Every time I watch Guy Nandal’s new vox pop, I alternate between laughing and crying.
I laugh at the idiotic answers of the respondents. But I am saddened by such ignorance. But in Guy Nantel’s latest vox pop, Anglophones and Bill 96, we can only weep before the contempt and denial of French truth in Quebec.
To make sure people at Dawson College understand me: There is nothing funny about it.
Who is RENÉ?
We pride ourselves on the bilingualism of the English-speaking younger generation, where three French courses are not required at CEGEP. However, Guy’s interviewees did not know what French called an eraser, a measuring ruler, or a trombone. Are you going to school and you don’t even know how to name the objects you use everyday in your classes? They don’t even know what a watch is in French! They were not asked to pronounce it unconstitutional, alas!
After that, would you like us to stop ranting about the French disappearance?
There’s even a French speaker who calls the trombone a “paper clip”! Are there more commenters to tell us that CEGEP doesn’t need to use Law 101?
No one will be surprised that Anglos at Dawson College don’t know who Véronique Cloutier is: Louis Morissette wrote an essay in the magazine. Vero To lament that the young Quebecers do not know his wife.
But if in Dawson, we don’t know who René Lévesque is…that says a lot about our education system! After all these years of study, you don’t even know who is one of the important political figures of the country you live in?
You remember the outcry over the Boris cartoon Montreal Gazette, where did we see a puppy pissing on a Rene Levesque poster? There are English people who can’t even recognize the guy on the poster!
Don’t know who Michael Tremblay is, never heard of him SistersNever heard of Yvon Deschamps or Gilles Vigneault, without knowing that French is the one and only official language of Quebec: Comrades Interviewed by Guy Nantel, they tell us face to face that Quebec (its culture, its language, its history) doesn’t care about their first socks.
The worst part of all this is that when we pay lip service, at least to assert our identity, to promote our culture, to protect our identity… we are called intolerant.
Glass is glass
I’ve always found Guy Nantel’s Vox Pops to be more than humorous clips.
They are short essays on sociology, snapshots of Quebec reality, like a mirror the comedian holds up to his community, a bath that reveals a true photograph of Quebec.
In this case, a film about young students living in Quebec while denigrating everything that makes Quebec unique.
And there is nothing funny about it.
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