Do you hear the directors of our cultural institutions chattering their teeth?
From one end of the country to the other these brave civil servants are trembling in their pants.
At the CRTC, at Telefilm, at the NFB, at Radio-Canada.
In museums, festivals, universities, libraries.
Everywhere it trembles, it trembles.
It’s shaking.
THE PLEUETER
Because they are afraid, our guardians of culture!
you got the bitch!
When these intellectuals attend free conferences in Sweden or all-inclusive conferences in Japan, they roll!
They speak of freedom, boldness, courage!
They laud the artists who dared to stir the cage, to think against the current, to attack the well-wishers of their time!
Long live Caravaggio! Dali! Kandinsky! Mapplethorpe!
Long live the rebellious artists who face clergy of all kinds!
But when the same defenders of culture find themselves alone in their offices, that’s something else.
They curl up in a ball under their work desk and pray to heaven not to get drawn into controversy!
Oh god, please make sure I don’t receive an email from an anonymous internet user who felt offended by an exhibition, film or TV show!
What the hell else am I supposed to do?
I risk losing my job!
My expense account!
My reputation! My journeys !
I’m not a brave artist, I’m just a petty official!
Free riders, not Picasso!
Protect me!
LET’S GET THE SCISSORS!
All it takes is a little bunny, hiding under the alias Bizoune24, to email them at three in the morning telling them he had to call his psychiatrist in the middle of the night after he had heard a public radio columnist utter a bad word for our guardians of culture to put on the Roman collars and turn into censors.
Quick, let’s send a rebuke to the evil broadcaster who uttered the N-word!
Yes, but the columnist in question quoted the title of a classic of Quebec literature…
It doesn’t matter, blame!
Yes, but a distinguished member of the French Academy used the same word in the title of one of his books…
Anyway, let’s get tough!
Yes, but the great Martinican poet Aimé Césaire himself clung to the concept of negritude…
Anyway, let’s censor!
Yes, but in 1983 the Martin filmmaker Euzhan Palcy made a great feature film called Rue Case-Nègres, a film that won 17 international awards…
Anyway, let’s punish!
Yes, but Omar Bongo, the former President of the Republic of Gabon, published a collection of interviews entitled Blanc comme nègre…
Anyway, let’s punish!
Yes, but in 1966, under the auspices of the great Senegalese poet Léopold Sédar Senghor, the magazine Présence africaine organized the World Festival of Negro Arts, an exhibition considered one of the greatest events in African cultural history. .
Anyway, let’s cut!
And it’s these little things that control our media, our museums and our funding bodies?
It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so pathetic…
