By Jenn Perutka
The Vancouver 2010 Olympics were a time for Canadians to showcase who we are as a nation and have the world take notice. On November 27, 2007 the mascots for the Olympic Games were revealed as three mystical creatures named Miga, Quatchi, and Sumi. Designed by Vancouver based graphic design house, Meomi, the creatures sparked the question of what is Canadian identity.
The official website of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games offers short bios on each mascot to let those interested become more acquainted. Miga is part killer whale and part Kermode spirit bear and is based on the legends of the First Nations of orcas that transform into bears on land. The Canadian touch? Miga is also a skilled snowboarder (Vancouver 2010).
Quatchi is a Sasquatch that is a lover of all winter sports and hopes one day to become a world-class goalie. The final mascot is Sumi who has the wings of a bird and has the legs of a bear while wearing an orca whale hat (Vancouver 2010).
The objective of these mascots were to represent diversity within Canada, however they ended up looking like Japanese Anima characters that many have compared to Pokemon.
It seems as if the creation of the mascots as creatures rather than people was made as not to offend or unintentionally discriminate any sort of culture. Mordechai Richler has described Canadians as apathetic to culture. Seeing as we do not have a definition of a Canadian, Meomi Designs decided to make their own sort of culture parallel to ours embodying Canadian interests such as snowboarding and hockey. Richler’s outcast character Duddy Kravitz, and his experience living in a Jewish area of Montreal, may be related to the mascots that were chosen to represent Canada through their struggle of identity. Canada is still going through it’s “apprenticeship” as it continues to grow and struggle for a definition. However, seeing as our nation is much younger compared to other countries an identity is harder to come by. We have been made up of a variety of cultures since becoming a nation in 1867 and had no prior identity to base ourselves on other than the First Nations. Being such a young nation, Canada has become an outsider just as Duddy Kravitz was an outsider within his community for being Jewish. He was the punchline to jokes and set apart from others for being an ethnicity he could not help. Duddy was a victim of stereotyping with jokes such as “Do you know how the Jews make an ‘S’?...draw two strokes through it” to resemble the money sign (Richler 10-11). The Olympic mascots are also a victim of stereotyping to some extent with their love of snow sports, however Meomi Designs made a more conscious decision to avoid explicit stereotypes through the characters.
The mascots ultimately represent our uncertainty of identity. By simply viewing these mascots we would have no clue as to what they are or what they represent. Though they slightly represent the First Nations myths that include these animals, they are not an accurate image of Canadians today. Viewers are not able to tell that what these mascots are or what they represent unless they are explained to them, just as Canadians must make it explicit that they are in fact from Canada when travelling or meeting new people so as not to be confused with Americans. Mordechai Richler noted this struggle for Canadian identity through Duddy Kravitz and his quest to own land in order to become a man. At a young age Duddy is labeled an outcast and does not receive the same treatment when pursuing ownership of land. Canada must work through it’s apprenticeship as a nation. We already have the land, so what else do we need?
Richler, Mordecai. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. Washington Square Press: New York, 1959.
"Meet the Vancouver 2010 Mascots!" 2010. Vancouver 2010. 29 March 2010. <"http://www.vancouver2010.com/mascot/en/meet.php"> .
Despite the initial effort of creating “Canadian” mascots, the outcome of their appearance has been associated with Asian methods of portraying caricatures. Due to their dominant Asian appearance individuals who view the characters of Quachi, Sumi and Miga might believe and mistake these mascots to belong to Asian nations and not those of Canada. When an image is presented before the audience, the direct visual or the obvious stimuli is most important, and can be viewed as the dominant determiner of other senses. In this case the importance lies in what the presented image looks like or what is directly “there” through a visual model, and not in the underlying meaning of the not-so-obvious or ambiguous representations of Canadian identity. The mascots do encompass Asian identity within Canada, but their strong resemblance to Asian caricatures undermines other cultures. Trevor Zawalich in his article Mascot Genesis designed two alternatives to the existing mascots which were created prior to the Olympics. His mascots focused on the Canadian natural and shared cultural aspects. Therefore this avoided and as he described “removed the issue of over-representation of a single culture, as the current Olympic designs have done” (Zawalich). It is important that we as Canadians try to carefully incorporate all the cultures that make up our Canadian borders, but as we have seen this is more difficult to accomplish.
ReplyDeleteby Veronika Petrovski