The rise and fall of the Synthetic: The mediatization of Canada's oil sands

Abstract

The concept of the Synthetic is developed to trace and trouble the prevailing popular mythology of Alberta's oil sands and place the omnipresence of petro-hegemony into focus in a time of crisis and transition. The Synthetic is theorized as a period of petroculture beginning in the late 1960s with the rise of Alberta's oil sands industry together with a rise in oil sands narratives, docudrama, and the emergence of mediated or synthetic politics reliant upon processed images. Attention focuses on three mediated moments within the Synthetic beginning with the banned 1977 CBC docudrama The Tar Sands and the reaction of Premier Peter Lougheed. This signals the power and grip of oil's hegemony. Second, the short film Synergy produced for Expo 86 captures the thickening of synthetic culture and oil's saturation of the public imagination. Finally, the controversy manufactured by Alberta's Canadian Energy Centre over the animated film Bigfoot Family suggests petro-hegemony's loosening grip.