I’ve long been an avid Bye.
At 11pm on December 31, all of Quebec stopped to take stock of a year spent together.
tradition
It was a real vector of collective cohesion, an impressive tradition.
Some editions have become true classics.
But the formula stuck.
I am told that debating the goodbye is a different tradition. It is not wrong.
But something deeper is also at play. We saw it last Saturday.
Let’s just say it: little by little, the bye bye ceased to be humorously interested in the Year of Quebec Society. He speaks less about Quebec society and the world than about Quebec television, which has become self-referential. It’s enough not to be up to speed on our TV series to not understand much at the end of the year in review. The artistic community thinks they are talking to Quebec society, but they are talking to themselves first. It works with inside jokes.
But more than that, this little setting feels increasingly endowed with a moralizing mission. From year to year he seems to want to resume the priestly function of yore, telling us what to think and what not to think.
We know the song: Quebec would be racist, minorities would be dominated, the conservatives would be morons and so on.
Of course, there is the annual concession to political incorrectness in order to take into account the sensitivity of the people. This year, the sketch was about the censorship of an old episode of Netflix’s Daughters of Caleb. All the stupidity of the time was there and brilliantly denounced. As if suddenly our artists stepped out of the politically correct catechism to joke, to poke fun at what they publicly, if not professionally, worship.
But that was the exception, not the rule.
I have a guess.
The artists are torn deep inside.
On the one hand, they know what slogans to repeat to function in their community, to get subsidies, to be able to work, simple as that. Let’s not forget that their environment is the most conformist there is.
However, I’m not ruling out the possibility that some comedians or comedians really stick to bright nonsense. Perhaps by making commitments to the system, they convert to it, and then are busy promoting it in the media.
conformism
On the other hand, several artists suffocate.
Anyone who visits our art colony outside of working hours will hear many of its personalities saying how tired they are of their surroundings.
Such a filmmaker will whisper how tired of being disqualified from a significant number of grants because of the bad taste of being white.
Such a novelist will confess her despair at the general distrust of relationships between men and women, as if desire between the sexes was inseparable from the “culture of rape.”
But the gist remains: On December 31, Quebecers gathered in front of their TVs received a moral lesson that wasn’t even funny.
