Anatomy of a Format

Promotion: Products, Dance, and Canada

One of the features of SYTYCDC’s commercial nationalism is promotion, which occurs on three axes—products/general promotional discourse, dance, and Canada. First, the show engages in a broader promotional culture framework in its promotion for the program and franchise as well as through placements, tie-ins, and sponsorship. This promotional activity is not always nationalistic in nature but increasing promotionalism in contemporary culture works to normalize promotion, such that national promotion becomes mundane, rather than something that is immediately suspect, in this show and elsewhere.

Saturating cultural texts with tie-ins, merchandising, and product placement is a central strategy of media conglomerates attempting to finance projects and support other arms of their organization or its business partners (Magder 2004; Meehan 1991; Wasko 2003). Promotion (Aronczyk and Powers 2010; Wernick 1991) and branding (Aronczyk and Powers 2010; Klein 2000) are flooding the cultural landscape. This increasingly pervasive promotional discourse is evident with SYTYCDC. Online fan communities, video clips, and tours work together synergistically to create a cultural intertext (Meehan 1991) that sells and promotes the program. Product placement such as Aquafina on the judges’ table, McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets’ sponsorship of a vignette (Salem 2008b), and Virgin Mobile–branded call-ins and tour sponsors are also highlighted. The live dance tour, working synergistically with the television show, opened with a commercial for Virgin Mobile and was then followed by a skit where contestants asked the audience to buy merchandise such as t-shirts. The show thus becomes a vehicle for broad promotion, selling, buying, and consumption. In this context, the promotion of dance and Canada contribute to an already intensified promotional vehicle.

The second promotional dimension of SYTYCDC is the promotion of Canadian dance and can be identified in the purposeful promotion of individual dancers, judges, and choreographers as celebrities; dance/theater shows; and the dance community as a whole. This should come as no surprise as the goal of the show is to identify “Canada’s Favourite Dancer” and to launch her or him into a higher profile dance career. However, it is worth questioning the pervasiveness and reified nature of the promotional dance discourse, even among dancers. Rather than simply participating in the program, in an online CTV video of the 2009 Vancouver auditions, hopeful competitors consider their own careers’ potentials by being seen by the judges and hopefully the viewing audience:

Here, we see that these dancers, the first on line at the Vancouver auditions, are concerned about getting “noticed,” “recognized,” becoming “known,” getting “out there” and obtaining “opportunities,” and “develop[ing] a fan base.” Such activities are self-promotional in nature—the dancers are keenly aware of the promotional nature of appearing on this program. They also happen to note the prize of the car, whose promotion has successfully gained their attention. This dance community has a national promotion to it as well. Blake McGrath, Canadian judge and choreographer, reminds Montreal Gazette readers,

I had to go to Los Angeles to make something of myself . . . It’s not so much like that now. A show like So You Think You Can Dance Canada gives dancers an outlet they didn’t have before. Look at (last year’s winner), Nico (Archambault). Everybody knows his name. (Greenway 2009)

In this quote, McGrath suggests that the show provides visibility and opportunities for a population that was excluded from the American version. Simultaneously, McGrath promotes his own hard work, noting that he had to go outside of Canada, to the United States, to become successful; SYTYCDC is superior, in that it will allow success domestically. No longer do dancers or choreographers need to escape to the south to become famous (a system long critiqued in the context of actors in Canada vs. Hollywood).

Past Canadian contestants are also promoted. The show highlights success stories through updated vignettes. Former contestants are also employed as choreographers—for example, Nico Archambault, first-season winner, was brought back in subsequent seasons. Both of these moves signal the show’s success in promoting Canadian dance—by the trope of the “success story,” the show validates and promotes itself and its creation of Canadian dance celebrities.

However, we can also note that success and promotion of smaller national dance cultures pale when compared with the bigger markets, thus demonstrating commercial nationalism. To exemplify, Talia Fowler, winner of the Australian SYTYCD, was excited—not for being the Australian winner but for gaining access to the American market. In an interview, she stated, “I’ll get to perform a solo on their grand finale with about twenty million viewers watching—that’s exposure” (The Daily Telegraph 2009). The winner of SYTYCD Greece was awarded a two-year scholarship to a renowned British dance school. We can understand contradictions in this aspect of commercial nationalism, in that “success” in a national context often requires transcendence of the nation and incorporation into the American or British dance/media/culture industries. At this point, commercial nationalism belies its true roots, commercial and commodification, in transnational contexts.

The show’s national promotional nature must also be understood vis-à-vis Canadian celebrity as a symbolic marker of Canadian cultural industries. The Canadian judges, choreographers, dancers, and host either become Canadian celebrities or further solidify their Canadian celebrity through appearing on the show. Part of the reason for this celebrity is the government certification process mentioned earlier—a show qualifies as Canadian with a point system. Culturally, the celebrities mark the show as Canadian, as they operate within the fame industry in Canada, rather than in Hollywood or American TV circles, providing a basis for fan connection through national status. Again, some contradictions arise when we see that the program also borrows American judges and choreographers. Rather than keeping the program completely Canadian, popular American celebrities appear, tying the program synergistically to its American counterpart and bolstering its popularity by its association.

Finally, the program sells nation-as-product through the commodified symbols and language signaling the nation. The title of the show is the first national symbol—“Canada” is used in the title, marking it as a national product, simultaneously differentiating it from other national versions of SYTYCD while building an intertextual program linked into an internationally successful franchise. The franchise’s familiar blue logo and music promote the SYTYCD brand through the homogenized colors, sounds, and program structure, yet this adaptation localizes to the Canadian context by inserting the word “Canada” onto the logo. The opening title sequence splashes the word “Canada” across the screen, and each week, viewers are reminded that the show is searching for “Canada’s Favourite Dancer” (and, the Canadian/British spelling also differs from the American “favorite”). Here, we see how commercial nationalism at once identifies the show as “Canadian,” but its direct references to the American version can help benefit from the American program’s familiarity and success in Canada, as previously discussed.

Together, these three forms of promotional discourse work to present a general culture of promotionalism and commercialism (Aronczyk and Powers 2010), blending the promotion of bottled water, cell phones, Chicken McNuggets, dance, and Canada together in contradictory ways. The normalization of promotional discourse encourages the saturation of the media landscape, and participant experience, with promotional activity, such that commercial nationalism is not particularly noticeable to viewers or participants—this, despite the need to transcend the nation to continue on in international success as dancers. Such commercial nationalist discourses point to existing imbalances in international television industries.

Defensive Comparison to the American Version

The second theme of commercial nationalism on SYTYCDC is the defensive comparison with the American version. As discussed above, the American original aired and had proven popular well before the Canadian version was developed. Thus, the addition of SYTYCDC onto the television landscape must be understood as piggybacking on American successes, both industrially and culturally. The derivative nature of the Canadian version begets immediate comparison. Defensive comparison is not new to Canadian television and culture—many expressions of Canadian cultural nationalism, in content and policy, have historically developed in response to the power of the States (Attallah 1996; Beaty and Sullivan 2006). This program functions as a contemporary imprint of a long-standing argument and conundrum in the development of Canadian national identity (Mackey 2002). For example, the program makes clear attempts to localize itself as Canadian in its “theatre” dance style. This refers to musical theater routines, which, on the American version, are named “Broadway.” On the Canadian version, “Broadway” becomes “theatre” in an attempt to Canadianize through de-Americanizing the program. However, this is just a surface-level change, as the content and style of the dance is the same, drawing on musical theater traditions that are largely American or British traditions.

One point of comparison discourse stems from the exclusion of Canadian participants from the American version. Most Canadians do not qualify as competitors, due to U.S. labor laws; most Canadian viewers are prevented from weekly voting, which is restricted to American phone lines, despite its international distribution. The CTV broadcast of the American version read, “Voting unavailable in Canada,” across the screen—a daily reminder of exclusion, alleviated when the Canadian version arrived. Here, viewer and dancer participation, rather than being seen as a form of labor commodification or exploitation, becomes a form of nationalistic pride of having arrived, in a commercial context.

One journalist helps construct another dimension of this defensive differentiation when claiming that the Canadian version is better than the American. He writes,

The U.S. version . . . is enjoyable, but already it seems a tad too slick and fussily show-business. The contestants are familiar with the template and, while there were outstanding performers and memorable moments, the sheen of American glitz meant that the show looked like one long variation on the Broadway musical A Chorus Line. (Doyle 2008)

In this instance, American is being coded as slick, show-business-y, and glitzy—and something to be avoided. If these traits are American, then certainly the Canadian version will demonstrate different qualities, which will ostensibly be coded as Canadian. Canadian Judge Jean-Marc Généreux confirms, “America has amazing dancers . . . but we have nothing to be ashamed of. I realize now how much depth we have” (Walker 2008). In this case, Généreux points to “depth” to construct dancers’ excellence, and to promise that the program is high quality, on par with the American original. Likewise, Mary Murphy, American SYTYCD judge and guest SYTYCDC judge, says, “The talent you have in this country . . . I just can’t believe it! . . . Even at the auditions, the level was so incredibly high. I’m amazed at what they’ve been able to do here, and it’s only the first year” (Salem 2008a). Murphy’s comments, in a somewhat patronizing manner, repeat the theme that the dancers are “actually talented”—as if attempting to prove that the show can favorably compare with the American version—and further that the dance talent is directly related to the show itself (“it’s only the first year”), rather than the years of dance training. Similarly, host Leah Miller comments on the attractiveness of the Canadian talent: “They’re better looking than the American dancers . . . Wait until you see them—they’re all super cute and sweet” (Ward 2008). Miller also notes that the Canadian dancers are extremely polite and gracious, even when criticized, unlike the American dancers: “Canadians are so polite compared to the Americans. They’re just like, ‘OK, thanks for the opportunity’” (Ward 2008). For Miller, Canadianness means “super cute” and “polite.” Here, we can see the construction of Canadianness as “non-Americanness,” its cornerstones being depth, quality, talent, cuteness, sweetness, politeness, and graciousness. Of course, we can easily recognize these characteristics as stereotypical imaginings of “Canadianness.”

Canadian defensiveness has the potential of becoming guardedness against American interlopers, such as Murphy. During one performance of former Canadian figure-skating champion-turned-dancer, Emanuel Sandhu, the dancer writhed around, and while crawling on the floor, licked the stage. Murphy pointed out that this was over the top and unpleasant. A Canadian judge turned to Murphy and yelled, “You’re not Canadian!” while the crowd uproariously cheered the dismissal of the outsider. Of course, there is nothing Canadian about licking a floor, but national identity politics were deployed to label Murphy a debatable, foreign subject, essentially disqualifying her critique. Nationalist fervor was mobilized quickly, defensiveness turning aggressive in silencing a critique to protect a construction of the nation.

In the commercial national context, these tensions between the American and Canadian program work to create buzz and bolster viewing, thus commercially supporting the Canadian, and potentially, the American, version. Such commercial nationalism functions to support the brand, and the franchise, and rely on stereotypical discourses of national culture. In this context, the “tension” also reinforces a love–hate relationship between Canadians and American television—a long-standing concern.

Geographies of the Nation

Part of the project of commercial nationalism in SYTYCDC includes the commodification of representation of its provinces, cities, and recognizable landmarks: geographies of the nation. Low and Lawrence-Zúñiga (2003, 19) show that people make latent cultural and personal connections with space. These connections are evident in SYTYCDC, as dancers and viewers attach loyalty to place, which becomes part of the production techniques and a dramatic element of the text, contributing to the dancers’ backstories and creating connection with viewers. However, we will see that in this aspect of commercial nationalism, the representation of place depoliticizes tensions between different cities and provinces, instead delivering them as consumable and iconic markers of Canada, the nation. Geographies of the nation are used as production strategies that fit the formula of the format and that suit the production company and format owner.

The show travels across the country, auditioning dancers to send to Toronto’s semi-finals. Viewers are treated to scenic landscapes and iconic buildings and statues, as the camera pans each city, establishing the audition’s space and place as a representative of a province or region. Season 1 audition cities consisted of Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, and Calgary—a metaphorical and partial, geographical span focused on only four large cities in only four provinces, and reaching neither coast, no Northern communities, and no territories. The remaining seasons simply repeated the central urban cities (Montreal and Toronto), with the occasional trade-out of Alberta (Edmonton), East-Coast (St. John), or West-Coast (Vancouver) representatives; there were never more than five cities. Winnipeg, for example, which has a thriving dance community, was never an audition city, despite both its known talent and the show’s lack of audition cities anywhere between Toronto and Alberta. The audition cities point up commercial nationalism—they are vaguely representative, metaphorically spanning the vastness of Canadian terrain, but instead of truly representing all provinces/territories, they represent industry interests, population density, and urban bias in the political economy of the show’s production (see Byers 2008; de B’béri and Middlebrook 2009). Locations that can easily and efficiently support on-site production, as well as draw on a higher population of contestants (enough talent to make a “quality” hour of television), are selected (see Byers 2008; de B’béri and Middlebrook 2009).

The commercial nationalist geography discourse is evoked in the opening of the post-season live tour, where one of the Top 10, Allie Bertram, states, “It’s so cool. Canada is such a diverse country” because the “Top 4” were from different cities—Montreal, Calgary, and Toronto (as well as experts in different dance styles, to be discussed below). At the live tour in one Ontario performance, the audience clapped loudly for the dancers who originated from a handful of nearby towns. It was clear that audience members were in favor of the local dancers—attaching significance to place.

Despite this popular expression, Jean-Marc Généreux, when asked whether he hopes a hometown (Montreal) dancer will win, stated,

It doesn’t really work that way for me. Even if I love my French culture and am a true Quebecer, I’m Canadian. I’d even say I’m North American. I want all our kids (to do well) in our show regardless of where they come from. (Solyom 2009)

Of course, as a judge, Généreux must be neutral and not be perceived as favoring dancers from Quebec. In this light, his comments make commercial sense. However, it is curious that he takes the comment one step further, subsuming his Quebecer identity not simply to the national Canadian identity but further to a North American identity, thus transcending the nation: as a professional, he also works in Hollywood. Limiting his Quebecer identity and Canadianness may be an attempt to not alienate American producers. It is possible to understand this move as a symptom of commercial nationalism.

It is useful to further consider the show’s use of French language and culture. Canada is officially a bilingual country, with English and French as official languages, long solidified in government policy (see Taylor 1993). The tensions between Quebec and the rest of Canada, and between English-speaking and French-speaking Canada (and other linguistic traditions), have a long history, centering on questions of national unity/independence and loyalty to different European colonizers (Taylor 1993). To this end, SYTYCDC auditioned dancers in Montreal but was not produced as a French-language program. Généreux, noted previously, is an award-winning French Canadian ballroom dancer. His connection with SYTYCDC started when he was a guest judge and choreographer on the American version (thus, linking the Canadian version to the success of its American counterpart). His French accent and occasional use of French on the program and his vlogs gathered some attention, as did the fact that half the men in the season 1 finals, including the winner, were from the Montreal auditions. In this way, the show did highlight French Canadian language and dancers but incorporated French in more of a tokenistic nod to bilingualism and French culture, rather than with strong contextualization of Quebec’s culture and arts; as such, it depoliticizes political tensions within Quebec, between Quebec and the rest of Canada, and regarding the role of French (and other minority) language(s), history, and culture in Canada in general (see Taylor 1993).

Diversity and Multiculturalism

SYTYCDC’s representation of diversity and multiculturalism must be explored as a layer of commercial nationalism. Canada’s official multiculturalism policy is that of the “mosaic,” a political metaphor, codified in 1988’s Multiculturalism Act, and with earlier political imprints. Suggesting the peaceful co-existence of a variety of peoples, this metaphor is typically viewed as a positive contrast to America’s “melting pot” assimilationist metaphor. Of course, the mosaic is an attempt, much like nation-branding, to control discourse about an unruly, messy, and unjust set of histories and practices. Mackey (2002, 70) suggests that the government

created the official policy of “multiculturalism” to respond to a range of complex and potentially dangerous conflicts in the cultural politics of Canadian nationalism, including the threat of Quebec separatism, demands for recognition by immigrants and other minorities, and the need for immigrants to fuel prosperity. It also intersected with the need, seen as a natural ‘evolution’ of nationhood, to construct a unified and distinct national identity to differentiate itself from the USA and Britain.

In a similar vein, Richard Day (1998, 61) critiques the mosaic as a “technology of governance . . . a seductive model which, it is hoped, those who occupy its territory will adopt and instantiate in their own daily practice.”

The official mosaic policy can be seen as a limitation on multiculturalism and diversity, defining appropriate types of diversity. Mackey reflects that

the support provided by the state is limited to that which will help cultural groups to participate in and contribute to Canadian society and Canadian unity. Therefore, acceptable cultural diversity must buttress the project of nation building and national unity in Canada. (Mackey 2002, 65–66)

This conceptualization of national unity rewards only those that contribute to a strong Canada and must not be perceived to be in conflict with the imagined Canada. Part of this imagining is

the idea of British Canadians as the “norm,” in relation to “multicultural” Canadians. In this construction of culture, we have a core Canadian national culture as a “whole way of life,” and the “multicultures” exist as fragments of culture, only valued for the ways in which they contribute to the “whole way of life” of the national culture. In this sense, minority cultures in Canada are constructed through a “discourse of enrichment.” (Mackey 2002, 66–67)

Such a conceptualization limits multiculturalism; all of these discourses flagrantly ignore historical structural racisms that persist today in institutions and lived realities.

Multiculturalism on Canadian television has been studied regarding specific programs as well as related policy issues, particularly as they apply to the national public service broadcaster, CBC (see, for example, Conway 2013). While a full discussion is beyond the scope of this article, I will focus on several key issues related to SYTYCDC. The program replicates some of the underlying problematics above in its global dance styles, for which it has been publicly recognized. Indeed, including a variety of dance styles should be applauded. However, this move can be understood as a “discourse of enrichment” (Mackey 2002): these styles are add-ons to those from largely white traditions. Dubbed “global routines,” dance from Brazil, Jamaica, India, African countries, and elsewhere, are infused into the program and the live tour. When the show featured Indian dance, it was referred to as a “Bollywood” routine. “Bollywood” is used as shorthand to describe a dance originating from India because commercial nationalism has commodified the concept of Indian cinema and dubbed it Bollywood to compete with Hollywood in the global film industry, reality TV thus capitalizing on the trendiness of “Bollywood” in North America and in the global film industry at the time (see Hirji 2010). Bollywood and the Brazilian Capoeira become “multicultural” add-ons to the standard fare of ballroom, contemporary, ballet, jazz, and so on. In this way, a “diversity” of dance styles becomes the language through which multiculturalism is articulated and was noted in the live tour—recall the earlier quote from Allie Bertram, celebrating the diversity of dancers’ different styles.

The diversity of styles does not adequately address racialized and classed histories—as well as current realities—bound up in those dance styles. Misty Copeland, one of the few prominent African American ballerinas, who dances with the elite American Ballet Theatre, has written a memoir in which she details her struggles as a black woman in a white dance world—having to dust her face with white powder to, literally, blend in, saying that “some people just thought that I kind of ruined the aesthetic of the group” (NPR 2014). The whiteness of ballet could be a core discussion of multiculturalism on SYTYCD, but is not, leaving whiteness as an invisible, and highly privileged, racial discourse (Kincheloe and Steinberg 1997). A similar erasure occurs with hip hop/break dancing, in terms of its blackness and rootedness as an art of oppressed peoples—this form is not cited as contributing to “multiculturalism” on the program. Both of these omissions and erasures stem from SYTYCD considering their diverse dances as “global” in nature, and secondarily, as a flattened “diversity” of dance styles, in a consumer-choice framing. In this way, diversity is then constructed either as an apolitical, consumer model (akin to choosing from a variety of, say, ice cream flavors) or as non-Canadian, despite the fact that persons from any number of cultures constitute Canadian society. This fits the uneasy notions of multiculturalism in official Canadian discourse and the “enrichment discourse” (Mackey 2002).

It is possible to view the show’s performance of multiculturalism as a form of commercial nationalism, seen as a function of ratings needs and product differentiation, and supporting problematic national discourses about race and ethnicity, and inadvertently reifying the invisibility of whiteness (Kincheloe and Steinberg 1997). Raced bodies do not figure into actual discussions of multiculturalism on the program, leaving “multiculturalism” and “diversity” solely in the domain of dance traditions. The show also stops short of educating the viewing public about different dance traditions—the histories and politics of the styles are not discussed. Rather, they are simply learned, performed, and critiqued on a technical level and celebrated unproblematically.