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Editor’sLetter
For decades the theme of the CBC Radio News has chimed on car radios across the country like some carefully planned propaganda machine, instilling on some level, whether acknowledged or not, the voice of objective authority. CBC Radio itself, via its mandate to champion Canadian talent, helped to trigger a cultural icon when, one sunny coastal afternoon in the Spring of 1987, it broadcast “Into the Fire”, a new song by a young unknown by the name of Sarah Mclaughlin.
Dean Unger
As much as we capitalists frown on government interference in matters of free enterprise, when it comes to culture we’ve taken a polite, perhaps even cautionary step aside. In 1936 the Canadian Government established the CBC. In 1918 the Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau was founded which in 1938, became the National Film Board of Canada.
Since then, the CBC has expanded to numerous affiliate networks and stations across the country. It also owns 40% share in the Sirius satellite radio network, Sirius Canada. The mandate that courses through the veins of each of these Crown Corporations is to promote the creation, development and delivery of distinct Canadian culture. In doing so, each has a hand in actually helping to define some of the fabric of culture in Canada. Now, with the benefit of posterity, we are beginning to sense the outcome of what was at the outset, little more than a social experiment.
The diverse and changing landscape of culture is always being interpreted and reinterpreted by good writers and culture critics. At Gonzo, we create a marriage of story and image, drawing parallels between Susan Sontag’s notion that although photography can be called utility and art it also requires a certain subjectivity: it can lie, it can give aesthetic pleasure; and Hunter Thompson’s well-established position that journalism is subjective.
Journalism is story-telling, it is creative non-fiction - creative, yet capable and effective at delivering an accurate message, an accurate representation of the truth of the matter. Story and image together, have the unique ability to capture the defining moment. And history has taught us that literature, music and film have the power to change the world.
On the film front, Canada has successfully established its presence in feature film and on the Indie circuit with a world-class stable of actors, directors and producers, as evidenced with Paul Haggis’ Crash, James Cameron’s record breaking brain-child, Avatar, the success of Mike Clattenburg, Sarah Polley, Anne Wheeler, among many others.
The proponents of the new journalism Tom Wolfe, Terry Southern and others, believe that objective journalism is an impossibility. However, Gonzo Magazine challenges this notion and brings to our readers a unique arts & entertainment magazine, one that is bold, and with a new aesthetic experience devoted to exploring the undercurrent, and the heart and soul of music, film, and culture in Canada. We sit you on the laps of some of the strongest, most poignant voices in Canadian journalism and strive to deliver a behind-the-scenes perspective written with grit and sarcasm, sometimes compassion and reflection, sometimes insightful and funny. We couple these narratives with striking, definitive imagery to bring story-telling to its highest level.
We strive to flesh out stories that need telling, about Canadians who are doing great and interesting things, issues that are important, and to create a mosaic look at Canadian culture, to define, not what it means to be Canadian, but to present a moving picture - an ever evolving impression of our cultural reality.
We are graced with incredible talent and amazing culture everywhere in this country. Though we’ve made great strides in many areas, there is still work to be done. Let’s continue to actively support our artists, performers and craftspeople. Purchase their music. Look around for opportunities to celebrate and support local talent. Make a commitment to go to at least one live show a month – whether music or theatre. Write your memoirs. Pick up a paint brush and paint outside the lines. Embrace Culture.
As much as it has taken the better part of a century to get here, I say with a well-earned confidence founded on an ultra-solid cultural bedrock layered over time, that we have
arrived. By Dean Unger
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