and open-ended, with literate dialogue, levels of subtext, contrapuntal music. Miller does acknowledge, however, that American genre drama may also depart from formula, and that the betterones may have those qualities which she predicates as 'Canadian.' In her analysis of the genre 'Copshows and Mysteries,' Miller has high praise for 'Wojeck' and 'Seeing Things' because they treat moral issues with ambivalence, question social norms, and usually fail to 'solve' social problems. Yet Miller is also critical of the CBC'S refusal to create a 'star' system, and its failure to 'mythologize' historical figures, such as Nellie McClung. And we should learn to appreciate excellence. In her graphic synopses of individual programs, particularly of 'The Last Man in the World' from 'Wojeck,' Miller demonstrates this excellence, which can show us that 'society does have faces and names, and that particularization is the...