In September 2024, Yvon Deschamps will appear in the first of a series of shows entitled “ Yvon Deschamps tells The Shop.
• Also read – “Yvon Deschamps tells La Shop”: Yvon Deschamps will take part in a final project
But make no mistake. The famous comedian's tongue has been washed with bleach and viewers will see it on a big screen rather than in person.
Only crumbs will remain of his legendary monologues from the 1970s and 1980s about “faggots,” about the disabled, about the store manager, or about women’s liberation. We can forget “Nigger Black!” Nigger Black!”, when we know that Verushka Lieutenant-Duval, lecturer at the University of Ottawa, or Wendy Mesley, popular host of The Weekly on the CBC, were stigmatized simply because they used the title of the book “White Negroes” by Pierre Vallières had mentioned America.
The hundreds of thousands of admirers of Yvon Deschamps who gathered for months at the Théâtre Maisonneuve on the Place des Arts remember how they laughed heartily when they heard him talk about the “mummies he would pass off as bats” or the women who that is, men's universe made fun of. They also remember that he concluded, “If you grab a girl's bottom, it's because you love her” and that he wondered if “we can call disabled people 'people'”! Next fall, these admirers will have trouble recognizing their Yvon.
DIFFERENT TIMES, DIFFERENT JOKES
Times have changed a lot. The censorship we thought was gone forever is back, more sophisticated and more widespread than ever before. Once the exclusive weapon of baluster eaters and supporters of dictatorships, censorship has also become a weapon of the left-wing intelligentsia and academic elites. Speak to the team of writers who wrote “Bye Bye” next Sunday night, every word of which has been carefully vetted by a series of lawyers!
Librarians might also tell you bad news about current censorship. We now have to hide and even burn dozens of books. Tintin is no longer welcome in the Congo and Agatha Christie's ten little niggers are nothing more than “them”. In the United States, once the land of freedom par excellence, the Republican right, inspired by Governors Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, is on the same wavelength as advocates of wokism and cancel culture. Since last January, they have removed more than 3,000 titles from public libraries.
SECOND FINAL, I DON'T KNOW!
In December, two great American comedy stars died: Norman Lear, creator of the famous sitcom “All in the Family,” and Tom Smothers, who co-hosted “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” an originally irreverent Saturday Night show, with his brother Dick Live.
Like Yvon Deschamps, Norman Lear and the Smothers brothers managed to break taboos and open up great freedom on American television. The two Smothers brothers were the CBS equivalent of our Cynics and All in the Family star Archie Bunker was the equivalent of Yvon Deschamps. Today, none of them would cross the threshold of a television studio, regardless of the broadcaster.
Far from diminishing, the audience's tendency to not understand the second degree of a statement has increased to the point where comedians' playing field has been reduced to zero. A field where poor Yvon Deschamps was now almost always offside.