Studio 360: Canada Redesigned & Beasts of the Southern Wild

The Supreme Court ruled on several landmark cases this week — not only the Affordable Healthcare Act, but also a challenge to Arizona's controversial, and influential, immigration law. The court ruled that most, but not all, of the law was unconstitutional. It comes on the heels of President Obama’s announcement that his administration would not deport the 800,000 undocumented immigrants under 30 who arrived here as children.

Next, the new movie Beasts of the Southern Wild is a Louisiana fairy tale with a six-year-old hero. Hushpuppy lives with her father in an isolated bayou netherworld they call the Bathtub, a tiny community of scavengers separated from the mainland by a levee. When a storm nearly washes the Bathtub away, Hushpuppy struggles to survive and to make sense of her perilous place in the universe.

Then, just in time for Canada’s 145th birthday (July 1 is Canada Day, in case you forgot), Studio 360 gives our northern neighbor a brand makeover. For the last several weeks, we’ve been looking at the image challenge
After that, Kurt Andersen and Jian Ghomeshi, the host of Q, the CBC's daily arts and culture show go head to head in a cross-border cultural quiz. The North American showdown is the culmination to our month-long redesign project. While Studio 360 has been rebranding Canada, Q has been redesigning America.
And finally, Canadian folk-rock musicians — Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Cowboy Junkies, k.d. lang, to name a few — have made it big south of the border while retaining something essentially Canadian in their music. Perhaps it’s a sense of longing born of Canada’s wide, empty spaces. [Broadcast Date: June 30, 2012]