Montreal Gazette

Why some francophon­es don’t get the SLĀV issue

Francophon­e director and commentato­rs lack empathy with minority groups

- BRENDAN KELLY bkelly@postmedia.com twitter.com/ brendansho­wbiz

It’s a franco Quebec thing, and it’s a little strange.

Many francophon­es ici, particular­ly white middle-aged ones with a decent income, are tone-deaf when it comes to complaints about how minority groups are portrayed in the arts. This came up with a vengeance in recent weeks following the controvers­y around the Montreal Internatio­nal Jazz Festival show SLĀV, with many in the francophon­e media and entertainm­ent milieu suggesting the criticism from members of the black community was simply the latest example of political correctnes­s gone crazy.

People from the black community, and many from other communitie­s, were upset because the musical show about the history of slavery, directed by Robert Lepage and starring singer Betty Bonifassi, featured mostly white performers portraying slaves.

This is about much more than SLĀV. In fact, this debate has been swirling around the Quebec arts and media milieus for years, and the dishearten­ing thing is that it doesn’t seem like the white francophon­e cultural movers and shakers have learned anything over the course of the debate.

Anyone who knows me or my work knows that I am one of the staunchest defenders of franco Quebec culture. I have spent the past 20 years writing and talking about local franco arts in the English-language media in an effort to convince my fellow anglos that they really should be paying more attention to the vibrant French-language music, theatre, film and TV culture going on around them.

So I am not a Quebec basher, and one of the things I dislike most in this polemic — and it happened again in the SLĀV fight — is that some anglophone­s use this issue as an excuse to trot out the tired old line about how franco Quebec is inherently more racist than other groups in North America. That argument is as irritating as the franco argument that we should be allowed to say anything we like about black people. I have no time for intoleranc­e on either side of the debate.

But francophon­e producers, filmmakers, writers and columnists have to wake up and realize that freedom of expression does not mean you can write whatever you want about any group. You can’t. Freedom of expression has its limits. You can’t go on stage in a theatre and shout “fire,” and a white person is not allowed to use the N-word freely.

Take the blackface debate that reared its ugly head a couple of years ago. Anywhere in North America outside of franco Quebec, the notion of a white actor painting his face black to portray a black character is, to put it politely, a non-starter.

But in la belle province, many just shrugged and said anti-blackface types were way too uptight and PC. This actually happened. A white actor painted his face black to play P.K. Subban in a year-end revue at Théâtre du Rideau Vert in 2014, and when the black community and others objected, Rideau Vert artistic director Denise Filiatraul­t said she felt humiliated and that she simply wouldn’t have any black characters in the theatre’s future year-end shows.

In early 2016, TV writer-producer Louis Morissette penned a column and then turned up all over the media saying it was an outrage that Radio-Canada was forcing him to have a black actor play a black character. His column was titled La victoire des moustiques (The Victory of the Mosquitoes). He compared these minority protesters to a mosquito irritating you at night in the country. “It’s not a mosquito that is going to f--- up my life,” Morissette said in an interview with La Presse at the time. “And in the same way, I am not going to be stopped by a minority.”

In essence, Morissette was saying the media bosses are wimps. They hear a few folks grumbling and immediatel­y censor artists like himself. Sadly, his words echo what Lepage wrote last week in his commentary on SLĀV being cancelled.

They’re both wrong. If people from the black community are upset, you should take a long, hard listen. Same with any minority community. Maybe you don’t close down the show. But you listen. You don’t cry censorship.

Lepage and others don’t get it because all they see is their own position as a minority in the English-language sea that is North America. So they don’t believe they can cause problems for other minorities. The irony is that, as members of a minority, francophon­es should sympathize with the concerns of other minorities. And of course some do. But many don’t, including Morissette, Lepage and so many columnists opining on SLĀV.

Imagine this: an English-Canadian theatre writer-director from Toronto creates a show about French-Canadian workers in a factory in 19th-century Quebec, and he casts only English actors from Toronto to play the franco workers. The actors just put on Québécois accents for the occasion.

How do you think that would go down with the same franco pundits? Exactly. It would be blasted from every direction, and with good reason. I rest my case.

 ?? JOHN MAHONEY ?? The controvers­y over the jazz fest show SLAV centred on issues of cultural appropriat­ion. Brendan Kelly argues the discussion would have been different had English Torontonia­ns played French-Canadians.
JOHN MAHONEY The controvers­y over the jazz fest show SLAV centred on issues of cultural appropriat­ion. Brendan Kelly argues the discussion would have been different had English Torontonia­ns played French-Canadians.
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