Quebec New Year's special draws complaints of racism

Can a mod with better skills than I please merge this thread with this one

http://www.rabble.ca/babble/anti-racism-news-and-initiatives/quebec-new-...

and have this discussion continue in the anti-racism forum? Thanks!

Accepted Lagatta. Thanks.

It's like a train wreck. You say each year you won't watch it, yet you take a peak anyway out of curiosity.

The Quebec humour industry is an odd thing in many ways, almost in a bubble unrelated to other trends. Society can go in a progressive direction, yet low-brow trash humour is big. Trash radio has been a huge success in many regions of Quebec, with hosts telling sexist jokes etc.

Dieudonné, a French comic who has been found guillty of anti-Semitism in French courts, who publicy consorts with convicted Holocaust deniers and who campaigns for Jean-Marie LePen's neo-fascist National Front (LePen is his child's godfather), is an oft invited guest at Quebec comedy festivals. He packs the house and gets standing ovations.

Maybe trash right wing humour as seen on Bye Bye is a safety valve: maybe deep down, many people unconsciously feel pressure to be P.C. and just want to once in a blue moon let loose and be nasty. I don't know.

Like a taboo that must be broken because everything else in Quebec society, officially, on the surface, at the level of rhetoric, is so egalitarian, intercultural, feminist, pro-union, etc. At humour festivals and on Bye Bye, it is as if people say fuck it and some weird repressed unconscious comes out.

But it is odd - politics goes one way, humour goes the opposite way.

And they rarely get TV or radio shows. I checked their schedule. They play alternative clubs like Club Soda and community centres in Ste-Thérèse and Drummondville.

Bye Bye gets 4 million viewers. Trash radio is heard by millions. They even had tens of thousands of people take to the streets when a trash radio station had its license pulled by the CRTC because of the morning host's repeated offences for libel and sexist humour. It was the largest demo in the history of Quebec City in the past 30 or 40 years.

The Quebec humour industry is a weird parallel universe. I think the humour industry is actually dumbing down discourse in a deliberate way.

"Like a taboo that must be broken because everything else in Quebec society, officially, on the surface, at the level of rhetoric, is so egalitarian, intercultural, feminist, pro-union, etc."

You must be joking - not only about the notion of Quebec as an egalitarian society, but that racist sentiment needs an outlet to be vented. The humour is a reflection of the society, or at least of those who tune in to have a laugh at their minority neghbours.

At the level of rhetoric, yes. It sees itself as egalitarian.

In reality, Quebecois society is quite racist to many people not considered pure laine enough.

All you have to do is watch TV, outside of parts of Radio-Canada. Or see how the Bouchard-Taylor Commission report on reasonable accomodation was buried by the National Assembly in less than 20 minutes when it unanimously voted to maintain the crucifix in the National Assembly, effectively neutralizing the report in a symbolic preemptive move to "protect Quebecois traditions". This vote happened the same day the report was published. The MNAs did not even take the time to read the report before the vote. This vote for all intents and purposes sounded the burying of the report's recommendations - it said: thank you, we have no intention of listening to any ideas on how to build bridges. 

The type of humour seen on Bye Bye or heard on trash talk radio stations is just a little less polished or polite than the huge number of ignorant statements I had to endure for years from supposedly educated Quebecois.

So I think, for many, there is this unconscious urge to occasionally throw off the "shackles" of political correctness and to "dire tout haut ce que tout le monde pense tout bas" .

Interesting and probably has a point.

 The world is so screwed up, or rather the people, laughter is better than depression.

No one said humour is the most intelligent side of any culture. It is frequently the dark underbelly.

Personally, having watched and heard enough Quebecois humourists over the years, I just happen to think most Quebecois humour these days has become insufferably low-brow and xenophobic. It is an industry, and that stuff sells.

A lot of people are cranky or angry - targeting minorities is easy. Anyway, it's better than beating people up. Quebec is still a wonderfully peaceful society.