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THIRD SPACE: AN INTERCULTURAL NEGOTIATION OF SOUTH ÁSIAN DIASPORA IN CANADA
diasporic filmmakers and artists to challenge the culture that creates a public
perception that views South Asia through what I see as "inauthentic modes/
channels" of information: the lack of representation or if-then conjecture
through stereotypes and an outlook that finds historical roots in the colonial
perception of non-Western cultures. In my earlier work," I observed this
outlook reminiscent of American films where South Asian identities have
been infamously explored through few general tropes. Such tropes are based
on the exotic nature of South Asia depicted by the Bollywood song and dance
routine and the third world poverty. Other stereotypes are the relegation to
few handful career options for South Asians (engineers, doctors, cabbies and
store clerk.) The problem with such tropes is that they explore South Asian
identity only through the one-dimensionality of postcolonial “others,”
creating non-Western “oriental” identities. Such identity constructions in
popular culture contradict lived experiences of the South Asian diaspora.
CANADIAN Mass-MEDIA
In the separation of First and Second Space, often known as “home” and
“away” to minorities, from the mainstream Canadian perspective, First Space
includes marginal ethnic areas and its inhabitants, a part of the landscape
that doesn’t have the agency to be subsumed in Canadian cultural narratives.
The Canadian mainstream culture facilitated in the Second Space is about
finding identity in its exports to the collective global culture, or involved
in cultural imports from America, to be part of a mainstream North
American culture. Mass media in Canadian society resonates with a lack of
collective identity: a reference to the cultural dualism in which only some
of the population responds to English mass-media, while a significant
portion remains uninfluenced by it. The process of creation of the Canadian
community and its inability to form a distinct mass-media culture resonating
with its multicultural ethos can be seen to be due to its proximity to the
United States, and thus influenced by its economic and cultural imperialism.”
Multicultural media, often ethnic or third media are seen as pivotal strands
in the Canadian mediascape for the dissemination of media to populace either
in English or French. Languages associate with diasporic cultures and the
2 Anushray Singh, “South Asian and The West: Identity, Multidimensionality and Public
Gaze”, in Intersections Cros-Sections 2019, 48-55, Toronto, Joint Graduate Program
in Communication & Culture at York University and Ryerson University, https://iscs¬
conference.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/ISCS_2019ConferenceProceedings.pdf
(accessed 20 March 2020).
Jean Francois Staszak, Other/Otherness, International Encyclopaedia of Human Geography,
2008, 1-3.
22 John A. Irving, Mass Media in Canada, The Ryerson, 1969, 225.
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