Les Trash

Quebec’s hit television series Les Bougon — C’est aussi ça la vie contains something to offend nearly everybody. In one episode, Junior Bougon works with a group of mentally challenged adults whom he refers to as “mes débiles” (my retards). The work is part of 300-pound Junior’s community-service sentence for stealing a car; his lawyer told the judge Junior did it because he’s too fat to walk. At first, Junior’s unruly charges repulse and anger him: one man, Antoine, masturbates constantly, another won’t stop yelling about Junior’s obesity. But ultimately they bond. Junior buys them a case of beer, takes them home to visit his mother, and breaks into the Montreal biodome in order to take them on a nocturnal fishing trip. He even asks his sister Dolorès, a prostitute, to relieve Antoine’s erection.

When Les Bougon debuted in 2004 it was a hit, quickly attracting more than two million viewers — more than one-third of all Quebec francophones. The family made headlines south of the border, where the New York Times declared, “A Twisted Sitcom Makes the Simpsons Look Like Saints.” Now an American producer wants to do an English version of the series. Within the context of North American television, the series is remarkable both in terms of its subject matter and its relationship to its audience.

Junior, a poorly educated petty criminal with no liberal notions about how to treat the mentally challenged, is clearly the first person they have come across in a while who gives them what everyone needs: affection, respect, and a little stimulation. By contrast, the “respectable” people portrayed in the TV series act out of cynical self-interest. The contractor only hires the mentally challenged group because doing so bags him a lucrative government grant, and their social worker’s only advice to Junior Bougon is an offhand “don’t leave a mark if you hit one of them.”

Throughout the series, Les Bougon’s creator, François Avard, drives home his belief that Quebec’s institutions — especially the ones that are supposed to be taking care of people — are failing. An ongoing theme is that the Quiet Revolution has disappointed: bureaucrats are lazy, unions are corrupt, and the education and health care systems are a mess. Disenchanted, Paul Bougon, his son Junior, and the rest of the family have dropped out of mainstream society and now run scams out of their Montreal apartment.

A veteran television writer and novelist, Avard says he first wrote the series, which he now co-authors with comedy writer Jean-François Mercier, because he was sick of watching so much TV about the middle class. The thirty-sevenyear- old, who describes himself as a “socialist with anarchism in his heart,” says he wanted to create a family of working-class heroes who “fight against the system and win.” And while this David versus Goliath theme is a familiar one, Avard’s approach to social satire is uniquely Québécois.

The badly groomed, messy Bougons are a radical presence on North American television if only because of how they look and live. They expose, rub, and scratch their imperfect bodies. The clan’s matriarch, chain-smoking Rita Bougon, tends her expansive gut as if it’s Mont Royal, the family’s preferred beer, and gives it plenty of air when her pants get too tight. Junior often walks around their cramped apartment bare-bellied, his own expansive girth restrained by only a pair of stained boxers.

Like Denys Arcand’s Les Invasions barbares, the tone of Les Bougon is one of profound disenchantment. While Arcand casts a judgmental eye on his generation, the target of Avard’s wrath is le système, the so-called Quebec model, credited with wresting control away from the Church and the English. Throughout the series, the Quebec model is portrayed as a massive, slowmoving creature that is both alienating and hilariously inefficient.

By using television to express his political views, Avard is following a long-standing tradition. For more than fifty years some of Quebec’s most imaginative minds — novelists, playwrights, and intellectuals — have been using television as a vehicle for social commentary, and they have found an exceedingly dedicated audience. So while English-Canadian TV seems locked in an interminable struggle to define itself and the American viewing audience is increasingly fragmented, Quebec television remains a largely communal experience. The province churns out two and a half times as many series per capita as the American networks. The top twenty shows are all made there for a home audience. In many ways, the popularity of Les Bougon illustrates the unique and powerful role television has played in this culture.

Last fall it was the ratings showdown between Quebec’s equivalent to Canadian Idol, Star académie, and the talk show Tout le monde en parle that held the Quebecers rapt. On Sunday nights, as many as two-thirds of the province’s francophones sat down to watch either program. In the mid-nineties, La Petite Vie, a ruthless satire of the modern Quebec family, attracted four million francophone viewers, breaking a percapita world record for television watching. Shows such as Les filles de Caleb, Lance et compte, and Scoop were watched by more than half of Canada’s French speaking population.

Why are Quebecers so into their television? The simple explanation is language. Creators and producers here have a captive audience. Yet while Quebecers regularly watch American movies dubbed into French, American television series aren’t that popular. A more fundamental reason for the success of television shows such as Les Bougon lies in the unique way television developed in this province.