You may have seen the scene on TV or heard about it. A high school teacher loses control and spouts nonsense to his students in the first episode of the Happiness, with VAT. He delivers the substance of his thoughts to these “precious little treasures”, “idiots” who no longer know how to give the word horse in the plural and “would like to decide the sex of the chairs”.
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
We underlined the humor of this slippage in order, played with a memorable intensity by Michel Charette. But we especially retained one side of the coin. The one who represents today’s teenagers as “the most stupid generation that the Earth has known”. A generation that would like a highway to be able to determine itself the appropriate determinants and pronouns to designate it (or it). “It’s his choice,” said one student.
The monomaniacs of “Wokism” chuckled with pleasure at the evocation of this deliberately crude caricature of today’s youth. Perhaps because they recognized themselves in the speech of this exasperated teacher, in the midst of a nervous breakdown. And that they place any value on it.
What has been less pointed out – the other side of the coin – is the way in which the authors (François Avard and Daniel Gagnon) have at the same time, in the same scene and the same speech, illustrated in an equally caricatural way the contempt and incomprehension of a representative of the generation X for the generation Z.
François Plante, played by Michel Charette, seems resistant to the idea of changing his thinking and recognizing the slightest claim from minority groups. The new spelling makes him faint. We dare not imagine what the presence of a transgender student in his class would cause in him. Don’t talk to him about epicene writing, it’ll finish him off.
That the commentators have above all retained the brushed portrait of a youth brought up in wadding claiming to the point of the absurd says a lot about our relationship to fictional characters and about those who write TV series. Many see a teacher losing control insult minors, violently overturn their desks… and say to themselves: “It’s true that young people are heavy. »
PHOTO FROM THE SHOW’S FACEBOOK PAGE
Louise Bombardier, Guillaume Cyr, Sandrine Bisson, Sam-Éloi Girard and Michel Charette in Happiness
Where to start ?
Whether they like it or not, with this comic scene which perpetuates new stereotypes, Avard and Gagnon participate in this heavy tendency of television, here as elsewhere, to present the man – especially the heterosexual white man in the middle of the life – as a victim.
A victim of those around him, of his society, of young people awakened to inequalities, of feminists or of minority and marginalized groups.
Like this François Plante, secondary school teacher who resigned from Happiness, who feels like he can’t say anything anymore because of the young “iels”. Or this Christian (Christian Bégin), university teacher suspended from Guys, who feels like he can’t do anything anymore because he has to attend a consent workshop (which he derides), due to an affair with a student who is 30 years younger than him.
They have in common that they are in their fifties and find laughable those who, in all sorts of ways, sometimes exaggerated and clumsy, challenge the established order. And who no longer simply accept the “it’s like that because it’s always been like that” from those in positions of authority.
I notice that there are several male characters on TV (American too) who spend a lot of energy trying not to look like mononcles… while regretting the not so distant time when they could give free rein to their inner uncle without fearing the slightest reprisals.
“Men are afraid of dying from two things: colon cancer and changes in society! “, says the young character played by Selena Gomez to his two baby boomer neighbors in the very entertaining series of Disney + Only Murders in the Building.
The white man of a certain age would be in disarray and lost his bearings, if we are to believe the television, which constantly sends back this image to us, and in an even clearer way for a few years.
I was talking about it this week with Stéfany Boisvert, herself a professor specializing in television at UQAM’s School of Media, on the show We’ll say what we want on Radio-Canada radio.
There are countless male characters who have the impression that the rug is slipping away from under their feet and who fear losing their place and their enviable achievements in society, with the panoply of “woke injunctions” of the younger generations and the “revanchist discourse” (trademark) of feminists worthy of “Big Mother”, which prevent them from going in circles. Anyway, they no longer know on which foot to dance.
They believe that the return of the pendulum – towards more parity, more diversity, more equality – is above all an injustice to them. A threat to the privileges they hold but refuse to acknowledge. We come back to it again and again.
Why do we hear this talk so much on TV? In particular because it is widely relayed by the media, in tune with the times and popular with the public and screenwriters, both of whom are aging. This is, in short, the dominant perspective. However, this representation of masculinity in crisis, victim of the claims of the last decades, would be a generalization loaded with meaning, believes Stéfany Boisvert.
“It’s a discourse that sometimes has anti-feminist overtones,” she says.
It is a discourse that aims to say that straight white cis men would be the big losers of social transformations.
Stéfany Boisvert, professor at the UQAM School of Media
“Somehow it’s like saying that feminism or civil rights movements have gone too far. It is also, she believes, a way of making the difficulties, forms of discrimination and marginalization of which minority groups are victims (racialized men or the LGBTQ+ community, for example) invisible. “Like saying it’s fine for everyone… except for men. »
Which, we will agree, is far from being a reflection of reality.