Why the title?

There is no continent of America. There are separate geographical divisions that are collectively referred to as the Americas - North, Central and South. There is only one national entity in the Americas that has "America" prominently in its name, and therefore uses the national demonym "American" as an adjectival identifier. "America" is universally accepted as an abbreviated form of "The United States of America". End of story. And as for our citizens, we are not called Unitites, United Staters, or United States of Americans. We are known worldwide, politically, nationally and culturally as "Americans". We get the base name. It's ours. "American soil" refers to lands within our borders and under our embassies. Dirt from Saskatoon or the Atacama desert is not "American soil".

There have been proposals to silence the literalists: words like "Usanian" or "Usonian". But they have never stuck.

This is so similar to the argument that people try to make when they claim that Great Britain is ONLY the single island that consists of Wales, Scotland and England. And then they demand that those calling the UK "Great Britain" or "Britain" are completely wrong. People would sound like pompous twags if they went around having to say "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" to be understood. So they abbreviated things. And the same demonym principle holds here. There are geographical distinctions and political ones. There are long-winded names and truncated ones. United States of America = USA = America => American :: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland = UK = Great Britain = Britain => British.

When "America" or "American" are used in contexts outside of describing the USA, its citizen and their ways, the words have to be modified. The Organization of American States is actually a group of countries not only spanning North, Central and South American, but also the Caribbean. There is Latin America, etc. We have to qualify these differences. And they must be learned.

Only people who want to argue semantics will try to demand that a single word primarily describes all landmasses in the Western Hemisphere or the British Isles because they like to be absurdly pedantic. Or they are attempting to negate or erase national, political, cultural, ethnic or racial distinctions for some reason.

Canada is NOT part of America. Go to Canada and start calling it "America" and the people there "Americans", see how they react. Canada is part of the Americas - the North one. It is part of Organization of American States which is a completely distinct entity from the United States of America - of which Canada is NOT a part. This stuff is not all that hard to accept.

As for this movie, I wrote a lengthy diatribe - that is now lost in a board purge - against its title's usage of the "American" moniker. I found it entirely disingenuous that the Canadian filmmakers had to glum onto this national distinction in order to evoke an ill-conceived pathos. There was nothing truly American about Mary's identity, actions or plight. And I surmised that calling the film Canadian Mary would have had far less marketing value or emotional impact. Sadly, the social criticisms conveyed in the film did not equate with traits known to be exclusively exhibited or associated with the United States of America or any number of its citizens.