Mom, it’s finally over! You won’t see me crying over the Just for Laughs festival, which has, at our expense, normalized joual and quetainism in our homes.
• Read also: Bankruptcy of Just for Laughs: the tours of affected comedians are not canceled
You have cost us enough to encourage a cultural demeaning mentality that has manufactured humor like it’s sausage.
Of course, I make the exception of certain great stage actors, such as Claudine Mercier, Clémence DesRochers, Guy Nantel, Boucar Diouf or Daniel Lemire, among others.
But the great comedians, Marc Favreau “Sol” for example, did not need the Just for Laughs machine.
On the other hand, it has inundated us with its largely subsidized and mediocre broadcasts and festivals.
Subsidies
The disgraced founder of Just for Laughs, Gilbert Rozon, was able to build up immense wealth… in part with these public funds granted to his organization in the name of culture.
How could this organization, which itself got Quebec addicted to low-end humor, not achieve profitability? I don’t know. There are questions to ask.
Shrinking
But my hair stands on end when I hear people tell me that Just for Laughs is a part of our culture.
We are talking here about culture with a small c and an industry which has always made the promotion of the ugliness of language almost a hobby horse.
Denise Bombardier was a thousand times right to mock these joyous coronators.
Exactly when Quebec aspired to free itself from its culture of ticouism to elevate itself intellectually and politically, the laughter industry came to invite it to wallow in the ease of fat and infantilizing laughter.
That’s why, as I told you, I’m not going to cry Just for laughs. Really, yes, I say: good riddance!