Reclaiming Canadian Bodies: Visual Media and Representation ed. by Lynda Mannik and Karen McGarry (review)

This collection of eight original articles assesses how bodies are produced and represented through popular visual media. Each of the articles is a discrete and well-focused case study of a particular event, series of interrelated texts, or producer. Individual sporting events, beer commercials, advertising, and art (photography, documentary film) form the critical material under analysis. The collection is framed with reference to affect theory, critical media studies, the body, and national identity. The editors argue that it addresses a 'paucity of empirical research by exploring the means by which various forms of media … and mediated practices and events … shape, transform, and affect bodies to articulate notions of identity in Canadian contexts.' ' Each of the articles contributes to one of three themes on ideals, marginalization, or activism, and the articles are divided into three sections on those respective themes. What is fresh about this collection is its use of affect theory. Most of the articles use Sara Ahmed's work in their framing of affect and combine introductions to her theory with critical readings of a selection of various historical or contemporary texts. The articles confirm much of Ahmed's theorizing in the Canadian context. The excellent bibliographies at the end of chapters also reveal the important work that this collection is built upon, and many of these articles could well fit within other publications on media studies, visual culture, or the body.

Part One on 'Embodied Ideals' ' includes three articles. The first is by Wendy Mitchinson on the history of fat and body ideals and provides an expansive study of men's and women's body image over the course of the twentieth century, with reference to shifting ideals, body weight, and clothing. Ailsa Craig examines twenty-eight television beer advertisements by Molson to show how they 'work to embody ideas' 'about women's bodies and marginalization to ultimately reveal 'disenfranchised embodiment' – a term that addresses women's representation as 'landscape and resource … rather than as equal participants and national subjects in their own right.' A third article on affect in the figure skating scandal at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics analyses seven interviews with fans, with questions on mass media and nationalism being well developed in the analysis.

Part Two contains two articles on sporting events and photographs of arrivals of Estonian refugees in 1948 and Sikh refugees in 1987. Dale Spencer and Bryan Hogeveen provide an interesting, if disjointed, comparison of Wayne Gretzky, Ben Johnson, and Georges St.-Pierre. Lynda Mannik provides a solid analysis of photographs of refugees' bodies and discourses of integration into the national body.

Part Three includes three articles on Metis filmmaker Loretta Todd, contemporary photographs of marginalized communities in Paris and Toronto, and political debates within Toronto's queer community over the inclusion/exclusion of Queers against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA). Jennifer L. Gauthier's theoretically dense article on Todd provides some much needed discussion on the tensions surrounding Canadian identity, colonialism, and Indigenous resistance in the form of 'embodied cinema.' 'Chris Richardson provides a fascinating reading of'symbolic violence,' 'race, citizenship, and marginality in contemporary photojournalism. Finally, Michael Connors Jackman does a close analysis of online and print responses to QuAIA's ban from pride in relation to legacies of gay and lesbian activism, nationalism, and queer politics.

As with all collections, there is some unevenness among the chapters. Few of the chapters succeed in addressing the four dense concepts of visual culture, body, nationalism, and affect in a cohesive and convincing way, and, for the most part, the case studies analysed are quite focused, raising the question of whether or not the conclusions are representative of wider issues. There is also a lot of different theory and theorists introduced rather quickly (and often without mention of substantial differences among them) for a book intended for an undergraduate audience. In one article alone, for example, there are references to Michel Foucault, Luce Irigaray, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Clifford Geertz, Donna...