Oldal 178 [178]
DERVILA COOKE
school experience." Part of his work is to encourage young people, including
immigrants, to vote in Québécois elections. The fourth is Daniel Russo¬
Garrido, a rapper with Latin American heritage. All speak perfect French in
a Québécois accent and all have mixed with the majority population through
politics, music or educational governance. The first three in particular seem
very far from the attitude of the adolescent students in the film, many of
whom do not empathize with accepted Québec concerns, whether about
nationalism, male-female egalitarianism, or even participation in politics.
Farouk feels solidarity with nationalist Québec and actually campaigns for
the sovereignist Parti Québécois (PQ). Akos works for the French-language
Montreal School board, and recalls his sadness at an incident when a group of
Québécois folkdancers giving a display were booed in his multi-ethnic school,
the Ecole Saint-Luc in the multicultural district of Notre-Dame-de-Graces.
Ruba, who is culturally Palestinian but born in Lebanon, has overcome the
gendered vulnerability of her Middle Eastern upbringing (mainly in the
United Arab Emirates, it appears) and has embraced the freedom that is
available to women in Québec, becoming a politician for the Québec solidaire
party. The latter three figures are poster children for the néo-Québécois
ideal: politically engaged in the province’s future, secular, French-speaking,
and open to mixing with other ethnicities. The society they identify with is
envisaged as a modern, secular state that is ethnically inclusive, egalitarian
to males and females, and experienced mainly through French in the public
domain. It is the legacy of 1960’s Québec’s “Révolution tranquille”, its Quiet
Revolution which famously heralded the political and cultural blossoming
of the majority Francophone group and helped to make Québec’s self-image
more tolerant, equal, feminist and secular.
Of the four, Daniel (the rapper who says he can sometimes pass for a
relatively dark-skinned Québécois but at another point says he looks Latino)
seems the most mobile in terms of identity. He is the least involved in the
Québécois body politic of the four main figures. He also seems the least
interested in safeguarding Francophone culture, as is evident in a newspaper
article from the time of the film’s release.!? The images in his music videos
root him strongly in a present Latin American culture, while his Spanish¬
language lyrics speak of how his ancestors travelled from city to city and
country to country in search of work or a better life, and perhaps to escape
persecution. What we hear of his songs and words encourages reflection on a
sense of shared humanity, and on the vulnerabilities of uprooted individuals
Akos Verboczy, Rhapsodie québécoise. Itinéraire d’un enfant de la loi 101, Montreal, Boréal,
2017.
12° Clairandreé Cauchy, La Loi 101 à l’heure des bilans, Le Devoir, 18 September 2008,
https://www.ledevoir.com/non-classe/206194/la-loi-101-a-l-heure-des-bilans (accessed 15
December 2019).
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