The place of drag queens, like the gender waterline between masculine and feminine, has ignited minds throughout the year. Allow drag storytellers to perform at school? Yes ? No ! Why not after all ? Children have seen others on the Internet, so let’s let colorful artists make them laugh and cry. Should we allow sex change among minors? Slippery terrain ! The conservative Pierre Poilievre is against early transition, pleading the need to acquire maturity before making such a decision called to modify one’s entire life. Others respond: “Hey! Waiting for a young person who wants to assert themselves differently to come of age means condemning them to school bullying for a longer period of time. And break his adolescence by imprisoning him in a sex that oppresses him. »
Both theses can be defended, so we have not finished quibbling over the question. You still have to be wary of fashion effects and juvenile impulses. The fact remains that these issues are beyond the comprehension of the average bear. Everything is happening so quickly.
To put gendered toilets in schools or not? To manage the needs of non-binary people or not? Adopt the new terms iel Or mx ? At least letting the words “woman” or “man” spread out in peace, we think. Many get lost along the way. The left and the right clash furiously over this issue of gender identity. Politicians navigate by sight. The Coalition Avenir Québec is considering setting up a “committee of wise people” to debate these thorny questions. Enough to straighten their white beards.
Thus transvestites, transsexuals, queers and other gender minorities land in the spirit of the times at the heart of public debates before ordinary mortals have been able to grasp their complex realities. In some families, even homosexuality remains a reason for exclusion. So for many parents, imagining their little Leo as a drag queen or a young premiere is a mission impossible. Others are open to all changes despite the front of resistance. On social networks, threats are brewing. It’s scary. Calms you !
Reaching out to people between two genders is done one step at a time, shaking one’s fleas. Among new generations, these realities are experienced more fluidly. And the future belongs to them. But to deny the unease that grips many of their elders would be to bury one’s head in the sand. The Web trembles. The fact remains that, far from loud cries, opening your mind has never killed anyone.
Lured by the popularity and charisma of its headliner, audiences who were initially reluctant ventured to Cabaret Mado in the Gay Village, suddenly delighted by a shimmering spectacle of laughter, songs, theater and colors. Jean-François Guevremont, aka the drag queen Rita Bagaone of the stars of the Just for Laughs festival in July with his show Creaturereleases his book from Éditions de l’Homme One glitter at a time. Diary of a Queen.
It is through art that borders blur. And when a work of great quality propels the public into the soul of a person not so different, all things considered, prejudices waver. So Solo by Sophie Dupuis, with Théodore Pellerin as a drag queen at its forefront, is a Quebec cultural event likely to attract a large audience. For its immense qualities, its vitality, its reach. To him, the style, the strength, the nuance, the solid distribution, especially the incandescent, hypersensitive performance of Pellerin and the murkier, denser performance of Félix Maritaud (120 beats per minute), in the shoes of her lover. The multiple threads are woven without blunting between an overwhelming toxic passion and the marvelous deployment of an artist’s wings. Without forgetting the hero’s relationship with his family, including a singer mother who is too often absent (Anne-Marie Cadieux). Add a vibrant and sharp camera, a production listening to a caught breath, a sidelong glance, sheltered from vain words.
This is the best film by the filmmaker Watch dog and of Underground. With Solo, we see it emerge from the dark vein of Quebec cinema to penetrate a zone of light between doubt, failure, pain and triumph over oneself. Rather than depicting the pain of marginalized people, Sophie Dupuis exposes their grandeur and radiant creativity. Through this path of clarity, people suddenly identify with characters of diversity. For having been able to find there the intimate fiber of their own humanity.