Claim the right to offend
Obviously, the comedian and ex-candidate for the leadership of the Parti Québécois needed to empty his heart. Without concession, he castigates those he presents as the right-thinking, the vigilantes of morality and virtue, bluntly attacking the radical left. Above all, he seems deeply worried that it will be necessary to spare a myriad of sensitivities, at the risk of raising popular and media storms. “We entered without transition into a period of obscurantism where the offended now reign supreme,” he laments in the foreword.
Guy Nantel roots his thinking in his own experience, recounting the whirlwind of controversy that had formed around him, provoked by the short segment of a show where he made a joke about a case of allegations of sexual assault. . Then he shifts to a hot topical issue: the resounding legal saga opposing Mike Ward to Jérémy Gabriel, which ended last week in favor of the comedian. The author explains why he sided with his counterpart. “Defending Ward is not defending the quality of his gag. It is to defend the right to make this gag, even if it is the worst gag ever made ”, he advances, claiming not only the right, but also“ the duty of the comic to be insolent, irreverent and disrespectful ” .
He then puts on the scandals that have taken the headlines by storm, here as elsewhere: shows by Robert Lepage, remarks by Louis-Jean Cormier, episode of The little life or François Legault’s playlist temporarily removed, song broadcast Baby It’s Cold Outside, cultural and culinary appropriations, etc. In his eyes, so many cases of censorship carried out by apostles of virtue with a “hypocritical” tendency, in the first rank of which he places the famous wokes, fond of the culture of banishment (cancel culture).
“This rectitude has become a form of tyranny, a religion to which it becomes imperative to adhere on pain of exclusion”, he believes.
When the stakes are brought to the semantic and lexical field, The offending book raises a panoply of neologisms and new concepts (“systemic racism”, “rape culture”, “traumaward”, etc.), presented as so many American imports, in the malleable sense, intended not so much to solve social problems as ‘to “blame the culprits”. The issues of racism and racial profiling are also widely attacked head-on, as well as the responsibility of the media in this “frenzy” of political correctness.
The offending book
Guy Nantel
Entourage Group
328 pages
The nuanced ban
PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, ARCHIVES THE PRESS
Judith Lussier, author ofCanceled – Reflections on “cancel culture”, proposes to take a closer look at the culture of banishment, its origins and its effects.
Even though columnist Judith Lussier’s new essay focuses on the culture of banishment (cancel culture), we find there, tied to his research and reflections, almost all the cases and examples mentioned by Guy Nantel. Above all, it is striking to see them lit by a completely different lantern.
Certainly, no one will fall in the clouds, knowing where their respective authors live (Nantel however claims to be center-left in his work). But we invite readers to compare the many analyzes of controversies such as the adjustments made by Hasbro to its Mr. removed from Mr. Legault’s reading list. Are the intentions, consequences and origins of such storms really what we think?
At the heart ofCanceled – Reflections on “cancel culture”, in line withWe can’t say anything more (2019), nestles a nuanced approach to the culture of banishment, which, for the author, “is nothing new”, but remains particularly difficult to define. It would not be the prerogative of the left, argues Judith Lussier, who deplores that cases fed by the right are not recognized as such. “There is no single person responsible for cancel culture. Most of the time, the people who are made to bear the burden of these consequences are the previously designated scapegoats: the wokes and their progressive ideas, ”she writes, adding that we“ attribute to the wokes powers that these people do not have ”.
She exposes that those who cause the spark of certain uprisings sometimes find themselves victims of a backfire, or witness chain reactions that they neither wanted nor claimed (such as contract cancellations or withdrawals. sponsors). “Not only are its real consequences difficult to pin down, but the people to whom it is blamed, generally the progressives, are also often the main victims,” she argues. Among other examples, she brandishes the affair between Maripier Morin and Safia Nolin.
According to the author, the targets of the “dominant” culture even manage to take advantage of the situation by presenting themselves as victims of their freedom of expression victimized by “an overly sensitive society”.
There too, the peripheral view of the work has too much amplitude to be faithfully reported here, but several themes deserve special attention, relating to humor, memory and the celebration of historical figures, the temptation to separate the man of the work, the algorithms of social networks greedy for spirals of negativity, academic freedom …
Almost irreconcilable, each bearing detailed reflections, but not always devoid of flaws, the two essays deserve a cross-reading; Backing them up chapter by chapter even promises an epic pass.
Canceled – Reflections on “cancel culture”
Judith Lussier
Cardinal
254 pages