Thursday, August 14, 2008  
The Doug Wright Awards' so called 'Canadian' language controversy

:: Posted by max @ 8/14/2008 06:00:00 PM
With a charged OP ed piece by Herve St-Louis, the publisher and editor for comicbookbin.com has kicked off a pretty intense conversation over the question of whether or not The Doug Wright Awards has the "right" to call itself a Canadian award.

Tom Spurgeon has started to act as something of a neutral presenter of the issue, posting several responses to the first posting from St-Louis on The Comics Reporter. And there's alot of back and forth in the comments of PW The Beat. So far i've found the debate very interesting.

I have a problem with the tone taken at the start by St-Louis myself; I feel he was pretty wildly hyperbolic in his analogies, and presents a basically false premise. And he seems upon a little asking around, to be speculating a lot about the intentions of the DWA organizers without information. There was a small amount of communication with our own Bryan Munn informally as a DWA representative on the subject, but it seems St-Louis cut that short and ran with his story.

But from a purely rhetorical point of view, many have made some very good points on the broader subject.

Bryan, who is responsible for most of the posting here on Sequential now, is bowing out of commenting on the debate on our site as he's closely involved with the Doug Wright Awards, so I'm going to try to keep on top of this for Sequential, work schedule permitting.

I will be thinking on it and perhaps posting my own perspective more in the future but at this time a few things seem clear to me.


First I think that it's clear the DWA's present themselves as A Canadian award, not THE Canadian awards. A point made by Brad MacKay but also consistent with my impression of their promotion of the awards. St-Louis's argument seems to be build a lot on the idea that something other than this is true.

The About page's first short opening paragraph from the DWA site.

About The Doug Wright Awards

The Doug Wright Awards were established in 2005 to cast a spotlight on the range of cartoonists and comic artists working in Canada.

And, the very relevant last one...

Language of work
[SeqEd:accepted for submissions]
For the first year at least, The Wrights will only consider works that are available in English or are wordless. (French-language works that are translated into English will be eligible.)

And if testimony is required, going back to the first year of the awards, I can confirm from my own discussions with the organizers, that what Brad MacKay says in his official statement as true; That there has all along been very active discussion of how eventually to address the question of, at some point, bringing in a french language category. But that for now they lack the resources to do so. There has been no active discrimination against french creators in anyway, or a flat refusal to address the issue. Only a recognition that they are unequipped to review french language submissions at this time in a manor suited to the standards they set out for the DWA.

And far from being presented as THE Canadian comics award, they are more like A Literary Canadian Comics Award in affect. And yes we could be really precise and call them The Doug Wrights, A Literary English Language Canadian Comics Award, but frankly as precise as that would be, it would be a terrible, terrible name!

OK yes I'm being a little dramatic, but The Doug Wright English Canadian Comics Awards is truly not too much better. So it's the The Doug Wright Awards, period.

As Hervé points out; hyphenation, and over qualification is a pain in the arse.

The idea is to make the awards appealing, and interesting. Not boring and didactic.


Now It's all very fine and well to say they could make the contacts here in Quebec, associate with a local award or start a parallel operation.

But it takes two to tango, and speaking as an Anglo, living in Montreal, I have to say the French community here at least, when not too busy with their own things to be bothered, is seldom very welcoming or enthusiastic of this kind of collaboration over all. Nor do they reach out often themselves in a collaborative manner to make such things happen. It's like herding cats here on both sides of the language divide.

Maybe in Alberta where Hervé lives now, he's unaware of this. He started out here so he should know. It was true more so when he lived here!

It's true that in their own language sphere many people have done amazing things to promote local French work to an international French audience. But making the effort to promote their work to an audience that overwhelmingly won't be able to read it is never appealing to any publisher. Frankly I for one can't fault them for that.

And far from generally being ignored by English Canada, I and many Anglo's have come to Montreal thinking we would be able to connect and build bridges with the french community, only to find a wall of often disinterested backs turned on us because we speak French as poorly as many of the Quebecois speak English.

For those who are more engaged and welcoming - and there are many now - it's shrugs and a lack of interest in general. Not to say it's always cold, but I have not experienced a culture in a hurry to be embraced by it's English neighbors. They want more than not to be admired in their own language in their own region or in the EU. For those few desiring more English attention, they look south, like a lot of us here, were there are many many millions more in the audience than here. A practical issues more than not.

I would put it to Herve that this often kind of insular approach, and a love of confrontation and conflict expressed to me by many of my Francophone Montreal peers, and as exemplified by the rather inflammatory examples in his post - Is as much if not more a problem than any active bigotry in the English community...

"If the Harvey Awards, were to refuse all comic books by blacks or women, until they bleached their skin white or undergo hormone therapy to change their gender, it would be clear to everybody that their policy and the support of those awards was morally wrong"

Really? Comparing asking for translations to bleaching skin, AND forced gender reassignment. Was one over the top inaccurate analogy not enough? Hmmmmm.


Numerous times have I inquired locally in Montreal, as to why more effort is not made by French creators and publishers to translate the huge amounts of work produced here into English for the larger North American market. Or why there are so few sites promoting the Quebec community outside of the Francophone sphere.

Coverage and effort has improved, yes, far more of both things happen now than just 5 years ago. But it's been very, very slow.

And my said inquiries are more often than not responded to with shrugs and the refrain that they rather someone else do the work. They are too busy, it's as simple as that. No bigotry, no conspiracy, no surprising undercurrent of hate.

I've done my own best when I've had the time to do so to promote local work, regardless of language, as has Bryan who is I'll repeat an active member of the DWA organization.

I have tried at some length to recruit contributors for this very site to help cover the Quebec scene, as well as trying to find people on the coasts and in the mid west.

I have constantly failed to find interested parties on all counts.

Even Herve's own site spends most of it's time reporting on American, English comics. On the site's menu there is not even a way to filter the posts to view QC or Montreal stories. Just Cunuck. And I invite you to look for yourself to see how many are for French Language books....

It seems to me Herve is asking, demanding, others to confer praise for work he seldom promotes himself. No he does not call himself THE Canadian comic news site anymore than the DWA call them selves THE Canadian comic awards, but then this only furthers my point.

I can understand that there are a lot of bruised egos, as I'm always reminded when I talk to my peers here in Montreal about this sort of thing. It does not come up nearly as often as Herve's article would suggest but sure, some feel a little left out.

But I have a hard time giving too much credit to said egos, when they do so little to change the situation themselves through constructive positive actions. But rather it seems - when bothered to do anything - prefer to rant at supposed arms length about it. In this case at Provincial length, and without foundation or information speculating in an overwhelmingly demonizing way about the intentions of the 'Others' they think someone may perceive themselves slighted or ignored by.


So what do I think they should do instead?

How about this; I've not talked to anyone about this so I don't know if the will or means can be mustered, but say they do and could be. Say someone in QC, or the french community outside of QC cares about this all that much, and wants to do something.

Say maybe the Prix Bedelys have any interest in this, that they take the initiative to put together a jury and reading list for a French language award to spotlight Original French books to the rest of Canada and the English comics reading world and any French readers who may be paying attention, to be presented at The Doug Wright Awards.

They can also help raise funds locally for the prize and to pay for the trophy, and The Doug Wright Awards in turn give them the additional press and attention. The DWA orginization have the current problem of a lack of resources and means on their side addressed in this way.

Maybe as a way to make this a mutual trade - not to besmirch anyone's best intentions; but the Bédélys trophy is not, well, all that impressive. Perhaps they also might be able to persuade the Doug Wright Awards rather famous trophy builder to help them out as well?

Call it a trade for mutual benefit, and fix the problem by doing something about it, rather than making over the top and inaccurate analogies to civil rights abuses and the intentions of others you don't actually talk with before speculating on publicly.

But in the mean time, until the French Comics community is willing or wants to be bothered to take on the task of promoting their own work to the rest of the world regardless if it's Francophone or not, I think it's a little disingenuous for someone in the to cry discrimination in this manor.

A lack of means does not equate a intentional bigoted refusal.


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4 Comments:

Blogger Hervé said...

Max. Thanks for taking the time to share your view of the Wright Discriminations, charges I made (and that I continue to stand by - just because you may not mean to have acted in a discriminatory way, doesn't mean that you didn’t.)

Like I've been repeating, there are specific charges that I have against the Wrights which until now still have not being addressed.

1-As an "English Canadian" award, how come when a comic book is translated from the French to English, it suddenly becomes English literature? Again, When Shakespeare is translated into French, does it become French literature, or does it remain of British origin?

2-Why even award an emerging artist prize to an artist already published in another language? The moment an artist is published in any language, his work is no longer emerging.

3-These two items continue for me to show how the people of the Wrights tip toe around their concept of being an award that celebrate Canadian excellence - and thus include all Canadians and an award that celebrate but English Canadian works. When it suits them, they are glad to call themselves an English Canadian award. But they won't shy away from using the generic word Canadian, to prop up their credentials, again when it's convenient. Let's not kid ourselves. The press junket sent to the media made clear mention of the fact that they were a Canadian award.

You mention that you can't filter searches for Montreal or Quebec at the Bin. There is no category for Montreal comic books at the Bin for the simple reason that it's hardly convenient. Should we have something for Halifax too? All relevant Canadian articles are put in the Canuck section. We don't run a blog software. We can't just insert tags into articles.

About of our coverage of Canadian topics, I have repeatedly invited Canadian creators in both languages to please submit their news to us on several occasions. One of those requests can even be found in the archives of Sequential. Just like you, I have been met with a general apathy.

One thing that distinguishes Canadian creators from American ones is their will to promote themselves. Both sides of the solitudes share the exact same genetics. They just won't do the effort. People can complain about the amount of American news at the Bin, but Americans promote their projects well.

I remember asking you in the past when you submitted news to us to please format it in a way that we could use it quickly and post with few edits. That's how it works. And if it takes too much efforts, we have to move to the next story. The editors and I skip stories that are too difficult to format everyday. Does it suck for the creator? Sure, but we don't have the means of the Globe and Mail to work on news stories. We're all volunteers.

If there were more news from Canadians in our mailboxes, they would have more coverage. Yeah, we do have a Canuck section, but until recently, I was the only Canadian working on the site. As the publisher, I'm already stretched beyond my limits.

It's slowly changing, now that more Canadians are part of the team. But just like you recruitment is a difficult.

About the apathy of the Montreal comic scene, I can only agree and I have met similar shrugs although I'm a Francophone. If you remember, I have also briefly discussed the exclusion of the Anglophone community from the First BD Montreal event. Again, Sequential had reported on that. But this apathy has also been shared by the folks who organized the Boma (sic) Fashion show inspired by comic book iconography way back in 2005 in Montreal and many others. Maybe that's why I'm no longer a Montrealer...

By the way, there are reviews about French-language Canadian comic books at The Bin and more on French books in our European section. Again, we do our best with our limited resources and at the very least, there is a Canuck and a European section at The Bin, which is unique in English-based Web sites on comics. Our focus is much more general than Sequential. Can you realistically expect more from a bunch of volunteers that buy the books they review?


A lack of means does not equate an intentional lack of interest.

Cheers

Hervé St-Louis

Friday, August 15, 2008 12:00:00 AM EDT  
Blogger max said...

1- Says who, show me where someone said when a comic book is translated from the French to English, it becomes 'English' literature? It's translated French literature, hopefully they didn't butcher it. And why would it mater to you? The silly misunderstanding of English nomenclature of some fool?

2- I worked 14 years ago for three years, in English, for Marvel and DC, retired, and then returned for another 8 years before being nominated to that category in the first year. It's not emerging as in available to read, it's a critical award. They are saying the artist is reaching a stage in the development of their work the Wright juries feel is critically notable. They are emerging as a Notable Artist.

3- that's not a question, as i said, your premise is false.

Your right, they don't shy away from it. And what's the problem?

They were formed, to promote "the range of cartoonists and comic artists working in Canada". Note Canada at the end of that.

So basically your upset because they want to promote Canadian books, and do so with in the means available to them, as do you?

Friday, August 15, 2008 2:36:00 AM EDT  
OpenID savageknight said...

The first year we brought BDs into the shusters, French creators and their publishing houses were very excited by the opportunity.

Unfortunately, interest in it spiraled downwards right after...

Monday, August 18, 2008 8:27:00 AM EDT  
Blogger max said...

Yeah you know i think Herve is wrong about it being apathy here. It's a lot of work to promote your stuff anywhere, and given how the FR text on the JSA site has been described to me as being kind of 5thgrader basic, I'll bet that's not so encouraging.

I'd like to see the DWA take on french books too but for sure i agree with their policy of staying away from it till they can do it right.

Getting an award from a group that feels half harted just does not do it for the nominees or the larger audience. It's just not that impressive.

I think if it felt like a real thing, and not just being thrown a bone, the FR comic scene would love to get a little more attention outside of the usual circles. But it's got to mean something you know?

Monday, August 18, 2008 2:46:00 PM EDT  

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