The Cage aux folles and CRAZY were both rebroadcast this weekend on television with a warning message warning viewers that the “cultural representations” contained in the film may offend in the current context. A way of doing things that perhaps ends up offending more than certain words spoken in these films.
On social networks at least, many have been offended this weekend by the addition of such a warning before the Cage aux Folles, presented Saturday on ARTV.
“This film is presented as it was created and may contain cultural representations of the time”, one could read before viewing this classic of French comedy. Adapted from a play from 1973, the Cage aux Folles hit theaters five years later, becoming one of the first mainstream feature films to show a male couple on screen in the mundane of everyday life. After the fact, some have decried the stereotypes about homosexuality that are maintained in this film, but the Crazy Cage remains for others a flagship work of gay cinema.
“We judged that the representations made of LGBTQ people and certain remarks towards the” domestic “, who is a racialized person, justified the addition of a warning”, ruled for its part Radio-Canada after revisiting the content. last year. In an email sent to Duty, the public broadcaster clarified that the same warning was added to the Cage aux folles II.
A similar warning also introduces each replay on the Saturday evening of the Little life since a year. It was at the time the compromise that Radio-Canada had found to put online an episode, which starred Normand Brathwaite in the skin of a very cartoonish African professor, and whose withdrawal had aroused the ire of many. viewers.
“I find it so infantilizing. It’s as if the public is too stupid to understand that it’s a comedy, ”plague Germain Lacasse, honorary professor in the department of art history and film studies at the University of Montreal. This specialist in the history of Quebec cinema also deplores that we take offense at certain terms in films which are nevertheless set in another era.
CRAZY
Latest example from one era that judges another: CRAZY de Jean-Marc Vallée, who came out in 2005, but which tells the story of a father (Michel Côté) struggling to accept the sexual orientation of his son (Marc-André Grondin) in the 70s and 80s. Sunday evening at TVA, the film many times awarded is also now provided with a warning at the very beginning to spare certain sensibilities.
A decision taken by mutual agreement between the director and the producer, Pierre Even. Not so much because the dialogues are riddled with homophobic slurs, which are inseparable from the subject of the film anyway. No, Jean-Marc Vallée and Pierre Even rather came to the conclusion that the addition of a warning was made necessary because of the use at one point in the film of the famous “N word”.
“When I read the CRAZY script in 2002, it didn’t shock anyone. But today, we could no longer make the film like that. Something else should be found today [même s’il est vrai que cette expression était couramment utilisée durant ces années au Québec]», Reasoned the producer.
Maria chapdelaine
Another feature film produced by Pierre Even was the subject of such a precautionary measure, this one much more recent. Maria chapdelaine, which took the poster this fall, is also entitled to a short speech opening on the cultural representations of the time.
Here, it is the use of the term “savage” to designate the Aboriginals that poses a problem in this new rereading of the cult novel by Louis Hémon, whose action takes place in the north of Lac-Saint-Jean at the beginning of the 20th century. century.
Neither Pierre Even nor the director, Sébastien Pilote, had initially seen fit to add a warning. Especially since several members of the First Nations were consulted during the adaptation of the scenario. They all found the use of the word “savage”, which was indeed the term used at the time to refer to Aboriginal people, justified.
Rather, it was during the screening of Maria Chapdelaine at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) that a spectator cringed and let it be known to one of the film’s funders.
“We felt there was a concern, but the decision came from us. We didn’t want a single native to be shocked by that word, that wasn’t our goal. We preferred to do too much rather than not enough, ”explains Pierre Even.
For Pierre Barrette, professor at the Media School of UQAM, these warnings are a “lesser evil” in the current context and at least allow the dissemination of a period work without having to cut out certain passages.
“The general reaction of the public right now is to be shocked by these warnings. Perhaps by dint of seeing it, there will be a going back, ”he suggests.