A Small Life for the Small Screen - Film Studies Association of Canada

A NDRÉ LO ISELLE
A S MALL LIF E F OR TH E S MALL SC RE EN : On the
Cultural Phenom enon of the Sitcom La petite vie
and the Critical Failur e of the Feature
Ding et Dong, le film
Résumé: L’émission ayant obtenu la plus haute cote d’écoute de l’histoire de la
télévision québécoise fut un épisode de la série La petite vie (mars 1995), mettant
en vedette Serge Thériault et Claude Meunier dans les rôles de « Moman » et « Popa
» Paré. Dans les années 1980, Thériault et Meunier, sous le nom de scène « Ding et
Dong », étaient devenus célèbres pour leurs spectacles de cabaret qui incluaient des
sketchs avec les personnages de Popa et Moman. Passés à la télévision au cours
des années 1990, Popa et Moman sont devenus de véritables phénomènes de
société. Pourtant quand Meunier et Thériault tentèrent de transposer leur humour
absurde au grand écran, dans Ding et Dong, le film (1990, Alain Chartrand), la critique fut méprisante. Par une analyse culturelle et formelle des spectacles, de la
série télévisée et du long métrage, cet article tente d’expliquer le succès extraordinaire de Moman et Popan à la télé et l’échec de Ding et Dong au cinéma.
n 20 March 1995, over four million Québec spectators gathered around their
TVs to watch what would become the top-rated show in the history of
French-language television in Canada. 1 It wasn’t a Canadiens hockey game or
special news broadcast on referendum results. Rather, it was an episode of La
petite vie, a Radio-Canada sitcom revolving around the strangely uneventful life
of the Paré family, which enjoyed unprecedented success from 1993 to 1998.2
Mom and Dad Paré, aptly called “Moman” and “Popa,” were played by two men,
Serge Thériault and Claude Meunier. In the 1980s, under the name “Ding et
Dong,” Thériault and Meunier had developed a tremendously popular nightclub
comedy routine, which included skits featuring Moman and Popa. The absurdist
humour of Ding and Dong’s stage performances in the 1980s and La petite vie in
the 1990s struck a chord not only with the francophone public, but also with critics, who saw in those “post-kitsch”,3 gender-bending, maniacal characters a
revival of uniquely Québécois forms of carnivalesque vaudeville.4 In fact, a
scholarly book offering an in-depth socio-cultural analysis of La petite vie was
published by Michèle Ne vert in 2000. Yet, when Meunier and Thériault tried to
bring their characters to the big screen in Ding et Dong, le film (Québec, 1991,
Alain Chartrand), critics unanimously panned the production.5 While in hind-
O
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sight, some scholars like Bill Marshall have appreciated the film’s display of the
“carnivalesque return of the body,” 6 it still has very few supporters amongst critics. Through an examination of the structure of Thériault and Meunier’s nightclub comedy act, television series, and feature film, as well as the various (and
often paradoxical) critical discourses around the sitcom and the movie, this article seeks to explicate the phenomenal success of Moman and Popa on the small
screen, and the failure of Ding and Dong on the big screen.
The creative force behind La petite vie was Claude Meunier, who wrote all
episodes and played the central role of Popa, also known as Ti-Mé Paré. Beyond
his contribution to La petite vie, Meunier stands as the most important figure in
Québec comedy since 1980.7 While studying law at the Université de Montréal
in the early 1970s, he wrote skits for amateur shows,8 and in the late 1970s, started appearing on stage with Thériault as a member of the comic group “Paul et
Paul.” Despite what the group’s name might suggest, this was not a comic duo
but a trio, in which none of the members was actually called Paul, the third
member being Jacques Grisé.9 In parallel with his stand-up comedy work in
“Paul et Paul,” Meunier also wrote a few plays with Louis Saia, who is better
known today for his directorial work on the successful Les Boys series of films .
Meunier and Saia co-wrote two popular satirical pieces, Les Voisins (1980) and
Appelez-moi Stéphane (1980) and were among the collective who created the
most frequently revived comedy in the history of Québec theatre, Broue (1979).
Saia explains the success of his collaboration with Meunier in terms of their complementary skills: Saia, the accomplished playwright, would provide plot struc ture and well-de veloped characters, while Meunier, the stand-up comic, would
come up with hilarious one-liners.10
Ding and Dong were first introduced to audiences in embryonic form in a segment of a “Paul et Paul” show entitled, “Une attend pas l’autre.” Here, Meunier
and Thériault were playing two old-timers of the Québec burlesque scene whose
entire routine was a succession of one-liners, hence the title “Une attend pas
l’autre,” a colloquial expression roughly translated as “one joke after another.”11
The machine-gun delivery of jokes was harking back to a tradition of comic duos
from the 1950s, like “Ti-Gus et Ti-Mousse” (Réal Béland and Denise Émond)
whose routines had titles like “Un rire à la seconde” (a laugh a second) and “Un
rire n’attend pas l’autre” (One laugh after the other).12 Such one-liner routines
were replaced in the 1960s and 1970s by a more politicized type of humour. First
with “Les Cyniques” (Marc Laurendeau, Serge Grenier, Marcel Saint-Germain et
André Dubois) and later with monologuistes like Clémence Desrochers, Marc
Favreau (aka Sol) and especially Yvon Deschamps, humour in Québec between the
“Quiet Revolution” of 1960 and the first referendum of 1980 was based on content
and narrative with characters, such as Deschamps’s anonymous ouvrier blissfully
ignorant of his own alienation, relating stories of their lives as colonized French
Canadians not yet fully aware of their Québécois identity.13
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Some critics have argued that the dejection that followed the negative result
of the first referendum precipitated the end of political humour 14 and triggered
a need for less engagé entertainment, thus favouring the re-birth of the vacuous
one-liner.15 Whether or not this is the case, there is no doubt that by the early
1980s, when Thériault and Meunier decided to make “Ding et Dong” the core of
their regular Monday evening live shows, “Les Lundis des Ha! Ha!,”16 at the
downtown Montréal comedy club Club Soda, the public couldn’t get enough of
their jokes. On any given Monday, a thousand people would have to be turned
away from the 450-seat Club Soda.17 Within a few months, the duo had reached
almost mythical proportions in Québec culture. While Ding and Dong, with their
cow-skin jackets and ridiculous wigs, differ markedly from Deschamps’s sober
(albeit very funny) working-class persona, their routine was not merely a return
to traditional stand-up comedy. As a self-conscious parody of old-fashioned,
campy comic duos from the 1950s, Ding and Dong presented their routine in
quotation marks, as it were, with much of the humour emerging not only from
the one-liners themselves but also from Ding and Dong’s own absurdity and
ineptitude as comics. Audiences laughed most joyfully at Ding and Dong’s own
response to their jokes. After an especially sharp “witticism” Dong would throw
out a proud “Tiens-toi,” (Take that!) accompanied by ridiculous little dance
steps, or would congratulate Ding on an especially funny comeback with “Est
bonne, est bonne,” (Good one, good one) or “Est effreyante” (Scary funny) or
“Terrib’, terrib’” (Terrific, terrific). Quickly, these lines took on a life of their own
and started being repeated across the province. Every time someone would make
a purposefully bad joke, “Tiens-toi” would be sure to follow. It is impossible to
exaggerate the influence that Ding and Dong’s routine had on humour amongst
young adults in 1980s Québec. As Paule des Rivières argues in Le Devoir
(Montréal’s intellectual newspaper), humour in Québec was revolutionized by
Meunier and Thériault who single-handedly created a comic sub-genre that
spawned hordes of imitators.18 Like Homer Simpson’s “doh!” Ding and Dong’s
“Est effreyante” has little meaning and doesn’t seem particularly funny, but in
its particular delivery has become part of the popular idiom. Not surprisingly,
linguistic purists such as Diane Lamonde often cited Meunier’s use of language
as an example of the deterioration of French in Québec.19
Meunier’s talent, however, is not limited to writing catchy phrases that have
the ability to “contaminate” Québécois parlance. As Saia remarks, Meunier has
an extraordinary gift for creating succinct metaphors that synthesize in the acute
form of the one-liner often highly complex ideas, emotions and relationships.20
This is nowhere more evident than in a recurring skit that soon became the most
popular part of “Lundis des Ha! Ha!”, “La p’tite vie.”21 The crux of the drama in
this skit is Popa’s fixation on his “sac à vidanges,” his garbage bags, which he
fills up with maniacal precision and protects with neurotic territoriality. By having Popa telling stupid jokes about garbage bags to his garbage bags before they
10 ANDRÉ LOISELLE
must be sent to the dump,22 Meunier exposes through a remarkably concise and
evocative gag obsessive behaviours of separation anxiety, pathological attachments to objects, and anthropomorphic displacement of affection. Moman is
equally obsessive and pathological in her interest in cooking turkey23 and her
efforts to avoid conflicts with Popa at all cost, defusing his frantic anxiety and violent anger through non sequitur whenever his precious garbage bags are at risk.24
Meunier’s ability to put a hilarious spin on otherwise mundane dramatic situations brings to mind what Richard Dyer calls the “utopian sensibility” of entertainment. Like all successful entertainment, “La P’tite vie” and other “Lundis des
Ha! Ha!” skits had the capacity “to present either complex or unpleasant feelings
(e.g. involvement in personal or political events; jealousy, loss of love, defeat) in
a way that makes them seem uncomplicated, direct and vivid, not ‘qualified’ or
‘ambiguous’ as day-to-day life makes them, and without intimations of selfdeception and pretence.” 25 In the post-1980-referendum context, Meunier’s
entertaining skits could easily be interpreted as an outlet for the spectators’
repressed feelings of loss, defeat and inadequacy, making them laugh at their
own fear of losing their material possessions and desperate need to avoid confrontation.
At another level, Meunier’s comedic manipulations of seemingly ordinary
comportments to reveal their underlying pathology, also recall the absurdist
work of Eugène Ionesco. As J.L. Styan points out in his book on dark comedy,
the power of Ionesco’s theatre lies in his propensity for showing serious, familiar situations and disrupting them through excessive eccentricity.26 The “obsessive strategies”27 that Ionesco employs to disrupt a familiar situation and turn it
into “théâtre de la dérision” 28 are surprisingly similar to those used by Meunier.
Ionesco, who sees the comic as “the intuition of the absurd,” 29 has described
what he wanted to achieve on stage in these terms:
to go all out for caricature and the grotesque, way beyond the pale irony of
drawing-room comedies. No drawing-room comedies, but farce, the extreme
exaggeration of parody. Humor, yes, but using methods of burlesque. Comic
effects that are firm, broad and outrageous. No dramatic comedies either. But
back to the unendurable. Everything raised to paroxysm, where the source of
tragedy lies. A theatre of violence: violently comic, violently dramatic.30
Like Ionesco’s plays, “La p’tite vie” uses burlesque devices to caricature actions,
situations and comportments to create broad, often verbally and physically violent distortions of everyday moments whose familiarity remains visible behind
the veil of outrageous parody. Regardless of the social context of the 1980s, it
could be argued, Meunier’s absurdist comedy, like Ionesco’s, triggers laughter
through the radical incongruity between the frantically exaggerated behaviour of
the characters and the all-too-ordinary circumstances that beset them.
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In its television incarnation, “La p’tite vie” continued to explore through
this absurdist lens the clash between circumstances and behaviours. Meunier
had already tried his hand at writing for TV, having contributed to the children’s
series La Fricassée in the 1970s and to the annual end- of-year satirical revue Bye
Bye 19... in the early 1980s.31 When he moved on to writing his own TV show in
the early 1990s, he found a medium that was easily adaptable to the structure of
his one-liner skits. The necessarily discontinuous organization of the sitcom formula (because of mandatory commercial breaks), the need for only a handful of
principals combined with the possibility for endless visitations from a host of
minor personages as weeks go by, the sense of “live event,” both in terms of a
live studio audience and the currency of broadcast (all spectators watch the same
episode at the same time throughout Québec, although the shows were not aired
live), all these television-specific features meshed perfectly well with the preexisting composition of the “Lundis des Ha! Ha!” nightclub shows. Characters
already present in the “p’tite vie” skits—Popa, Moman, the hysterical daughter,
the cheating son-in-law—were straightforwardly transferred onto the small
screen, and new roles were added.
Half a dozen characters form Popa and Moman’s immediate surroundings
in La petite vie: Rod (Bernard Fortin), the self-centred older son; Thérèse (Diane
Lavallée), the hypersensitive older daughter; her lying, cheating husband, Réjean
(Marc Messier); the second daughter, Caro (Guylaine Tremblay), a dreamer and
defender of lost causes; the greedy younger son Rénald (Marc Labrèche); and his
superficial wife, Lison (José Deschesnes). A few other characters, like Popa’s
best friend Pogo (Rémy Girard), the homosexual Jean-Lou (Michel Côté), and the
stinky Frenchman Momo (Benoît Brière), also made regular appearances.32 Even
from these cursory descriptions, it is clear that Meunier’s menagerie of buffoons
are caricatures in the commedia dell’arte tradition, which had a great influence
on early French Canadian burlesque.33 Each individual is dominated by a
“humour,”34 be it greed, narcissism, lust or anger, and situations build up around
these fixed attitudes. Each episode generally has two or three situations, which
connect only in the most indirect way, the purpose being less to construct a multifaceted narrative than to create a space for characters to perform “numbers”
according to their humour.
The structure of the sitcom, as mentioned before, proved ideal for Meunier’s
brand of comedy. Episodes being divided into three segments separated by commercial breaks—a two to five minute intro, a fifteen minute middle part, and a
two to five minute conclusion—scenarios could easily be divided into short,
almost self-contained skits, where plotlines are clearly subordinated to the frantic
delivery of one-liners. The longer, middle part of each episode could itself be subdivided into smaller units, where characters engage in funny business that may
or may not have any obvious relevance to the general story. However, Meunier
also often introduces seemingly irrelevant material that eventually finds its way
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Moman (Serge Thériault) and Popa (Claude Meunier) in their vertical bed in La petite vie.
Courtesy of la Cinémathèque québécoise.
back into the narrative or even subsequent episodes for increased comedic effect.
“Le marriage du gai” (1995), whose narrative covers two episodes, is an
excellent example of this structure. Here, Caro wants to help her gay friend JeanLou organize his wedding ceremony. Since gay couples cannot get married in the
Church, Caro decides to hold the ceremony in Popa’s house without the latter’s
permission. The episode begins in Moman and Popa’s bedroom, with the two
protagonists standing up in their vertical bed. The vertical bed is a stage gimmick that was used during the “Lundis des Ha! Ha!” shows to make the couple’s
bedtime conversations visible to the live audience. The device was transferred to
television, even if an overhead shot could have been used instead, as a means
to refer back to the live performances and to add an element of absurdity to the
sitcom (precisely because television could have dispensed with the stage device,
its presence seems even more ridiculous than in the live performances). Popa
and Moman, have just had sex for the first time in forty-nine weeks. Popa is
dressed as Darth Vader or more precisely, “Ti-Mé Vader,” and Moman is wearing
a garbage bag. These kinky outfits are part of an elaborate sex game that lasted
all of thirty-seven seconds—a new speed record for Popa. While this brief scene
triggers much laughter, its only narrative purpose is to have Popa get impatient
with Moman because she made him miss thirty-seven seconds of his favourite
TV program, “Monsieur Bricole,” a do-it-yourself handyman show. The crux of
the narrative is that Monsieur Bricole (Gilles Renaud), a manly man whom Popa
greatly admires, is in fact Jean Lou’s gay lover. Monsieur Bricole’s arrival at TiMé’s house for the wedding ceremony creates the main comic situation of the
SMALL SCREEN 13
Moman and Popa with a photo of their children: (from top left, clockwise) Rod (Bernard Fortin),
Thérèse (Diane Levallee), Rénald (Marc Labrèche), and Caro (Guylaine Tremblay) in La petite vie.
Courtesy of la Cinémathèque québécoise.
two episodes. Torn between his admiration for Monsieur Bricole and his profound discomfort with homosexuality, Popa maniacally tries to repress his homophobia as the ceremony unfolds in his living room.
While the plot might be amusing in and of itself, comedy emerges primarily from the “numbers,” which have little connection to the story. For instance,
early in the first episode, Thérèse and Réjean, who live upstairs from Popa and
Moman,35 barge into the old couple’s house, the woman angry with her husband
who now wears an improbable “lie-detector” watch that exposes his cheating
and philandering. Every time Réjean lies about his most recent sexcapade, the
watch buzzes. It even buzzes when he apologizes, or when he is merely thinking about lying. The only time the watch doesn’t buzz is when, in a moment of
self-deprecation, Réjean refers to himself as a disgusting bastard. Thérèse also
wears a “lie-detector” watch, which buzzes profusely when she swears she
won’t be made a fool again and will leave Réjean. The scene lasts only a couple
of minutes and has no immediate relation to the gay marriage story, but contributes greatly to the frenzied hilarity of the episode through a rapid succession
of one-line lies and noisy buzzes. The device reappears later in the narrative,
when Réjean drops by again and convinces Ti-Mé to exchange watches, so that
Popa now wears the lie detector while the son-in-law puts on a regular watch.
Freed from the lie detector, Réjean can tell the most outrageous and hilarious lies
to Thérèse who, unaware of the switch, comes to believe that her husband only
acted out of the goodness of his heart when he rescued a girl who had a flat tire
14 ANDRÉ LOISELLE
on her rowboat. Incidentally, the watch gets the biggest laugh during this dialogue between Popa, Réjean and Thérèse when it fails to ring at one of Ti-Mé’s
obvious lies. Whether this was in the script or a mistake on the part of the
sound-effect operator remains unclear. But in any event, the seemingly improvised exchange following the watch’s failure succeeds in showcasing the “liveness” of La petite vie and reasserts the correlation between the TV sitcom and
the Club Soda performances.
Some of the subsequent lie-detector numbers are somewhat more directly
related to the central theme of homophobia, but still function as self-contained
skits. Interviewed by a lesbian reporter, Ti-Mé manages to avoid being exposed
as a homophobe by playing around with the question “do you like gay people,”
turning it on its head, throwing it back at the reporter and using the word gay in
its meaning as “happy.” Later, when Ti-Mé finally gets a chance to work with his
idol, Monsieur Bricole, the watch buzzes numerous times to reveal his homophobic sentiments. The most notable moment in this exchange is when Popa is
asked by Bricole whether he would be interested in experimenting with the gay
lifestyle. Popa “lies” by saying “yes” to humour his gay mentor, but the watch
doesn’t ring, thus revealing that gay experiences would indeed appeal to him.
This revelation of Ti-Mé’s own homosexual desires implicitly refers back to the
opening scene when the two male actors, Meunier and Thériault, were in bed
indulging in post-coital banter. Elsewhere in the episode, when Jean Lou
describes some of the fantasies of some of his gay friends, he identifies having
sex in a garbage bag as the sickest of the sick perversions, thus associating Popa
and Moman with the most radical of sexual practices. This comes only seconds
after Moman complains that she has masculine hips. Here Meunier makes a
rather astute commentary on the true nature of homophobia, that is, the “fear”
of that which is “similar.” Etymologically, homophobia is not the fear of homosexuals per se, but rather the phobia of homo, i.e. “one and the same.” Ti-Mé’s
homophobia is thus perceptively revealed to be fear of his own sexuality.
The sort of gender-bending humour used in this episode, which at once
exposes homophobia and capitalizes on it, since Michel Côté plays Jean Lou as
a stereotypically flamboyant queen, is certainly not exclusively Québécois. Nor
are Réjean’s womanizing and constant lying, Thérèse’s naïve hysteria or Caro’s
devotion to all that is eccentric uniquely French Canadian. As such, there is
something perhaps universal or perhaps commonplace about Meunier’s comedic
writing.36 But certain aspects of Meunier’s work are undeniably culturally distinct. “Le marriage du gai” is filled with references to one of the best-known gay
plays in Québec theatre, Michel Tremblay’s Hosanna (1973). For his wedding,
Jean Lou dresses up as Cleopatra, like Hosanna; the centre piece of the décor for
the ceremony in Ti-Mé’s living room is a kitschy statue of David, which recalls
the grotesque David at the centre of the small apartment that Hosanna shares
with her boyfriend Cuirette; most importantly, Gilles Renaud, who plays the
SMALL SCREEN 15
macho Monsieur Bricole, was the first actor to play the equally macho Cuirette
in the original production of Hosanna.37 Such references to the cultural icon that
Michel Tremblay has become in Québec are sure not to go unnoticed.
The same is true of a brief appearance by Janette Bertrand at the end of the
episode “Info Caro” (1994). An actress, author and television personality,
Bertrand was the famous host of the talk show Parler pour parler from 1984 to
1994, which is lampooned in this episode of La petite vie. Here Caro is hosting
a show which ridicules the kind of heart-to-heart conversations that Bertrand
featured in Parler pour parler, and the title of Caro’s sho w, Bonsoir avec un gros
B, makes fun of another Bertrand show, Avec un grand A. Having invited her
entire family to appear as “strangers” talking about their personal problems
around a dinner table (the formula of Parler pour parler), Caro extracts amusing
confessions from her guests, including Thérèse’s revelation that she had a brief
sexual encounter with a mysterious man in a Toyota Tercel. References to the
Tercel will remain a running joke throughout the rest of the series, as Thérèse
will bring up her affair on occasions to counter Réjean’s constant womanizing.
The punch line of the episode, however, is when Janette Bertrand actually
appears at the Paré house to prepare a special instalment of Parler pour parler on
garbage bags. That Bertrand would agree to make a cameo in a sitcom that so
blatantly mocks her attests to the status of La petite vie as a weekly national
event in which even “big stars” want to participate. The Simpsons offers again
an appropriate parallel, where celebrities agree to make fun of themselves for the
sake of partaking in the legendary series.
“Info Caro” is also a good example of another culturally distinct aspect of
Meunier’s writing: his use of language. Manipulations of language, or “linguistic
terrorism” as David Bradby calls it in his analysis of Ionesco’s dramaturgy,38 is
common in absurdist theatre. But Meunier does not play with language only to
expose its failure to achieve genuine communication, as Ionesco does.39 He uses
it consciously to make a point about the role of language in Québec. As the new
host of a talk show, Caro makes an effort to adopt a French-from-France mode of
speaking. But her efforts only display her profound ineptitude. One of the many
signs of linguistic competence in French-from-France is the appropriate use of
liaisons. But while proper liaisons are unmistakable signs of education, improper
liaisons are the clearest indication of ignorance failing to masquerade as high
class. Caro’s opening lines to her new audience on her first evening on TV are:
“Bonsoir. Bienvenue à Bonsoir avec un gros B.... Ce soir notre émission porte sur
le couple. Ce célèbre duo presqu’aussi vieux qu’Adam t’et t’Eve. Mais malheureusement pas toujours aussi drôle que Ti-Gus et Ti-Mousse.” (Good evening.
Welcome to “Good evening with a big G.” Tonight we are looking at the Couple.
The famous duo, almost as old as Adam t’and t’Eve. But unfortunately not always
as funny as Ti-Gus and Ti-Mousse.) Shortly after, she begins her questions,
addressing her father as though she didn’t know him: “Alors, on va-t-y aller avec
16 ANDRÉ LOISELLE
vous monsieur Paré. Vous-là. Comment ça marche votre couple?” (So we’ll begin
t’with you, Mr. Paré. How is your couple?) And she announces a commercial
thus: “La-dessus, nous allons tous-t-aller-t’à-t’une pause publicitaire.” (On this,
we t’will t’all go to t’a commercial.) Through Caro’s constant insertion of inappropriate “t” liaisons in her speech, Meunier does not merely ridicule improper
French, he also criticizes the bourgeois ambitions that this colonized linguistic
attitude betrays. While shunning the explicit political humour of earlier comics
like Deschamps, Meunier still comments on the colonized condition of French
Canadians, satirizing those who blindly seek to imitate the colonizer.
Of course, if French-from-France is one half of the French Canadian’s schizophrenic colonized mind, the other half is Anglophone power. The episode of La
petite vie that holds the record for being the single most watched television show
in Québec history, “Réjean reçoit,”40 exemplifies Meunier’s playful reflections on
the French Canadian’s ambivalent relationship to English. As the title indicates,
the episode r evolves around Réjean, the ever-unemployed son-in-law who, in a
hilarious symptom of self-alienation, always refers to himself and Popa in the
third-person when they first encounter one another (“he will never guess what
just happened to him!” is a common opening line for Réjean, when he barges in
on his father-in-law). Here, Réjean hopes to make a quick buck by sucking up to
his rich friend Gérard-Marie (Martin Drainville). To impress Gérard-Marie and his
upper-class, Anglophone wife “Darling” (Pierrette Robitaille), Réjean enlists
Moman and Popa to play the role of his maid and butler. Much of the humour
comes from Thérèse desperately trying to speak English with “Darling.” The
punch line at the end of the episode is that Gérard-Marie is not rich and his wife
is not an Anglophone; they are just broke F rench Canadians who were trying to
suck up to Réjean who, they thought, was well off. While the situation itself is
hardly original, the playful clash of languages and the characters’ absurdist subservience to Anglophone power, in the absence of any actual English-speaking
character, exposes deeply felt angst in Québec. Just the idea of English supremacy is enough to turn Meunier’s stereotypical Canadiens-français into servile lackeys. Meunier himself has observed that the absurd fixations of his characters are
the result of displaced anxieties where fundamental fears are veiled behind
ridiculous trepidation.41
Michèle Nevert, in her book-length analysis of the series, argues that
Meunier’s use of language is the secret of La petite vie’s cultural significance. She
singles out a line from Moman as the expression of La petite vie’s central point:
“La langue c’est les entrailles d’un people.” (Language is the bowels of a people.)42 For Nevert, the characters’ humours and the situations that their inflexibility provokes remain secondary to the sometimes very complex play-on-words
that they speak and which give them their identity. Filled with extremely
Québec-specific cultural references, crammed with Anglicisms, peppered with
evidence of Québec’s inferiority complex towards France, Meunier’s language is
SMALL SCREEN 17
as deeply rooted in the French Canadian ethos as it is impossible to translate.43
Along with pseud- French-from-France and pseudo-English, Meunier also packs
his texts with wordplay that derives its humorous effects from the rich tapestry
of cultural connotations attached to certain words and sounds. Nevert gives an
excellent example of Meunier’s intricate use of language as a playful tool. In the
episode “Le Cadran” (1994), the Paré family find themselves in court. The judge
is addressed in a multitude of nicknames that display Meunier’s ability to shift
meanings through an elaborate process of association. From “Votre Honneur”
(Your honour), the nickname “Votre Odeur” (Your odour) seems rather facile.
But the nickname is not only justified by the similarity in sound between “honneur” and “odeur.” It also emerges from the fact that there is indeed a bad odour
in the court caused by the presence of Thérèse’s gold fish. This is all Meunier
needs to start associating the judge with fish, calling her “Votre morue” (cod),
“Votre petit poisson des chenaux” (tomcod), “Votre Ouananiche” (a type of
salmon). Having effectively introduced an absurdist logic to nicknaming,
Meunier moves further away from diegetic associations into a self-reflexive,
inter-textual mode, capitalizing on the coincidence that the actress playing the
judge, Jacqueline Barrette, had played the 1930s folk singer “La Bolduc” in a
recent film 44 to switch from fish names to terms that evoke the singer: “Votre
Folklore,” “Votre damdililam”, “Votre turlute.”45 All of these are funny not only
because of the ridiculous associations, but also because linking a judge to the
stench of fish and the sexual connotations of such words as “turlute,” which is
euphemism for oral sex, 46 clearly leans towards a kind of carnivalesque subver sion predicated on the polysemic potential of language.
Nevert is not the only critic to see Meunier’s use of language as the core of
La petite vie’s phenomenal success on television. Hélène de Billy summarizes the
position of most serious critics: “La magie et l’humour singulier de Claude
Meunier—qui signe une comédie du verbe—se trouvent justement dans le texte”
(Meunier’s magic and peculiar humour, which is verbal comedy, is precisely
located in the text.) 47 Meunier used similar linguistic devices in Ding et Dong, le
film. One of the most memorable scenes in the film shows Ding and Dong trying to break into the movie business by attempting to convince a Québec film
producer that they are Hollywood moguls. As in “Réjean reçoit,” the use of pseudo English conveys the state of alienation of the two inept comics, whose absurd
attempts at making it big are chronicled in the feature film. Obvious mistakes
such as “Sorry, do you French,” “Shut up, you son of a switch,” and “I am the
here,” pronounced with the thickest of accents, expose Ding and Dong’s exclusion from the discourse of power. Unable to speak the dominant language of the
film industry, they can only land a job as stuntmen for a car chase scene in a
second-rate action movie. Of course, their ridiculous incompetence is not merely linguistic, as they also fail miserably at the strictly physical task of driving a
car through the streets of Montréal. The scene with the producer followed by the
18 ANDRÉ LOISELLE
catastrophic outcome of the duo’s brief career as stuntmen, encapsulates the two
types of humour of Ding et Dong, le film: broad slapstick performances and play
on words, both staples of Ding and Dong’s nightclub act and later La petite vie.
The film functions as a genealogy, of sorts, of the “Lundis des Ha! Ha!” We
see Ding and Dong’s humble beginnings: provoking a brawl in a seedy bar in the
middle of nowhere because their jokes fail to amuse the crowd of bikers; stumbling over foreign names when they audition as anchormen; misguided improvisations when they appear as slaves in an Egyptian stage epic (in which the
Pharaoh is played by Robert Lepage); their difficulties with the repo-man; we
even see how their white jackets became their trademark cow-skin outfits with
a few well-placed mud stains. Their fortune turns when a dying millionaire (Jean
Lapointe) leaves them all of his money after their jokes provoke in him a few last
chuckles. With their new wealth, they open a theatre, the Théâtre de la Nouvelle
Tragédie, a temple of high culture, where there will be no room for jokes such
as, “Why do Newfies go to the toilette with sand paper?” They hire a French
director (Yves Jacques) to stage Corneille’s Le Cid, sycophants try to take advantage of them, and greedy agents attempt to turn the two friends against one
another. The première of the French tragedy is a theatrical disaster because of
growing rivalry between Ding and Dong and, of course, their general incompetence as actors. But while a few serious spectators (perhaps critics) walk out, the
audience in general is delighted by the unintentional humour of their performance. This positive response encourages the duo to return to stand-up comedy.
Their next show, coincidently, is a “La p’tite vie” skit, with Popa and Moman
dressed as Egyptians standing up in their vertical bed.
The mirth of the diegetic audience amused by the closing “P’tite vie” sketch
mirrored the laughter in the movie theatres, where Ding et Dong, le film enjoyed
tremendous popular success. It was such a commercial hit, in fact, that it became
the top grossing Canadian film of 1990-199148 without even having to make any
money outside Québec. But while the public enjoyed the film as much as the earlier nightclub acts and subsequent television series, the critics detested the big
screen version. While Meunier’s writing for the “Lundis des Ha! Ha!” earned him
the rare privilege of having an entire symposium devoted to his dramaturgy in
1990, at McGill University no less,49 and his work on La petite vie made him the
main topic of a scholarly book,50 his efforts on film were almost universally disparaged, Ding et Dong finding its way at the top of more than one most-disappointing-movies-of-the-year lists.51 Maurice Elia, in his review for the film
magazine Séquences, identifies several problems ranging from bad acting and flat
lighting to incompetent directing and editing.52 But the main issue seems to be
with the narrative construction of the feature, or lack thereof. The screenplay,
which according to Elia should be taught to film students as an example of what
not do to, doesn’t even have a plotline: “Ding et Dong passent d’une scène à
l’autre sans même l’enchaînement propre aux films à sketches.” (Ding and Dong
SMALL SCREEN 19
go from scene to scene without even the loose links common to sketch movies.)53
What works on stage does not necessarily work on film, argues Elia. In this case,
the skit structure of “Lundis des Ha! Ha!” and the fragmented succession of
humorous situations of La petite vie, which suit stand-up comedy and television,
fail miserably within the ninety-minute composition of a narrative film.
While structural differences between nightclub acts and television, on the
one hand, and feature film narratives on the other, might explain in part the critical failure of Ding et Dong, le film, one notices among critics a curious aversion
towards the movie even prior to its release. Even before shooting began, Francine
Grimaldi of La Presse complained about the title of the project.54 Serge Dussault
expressed a certain irritation with the secrecy surrounding the production,55 and
a couple of weeks before the première, on 7 December 1990, Huguette Roberge
forewarned critics not to be too hard on Meunier and Thériault, who are thinskinned—“Avis aux critiques en passant, nos larrons ont la couenne mince!”—
thus condescendingly prejudging the film.56 In his negative critique of the movie,
the day after the first screening, Dussault betrays what might have caused such
negative anticipation:
Ding! ding! Qu’est-ce qu’ils n’ont pas dit, qu’est-ce qu’on n’a pas écrit
depuis un mois sur Ding et Dong, le film! Ils se passaient l’encensoir, faisaient sonner les cloches... Les cloches de Noël (Ding et Dong) feront peutêtre le tour du monde, par la magie du rire et du cinéma, Et ding! Et je te
compare à Chaplin, ding! ding! Et aux Marx Brothers! Ding! Dong! ... Ding,
Dong, leur producteur, leur distributeur, [ont] orchestré la plus formidable
campagne de publicité que nous ayons vue au cinéma québécois. Une publicité intelligente, habile. Qui culpabilise à l’avance ceux qui s’aviseraient de
pas aimer Ding et Dong, le film... Alors, alors, Ding et Dong, le film? ... Rire
aux larmes! Non. Pleuré, plutôt, devant l’indigence du scénario. Devant la
banalité des farces. (Ding! Ding! They have said so much, written so much
about Ding et Dong over the last month. Buttering up people, ringing
bells... The Christmas bells (Ding and Dong) will conquer the world with
their humour. They can be compared to Chaplin, Ding! Ding! And to the
Marx Brothers! Ding! Dong! ... Ding, Dong, their producer, their distributor
orchestrated the most amazing marketing campaign in the history of
Québec cinema. A skillful and intelligent campaign that is sure to make any
detractor feel guilty... So what about Ding et Dong, le film? ... Did it make
me laugh? No. Rather it made me cry, because of its screenplay devoid of
ideas and its banal jokes.) 57
The annoyance with the hype around Ding and Dong’s appearance on the big
screen, which expressed itself implicitly before the premiere, comes to the forefront once Ding et Dong proved to be less than what had been promised. In
20 ANDRÉ LOISELLE
effect, it was almost impossible for Dussault to appreciate Ding et Dong precisely because the marketing campaign tried to force him to love it.
But beyond the structural flaws of a screenplay overly reliant on stage and
television gimmicks that do not translate well into feature-length narratives, and
the exasperating hype around the movie, what seems to be at the core of Ding et
Dong’s failure is that cinema was interpreted as marking the limit of what the king
of one-liners, Meunier, could do. And as such, the Le Cid sequence of Ding et
Dong proved prophetic, showing how spectators would love the humour but how
critics would resent the comedians’ attempt to climb the ladder of high culture.
One does not need to analyze Pierre Bourdieu’s work58 in detail to understand
that for certain critics the cultural status of film, still below legitimate theatre but
certainly above television and comedy clubs, erects a boundary that Dong’s
absurdist humour cannot trespass. According to Mario Roy, “Dans Le Film, et
même si celui-ci n’était pas aussi mauvais qu’on l’a dit, Claude Meunier se cognait le nez sur les limites de sa brillante invention, sur les limites de l’Absurdede-Chez-Nous.” (In Le film, which was not as bad as people said, Meunier hit the
limits of his brilliant creativity, he hit the limits of our homemade absurdism.)59
It is no coincidence that Roy refers to Meunier’s feature as “Le Film.” It stresses
how absurd jokes in nightclubs might entertain drinking patrons, but within the
realm of the cinema, one needs more. Of course, the public couldn’t care less
about this distinction, but critics do. Régis Tremblay, commenting on the video
release of Ding and Dong nightclub skits in 1992, matter-of-factly observes that
after the critical failure of the feature, Meunier and Thériault retreated to the good
old days of their stand-up success, “un repli stratégique vers la belle époque des
Lundis des Ha ! Ha !”60 as though this is where they really belong rather than on
the big screen. Hélène de Billy also perceives Meunier’s post-Ding et Dong career
as marking a return to what he does best:
La crise des 40 ans a pris toute sa signification pour lui lorsqu’il s’est
retrouvé un beau matin, les bras ballants, “pas mal tanné”. Ding et Dong, le
film venait de sortir. Et malgré son énorme succès, il n’était pas complètement satisfait des résultats (la critique non plus, d’ailleurs, qui s’était montrée féroce). Une petite voix également l’avertissait d’un danger, celui de se
répéter. Un moment creux. [...Il va] s’installer à la campagne dans la propriété qu’il a acquise il y a quelques années à Saint-Adolphe-d’Howard dans
les Laurentides. Il s’y fait construire une dépendance (“On dirait une
cabane à sucre.”), y met un bureau, une chaise, un ordinateur et entreprend
ce dont il rêve depuis longtemps: bâtir un monde par l’écriture. C’est ainsi
qu’allait véritablement naître La petite vie. (His mid-life crisis struck him
when he found himself “pretty tired” after Ding et Dong’s release. In spite
of the film’s commercial success, he was not fully satisfied with it [and neither were the critics, who were scathing]. A little voice also warned him
SMALL SCREEN 21
Claude Meunier as Dong and Serge Tériault as Ding in, Ding et Dong, le film. Courtesy of la
Cinémathèque québécoise.
Ding and Dong in costume for a performance of Le Cid in Ding et Dong, le film. Courtesy of la
Cinémathèque québécoise.
against the dangers of repeating himself. It was a low time. He moved to his
country house, had a small room built [“it looks like a sugar shack”],
where he set up his office to create a space for writing. This is where La
petite vie really came to life.) 61
la caricature qu’offraient pôpa, môman et la famille Paré aux téléspectateurs
était un univers particulier que l’on connaissait depuis Les lundis des Haha! et, qu’en nostalgique, on acceptait, trouvant cela d’un absurde marrant.
Du moins au début. Nous resservir un peu le même plat en faisant passer
pôpa pour un détective, en changeant les décors par des lieux réels et en
troquant les personnages qui nous étaient familiers par des équivalents est
quelque peu ridicule.... Meunier n’a qu’un seul et même registre, que ce
soit dans La petite vie, dans les publicités de Pepsi ou dans Détect. Inc. (As
caricatures, Popa, Moman and the Paré family offered spectators a unique
world that was known from “Les Lundis des Ha! Ha!” and which we found
amusing, out of nostalgia, at least at the beginning. But turning Popa into a
detective, putting him into realistic sets and trying to find equivalents for
old familiar characters is ridiculous.... Meunier can do only one thing,
either in La petite vie, his Pepsi commercials or Détect Inc.)64
Not surprisingly, critics praised this return to Meunier’s origins after the fuss
over Ding et Dong (Jocelyn Lapage refers to the film as a “nuisance” in Meunier
and Thériault’s career). For instance, in a 1993 article, Daniel Lemay is quick to
link La petite vie to the “grande époque de Ding et Dong aux Lundis des Ha! Ha!”
but passes over in silence the unpleasantness of Le Film.62
The criticism that Meunier should stick to absurdist low-culture rather than
try his hand at serious projects resurfaced in 2005, when his primetime series
Detect Inc., produced for over one million dollars per episode, the most expensive show on Québec TV,63 and broadcast in letterbox like respectable American
series such as Law and Order and ER, attracted biting criticism and failed to
maintain high ratings. While a comedy, the series following the adventures of
detectives Bob Marlow (Meunier) and James Bonin (Gilbert Sicotte) clearly had
higher ambitions than the purposefully cheap looking Petite vie, but, again, critics refused to let Meunier cross this cultural boundary. In a scathing review,
Sabin Desmeules explicitly states that while La petite vie succeeded because it
followed the format of Ding and Dong’s nightclub act, the detective formula is
simply beyond Meunier’s abilities:
22 ANDRÉ LOISELLE
Other critics similarly condemned the series for its pretentious aspirations and
its failure to reconcile a serious subject matter—crime and corruption—with its
juvenile humour.65 Quickly, the series was re-titled “Détest Inc.” and “Reject
Inc.” by disappointed viewers.66 At the end of the first season, Meunier decided
to give up on Detect Inc.67 As though Meunier was born for a “small life,” any
attempt to make it big could only lead to critical failure.
It is perhaps not a coincidence that Meunier named his most celebrated
SMALL SCREEN 23
character Ti-Mé Paré, “petite mais paré” (small but ready, small but dressed up).
There is a long tradition of small but outgoing and flamboyant characters in
Québec culture, starting with Gratien Gélinas’s famous cocky orphaned soldier,
Tit-Coq (play 1948, film 1952). Hot-tempered, loud and overconfident, both TitCoq and Ti-Mé are characters who won’t let anything drag them lower than they
already are, but are also incapable of becoming anything more than little men.
Just like his character, who fails to improve his circumstances, Gélinas failed to
hit the big time with Tit-Coq on Broadway in 1951, where the play was swiftly
dismissed.68 And like Ti-Mé, who must remain Popa and can’t become a detective, Meunier should be satisfied with writing about the small life and not take
chances with million-dollar-per-episode, letter-boxed primetime epics. It is as little men that Gélinas and Meunier have appealed to the people of Québec; similarly Ti-Poil, René Lévesque, the diminutive father of the sovereigntist
movement, remains the most revered public figure in modern Québec history in
great part because he was a small man. As a small nation, Québec seems to like
small heroes and is suspicious of big success. Separatist actor Luc Picard once
wrote: “Ce n’est pas pour rien qu’on se sent petits chez nous, qu’on se méfie du
succès comme d’un crime. Ce n’est pas pour rien...qu’on place des Ti devant le
nom de nos héros (Ti-Guy, Ti-Poil, Ti-Zoune). Ce n’est pas pour rien qu’on parle
avec des moitiés de phrase, qu’on est gênés d’exister.” (There is a reason why
we feel small in our own land, why we are suspicious of success like it were a
crime. There is a reason why we put “small” in front of our heroes’ names [TiGuy (Lafleur), Ti-Poil (Lévesque), Ti-Zoune (Olivier Guimond, a 1930s comedian). There is a reason why we speak in half sentences, why we are afraid to
exist.)69 For Picard, Québec’s “Ti” complex would disappear with national independence. This remains to be seen. But it is doubtful that Meunier’s success
could ever get any bigger than Ti-Mé’s small life on the small screen.
10.
Louis Saia, “Écrire avec Claude Meunier,” in Claude Meunier, dramaturge, 15.
11.
Gabrielle Pascal, “Serge Thériault: ma collaboration with Claude Meunier,” in Claude
Meunier, dramaturge, 21.
12.
These are the titles of LP recordings of Ti-Gus and Ti-Mousse shows.
13.
The term “Québécois” has generally been used in contrast to “French Canadian” since
the 1960s to signify the emergence of a “modern” subject, politically aware of, and reacting against, the colonization and alienation of pre-Quiet Revolution French Canadians.
While the “Québécois” is self-aware, the “French Canadian” is blissfully ignorant. In the
rest of this paper, I will use “French Canadian” to evoke the lack of such awareness in
Meunier’s characters. For a discussion of the distinction between “French Canadian” and
“Québécois,” see, for instance, my commentaries on this issue in Le Cinéma de Michel
Brault, à l’image d’une nation (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2005), 111-115.
14.
It is only relatively recently that political humour is said to have returned to the Québec
scene. See for instance, Jean Beaunoyer, “Enfin de l’humour cinglant!” La Presse, 12 Jan.
2002, D6.
15.
Solange Lévesque, “Humour et rire: dis-moi de qui tu ris,” Les cahiers de theatre Jeu 55
(June 1990): 67.
16.
“Lundis des Ha! Ha!” is a pun referring to A. A. meetings.
17.
Pascal, 22.
18.
des Rivières, A1.
19.
Diane Lamonde, “Pour en finir avec le français sacrifié,” Le Devoir, 12 June, 1997, A7.
20.
Saia, 17.
21.
While the television series is spelt “La petite vie,” the skit elides the “e” in “petite.” See
Nevert, 37.
22.
Claude Meunier and Pierre Filion, Le monde de la petite vie (Montréal: Leméac, 1998), 13.
23.
Michèle Nevert, La petite vie ou les entrailles d’un people (Montréal: XYZ éditeur, 2000), 37.
24.
Pascal, 26.
25.
Richard Dyer, Only Entertainment (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 23.
26.
J.L. Styan, The Dark Comedy: The Development of Modern Comic Tragedy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1962), 232-33.
27.
Ram Sewak Singh, Absurd Drama: 1945-1965 (Delhi: Hariyana Prakashan, 1973), 134.
28.
Ionesco quoted in Marvin Carleson, Theories of the Theatre: A Historical and Critical
Survey, from the Greeks to the Present, Expanded Edition (Ithaca and London: Cornell
University Press, 1993), 412.
NOTES
1.
Louise Cousineau, “La Petite Vie: congé d’un an,” La Presse, 8 April, 1995, A1.
29.
Ionesco quoted in Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd (Garden City, NY: Anchor
Books, 1969), 158.
2.
30.
Ionesco quoted in James Knowlson, “Tradition and Innovation in Ionesco’s La Cantatrice
chauve,” in Around the Absurd: Essays on Modern and Postmodern Drama (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1990), 63-64.
There were two “reunion” specials after the series ended in 1998. An end-of-millennium
special presented on 31 December, 1999, “Le bogue de l’an 2000,” and a Christmas special, “Le Noël des Paré,” in 2002.
3.
Paule Des Rivières, “La vie en direct,” Le Devoir, 16 Feb. 1994, A1.
31.
Smith, 10.
4.
Chantal Hébert, “Claude Meunier: un nouveau burlesque,” in Claude Meunier, dramaturge, André Smith, ed. (Montréal: vlb éditeur, 1992), 29-46.
32.
Meunier, Fillion, 188.
33.
Hébert, 31.
5.
Roger Frappier, “Claude Meunier, le cinéma et moi,” in Claude Meunier, dramaturge, 110.
34.
6.
Bill Marshall, Québec National Cinema (Montréal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s
University Press, 2001), 194.
7.
Not surprisingly, the cover page of the special issue of the theatre magazine Jeu (no. 55,
June 1990) devoted to humour on the Québec stage shows Ding and Dong grimacing
stupidly at the camera. By 1990 Meunier and Thériault had come to symbolize Québec
humour more vividly than any other artists.
Here, I use the term “Humour” as Ben Jonson understood it in plays like Every Man in
His Humour (1598). See Peter Thomson, “Comedy of Humours,” in The Cambridge
Guide to World Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 222. Thomson
makes the point that television situation comedies continue to employ the basic principles of “humours”.
35.
This situation is reminiscent of La petite semaine, a 1970s sitcom that revolved in great
part around the tensions between a middle-aged couple and their son-in-law living
upstairs with their daughter. A sort of French Canadian All in the Family, La petite
semaine clearly belongs in the genealogy of La petite vie. Another well-known 1960s-
8.
Claude Meunier and Louis Saia, Les Voisins (Montréal: Leméac, 1982), 8.
9.
André Smith, “Présentation,” in Claude Meunier, dramaturge, 9.
24 ANDRÉ LOISELLE
SMALL SCREEN 25
70s “téléroman” that belongs in the genealogy of La petite vie is Rue des pignons,
although in this case the connection is not made obvious through similar titles and situations but through similar opening scores: a lively and nostalgically kitschy piano tune.
36.
68.
André Loiselle, Stage-Bound: Feature Film Adaptations of Canadian and Québécois
Drama (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2003), 66.
69.
Pascale Navarro, “Je me souverain,” Voir 9.44 (28 Sept. 1995): 32.
Nevert, 20.
37.
Michel Tremblay, Hosanna - La Duchesse de Langeais (Montréal: Leméac, 1984), 9-11.
38.
David Bradby, Modern French Drama, 1940-1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991), 74.
39.
Esslin, 160.
40.
Cousineau, La petite vie, A1.
41.
Jocelyne Lepage, “Ding et Dong: après le film, la télé et l’angoisse existentielle,” La
Presse, 29 Feb. 1992, E14.
42.
Nevert, 194.
43.
Nevert, 197.
44.
Madame La Bolduc. Dir. Isabelle-Monique Turcotte, 1992.
45.
Nevert, 185-186.
46.
See for instance, Harrap’s Shorter Dictionary–English-French/French-English (Edinburgh:
Chambers Harrap Publishing, 2000), 955.
47.
Hélène De Billy, “Petite vie grand Meunier,” L’Actualité 20.5 (1 Apr. 1995): 70.
48.
The film won the 1991 Golden Reel Award. See the Genie’s website:
http://www.genieawards.ca/ genie25/pressgoldenreel.cfm
49.
Smith.
50.
Nevert.
51.
Serge Dussault, Huguette Roberge and Luc Perreault. “Les dix meilleurs films qu’ils ont
vus cette année,” La Presse, 28 Dec 1991, D10.
52.
Maurice Elia, “Ding et Dong, le film ,” Séquences 151 (March 1991): 57-58.
53.
Elia, 57.
54.
Francine Grimaldi, “Ding et Dong: le Film ,” La Presse, 18 Apr. 1990, E1.
55.
Serge Dussault, “Alain Chartrand, un cinéaste occupé: Ding et Dong, Michel Chartrand,
Le Survenant,” La Presse, 21 July 1990, D13.
56.
Huguette Roberge, “Ding et Dong, le film : un ‘Rocky culturel’ qui s’adresse aux 12-112
ans,” La Presse, 24 Nov. 1990, C1.
57.
Dussault, Serge. “Ding et Dong, le film : un autre son de cloche,” La Presse 8 Dec. 1990,
p. C8.
58.
Pierre Bourdieu, La Distinction, critique sociale du jugement. (Paris: Les Éditions de
Minuit, 1979), 14-17, 34-35, 130-131.
59.
Mario Roy, “Les nerfs, les nerfs,” La Presse, 26 July 1992, C1.
60.
Régis Tremblay, “Regard sur l’adoption internationale,” Le Soleil, 16 Oct. 1992, C2.
61.
de Billy, 70.
62.
Daniel Lemay, “Quelle famille!” La Presse 9 Oct. 1993, E1.
63.
Hugo Dumas, “Pas un énorme succès pour l’émission d’Isabelle Boulay,” La Presse, 5
Jan. 2005,. Actualité-4.
64.
Sabin Desmeules, “Des nouveautés pour passer à travers l’hiver,” L’Acadie Nouvelle, 8
Jan. 2005, 5.
65.
Louise Cousineau, “Détect Inc.” La Presse, 2 Feb. 2005, Arts/Spetacles 2.
66.
See Pierre Foglia, “Les artistes,” La Presse, 1 Feb 2005, A5, and Philippe Letendre,
“Carrefour des lecteurs: Reject Inc.” Le Soleil, 10 Jan. 2005, A13.
67.
Richard Therrien, “Claude Meunier met un terme au projet de Détect Inc.” Le Soleil,
11 Mar. 2005, B4.
26 ANDRÉ LOISELLE
ANDRÉ LOISELLE teaches film studies at Carleton University. He is the author
of Le Cinéma de Michel Brault : Á l’image d’une nation (2005) and Stage-Bound:
Feature Film Adaptations of Canadian and Québécois Drama (2003). His next
book project looks at film adaptations of horror plays.
SMALL SCREEN 27