Abstract
If Canadian culture can be said to have a master narrative, it is surely one of ambivalence. It is a concept that is laced implicitly throughout Canadian popular culture, as well as Canadian cultural studies. Although Canadianists frequently grapple with the issue of cultural industrialization, especially in relation to cultural nationalist fears about Americanization, it is my contention that these analyses do not adequately consider Canadian popular culture as a process of ambivalent industrialization which allows certain non-industrial practices to be preserved. This process is particularly evident in the subject of my doctoral dissertation the Just for Laughs Comedy Festival (JFL) where carnival and industry collide in very public ways.
