PSR 1: Primary Source Report on Canadian Home Journal 1930’s Issue 1
By Braith Lane
Circulation
What
can you find out about the circulation of the magazine? How would you
characterise the circulation--was it limited, or popular? Can you find out if that was considered
expensive?
The
expectation that the magazines' audience consisted of the white, middle-class
consumers to whom the magazines' advertisers sought to appeal. This was due to
the identity set up by the magazine so the Canadians have an own market to
themselves, different to the Americans. This meant they could target still who
they wanted as an audience, this being Middle-class white people. Thus, means
the magazines were fairly expensive.
Editor
Does
the magazine have the same editor for a range of time? Can you find out
anything about this person? What is her
or her background, education, training? If the editor writes for the magazine,
what kind of things does he/she write?
The
editors placed a photograph of the artist C.R. Wilcox, who painted many of the
illustrations that accompanied the fiction, to the left of the header.Fog Over
Fundy’ (P.2). Cunningham, for his part, was a hugely popular writer for the
journal. Wilcox, the Journal 's editor C. Wilma Tait noted, was 'a native son
of Nova Scotia, now resident in Toronto, who is busy these days painting the
illustrations for Louis Arthur Cunningham's serial novel.
They
use to write many different stories, which were ‘add ons’ to the specific
journal, this included 'The Dress with the Blue Flowers', (Dorothy Roberts
Leisner) and Chatelaine (Byrne Hope Sanders 1929 -51). These are both
significant stories in relation to the Canadian literature.
Implied Reader
After
studying thoroughly a single issue of the magazine--ads, articles, stories,
everything--consider its target reader implied by the magazine’s contents: age,
sex, economic class, intellectual class, race, political position, and anything
else that seems important
Through
the ads, articles, stories and everything else, it appears the magazine was
targeting “Middle aged” ‘white’ people of Canada, and not specific on any
gender, but leans more towards the male bias. Intellectual class would
obviously be someone who attended school and has the skill requirement to read.
Contents
a. In
a single issue, what kind of content gets the most pages (creative: fiction,
poetry, drama, visual art, music/ critical: cultural, aesthetic, social,
political/ informative: travel, biography, history, news)
In
every issue, 4 out of the 5 had a fiction story involved, therefore it was
getting the most pages (fiction). “stories by Canadian authors typically made
up at least four out of the five works of fiction (if not all of them) featured
in each issue”. This focused on rather the quality then the quantity, and most
authors would be greatly critiqued on their fictional stories, according to
this journal article.
As
mentioned earlier, the largest and most popular was the story 'The Dress with
the Blue Flowers', (Dorothy Roberts Leisner), this fictional story is what
helped shape the culture and literacy standards of mass amounts of stories in
The Canadian Home Journal in the 1930’s – 40’s.
The
fictional story by Dorothy and many other writers also displays a male
orientated book/story in which represents males as the alpha or leader,
portraying them as rather more superior. A sign of subtle sexism, but a smart tactic
in the selling industry as people would be more likely to buy these magazines,
especially if they are targeting the middle age white class, with a slight lean
to the male gender.
b.
Advertising: Ratio of advertising to other aspects of the text. What kind of
advertising gets the most space? Anything else significant about advertising?
Throughout
this issue, many images used big images of women to objectify them and show
them off in order to both manipulate and grab attention. They would also do
this on front covers in order to reach out, by displaying a beautiful woman on
the front, as shown below.
All ads contain a women figure, or a price tag, which was reasonably affordable, and projected to grab the eye of middle aged, majority white men.
It also uses smart
and manipulative quotes such as “do Women oppose war?”, what this also means
that women have a say now, and are allowed to have their own voice.
War is also being
advertised in this article as World Wars are continuing and approaching, women
are forced to work in journal articles and newspaper business’, granting them
more privileges since World War 1 in 1917.
By this time
(1930) colour has also been introduced, and by using bright and eye-catching
colours, on top of the female, is an advertising technique itself.
c. If
the magazine attends to social, political, or cultural issues, is there
anything that helps you describe its position?
As mentioned earlier, the representation of
war and the targeted audience being middle aged men (white), it can be seen as
a worldly and progressive magazine, however different to common American
article. With the objectifying of women, and other sexist images and stances,
it can be considered as sexist also. However, the sexism isn’t as bad as it was
in World War 1 periods.
Format
How
many average pages per issue? Did it use colour? How much?
Photography? How much? How are
images used? Do they illustrate stories
or article? If there are illustrations,
how do they make the magazine feel?
The Canadian Home Journal would have no more
than 32 pages per issue, which quite common for this time, if not a little bit
bigger than some articles, due to the war periods. This may be also due to the
introduction of colour in magazines.
Due
to its colour, most issues were approximately 10 cents, which is not cheap, but
not expensive for this time period. This is due to, as mentioned earlier, the
introduction of colour and other different illustrations. Most images and any
sort of person was produced in colour, more advertising purposes and also
quality of the magazine. This also added a more vibrant effect on the magazine
and could make the reader feel more playful with the art and colours shown in
the advertising, but when serious information occurs, colours were duller
making the reader feel more focused and switched on for that reading section.
Bibliography:
Canadian
Home Journal (Canada, 1918-34)
August
1932 issue and magazine introduction:
Accessed:
2/10/2020:
Chatelaine
(Canada, 1928-41)
June
1928 issue and magazine introduction: Accessed: 2/10/2020: http://www.middlebrowcanada.org/Magazines/Chatelaine/tabid/3193/language/en-GB/Default.aspx
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