Les Trash

Beaulieu is right. Quebec television isn’t what it once was. But then neither is Quebec society. Beaulieu resides in a small community on Quebec’s south shore, so he doesn’t live where most Quebecers do, in cities and suburbs. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t appreciate the most insightful aspect of Avard’s satire: his ruthless analysis of the dysfunctional institutions that torture so many of us. Over the last fifteen years companies and government departments have been busted apart and slapped together in the name of efficiency and reform, here as elsewhere. A recent health department report, commissioned after relatives of a fifty-oneyear- old female patient in a chronic care hospital released audio tapes of her abuse by orderlies, said that nearly onethird of patients in long-term care facilities are living in poor conditions. Last October, Quebecers expressed alarm after a grisly documentary was released about the horrid lives of children under the care of the provincial youth-protection agency. Of course similar problems exist elsewhere in the country, but the soul searching may be deeper here because Quebecers fought so hard to create their own institutions.

Political dissatisfaction has intensified in recent years. In 2003 Quebecers dumped the Parti Québécois for the Liberals, whom they have been complaining about ever since, and the PQ will likely win the next election. But the sovereignty movement is far from unified and there is a noticeable absence of new ideas. A new left-leaning party, Option citoyenne, has emerged, led by the respected former head of the Quebec Federation of Women, Françoise David, and it may draw much-needed votes away from the PQ. And last October, a dozen prominent Quebecers including Lucien Bouchard, former PQ minister Joseph Facal, and film producer Denise Robert ( Denys Arcand’s wife), published the manifesto Pour un Québec lucide ( For a clear-eyed vision of Quebec). In it they warn of a looming demographic and economic crisis if something isn’t done about the declining birth rate, inflexible unions, and the “bulky albatross” that is the provincial government. Some of the twelve are federalists, some are sovereignists, all are worried. Quebec, it seems, is a society looking for answers.

Avard once referred to the Bougon family as Les Plouffes trash, in reference to Quebec’s first téléroman, La Famille Plouffe, broadcast in 1953. The parallel he draws with that classic series, which was also shown on English cbc, is an apt one. La Famille Plouffe’s creator, Roger Lemelin, pioneered the practice that Avard continues: using TV to push Quebec society toward change. In the 1950s, Quebec’s old guard — particularly its religious elite — wanted the province to remain a pious rural culture revolving around family and church. But this vision was out of step with the way many Quebecers were living. People wanted a different interpretation of reality and La Famille Plouffe provided it. Like many Quebecers in the 1950s, the show’s characters struggled to reconcile their traditional Catholic values with the realities of modern, urban life.

Nearly a half-century after the Quiet Revolution, many Quebecers are questioning the model it produced, and the Bougon family reflects this sentiment. Perhaps veteran television critic Louise Cousineau said it best when she exclaimed: “À qui ressemblent le plus les Bougon? À nous tous voyons! ” Who do les Bougon resemble the most? Why all of us, of course.