It is the day after tomorrow that 1,762,000 Quebecers will mourn District 31. I will be. Through its innumerable qualities, Luc Dionne’s daily newspaper will have succeeded in uniting us.
Posted yesterday at 9:00 a.m.
Psychologically, she will have been strong. In six seasons, the author will have dissected the issues facing today’s society, a complex world in all shades of gray, values in crisis. He created a gallery of characters, including the complex figure of Commander Chiasson, a strong but ambiguous paternal refuge.
District 31 knew how to strike a sensitive chord. It was more than a soap opera; it was a modern reading of society.
It’s the end of something, much more than the end of a beloved series. Because television is changing, not only in Quebec, but the phenomenon is particularly important here, Quebec television having traditionally been a tool and a vector of social ties.
Those watching TV are old, by broadcaster standards. They consume less, no longer dictate trends, so are less profitable, basically. District 31with its staggering market shares, largely escaped this fate.
Nevertheless, 1.6 million viewers on average, however faithful they may be, are only part of the 8 million Quebecers. Many weren’t watching, and that has nothing to do with the intrinsic qualities of the series. Rather with the fact that in 2022, a large part of the population has given up television, at least, its traditional version, on a fixed day and at a fixed time. Question of age, very often. Under 40, many don’t even have a device anymore. It’s generational. Content is available on a variety of platforms, when needed. We escape the diktat of the broadcasters, who no longer know what to invent so that their content is seen. To make recipe, one divides in the facts the basin of televiewers to the extreme, one addresses “segments”, and one deconstructs solidarity.
There is also a question of language and culture. Our rich French-speaking offer is not consumed by all. Not everyone can be found in our stories, our star system consensual.
There are always good cases of cultural integration through TV viewing, but consumption is increasingly experienced in parallel worlds that do not mingle. Add the many who distrust traditional media and find their information and entertainment elsewhere.
All this talks about the state of our society; in ideological recomposition, traversed by innumerable divisions, by deep fractures. An individualistic world, where culture is consumed à la carte, even in silos, where our age isolates us in terms of our consumption and our understanding of the media.
Until recently, perhaps 15 or 20 years ago, and for a very long time, several decades, television produced a common reference. She spoke to everyone, and everyone shared a common core of references. We understood each other before we even opened our mouths. Society was certainly less complex, more homogeneous. She has changed a lot, and we won’t complain about it here!
I would argue that District 31 will probably have been one of these last appointments so hegemonic, so unifying, apart from certain hockey matches, the elections, Live from the universe, or big events that everyone is watching at the same time. These moments when it’s stronger than us, we become one in front of the same small screen. The shift was not to ONE other medium, but to a multitude of sources.
We are witnessing an accelerated atomization of media production and consumption, combined with mistrust and disinterest in it. District 31by its strength, its quality and its roots which draw on our collective subconscious, will have been one of the last modern representatives of this unifying television.
It will have created memories, links, shared expressions. Thursday will be the end of a cult series. It’s also a bit like the end of a type of television that makes society. There will still be plenty of popular series and shows, talent abounds here. But demographically, culturally, technically, it will be more and more complicated. The successes, because there will be some, will be more nested. I also have a feeling that it’s pretty much the general end of the good-natured consensus in Quebec, and not just on TV… Withdrawal and fracture are now part of our DNA.
District 31 leaves us orphans. Chiasson leaves, and it’s harshly symbolic. Come on, we order chicken for the last episode. Whole.