Adolescence is a bottomless well of inspiration for artists. The most recent comedy shows I have attended, with their airs of psychotherapy, found their bases in the humiliations of youth, the rejection of peers and a form of dialogue of the deaf with parents.
Without an unmet need for love, Maude Landry would not be on stage today, she says. Without the rejection experienced in his youth, Philippe-Audrey Larrue St-Jacques, also considered “different”, would not be there either.
Jean-Sébastien Girard makes the same observation. From an early age, he desperately sought the limelight. He got burned more than once on blisters, backstage. This path made of humiliations became the raw material of his first solo show.
Many comedians, for different reasons, are boys and girls “not like the others” (to borrow the title of Girard’s show, itself borrowed from starmania). They underline in broad strokes of self-mockery, for maximum comic effect, what motivates them so much to try to obtain the public’s approval. To heal wounds, to fill a void, to calm anxieties which, often and by their own admission, come from adolescence.
In the first scene of the first episode of the series High demolitioninspired by the novel by Jean-Philippe Baril-Guérard and broadcast Thursday on Série Plus, the future comedian Raph (Étienne Galloy) is intimidated while he is in the chemical toilet by a group of students from his high school class.
We made fun of Philippe-Audrey, in high school, because he was literary. We made fun of Jean-Sébastien because he was fascinated by popular stars. They have in common never to have been chosen first in dodgeball and to have misunderstood the tactics to adopt in order to shine in society (or at the very least to integrate the majority group).
Girard believed that his appearance on a Télé-Métropole show – dressed in a simple towel on an acupuncture table, in order to cure a phobia of sleep – would make him a star of the schoolyard. Larrue St-Jacques thought that a baptism at 9 years old would open the doors to the conclave of children in the wind.
They were wrong. Jean-Sébastien received baloney sandwiches in the face while eating alone in the school cafeteria. He didn’t dare tell his mother about it, let alone his father, who stubbornly offered him Tonka trucks at Christmas when he would have preferred a Barbie.
After his first heartbreak, Philippe-Audrey’s father, unable to find the words to console him, suggested that he not read The confession of a child of the century de Musset, inspired by his tumultuous relationship with George Sand. What Philippe-Audrey did, of course, out of a spirit of contradiction.
Going through adolescence isn’t always easy. And it is not always easy to guide a teenager when you are a parent. There is an inherent unpredictability in adolescence. The intensity of the reactions is stronger there than in childhood or adulthood.
Adolescence is a roller coaster ride, and that’s in the order of things, reminds psychologist Lisa Damour, whom my colleague Silvia Galipeau interviewed for her new book, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers.
What has changed since the time when Philippe-Audrey Larrue St-Jacques and Jean-Sébastien Girard were teenagers, 20 and 30 years ago respectively, is that the injunction to happiness has never been clearer. . Teenagers are no longer allowed to be unhappy, even for short periods of time, believes Lisa Damour. We fear sadness for them, this state that we should get rid of as soon as possible.
Teenagers now talk openly about mental health and consult experts without prejudice. Except that mental health is not about feeling good all the time, recalls Lisa Damour. It is also having appropriate reactions to obstacles, setbacks, disappointments. And be able to face these difficulties. Being sad is healthy, she says in short. And letting teenagers believe otherwise is dangerous.
The psychologist notices that some young people she treats have come to feel bad about feeling bad, so much is expected of them to feel good. The parents are there for something. They may recognize the virtues of psychology more than their own parents did a few decades ago, but they too have fallen in love. That, in particular, of wanting at all costs to avoid for their adolescents the same traumas (small and large) that they experienced at their age.
A first heartbreak, a failure or a public humiliation, anxiety about school or sports performance, the stress of the major stages of the transition from childhood to adulthood. These are, says Lisa Damour, experiences that are sometimes unpleasant, even painful, but necessary for the development, autonomy and independence of adolescents.
We must not avoid these ordeals, but rather, she believes, prepare them to take the blows, which will be inevitable, as best as possible.
Getting depressed – a little, and not for too long – is completely normal in adolescence. The opposite would be worrying. The strong emotions that sometimes overwhelm young people, the frustration expressed towards their friends or their parents (which can be exasperating) are obligatory passages. From adolescent spleen even vocations are born. What would Quebec humor be without it?