Oh, well, that’s better then - anglophone Albertans as arrogant, bumbling idiots.
I don’t actually support arts funding from the federal government at all. If you really want to show a panel of anglophone Albertan conservatives, there should be nobody there because the government shouldn’t be in the business of supporting artists.
It’s not fair, and it’s not true. I’ve been here 18 years, and spent all of my life on the prairies; I have very rarely seen the type of stereotypical behaviour that Alberta is supposedly known for. It’s a myth that isn’t based on reality, and perpetuating it isn’t really contributing anything to the greater good in Canada, is it?
That isn’t actually the stereotype Albertans have of Quebecers.
Some people here are saying that it is only anglophone Albertan Conservatives who are being lampooned, but it looks to me more like anglophones are being mocked. I guess we may have to agree to disagree on that.
Ah, yes, the infamous “two wrongs make a right” argument.
Well Lou the government provides research and development tax incentives to companies. So, I think it’s fair that if companies receive funding for R&D projects, that people employed in the arts also receive some “seed” money as well: sounds fair, right?
I guess we need to have a balance. At first glance, I don’t want my tax dollars going to support some starving artist, but on the flip side I fully support providing funding to high-tech companies who may be on the cusp of developing next-generation type products.
It’s all about ROI I suppose. ROI on the arts is hard to quantify.
Needless to say, you’re wrong. I have an excellent sense of humor. The video is sophomoric and stupid. There are a few funny lines and it dries out quickly. The “Stephen Harper’s an American” bit robs the video of a lot of its humour, because it’s tiresome and distracts from what the video’s central joke should be.
The “you don’t have a sense of humour if you don’t find this funny” line is the dumbest one you could trot out.
Who in this thread thinks Don Cherry is the second greatest Canadian of all time? Please provide specific examples.
And I’ve never seen anyone make a video about that, or laugh at such a thing. It would be remarkably offensive, and it wouldn’t be funny.
Multicultural? Quebec compared to Alberta? We have a higher percentage of visible minorities. A far more diverse religious base including the second highest declared non-religious in Canada, 23.6% vs 5.8% in Quebec. Nor do we only accept English speaking immigrants as Quebec does with French speakers. I guess if you limit multicultural to being French/English like the term bi-lingual then I’d agree. But Canada is made up of more than its constituent founding peoples now, except to those who want it to continue that way for their own political purposes thereby ignoring reality.
Frankly, it seems far more likely that the ‘typical’ Quebecer reflects the bigotry of a Jacques Parizeau than that an Albertan is a redneck given the insular nature of Quebec.
Okay, granted. I wanted to point to featherlou that they weren’t meant to be “English Canadians” in general, and I also wanted to concede that there is a current in Quebec (and elsewhere in Canada, for that matter) that sees Alberta as this extremely conservative place whose values are totally at odds with Quebec’s or Canada’s. A reason why the Conservatives unexpectedly weren’t able to make much gains in Quebec this election, other than their position on culture which is seen as arrogant by many Quebecers, is their position on young offenders. Quebec has a tradition of [del]being soft on crime[/del] emphasizing rehabilitation of offenders, especially young ones, and it has given positive results. When Harper talked about lowering the minimal age to try young offenders as adults, this was seen as another attempt to impose conservative Albertan values on Quebec even though following those values doesn’t work as well as following ours. Attempting to have his cake and eat it too, Harper said that provinces (i.e. Quebec) could still keep a higher minimal age to try criminals as adults, 16 instead of 14 years old.
This reminds me of a few years ago, when Albertan Anne McLennan was the federal Justice minister and pretty much the same thing happened: she tried to be “tough on crime” only to be met with a concert of protests from Quebec, because her new position would make it harder for us to rehabilitate our criminals. The fact is, our way works: the statistics I’ve seen show that Quebec’s juvenile crime rate is lower than in the other provinces, and decreasing.
So you see, featherlou, not only Westerners have reason to complain that the rest of the country pushes ineffective and arrogant measures on them against their wishes! (Not that you don’t also have reason to complain, because you certainly do, but you’re not unique in this regard.)
For sure, stereotypes do have a basis in fact; they wouldn’t exist otherwise. We could argue that they serve the useful function of allowing us to take faster decisions, but I think we can raise above them and not make judgements on people based on where they are or where they’re from.
But in humour, it does often work.
Yes. Even though this conservative mindset can be equated with “Alberta values” in our minds, I’d agree that this video lampoons the conservative mindset itself and not any regional values (or linguistic group, or ethnic group).
In fact, I’d say that to see any “anti-English” sentiment in this video, you must already feel irritated by the “frenchies” in this country. So I think featherlou is a tiny bit hypocritical here, expressing surprise that francophones supposedly hate anglophones so much, while at the same time being willing to see such amounts of anti-English sentiment in the video.
Wow, that’s a lot of over-analysis for what a simply a funny anti-Conservative video!
Well, spoike says the stereotype is sometimes half-true. It is possible that he/she notices it, and you don’t, because you’re more conservative than he/she is? Some elements of the Albertan stereotype can be considered positive to someone with strong conservative values. But no problem, I know a stereotype isn’t really true anyway.
Okay, maybe not drunk, semi-retarded or Catholic – I mentioned them especially so you don’t think I hold any great romantic attachment about (presumably) being a French-Canadian, who I realize are not one of the great peoples of the world – although more about this later. But lazy and poor, sure, and more interested in leeching money from good, hard-working Canadians than actually doing anything worthwhile. I’ve heard that one more than once. It’s funny how easy it is to apply insulting motives to people who aren’t you. Remember: most people are trying to do good in the world, they don’t actively pursue Evil as a worthwhile goal, especially when you’re talking about groups of millions of people rather than a few outliers.
Oh, and racist. Yes, of course Quebecers are stereotypically racist, or at least ethnocentrist; that’s our primary quality in stereotype-land. It appears we especially hate Muslims, except when we love them, are a “Quebecistan” and hate Jews instead. Of course we also hate blacks (I remember Barbarian saying so anyway), but oddly enough we appear to favour Barack H. Obama as American president by something like a nine to one margin. I don’t know why people are saying racism may cost him his election, if even we would be willing to vote for the secretly Muslim black guy over gramps in such high proportions, how on earth can he lose, short of eating babies on live TV? But anyway.
But now back to the drunk, semi-retarded and Catholic stereotype. Sure, I guess it’s not as strong a stereotype of French-Canadians, and by extension francophone Quebecers, which I will reiterate are not the same thing, as it was before the sixties and the Quiet Revolution. I mean, I know I said it before, but I remember reading an essay in a Quebec newspaper that suggested the English Canadian view of Quebec had been shaped in part by the paintings of Cornelius Krieghoff. Yeah, I know that’s not quite accurate, most people here have probably never heard of him anyway, but he liked to paint the habitants and usually showed them as carefree and childlike. That’s the “positive” version of drunk and dumb.
But even today, French-Canadians aren’t seen as stern librarians, but as party people. On another message board I read, I’ve seen a student at my alma mater, the University of Ottawa, suggest to prospective students to take classes in French, because French classes at the U of O are much easier than English classes. I guess that makes sense, you can’t expect French-Canadians to pass classes made for regular people, but in my experience at this university, taking classes in both languages, I didn’t see any difference in the difficulty level. Sometimes the same person taught both the French and English sections the same term using the same material. But anyway. (On that same message board, the anglo students at the U of O like to complain about the university being so French-oriented that anglophones are being alienated – apparently the fact that their main page has “Français” before “English” instead of the other way around is a symptom of it – while in my experience all the anglo students have to do to make a class supposed to be taught in French changed into a class taught in English is sign a petition, but that’s another complaint that’s irrelevant here.)
So I think the stereotype I’m talking about exists. Even Uzi in this thread points out that Alberta has 23.6% declared non-religious, while Quebec has only 5.8%. Yes, something like 85% of Quebecers are declared Catholic. Maybe 10% of Quebecers know what transubstantiation is, and the rest would laugh if you told them. Quebecers are strongly Catholic? That’s a matter of definition.
As I’ve said, you think anglophones are being mocked only because the frenchies already irritate you, so who knows what they’re going to do next?
Right, sorry about that. Just don’t say you’re better than us.
True enough. It wasn’t actually a response to your post (or to Bookkeeper’s for that matter, sorry Bookkeeper), it was me getting agitated at what I perceive to be the difference between what Quebec is (or what I’d like Quebec to be, anyway) and how anglophones outside of Quebec (and sometimes even inside, although this is getting less common) see the place of Quebec in Canada. I’ll try to touch on this in my upcoming answer to Uzi.
(Bolding mine)
Okay, I can respect that. I can see why you’d be turned off by this. I wasn’t, but that’s because it’s rather understated, just a picture in the back, and I see it more as tying Stephen Harper with the values of the Republican party, rather than smearing all Americans with the idiot brush.
This said, Rivard, Brière and Rousseau are professional actors and comedians (okay, Rivard is more of a professional musician, but he does comedy as well), and many people loved the video, so there is something there. Maybe Quebec humour in French is different from Canadian humour in English? I’m sure thousands of pages have been written on the subject. I may try to look for it later as I’m sure the answer would be interesting.
Nah, nobody said so in this thread; I was bringing him out to respond to featherlou and Leaffan’s claims that there’d be hell to pay if an anglophone Canadian even thought of possibly mocking a francophone. Cherry’s schtick, as I understand it, is that our boys are the strongest and meanest in the world, not like those Euro and frenchie pussies who try to play hockey with figure skates RAAAAHHH CANADA RULES!!!, and you know what, I guess it’s sort of funny if you’re in the target audience. I’m not complaining. If you don’t like him, fair enough; I’ve never really liked Jean-Marc Parent either, but there’s no denying that both are really popular.
Well, let’s analyze detop’s video, although I’m quite certain it’s been done by a francophone Quebecer. There is, of course, a difference between mocking yourself and mocking someone else. (By the way, the video doesn’t do all that much for me since I don’t really recognize myself in it, but it has its moments and I don’t find it especially offensive either.)
[ul]
[li]“I’m not unemployed or smuggling cigarettes across the border”: as with the beginning of the I Am Canadian video, this video takes elements from the stereotype and says that this is not what the person is.[/li][li]“I smoke in church”: party animal character, Catholicism. This tells me the video was indeed done by francophones, since even though Quebecers are seen as heavy smokers, I can’t imagine an anglophone actually putting these words in the guy’s mouth. It pushes the stereotype a bit too far in such a way that it makes less sense. Not the best line in the video.[/li][li]“Eating french fries with cheese makes sense mon esti”: why do you think I said anglophones see francophone Quebecers as “poutinethnics”? If there’s one thing people know about Quebec, it’s that we eat poutine. I find this sentence clunky, though (and the guy is hard to hear). “Eating french fries with cheese makes sense, câlisse” might have been better.[/li][li]“I believe in a distinct society, as long as someone else pays for it”: do I even have to explain, câlisse? :p[/li][li]“I believe in language police, not equal rights”: this makes me want to launch into a long explanation of how I see the evolution of Quebec since the 60s and how I’d like it to be tomorrow, but let’s leave it at that and tag this sentence with the “racism/ethnocentrism” element of the stereotype.[/li][li]“And câlisse, I believe that Club Super Sexe is an appropriate place for my wife and me to celebrate our anniversaire”: no comment :D[/li][li]“Maybe I can’t turn right on a red light”: that’s an old video, isn’t it? (Unless the guy is supposed to be a Montrealer.)[/li][li]“the legal drinking age is… just a suggestion”: again[/li][li]plus the guy does look pretty dumb.[/li][/ul]
What do we have? Lazy, check; drunk (or obsessed with cigarettes and sex and other party stuff), check; poor, sort of; semi-retarded, check; racist, check; Catholic, check. So as we can see, it can be funny!
Possible (I see your link below, although I’m not sure how “visible minority” and especially “visible minority, not included elsewhere” is defined). There is other diversity than “visible minorities”, of course.
Quite a few religious groups present in Quebec. I explained earlier why this 5.8% of non-religious people in Quebec is misleading.
I’m not entirely certain what Quebec’s immigration policy is, but we certainly do accept non-French speakers, even if it’s only refugees (who are under federal responsibility). Still, it’s expected that our immigrants will learn French after they get here, same as Alberta expects its immigrants to learn English.
Yeah, so is Quebec.
“Insular nature”? What does that mean? Right now I live in Sherbrooke, which is a city of average size, and I know tens of people who are born outside Canada. Yes, of course I work and study in a university, which can possibly skew the results, but I see much diversity in the streets of this city. Same thing when I go back to see my parents and friends in Gatineau, with the added presence of Ottawa, a city with a rather different culture, on the other side of the river.
Yeah, I’m sure the same thing can be found in Alberta, especially in the cities.
By the way, what’s this thing about Jacques Parizeau? You’re probably referring to his comments in his defeat speech at the 1995 referendum. Well yeah, sure they were politically incorrect. He blamed “money and the ethnic vote” for his defeat. But was he wrong? There are many indications that the No side in the referendum violated Quebec’s referendum law by pouring millions of dollars in the campaign, especially after the federal Liberal party started getting involved. And Parizeau is certainly right that he wasn’t able to convince a sufficient number of people of a minority ethnic background (although again it depends on which ethnic group we’re talking about) to go along with his project. I don’t defend the way he made his comments, and had he been wiser he’d have tried to be conciliating instead of divisive (Bernard Landry was apparently livid with rage after hearing Parizeau’s comments), but Parizeau did not lie. He was right.
But now I promised featherlou that I’d use my reply to this post to explain my cryptic comments earlier, that is:
My point is simply that it seems to me, and Uzi’s post is another data point in this direction, that most Canadians have trouble conceiving of a modern, multicultural society existing in Canada in French. To them, the French language in Canada is for French-Canadians, and French-Canadians are one of the many ethnic groups that make up our great nation. You know, the ones who eat poutine and worship Céline Dion and… well, that’s what we know of them.
I’m reminded of a comment by matt_mcl who was with a friend from Texas on the Montreal Metro when the friend expressed surprise that the Asian girls next to them were speaking in French. Sure, the friend was from Texas, but he could as well have been from somewhere in Canada. Why do these Asian girls speak French? They’re not French-Canadian.
What’s especially confusing to these Canadians is that there are francophones, of French-Canadian ethnic background, living all across Canada. I know some of them; as I said I studied at the University of Ottawa and many of my fellow students were Franco-Ontarian. I have a good friend who’s Franco-Ontarian. Francophone Canadians (outside of Quebec) do have a few “revendications” relating to their status as an official minority, for example I was living in Gatineau when Mike Harris’s government in Ontario threatened to close Montfort Hospital and I saw the mobilization of Ottawa’s francophone community; but other than that they are quite similar to their neighbours of other ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. They are actually one of the ethnic groups that make up our great nation; they are, if I may say so, “francophone English Canadians”.
So I guess the problem is that many Canadians look at their French-speaking neighbours and wonder why francophone Quebecers can’t be more like that. Why can’t they recognize that we love them as one of the constituent ethnic groups in our great nation and coexist with us while keeping their language? The problem is that this is not so for French-speaking Quebecers. We are not a “constituent ethnic group”, we are made up of many ethnic groups and in some ways we don’t have the same cultural referents as Canadians in the rest of the country. That’s why I think the idea of a Canadian “national culture” is doomed, since it won’t be something that will be meaningful to all Canadians.
Just as an example, on another message board I saw someone bemoan that only about 7% (or something) of Quebec high school students knew about the battle of Vimy Ridge in World War I. Well yes, I know that it’s supposed to be an important battle in the development of Canada, but I never heard about it in school and right now I couldn’t even tell you if it was a victory or defeat for the Allies. (It appears it was a victory.) But the reason why it’s so important for (English) Canadians is that it is one of the first times when Canadians really fought (and won, as I see) together separately from the rest of the British Empire. So to anglophone Canadians of British ancestry (and the other ethnic groups that have integrated into them, and, I suppose, their francophone friends), it is important. But to francophone Quebecers of French-Canadian ancestry (and the other ethnic groups that have integrated into them), it’s not so important; in World War I they’re more likely to know about the conscription crisis. (Or maybe they won’t even know about that; people don’t know a whole lot about their history.)
Anyway, I don’t think all this is very interesting to featherlou or Uzi, but I found it interesting all the same.
Oh, come on. A gigantic picture of Harper placed right in view of the camera against the background of the Stars and Stripes is “understated?” In the context of cinema, that’s about as understated as a nuclear explosion.
And they’re absolutely right. There IS hell to pay if it happens. On the few occasions Don Cheery has done so he’s been ripped apart in the media, and he’s the only prominent figure left who would dare to do it. (And his comments are, as to that, hockey-specific.)
Cherry’s popularity is hardly due to his editorializing on French Canada, and that you’d think so suggests you’ve never watched him. He’s popular largely because he’s silly and entertaining and is also, to be fair, very knowledgable about hockey.
Are there rednecks around? Sure. Are they a majority of Canadians, in or out of Quebec? No. Stereotypes simply aren’t funny for that very reason. Jokes based on race, origin, religion and such are offensive because they deny the dignity and worth of the individual, and more to the point, they’re usually wrong in most individual cases.
Last night (Sunday), I was doing as I do every Sunday night lately: driving from Calgary to Lethbridge, Alberta. In spite of the dark drive across the prairies, I like the drive; it’s usually not a crowded road, and the other drivers at that hour aren’t the hot dogs you find in daylight hours. Anyway, I pass the drive listening to “In the Key of Charles,” on CBC Radio. Charles is a Quebecois actor, musician, and so on, who broadcasts this show in English (though I understand he’s much better known to Quebecois French audiences). I enjoy the show; Charles has a nice voice, a good musical knowledge, and the ability to go off on tangents that only add to the program.
Anyway, he always selects a theme for each week’s show. Last night’s was “Famous Ladies of Music,” and when he announced the theme at the beginning of the show, my English-speaking Protestant’s first thought was “Ella Fitzgerald.” Quebecois Charles, however, said, “Now we all know the most famous lady is the Virgin Mary…”
This means nothing, and I add it only in the hope that others will laugh as I did when I heard the host’s remarks about “the most famous lady of music.” Yes, I thought of this thread at the time. I do not believe that Hypnagogic Jerk’s comments about Catholic French-Canadians are incorrect, but after all the effort he has put into trying to convince us that the “French-Canadians are Catholic first” stereotype is wrong, to have it dashed so easily on CBC is … well, something, anyway. Hope you can all see it the same way.
Maybe. To me it wasn’t the main message of the video.
I’m sure he is (but it’s true I’ve never really watched him; if I want hockey I can get it in French), but I’m sure his lack of political correctness has also helped his career.
Maybe the world would be a better place if we all thought like that, but I could also argue that being able to laugh at stereotypes – while recognizing that they are stereotypes – is a way to evacuate tensions.
Heh. Gregory Charles is quite well-known and appreciated around here for his multiple talents. He’s also known for his devout (but very tolerant) Catholicism, which is unusual in modern-day Quebec. But as you can see, he’s partly of Afro-Caribbean ancestry (I believe his father is from Trinidad) and therefore not exactly a “French-Canadian”, ethnically speaking.
