Tuesday, May 18, 2010

French Language Ayatollahs Determined To Impose Bad French Music on the Public

The furor over the Quebec City's Summer's Festival plan to include English artists has once again opened another tedious debate between language elitists who wish to impose bad French music on a public that steadfastly demands the highest quality entertainment whether it be in English or French.

French language militants fail to realize that the organizers are not the enemy of the French language, certainly not front men, doing the bidding of Anglo imperialists whose only quest is to subjugate Francophones and assimilate then into the Anglo community.
If organizers can be accused of anything, it is of practical realism. If the Festival is to remain profitable, top English artists are a necessity. It seems that Quebec City residents, even unilingual ones, are not the rubes that militants pretend, to be fobbed off with second and third class talent. Quebeckers, as well as just about everyone else in the civilized world (regardless of language) recognize talent and expect to get the most for their money when shelling out hard earned dollars on concerts.

As the famous old New York Yankee manager, Yogi Berra said, "It's a question of déjà vu, all over again."
The very same debate took place back in the summer of 2008 when language militants complained that it was inappropriate to have Paul McCartney give a free concert celebrating the 400th anniversary of the founding of the City of Quebec.
Over 250,000 people attended and were treated to an entertaining set of old Beatles classics as well as some post-Beatles tunes, all of course sung in English. Considering that the population of Quebec city is only about 500,000 people, the concert obviously drew people from far and wide.

Today militants are again making a play to impose their views on a reluctant majority, invoking the 'Father Knows Best" argument, the one that holds that they alone should be the arbiters of what may be seen or heard by Quebeckers, despite what the public wants.
« Let free people do whatever they want to do » 
Laissez donc les gens libres de faire ce qu’ils ont envie de faire » )
...is the opening line by French language radical Louis Prefontaine, who spends the rest of his blog piece doing cartwheels to justify why this should not be allowed to happen and why English artists should not be allowed at the Quebec Summer Festival.

It's the type of attitude found in North Korea or some other tin pot country where the local "Dear Leader" imposes his musical preferences on a captive nation, where books are banned according to political agenda and television is controlled to promote 'clean thinking' and where the public must be protected from itself.
French language militants see themselves as waging the good fight, one where they alone understand what is best for the nation, displaying an attitude no different than Muslim radical clerics who demand that women be covered up in public because it is "God's will"
Perhaps our very own language ayatollahs would be shocked to be compared to religious zealots, but the comparison is valid and if the shoe fits... well, there's little difference in the imposition of a language or culture by decree than there is in the imposition of a state religion, one to which all must adhere to by force. Just like the radical mullahs, our language ayatollahs wish to ban what they do not like.

Too harsh a comparison? I don't think so.

No longer satisfied with forcing students into French language school against their will, they now want to control what people choose as entertainment. It may not be long before we face the dreaded  'thought police' who will be charged with rooting out English everywhere. Perhaps we can add the term 'languagecrime' to the dictionary, to go along with the famous Orwellian term of  'thoughtcrime.'
Life imitates art.

Now the issue of English artists at the Quebec Summer Festival is rather interesting and begs the question as to why Francophones prefer English music.

They do so because English music is better. Sorry.

Don't get me wrong, Francophones are a talented lot and have some very good musical groups. The problem is that there are not enough and the good ones are not as good as the Paul McCartneys or the Black-eyed Peas. It is a fact that Quebec concert goers understand all too well.

The reality that militants don't want to face, is the fact that internationally, music is English. No artist that sings exclusively in any other language but English can expect fame and fortune on the international scene.
Just ask Celine Dion who removed the accent from her name to appear more like an Anglophone and learned to sing in English in order to seek her fame and fortune.

I mentioned in a recent column how on the talk show Tous le Monde en Parle French chanteuse Charlotte Gainsbourg was cruelly realistic when she was asked why she chose to sing in English. 'It's just easier..."

Quebec is a small nation of just seven  million Francophones. To believe that they can compete in French against the entire world that sings in English is absurd. While one or two artists can be considered world class, that's about it. Everyone else is, well, second or third rate. And so any concert that is exclusively French is by definition, inferior.

The lack of depth is the real reason that people don't want to hear more than a few French songs at the Bell Centre or go to concerts in Quebec City without international talent (English.)

When the students of UQAM, a Montreal French language university made a innovative one-shot video to the Black-Eyed Peas monster hit "I got a Feeling," our intrepid language ayatollah, Louis Prefontaine complained that they should have sung in French. Had they done so, do you think six million people would have watched the video? Not a chance!
SEE THE VIDEO....... READ MY POST ABOUT IT


Many years ago, I attended a French musical, Notre Dame de Paris which was then the talk of the town in Montreal. While the audience was enthralled, I was shocked at how amateurish the production was. Although the price of admission was close to a $100 (12 odd years ago) the music was canned and the staging rather minimalist to be kind, something one would expect in a high school production. The real disappointment were the voices of the leads, none of whom would make understudy on Broadway.

The same of course goes for French television, which is inferior to Canadian television, which is inferior to American television and so both Anglos and Francophones choose to watch US shows (even dubbed.) Could you imagine being forced to watch  CBC and CTV exclusively (minus the American content) your whole life? Bah!!!!

Before somebody comments on how good Quebec television is, let me tell you that it is a tedious collection of low budget soap operas and bad imitations of American game shows. The rest of the schedule consists of badly dubbed American shows, with the occasional provincial talk-show thrown into the mix, where local Quebec artists regale the audience with fabulous stories of their 'breakthrough' in France and Belgium.

Julie Snyder's imitation of Howie Mandel on the Quebec version of "Deal or No Deal" is so bad that it makes Pamella Wallin's Canadian version of "'Who Wants to be a Millionaire" seem almost riveting.  Errr, maybe not.... LINK.

To sum up, Americans like to go to shows that feature Celine Dion because she is talented. Quebeckers like to see Paul McCartney or the Black-Eyed Peas for the same reason.

Having language shoved down one's throat in school is an outrage. Demanding that one's personal entertainment dollars be spent according to someone else's politically correct selection is beyond the pale.

Perhaps Mr. Prefontaine can write a code à la Herouxville that would describe how we should all dress, act, speak, eat, think and vote.

Maybe then he and the other French language ayatollahs will finally live in the Quebec of their dreams.

10 comments:

  1. Do us a favour--don't give mention to these small-minded morons. They have the intelligence of the KKK, i.e., nada! They are perennial as roses, but they don't smell as sweet. In fact, they wreak!

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  2. In addition to what I wrote above, this Prefontaine guy reminds me of a South African racist kook (murdered about two months ago, justifiably) named Eugene Terreblanche (how about that paradox family name?).

    He zealously led a pro-Apartheid group called the AWB, a fascist group of Afrikaaners who wanted to creat a province in South Africa known as the Orange-Free State. Their objective was to have a jurisdiction where ONLY Afrikaans (a derivative of the Dutch language their renegade underclass farmer ancestors developed that is akin to Joual in Quebec vs French in France) and Apartheid would have been encouraged.

    Terreblanche was a rabid racist who end of life came well deserved. He was downright cruel to his black employees, and had the savvy and mindset of the KKK. HE WAS THE KKK, South African style.

    I think we should give cukoo birds like Prefontaine and his minions a separate state. Shefferville has been a good-for-nothing piece of real estate, a ghost town since the defunct Iron Ore Co. of Canada, run by ex-PM Brian Mulroney, is a perfect place for them to set up. They could have their French TV and Radio, French signs, French newspaper, French everything. I think we should nickname it Joual Siberia. Da, commrad!

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  3. GREAT POST! You hit the nail right on the head. I just wish sometimes your blog opinions could be shared with the rest of the province.. kinda feels like your preaching to the choir. Keep em comin!

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  4. George Orwell? Who is that? Sounds like another anglo without culture, if you ask me.

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  5. The language militants are clearly in the wrong. People in Quebec City clearly support music of all different kinds, including Black Eyes Peas and Paul McCartney who all have international following.

    What started with a fair comment rampantly morphed into a crankish screed. To compare Kim Jung II, with all his centralized power, to the rather powerless rantings of some fringe Quebecois activists defies any kind of logic.

    However if the author thinks American television is excellent, I guess this shows how far the uncultured, nuance free American mainstream culture has evicerated the Anglo-Canadian cultural palette. Perhaps I am overreacting, and in Minnesota I do not get Canadian shows.

    I am a profound admirer of many of Canada's interviewers such as George Stroumboulopoulos, Allan Gregg, and Steve Paikin whose ability to see that the whole world is revolving around USA and our benevolent hegemony, puts them well ahead of 9/10 of the broadcast news journalists in the USA. I think general American ignorance about the world is a reflection of the low horizons that this supposedly world class American TV reflects on our spectacle loving population. Give me Rick Mercer any day.

    I don't see how Francophone music is inferior just because it doesn't have the market share. It is obvious why it doesn't have the share, fewer Francophones. That is a fairly weak circular argument. Most of today's "world class" talent is nothing more than entertainment for people with short attention spans. Black Eyes Peas to their credit are better than most, but let us not pretend that the United States leads the entertainment industry in quality, it simply has sheer numbers and dollars.

    Lastly the commenter who compares Quebec Nationalism to S. Africa Apartheid willfully denigrates those who were killed under the regimes of Henrik Verwoerd and following him. I know some Quebec Anglos like to act like they are victims of neo-Nazis to get attention in the US Media-- hey it worked for Mordechai, after bashing on how boring Canada was he managed to make himself a brave "anti-fascist" in Quebec, if only in his own mind. But at the end of the day, all that is achieving is crude imitation of the worst excesses of Francophone Quebecers exageration (ie. Westmount Rhodesians).

    Thinking folks south of the border aren't going to fall for either one of those tricks.

    So it is not the overall point of this post, but its embellishment at the end that gets me. Overall, I enjoy this blog.

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  6. Justin, you missed my point re South Africa. I was pointing out those AWB zealots, like the now late Eugene Whiteland (Terreblanche, really) who was trying to form a separate sovereign jurisdiction within the borders of S. Africa, aka, the Orange-Free State, where Afrikaans, an inferior derivative of Dutch, would have been the only official language of the jurisdiction, and white Afrikaners would have been the superior race.

    Does Quebec not seek to be a separate state/jurisdiction/whatever within Canada's borders where Joual, an inferior derivative of French, would have been the official and only language of this Quebec jurisdiction, and white Roman Catholic Québécois would be the superior race?

    The AWB Afrikaners and Québécois both act like they're races to be regarded as the superiors and neither has established a separate jurisdiction. I didn't mention anything of the kind about killing others in the name of ethnic cleansing--YOU DID!

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  7. To compare the AWB to the PQ or BQ or any other Quebec nationalist group is absurd.

    The Bloc and Parti Quebecois clearly are left of center parties whose membership has nothing to do with race. Given my interest with Quebec as an outsider, I have followed its politicians closely. I list just a handful of both successful and failed BQ candidates of non Pure Laine origin such as Vivian Barbot, Mellie Faile, Maka Kotto, Frederic Isaya, Gerard Labelle, Abraham Nazbillian, and May Chiu. I could figure all this out as an observer just through google searches.

    It is a long time since Parizeau's comment in 1995, so just like left wing Israeli is Apartheid campaigners perform a kind of "clipart" analysis cutting and pasting past themes with no intellectual integrity, it seems the same thing is at work in your analysis.

    Your denigration of all of Quebec French to Joual is nonsense, and don't think you can fool me like that.

    There are good reasons to argue for a consociational Quebec within Canada, I would not read this blog if I was not interested in that concept. But, your decision to compare an Armed separatist group, which openly talks the idea that to be Boer is to be White with a left wing racially pluralist nationalist movement is beyond absurd. AWB have shed way more blood than the FLQ, who were if anything a parody of other delusional "internationalists" in the 70's.

    Quebec's Anglophones have every right to oppose Quebec Nationalism, just as Catalunya's Castillian speakers have every right oppose Catalan Nationalism.

    There are two sometimes incompatible world views in both Quebec and Catalunya. The best that can be hoped for is a modus vivendi.

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  8. Editor: “It's the type of attitude found in North Korea or some other tin pot country where the local "Dear Leader" imposes his musical preferences on a captive nation, where books are banned according to political agenda and television is controlled to promote 'clean thinking' and where the public must be protected from itself. French language militants see themselves as waging the good fight, one where they alone understand what is best for the nation, displaying an attitude no different than Muslim radical clerics who demand that women be covered up in public because it is "God's will"”

    The separatists and Quebec nationalists work exactly like that. Their approach is not to make a superior product, but to limit access to more appealing alternatives, be it music, film, television, language, Cegep, university, secondary school, primary school. This reminds me a little bit of how things used to be in communist Poland, where I grew up in the 1980s. In those times, it was easier to obtain a US, Canadian, or Australian visa than to obtain a Polish passport from Polish authorities. The logic was the following: “you might want to taste the western lifestyle and those countries agreed to welcome you, but…we are offering you this lifestyle so you will live with it. Why? Because”.

    The situation with Quebec is a little different, but the underlying logic here is EXACTLY the same. You want to hear some English bands? Sorry, you are a Francophone so you must support your domestic bands. You want to go to an English high school? Sorry, you are a Francophone so you will go to a French school. You want to switch to the English system after high school? For now you can, but we strongly disapprove and rest assured that we will work tirelessly to take that out of the available options too. As we will do with kindergartens, in case you want to send your kids to an English one.

    In other words, there is hardly any positive action (making your product appealing and competitive), but plenty of negative action (banning of superior alternatives).

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  9. Read more:
    http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Nunavik+sees+role+hospital/3031093/story.htm\
    l#ixzz0o2R2DJoT

    " ... The building, which belongs to Quebec's Health Department, would require
    about $12 million in renovations to make it suitable for a residence. It could
    accommodate 150 beds and a mini-cultural centre to showcase Inuit art and
    culture ...

    "Anie Samson, the mayor of Villeray-St. Michel-Park Extension, voiced concerns
    about the plan this week. Her borough is home to two of the five poorest
    neighbourhoods in Canada. There are more than 100 ethnic groups in St. Michel
    and Park Extension, Samson said, but not in Villeray, which she described as a
    white, francophone and separatist neighbourhood ...

    " ... I have extremely limited resources. We would have to live with this new
    group. I don't think we can do this well," Samson said ... "

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  10. ''he reality that militants don't want to face, is the fact that internationally, music is English. No artist that sings exclusively in any other language but English can expect fame and fortune on the international scene.
    Just ask Celine Dion who removed the accent from her name to appear more like an Anglophone and learned to sing in English in order to seek her fame and fortune.'' YOU'RE SO OPEN MINDED ! I SEE THAT THE WORLD STOP TO ENGLISH FOR YOU POOR RHODESIANS !

    ReplyDelete