You have undoubtedly seen the archives of Quebec and Canadian television which are currently a hit on the web. Video clips of old shows from the 1960s and 1970s have been extremely popular in recent months. Despite the language barrier, the two videos even managed to transcend the geographical borders of La Belle Province by bringing a smile to the rest of Canada, the Americans and… the Japanese.
At the heart of this digital phenomenon we find an interview with a group of pee-wee hockey players rolling their “r”s strongly and published on the TikTok account of the Archives of Radio-Canada.
Initialement diffusée à l’hiver 1962, elle met en scène Normand Marineau, un jeune joueur étoile désormais célèbre et aujourd’hui âgé de 73 ans. L’autre vidéo est extraite de l’émission Soirée canadienne et date de 1976. Dans un décor des veillées d’antan, un jeune Joël Legendre entonne une chanson à répondre entraînante, En revenant de Sainte-Hélène.
Relayée en masse sur X, la vidéo de Legendre éveille la curiosité des non-francophones pour notre joual bien-aimé.
Quant à Normand Marineau et ses camarades, je lisais il y a quelques jours sur eux dans l’infolettre Memeforum, une publication de la chroniqueuse américaine Kathryn Winn, installée à Los Angeles. Cette dernière écrivait être tombée par hasard sur « [cette] trend having conquered the hearts and minds of Quebecers” and considered the meme as a window allowing him to observe and try to understand our culture.
Ambassadors
If the enthusiasm for the two Quebec internet memes is palpable, it is however difficult to explain why they have become ambassadors of our culture outside the province. Indeed, digital virality is not orchestrated and very often depends on unpredictable factors. Still, the phenomenon signals the existence of a Quebec digital culture that must be further valued, in that it finds itself becoming one of Quebec’s standard bearers internationally. This imperative echoes the speech made by content creator Farnell Morisset, who frequently popularizes citizen issues on his TikTok account.
The future of Quebec culture depends at least in part on social media. We should recognize that they have a role to play in its continuity, its propagation and its promotion, both at home and internationally.
Farnell Morisset, content creator
However, social media have codes that differ from those used in traditional media. To stand out from the crowd and highlight today’s Quebec culture, it is essential to become familiar with the idiosyncratic mechanics of web platforms.
Memes and genes
A good way to approach the participatory culture of the Internet is to go back to the very root of the term “meme.” It appeared in 1976 in the book The Selfish Gene by biologist Richard Dawkins. Dawkins positions the “meme” as a cultural element that is transmitted from one individual to another, in the same way as genes, those DNA sequences that we bequeath hereditarily to our biological children. However, unlike genes, the meme has nothing to do with heredity: it spreads by imitation. This is why the meme is also forged from the Greek term mimesis.
The concept of the meme can be applied to the circulation of ideas and cultural practices on the Internet, elements that are adopted and disseminated through imitation. Like the process of biological evolution, as something is reproduced, it undergoes mutations. For example, since the success of Joël Legendre’s music video, the song Coming back from Saint Helena inspired a house remix, but also a pop piano cover.
With each iteration, the meme takes on new meaning and convinces other people to reinterpret it. Web culture is therefore not simply something we consume, it is something we create… collectively.
Enemy of TV?
While social networks are frequently singled out to explain the lack of interest among young people in local television content, the viral success of the two moments taken from television archives problematizes the antagonistic relationship which would oppose digital culture to culture television. Rather, it demonstrates that the two can exist and maintain a dialectical, mutually beneficial relationship.
However, for television to benefit from this symbiotic relationship, it must comply with a new participatory ecology and let its audience extend, modify and reinterpret the media products they like. On the web, culture is not controlled by an elite or a handful of institutions, but rather belongs to everyone. TV content must therefore be disseminated strategically across platforms, so as to encourage the creative engagement of Internet users. This underlies an assumed loss of control on the part of broadcasters. Because a meme cannot be governed, it only transforms.