It’s spring break, let’s step aside and go light on the subject: let’s talk about the Paré.
Not long ago, Radio-Canada announced that for the 30th anniversary of The little life, its Tou.tv platform would deliver six episodes of the cult series. The good news made the headlines, in one of those enthusiasms of which Quebec is capable, because the saga of Claude Meunier is much more than a historical soap opera.
Born in 1993, the series of 59 episodes only lasted four seasons. Four short years yet served methodically for 30 years. The episodes have become classics of our television. In 1995, an episode attracted 4,098,000 viewers, in a Quebec with 7.2 million inhabitants! The ratings, for covers so rehashed that certain lines are known by heart, remain spectacular three decades later. One can imagine that young people born after the original outing are still discovering the Paré, that immigrants have perfected their Quebecois there.
The little life was and remains a television phenomenon. At a time when young audiences are turning away from television, this fixation on the imaginary life of an average pure wool synthetic Quebec family is surprising. It’s that The little life is not television, but a social phenomenon.
What did Meunier tell us 30 years ago? He drew an impressionistic, fatalistic and lucid portrait of a society at the dawn of great changes, where the family would be the first to break up. A Quebec that was coming to the end of the useful life of its Quiet Revolution, where the models were going to be bullied.
A Quebec where the traditional family, even a poached one, was still briefly the dominant model, where somewhat racist, somewhat homophobic mononcs told their jokes in public, where children still venerated their parents, but turned out to be more curious, adventurous than these. Families where, despite the ongoing feminist revolution, the patriarchal model still prevailed.
Stumble upon an episode of The little life a Saturday night can be a shock! First, there is the dose of nostalgia for what we were collectively, or rather, for the exaggerated portrait that Meunier painted of it: simple, good-natured, a little stunned by the changes that were knocking at our door.
The Quebec of 1995 is still homogeneous, but has just closed a nationalist chapter in its history. We become attached to these Paré who are like a caricature of a US in the process of being diluted. Sociology, I tell you.
What does Claude Meunier have in store for them in 2023? The characters will have aged, we know that Môman will be absent, Serge Thériault suffering from severe depression. Since the author remains discreet about what the present has in store for the Paré, we can have fun speculating…
They still live in a central neighborhood of Montreal, probably Rosemont gentrified. Patriarch Ti-Mé’s obsession with garbage finally takes on its full meaning in these times of environmental concerns. Pôpa, neighbor of Valérie Plante, became a very prominent municipal councilor for Projet Montréal; a pioneer. His son Rénald, ex-manager of Caisse, is no longer cheap, but a follower of degrowth, which finally brings him closer to his father. As for Rod, the obsessed with the look, he would have become a guru of recycling andupcyclingambassador of thrift stores and arbiter of second-hand elegance, involving her sister-in-law, the monochrome Lison, in her social approach.
Thérèse, the Chinese pie neurotic, finally succeeds, now that she has gone vegan. She is also a TikTok influencer: Miss Chickpea. Caro, once a forward-thinking activist in search of identity, is the one through whom openness to differences comes, as the Parés now navigate the turbulent waters of political correctness. Many misunderstandings and excuses in sight…
Môman’s case is complex.
Where did she go? Forgotten at Fleury Hospital? Elected to the National Assembly? Sociologically, her disappearance from the home has a certain meaning: she left the family, exasperated. She’s an exhausted mother. She has finally assumed the greatest of changes: she is fluid, and has gone to live her binary elsewhere.
These six episodes come at a time when TV is overflowing with reruns. You might even think that TV is rambling. This is not the case: see the staggering number of new (and excellent) series offered on all networks. We would almost end up running out of actors! It is therefore not television repetition, but an entire society that feels the need to take stock. Everything is going so fast, everything has changed so much over the past 30 years, that the Paré are like markers by the side of the road, measuring the road travelled.
These new adventures therefore prove to be an anticipated treat, but also a public service. (That’s why Tou.tv is rather greedy to make us pay twice…)