We want to give the runner the chance. Except that we are itching for questions before the start of the Culture and Quebec citizenship course by the CAQ. The feeling of belonging, especially French-speaking, will tint the sauce, that’s for sure. The word “chauvinist” was thrown around. Certainly, many Quebecers should explore secular values and their roots (largely religious, by the way). But we must also open up. As for education in civics and ethics, how can we make it fill the current gaping hole in so little didactic space? Where to look for the quest for the common good under the invectives of social media? The excessiveness of the operation smacks of political aims. We sympathize with his scribes.
Under many beautiful projects and declarations of principle, the petticoat exceeds. Already, the public letter of the two ministers of education, the French Jean-Michel Blanquer and the Quebecer Jean-François Roberge, defending the culture of banishment, had its bias. Should we let activists burn the bad subjects Tintin, Asterix and Lucky Luke? No, these voices, worried about the retreat of the democratic spirit, answered with reason. Throughout history, stifling memory has only served to manipulate humans. Stop obscurantism!
The fact remains that our societies are evolving. Sensibilities are awakening to the fate of women and minorities, promising the future. Alas! the two ministers fired on a single target: extremism woke. Yet radicalization hits the reactionary right as much as the exalted left. Today, each camp is making history, diminishing or amplifying the effects of colonialism and sexism according to its theories. But who defends the nuance at a time when so many biases cling to the train of complex realities?
Take the recent positions of Wajdi Mouawad, Paris director of the Théâtre de la Colline. Deaf to pressure, he refuses to terminate the contract of Bertrand Cantat, composer of his next show. The singer of Noir Désir, we remember too well, beat to death his companion actress Marie Trintignant in Vilnius in 2003, before being imprisoned (not very long), then released. Since then, his performances have stirred up turmoil, as was the case in Montreal in 2011. Three pieces by Sophocles staged by Mouawad to music by Cantat were performed without him at the TNM the following year, after outcry.
The director of the theater assures that he fully adheres to the fights for equality between men and women and against violence and sexual harassment, while refusing to take the place of justice. No doubt he also uses the proscribed musician to defend this principle. Each bangs on his nail while finding the other’s suspect.
Cantat’s violence against women annoys us, but let us listen to the arguments of the director of the theater. Not necessarily to support his choices, at least to understand them. Yes, the #MoiAussi movement and minority defense groups are changing mentalities. Nonetheless, one can shudder to see people’s courts taking the place of the courts of justice.
Our institutions, often obsolete, are in great need of renewal, but sweeping away legal decisions sends us back to another limbo. The principles of law offer former prisoners a chance for rehabilitation. Should we give it up? And for the benefit of what? To sharpen your critical mind is to leave aside your assumptions for a while. Good luck with the future school program for navigating in these foggy times! Democracy is floundering on all sides, all sides. Its foundations are crumbling.
Even our institutions themselves sometimes flout the best values of their own system. A shame! Last week, we learned, the Montreal police met the mafia and called on them to bring street gangs to a halt. The octopus will undoubtedly know how to wring the necks of the young murderers of the red light districts. No need to have devoured the films of Coppola and Scorsese to know the muscular methods of the underworld, endorsed de facto by the police by passing the torch, even if they were banned in the country. Who protested in the name of a common ethics in front of the alliance of these accomplices? At most, we saw in it an admission of the powerlessness of the system. Elected officials applauded. We lose the map and the compass.
Our institutions are crumbling from the inside, from the outside, with blows from the right and the left. Do we want more of this imperfect democracy? In the cultural world as much as within the justice system, blind drifts lead us who knows where. A civic ethics course should put children in the face of the holes. If that was the aim of this reform, of course …
A previous version of this text mentioned that three Sophocles pieces had been deprogrammed at the TNM in 2012. They were in fact performed without Cantat.