Carnivalization of Politics: Quebec Cartoons on Relations with Canada, England, and France, 1960-1979 9780773565487

Table of contents :
Contents
Figures
Acknowledgments
1 Editorial Cartoons as Social Documents
2 Relations with In-Laws: Berthio Greets the Queen
3 Relations with Parents: Dupras Welcomes President de Gaulle
4 Quebec and Ottawa as Spouses: Can They Live Together?
5 Ottawa and Quebec: Can They Live Apart?
6 Between Parent and Child: Quebec and its Language Minority
7 Conclusions
References
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
L
M
O
P
Q
R
S
T
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Citation preview

The Carnivalization of Politics Quebec Cartoons on Relations with Canada, England, and France, 1960—1979

Focusing on English-French relations and attitudes towards the United Kingdom, France, and the rest of Canada, Raymond Morris explores recurrent themes in the works of Quebec's most popular francophone and anglophone political cartoonists - Aislin (Terry Mosher), Berthio (Roland Berthiaume), Pierre Dupras, and Jean-Pierre Girerd. Examining cartoons published between 1960 and 1979, Morris shows how the artists dealt with particular aspects of Quebec's political experience. He looks at Berthio's drawings on the Queen's visit and Duprass on President de Gaulle's, Girerd's and Berthio's on Quebec-Ottawa relations, Girerd's on the referendum campaign, and Girerd's and Aislin's on the English minority in Quebec. He points out recurring tensions, makes oppositions and associations, and analyses the relationships from a sociological perspective. One of Morris's major objectives is to better understand the framework through which cartoon ideas are filtered and presented to their audience, focusing on the metaphors that underlie the frame, message, content, and form of the cartoons. Morris argues that the carnivalization of political figures and events, whereby the social structure is mockingly inverted and society's values and taboos are exaggerated until they become ridiculous, is a central metaphor governing Quebec cartoons of this period. He also explores another important metaphor, that of the family, with England and France as grandparents, Canada and Quebec as parents, and the official language minorities as children. RAYMOND N. MORRIS is professor of sociology, Glendon College, Ifork University.

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The Carnivalization of Politics Quebec Cartoons on Relations with Canada, England, and France 1960-1979 RAYMOND N. MORRIS

McGill-Queen's University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Buffalo

© McGill-Queens University Press 1995 ISBN 0-7735-1318-3

Legal deposit fourth quarter 1995 Bibliotheque Rationale du Quebec Printed in the United States on acid-free paper This book has been published with the help of grants from the Social Science Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, from Glendon College, and from York University. McGill-Queen's University Press is grateful to the Canada Council for support of its publication program.

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Morris, R. N. (Raymond N.), 1936The carnivalization of politics : Quebec cartoons on relations with Canada, England and France, 1960-1979 Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7735-1318-3

1. Canada - English-French relations - History - Caricatures and cartoons. 2. Quebec (Province) - Foreign relations - Great Britain - History Caricatures and cartoons. 3. Quebec (Province) - Foreign relations France - History - Caricatures and cartoons. 4. Political cartoons - History zoth century. 5. Editorial cartoons - Quebec (Province) - History — zoth century. I. Tide. NCI446.M67 1995 971.404 C95-9OO453-X Typeset in Adobe Garamond 11/13 by Caractera production graphique, Quebec City

To Douglas and Joy Morris

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Contents

Figures

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

1 Editorial Cartoons as Social Documents 3 2 Relations with In-Laws: Berthio Greets the Queen

13

3 Relations with Parents: Dupras Welcomes President de Gaulle 37 4 Quebec and Ottawa as Spouses: Can They Live Together? 60 5 Ottawa and Quebec: Can They Live Apart? 83 6 Between Parent and Child: Quebec and its Language Minority 107 7 Conclusions References Index

143

126 137

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Figures

1 Advertising and cartooning in relation to behaviour 2 The structure of the ceremony and the carnival 3 "Help, Help" (Berthio)

n

17

19

4 The crowd gets ready to greet Her Majesty (Berthio) 5 Relationships among the main characters in Dupras' work 40 6 "What does he say?" (Dupras) 45 7 The two solitudes (Dupras) 54 8 Interactions among Dupras' principal characters 55 9 Sociogram of Dupras' central characters 56 10 Twin semiotic squares: Dupras' French-English relations 57 11 Those two are inseparable (Girerd)

66

12 The two dogs (Girerd) 73 13 "Pretend it hurts, Lester!" (Berthio)

78

14 "I can't move back any further" (Berthio)

80

26

x

Figures

15 The question (Girerd)

92

16 And if the answer should be "No"? (Girerd)

99

17 Size and position according to role in Girerd's referendum drawings 104 18 "No cause for panic, old chap!" (Girerd) 19 "Speak French, English dogs!" (Aislin) 20 Happy St. Patricks Day (Aislin)

112 117

119

21 "But moving our head office?" (Aislin)

123

cccc

This book has benefited from the advice and comments of many people over a period of twelve years, and I cannot do justice to them all in a short note. Indeed, some of the more influential contributions are buried deep in my memory, and I regret being unable to recover them. Alan O'Connor played a key role in generating my interest in cartoons by introducing me to the work of Perry Curtis and Ariel Dorfman. Gilles Houle was a great encouragement, and he shared his wisdom generously when this project was in its early stages. I am deeply grateful for his continuing interest. Barbara Godard introduced me to the concept of carnival and did more than anyone to help me grasp the underlying unity in Berthio's analysis of the Queen's visit. Paul Bouissac, through his course on circuses, limericks and nonsense rhymes and his ardent support, greatly enriched my understanding of semiotics and humour. Andre Turmel has been a good friend who has taught me much about metaphor and shared with me his excitement about studying it. Paul Perron has contributed much more to my grasp of Greimas' work than shows in this volume. I owe a special debt to Greg Nielsen, who has shared his love for and his profound understanding of Bakhtin, and has given unflagging support and perceptive criticism. His collegiality and good humour have meant more than I can put into words. Francoise Boudreau and Linda Hunter have each contributed their vibrant enthusiasm for this kind of work. I have benefited greatly from

xii

Acknowledgments

discussions with Corinne Chenier and Bernard Gauthier, as they collaborated with me on a French language version and challenged me to combine figurative language and clarity more effectively. A number of anonymous readers have judiciously helped me strengthen the argument, improve the exposition, and prune the superfluous undergrowth. To the four cartoonists featured - Berthio, Dupras, Girerd, and Aislin - how can I express my debts? Obviously, without their assiduity, their talent, their inspiration and rich imaginations, there could have been no book. I have indeed been privileged to have the chance to study intensively the work of four exceptional people, during perhaps the most outstanding period of Quebec cartooning. They have played an important part in forging Quebec's understanding of itself during this eventful period. I have also benefited from their continued generosity in granting reproduction rights and from their encouraging messages. What I can offer them in return seems puny, though their work certainly deserves much more attention from academics than it has received. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Social Science Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and with financial assistance from Glendon College and York University. Finally, my family has once again been very important for their support and their critical interest. This time I will focus on Douglas Morris, who has offered many incisive comments on social science and its practices and provoked many stimulating discussions, and on Joy Morris, whose enthusiasm, curiosity, and logical mind add much to my life.

I regret that I have been unable to provide references for many of the cartoons discussed in this book. (The Girerd cartoons, for example, are scattered through seven years of La Presse, and only some copies are catalogued in the National Archives.) However, I shall be glad to help interested readers find particular cartoons that they may wish to see.

The Carnivalization of Politics

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i Editorial Cartoons as Social Documents

INTRODUCTION

Semiotic analysis and sociology have recently begun converging in several important ways, with the promise of considerable benefits to both disciplines (McCannell 1983; Harman 1986). Initially semiotics remained within linguistics, concentrating on units no larger than the sentence and excavating their basic grammar. More recently it has expanded its scope, linking with work in other fields on the structure of literary works, buildings, scientific diagrams, and paintings. Its interests now include communication among animals, across language barriers, and over physical handicaps. Semiotics seeks to build an anatomy of discourse in all its forms by exposing the underlying structure of concepts on which communication is built. At first semiotics relied on the success of linguistics and argued that any cultural product is a text that communicates through a language based on a grammar. Art, television, cooking, and even surgery were seen as codes, each with its own syntax and deep structure. The ubiquity of this analogy is now being reexamined and challenged, for two reasons. First, it obscures central aspects of visual communication by insisting that all characteristics have verbal equivalents (Carani 1992; Saint Martin 1987). Second, it has sometimes encouraged semiotics to focus on sentences and to neglect larger units of communication (Ricoeur 1975) and the social settings in which discourse is produced.

4

Carnivalization of Politics

At the same time, sociology has gradually moved away from its traditional focus on social surveys toward a much greater emphasis on analysing texts of all kinds. Documents were once a minor adjunct to the sociologist's survey data, useful only as tools for generating hypotheses, or as second-rate data, when no more representative samples of opinion were available; they received scant attention in research methods courses and were always suspect. But now they are recognised as central sources of data, and their value for hypothesis testing is slowly becoming apparent. Sociologists are giving more thought to appropriate frameworks for the analysis of documents, and this, in turn, is leading them to closer linkages with researchers in the humanities and to a new appreciation of literary theory. The new emphasis on texts has been accompanied by the emergence of a "social construction of reality" perspective within the disciplines (Berger and Luckmann 1967; Green 1983,1988; Holzner 1968; Smith 1974,1978,1987; Tuchman 1978). This perspective draws on Marxist humanism and symbolic interactionism, and views the production, distribution, and consumption of texts as social processes acting within and upon a range of structural constraints (Ericson, Baranek, and Chan 1987,1989; Hall, et al. 1980; Smith 1987). The cartoonist, for example, negotiates with him or herself and the editor in creating a final public version of the cartoon that is subsequently reproduced and distributed through further negotiations. The traces of these interactions are kept private, however, and all that survives is the drawing as printed. It is then skimmed by a glancer who seeks to negotiate its meaning in the light of certain social expectations and conventions (Mailloux 1982; Twer 1972).' While it is clearly desirable to study this entire process, the necessary field data are often simply unavailable, and they cannot be reconstructed. Fortunately, work such as Smith's (1987), Green's (1983,1988), and Dorfman and Mattelart's (1975) has demonstrated that few texts are

i The words "skimmer" and "glancer" are used interchangeably, as they convey better than "reader" or "viewer" the almost instantaneous manner in which readers seek to "get the point" of a cartoon. Essentially, the drawing presents the skimmer with a daily puzzle: what is funny about this picture? The cartoonist assumes that the reader is willing to spend about three seconds looking for the answer. The puzzle must be soluble within this time, or skimmers will turn their attention elsewhere.

5

Cartoons as Social Documents

altogether successful in concealing the social contradictions which underlie the messages they transmit. I have continued this approach in my analysis of cartoons in the major Quebec newspapers and magazines, by focusing on the drawings themselves and studying the form (Golding and Murdoch 1979) as well as the content of the visual texts. Ideas from semiotics, as well as sociology, were important in guiding my analysis to the structure of oppositions and associations within which a topic was presented to a cartoon's skimmers. These ideas permitted a more systematic analysis of frames than Goffman's (1974), and they drew attention to the root metaphors (MacRae 1975; Lakoff and Johnson 1980) through which domestication takes place (Goffman 1979). I hope in this work to offer a better understanding of the framework through which cartoon ideas are filtered and presented to skimmers. To do this I examine the metaphors in cartoons dealing with FrenchEnglish relations that were published in newspapers and magazines in Quebec in the 19605 and 705. The metaphors through which FrenchEnglish relations are re-presented and made sense of are classified in four categories derived from Hjelmslev (1961). These categories give rise to four locations where metaphors may be found: in the content of the message, in its form, in the content of the frame, and in its form. THE

CONTENT OF THE

MESSAGE

The content of the message is the most immediate and concrete location, and also the most variable. It performs the domestication function most explicitly (Goffman 1979; Press 1981). Editorial cartoons refer to events and personalities beyond the skimmer's circle of personal knowledge. But the ideas, often stereotypes, they present are drawn from the skimmers own stock of common knowledge, daily experiences, and familiar stories, and the strange, the abstract is then re-presented and interpreted in these familiar terms (Gombrich 1978, 128-33), on the basis of an isotropy between them. Cartoonists are especially creative in applying unexpected metaphors to political actions and in pointing out their comic consequences in odd corners of the land. These metaphors are an important element in the humour and popularity of their work. A country's fight against inflation, for instance, may be illustrated by a tiny figure of the prime minister trying to combat a huge monster which would terrify any skimmer. This portrayal is presented as factual, and is humorous insofar as it stresses the ineptness of the champion rather than the impossibility of the

6 Carnivalization of Politics challenge. It is as if the cartoonist were saying, "You'll never understand inflation intellectually, so think of it as an overpowering monster," that, by implication, the public must endure with fortitude until it goes away of its own accord. Ideology is inherent in the choice of a metaphor (Barthes 1972): it may offer false reassurance; it may distort or mislead in important ways; and it may be slanted to ignore new and alternative conceptions of the problem. A Marxist cartoon might present inflation as a profitable hoax perpetrated by the bourgeoisie, many of whom find inflation more rewarding than its conquest. While this may be one-sided, it draws attention to those groups that have a vested interest in at least moderate inflation and in public fatalism toward it. The most powerful visual metaphors provoke in the skimmer an association which can neither be scrutinized nor shaken off (Gombrich 1978, 138). THE

FORM OF THE

MESSAGE

Barthes (1972) studied the form of messages in the media in great detail. His central argument was that capitalist relations of production, distribution, and consumption were peculiar to a particular historical period and area of the world, and that they would gradually be replaced, as preceding systems had been. They were, however, being re-presented in the media as "natural," and thus independent of variations in time and place. The reader who accepted this representation would attribute them to a biological order that could not be changed by human effort. I have argued (Morris I989a) that cartoons in particular further serve the interests of capital by their attacks on politicians; they stress that power and effectiveness lie with business and not with political chiefs. Democratic politics and decision making are typically portrayed as intrinsically foolish, in contrast to business and bureaucratic decision making. This distinction is widespread in cartoons, and very clear in drawings on French-English and Canadian-American relations. Business leaders are sensible and collaborative, and they use their energy to make material decisions which produce tangible benefits. Political leaders, on the other hand, are foolish and argumentative, and they use their energies to make symbolic decisions which produce no tangible benefits. Thus the message is presented in the form of a contrast, just as news is reported in the form of a conflict between two sides to which the reporter seeks to give equal time in order to demonstrate objectivity (Ericson, Baranek, and Chan 1987; Stone 1992).

7 Cartoons as Social Documents Underlying the form of the message, then, is the metaphor that I studied intensively in Behind the Jester's Mask (Morris i989a): cartoonists are the jesters of the bourgeoisie. Their role is analogous to that of the royal jester of an earlier time, who mocked the courtiers and clergy while respecting the monarch. THE

FORM OF THE

FRAME

In Morris (1984) I elaborated the root metaphor in the form of the frame: that of Canada as a family. This had two versions. In the political version, the federal government was the single parent of the Canadian family, whose children were the ten provinces. Most had their own peculiar characteristics: Ontario was portrayed (by Ontario writers particularly) as the .responsible eldest child, who regularly rescued the federal single parent from situations with which she could not cope. Quebec was the rebellious adolescent, wishing to leave the parental home while retaining all its comforts. Alberta was the newly adolescent child, beginning to rebel. The Atlantic provinces were the helpless little children, suffering from the dissension among their older siblings. In the ethnic version, English Canada was the husband, who provided the economic foundation of the family by hard work. French Canada was the wife, who reared the children, contributed little to the family income, and was increasingly discontented with the long-standing family patterns. The skimmer seeking to understand why some in Quebec wished to "separate" would have to picture her as a woman who wished to leave a frustrating marriage. The future and rights of the children play a considerable part in the rhetoric around a possible separation, for the husband and wife each have children of their own, the official-language minorities who occupy the others territory like hostages. The cartoons which I will study here extend this metaphor by introducing leaders from the "parent countries," who pay state visits and represent the third generation of the Canadian family. The ties of the wife and husband to their respective parents have an impact on their own relationship. The ideological significance of the family metaphor is considerable. The capitalist state, like the corporation, generates little loyalty when characterized as an impersonal system. But when it is re-presented as a family, some of the emotional content of family obligations is transferred to it, and patriotism becomes not only possible but obligatory.

8

Carnivalization of Politics

THE

CONTENT OF THE

FRAME

My thinking on the content of the frame draws on the work of Goffman and Bakhtin. Goffman s earlier work (1959) on the presentation of self had focused on the single actor performing a one-person show with props on a personal stage. He gradually moved from the study of faceto-face contacts to examine the frames within which they take place (Gonos 1977). In later works (1974,1979) he applied the theatrical analogy and the notions of on and offstage to the mass media, and explored situations in which there are many actors, support staff, a playwright, and a heterogeneous audience. Goffman ingeniously adapted Barthes' (1972) model of the sign to demonstrate how characters in the media relate to those in everyday life. Concentrating on advertising and its portrayal of women, he developed a three-level model. Everyday behaviour is at the initial level (Level o). At the first level of abstraction (Level i), corresponding to Barthes' firstlevel denotative sign, is ritual behaviour. Rituals present stylized versions of everyday behaviour, performed mainly when persons are being initiated into or out of social roles (Turner 1974, 47-57). Stylized actions are organized around a concept, such as wedding, graduation, or examination, to which the actions point; the ceremonies are a language for conceptualizing the ideal form of behaviour in important roles. Beyond ritual, at the second level (Level 2), is hyper-ritual, a secondorder system like myth, or perhaps a part of myth, which is connotative. Here one finds most advertising material, including photographs of persons posing as if engaged in rituals. The photograph of the ritual is the signifier, and since it is a second-level sign, its referent is the ceremony, not the everyday behaviour. It connotes such values as seriousness, excitement, or awe, which are believed appropriate to those engaged in ritual behaviour, and it indicates how rituals should be performed. Williamson (1978) spelled out more clearly than Goffman the implication that second-level signs are in the realm of ideology. Hyper-rituals signify how rituals ought ideally to be performed, in the view of the advertiser. Williamson argued that the relationship between the signifier (the name) and the signified (the product) is purely arbitrary in modern capitalist society. The sign is empty of meaning because there is no difference in appearance or quality between, say, Smith's mass-produced butter and that of Jones. Producers who wish to generate brand loyalty will therefore appropriate meaning by associating their product with a

9

Cartoons as Social Documents

scene that already has the desired connotations: "The work of the advertisement is not to invent a meaning for the product but to transfer meaning to it by means of a sign system we already know" (Williamson 1978, 25). The advertiser claims that the product is an intrinsic part or even the cause of the pleasant experience that is depicted. How, the viewer is asked rhetorically, could you conceive of a happy breakfast without x's cereal? Or, to use a different example, the unqualified claim that "men drink ABC" associates manliness with ABC and carries the implication that those who do not drink ABC are not real men (Chebat and Lindekens 1976, 40-1). In my thinking about cartoons, these ideas offered me a very useful framework for constructing a model of the content of the frame. I found the other elements I needed in the work of Bakhtin (1968, 1984). Living under Stalinism, Bakhtin studied ways to keep alive the alternative voices that the official texts of the regime sought to suppress when they presented a single viewpoint as "natural" and legitimate. He saw the novel as the form of writing most likely to display the multiple forms of discourse and knowledge which occur in everyday life. It had the potential to maintain many simultaneous dialogues: between language as a code and individual language use, between the changing meanings of a word over time, between this text and many which preceded it, between the author and the characters in the novel, and between the author-and-characters and the reader (Hirschkop and Shepherd 1989; Holquist 1990, 69). Dostoyevsky and Rabelais were, for Bakhtin, particularly open to multiple voices (Bakhtin 1968,1984). Their leading characters were unusually conscious of otherness, and they were open-ended, unfinished selves struggling with the closed, simplified categories offered by the others (Holquist 1990, 84). Bakhtin used the metaphor of carnival to show how an age without the novel displayed otherness and made familiar relations strange. The carnivals emphasis on the grotesque, the chaotic, the communal, and the unromantic clashed with the idealization of the attractive, selfimproving, solitary romantic hero of bourgeois thought, as Frankenstein was contrasted with the monster he had made (Holquist 1990, 89-106). Carnival broke with the tyranny of single-voiced official speech in two related ways. First, instead of representing the other as opposite to the self, and thus as something alien, to be feared and condemned, it re-presented the world from the other's alleged viewpoint. If official discourse presupposed that a ceremony was holy, carnival parodied it as vulgar. If official speech exalted the social hierarchy, carnival inverted it

io

Carnivalization of Politics

or erected a counter-hierarchy. Second, carnival did not stop at offering a mirror opposite and equally univocal version of reality, for a struggle between univocal opposites would have led to confrontation and tragedy as each side defended and over-emphasized its otherness. Carnival would not fight communism with an equally dogmatic fascism, but would resist any unification of discourse, seeking to preserve multiple alternative perspectives. It would do this by showing the consequences of carrying the official priorities to excess, rendering their solemnity comic, and by implicitly pleading, as comedy did, for a return to moderation, flexibility, and tolerance. Carnival was a chronotope, a site in time and space from which some things would be called "now," "here," and "self," and from which some would be viewed as "there," "then," and "others." As such, carnival was both a particular phenomenon, flourishing and meaningful in a certain period and culture, and an ideal type whose elements might recur in quite different settings. It is important to distinguish between the "pure carnival" of the late mediaeval era and the commercialized, "reified carnival" still observable in peripheral capitalist societies. Pure carnival retained a spontaneity and mockery that is largely absent after reification. It was a democratic institution, open on fairly equal terms to all local people. Reified carnival is commercially organized and frequently limited to relatively professional participants, who display their skills before an audience that includes large numbers of tourists. As ideal types, these conceptions can be integrated into the three-level scheme used by Barthes and Goffinan (see figure i). While ritual abstracts idealized and solemn elements from everyday behaviour, pure carnival abstracts the vulgar and comic elements to form its opposite. At the first level, then, ritual and pure carnival stand in a relationship of contradiction. At the second level, reified or hyper-carnival extracts from pure carnival those elements which are commercially valuable. The atmosphere of celebration is carefully preserved, for example, but popular participation is restricted to the spectator role. In the same manner, political dramas are rituals, as Kenneth Burke (1954) has repeatedly stressed: they include moments of liminality when the control of social structure is fleetingly lifted (Turner 1974). Parliamentary debate is normally a ritual contained within clearly recognized bounds by the party in power; but occasionally it escapes, and there is personal violence, or members are ejected from the House, or the government is defeated. As ritual, politics can be carnivalized: its values

ii

Fig. i.

Cartoons as Social Documents

Advertising and cartooning in relation to behaviour

inverted, its forms mocked, and its content taken out of context to appear comic. It can also be hyper-carnivalized: political cartoons may focus on only those features which make political institutions appear chronically laughable. Bakhtin identified six elements in pure carnival; only three of these remained in commercialized hyper-carnival. First, pure carnival emanated from the popular culture of the period and was polyphonic: participants spoke with a wide range of voices simultaneously. This allowed a span of outlooks and experiences to be heard in rapid succession. Second, the carnival was a joyful bodily game, an occasion to rejoice in the physical unity and community of the people. Third, the carnival proclaimed that only the people were immortal and indestructible, constantly fertile and able to renew themselves. These features disappeared with commercialization, but the following three features of pure carnival remained in reified or hyper-carnival. Carnival temporarily reversed a coercive hierarchical social order and its preoccupations by bringing into being a community which was its opposite in several crucial respects: it was egalitarian, disorderly, and free, and it was ruled by an elected fool-king who was derided and eventually sacrificed, not in anger but in joy. Carnival celebrated the body and its current imperfections through indulgence and vulgarity. And finally, carnival propagated folly as an alternative to sainthood. Both were distinctive outlooks, disdainful of worldly success. Each corresponded to a spiritual world, for folly emanated from the Devil and had its counterpart in Hell, just as wisdom originated in God and had its counterpart in Heaven (Auerbach 1957, 490). S O U R C E S OF DATA

The data for this study come from the Mosher collection in the National Archives of Canada. This collection was made for The Hecklers

12

Carnivalization of Politics

(Desbarats and Mosher 1979) by Terry Mosher and Guy Badeaux, who, with extensive collaboration from all currently active cartoonists, assembled the best drawings done in Canada over a period of two hundred years. While some cartoonists were unable to supply as many examples as one might have wished, the collection is widely representative, nevertheless, and includes some two thousand cartoons for 1960—79, the period under study here. The cartoons from Quebec were chosen for this study, and since the referendum campaign continued into 1980, cartoons on this topic by Girerd were included as well. In my study (Morris i989a) of the cartoons on French-English or Canadian-American relations from 1960 to 1979, I found that, in general, one or two cartoonists had treated each topic extensively, while the others had rarely considered it. Thus, for this study it seemed preferable to make a detailed analysis, for each topic, of the works by the artists who had commented on it most intensively. This meant that it was sometimes possible to compare two artists' treatment of the same theme and to identify the main preoccupations of most major Quebec cartoonists. If a series extended through much of the chosen time-period, it was also possible to chart the evolution of the messages offered.

2 Relations with In-Laws: Berthio Greets the Queen

INTRODUCTION

Roland Berthiaume (Berthio) is one of the best-known Quebec cartoonists. Born in 192,7, he has worked for nearly all the French-language newspapers in Montreal and for several leading magazines. His style has been described as spontaneous, starkly simple, and incisive (Desbarats and Mosher 1979, 229). He has long been a passionate Quebec nationalist, and he was one of the leading lights of the independentist daily Le Jour. In an interview, Berthio summed up his philosophy of cartooning: "I try to make people laugh, to give them some consolation for the political events that make them suffer ... It is important to make some people laugh and others groan" (Desbarats and Mosher 1979, 229). As an ardent nationalist, Berthio offers a fundamental critique of the political culture of the decade. Perhaps the most striking feature of his work is his use of pure carnival as the content of his frame. Bakhtin (1968) showed how Rabelais' carnivalesque language enabled him to make fundamental attacks on the rigidity of his society; and the parallels with Berthio are striking. Berthio drew the first set of cartoons that I shall examine here as commentaries on the Queens visit to Quebec in 1964; most of them appeared in La Patrie or Le Maclean in the same year.

This chapter is a revised translation of Morris (1986).

14

Carnivalization of Politics

In 1962 the federal government proposed a royal visit for October 1964 during the centennial of the Quebec Conference, one of the major formal steps which had led to Confederation in 1867. The Queen and Prince Philip were alsp to visit Charlottetown and Ottawa, where the other pre-Confederation conferences had taken place. Although a majority of French-speaking representatives had voted in 1867 to join Confederation, the decision was far from unanimous. In the years that followed, francophone nationalists regularly portrayed anglophone Canadians as strangers threatening their homeland, language, culture, and religion (Cook 1969). Some greeted the centennial with bumper stickers inscribed "One Hundred Years of Exploitation." In the 19605 nationalists grew more aggressive, and there were many acts of violence against buildings that symbolized anglophone domination. Demonstrations were held to liberate Quebec from the power and symbols associated with (English) Canadians. The announcement of the Queen's visit to Quebec evoked fears of unseemly protests, and when President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, there were fears that the Queen might also be attacked. A number of voices recommended abandoning the Quebec part of the trip, but the federal government decided to proceed, while taking unusual security measures. The Quebec City police banned the demonstrations planned by the independentists, and, with reinforcements from the army and federal and provincial police, some six thousand officers were assembled along the route. Their presence meant that subjects who stood on the sidewalk would probably not have a good view of the Queen, and since the weather was rainy, most citizens decided to boycott the visit or to watch it on television. But two or three hundred nationalists, mainly students, did gather from time to time to chant slogans. The city police charged these "demonstrators" several times, chasing and sometimes beating them with their new clubs. Several journalists were struck, and the attacks received considerable though short-lived attention in the media. The day became known as "le samedi de la matraque" (Billy Club Saturday). As the Queen continued her journey to Ottawa, the authorities heaved a sigh of relief. Jean Lesage, the Premier of Quebec, left for a holiday in Rome on his way to receive an honorary degree from the University of Athens - where he made a stirring oration in favour of freedom of speech. An official inquiry into the club-swinging conducted by Quebec's new Minister of Justice, Claude Wagner, concluded that the police actions were justified. Wagner was widely known to advocate

15 Relations with In-Laws sterner law and order policies, but his claim that violence was never justified and would not be condoned (Montreal Gazette, i October 1964) was apparently not applicable to the conduct of the police. His conclusion provoked indignation, but little surprise. The historian Michel Brunet has offered this summary: Queen Elizabeth's visit in 1964 offered an opportunity for all Quebecois to let English Canada and the world at large know that their political thinking had changed greatly since the North American tour of King George VI in 1939 ... Twenty-five years later the population refused to be mesmerized. When Her Majesty was received there, Quebec City had the appearance of a town occupied by a conqueror; it was a disheartening scene for the royal couple and for all who witnessed it ... It was not a situation that Her Majesty could help; her visit merely served to dramatize it. (Brunet 1973, 48)

Berthio's cartoons on the visit were all drawn between 1964 and 1967 and later collected in Berthio 1967, but their dates and thus the precise time-sequence cannot be confirmed. They can, however, be roughly subdivided into those drawn before, during, and after the visit. Berthio retains the metaphor of Canada as a family, as the form of his frame, but extends it to a three-generation unit encompassing England as one of the grandparents. While the older generation normally remain in the background, they sometimes pay state visits which can be represented as the arrival of a beloved parent or an unpopular parent-in-law. CARNIVAL AS THE IN THE

ROOT METAPHOR

CONTENT OF THE

FRAME

Before analysing this set of cartoons it will be useful to elaborate the root metaphor of carnival, as "a second world and a second life outside officialdom, a world in which all medieval people participated more or less, in which they lived during a given time of the year" (Bakhtin 1968,6). In this world, the people celebrated "community, freedom, equality, and abundance," while, in contrast, the official ceremonies "sanctioned the existing pattern of things and reinforced it" (9). Carnival was "opposed to all that is finished and polished, to all pomposity, to every ready-made solution in the sphere of thought and world outlook" (3). The "grotesque realism" of carnival laughingly degraded as carnal that which the dominant group held to be sacred, including "the predominant truth that was put forward as eternal and indisputable" (9).

16

Carnivalization of Politics

Berthio carnivalized the ceremony of the royal visit as organized by the state. Since the Queen was a sacred object for the (English) Canadians who held power, their ceremony had all the solemnity of a religious procession. The state called on the security forces of all levels of government to build a wall of loyal officials along the whole ceremonial route, and the ceremony itself reflected the official hierarchy, with the political leaders at the top. To counter this traditional structure, Berthio drew on another, equally venerable. He imagined a mediaeval carnival, centred on a king and queen of fools, that belonged to the Quebec people and which inverted the established hierarchy. This carnival served to undermine the rigidity of thought and action that characterized the old regime, to parody official reason, and to promote a more flexible, sensitive, and dynamic government. As a form of satire, carnival has five major characteristics. First, it erects an alternative social structure that has most if not all the roles of the traditional social structure. Second, within this alternative structure it inverts certain values, so that the heroes who have exemplified them are turned into alazons or impostors (Frye 1957, 172), while the villains who have opposed them become the reigning buffoons. Third, the iconoclasm lasts for only a limited period, which is known in advance; when it ends, social order is restored. Fourth, the carnival serves as a vehicle for social criticisms that would be unacceptable under normal conditions and that generally act as a safety valve. Within this socially circumscribed context the unspeakable may be said, the solemn and the hilarious may change places, and the body may be installed in charge of the mind. It becomes permissible to display the lewd side of whatever is normally considered sacred, and the sacred side of what is normally considered lewd. Finally, the climax of the carnival consists of the symbolic defeat of the comic figure who represents the old regime and in whom its folly is caricatured. The idea of the structure of carnival requires clarification, since Bakhtin generally treated carnival as liminal. While that is certainly an apt description of the spirit of carnival, it appears to be much less accurate as a description of many of the phenomena which occurred during carnivals. Arden's (1980) account of soties, for example, suggests that these scurrilous plays were highly organized in some respects and that great care was taken in circumventing the censorship of the Church authorities. Similarly, a carnivalized mass would be recognizable only if it mirrored many of the structural features of a conventional mass. The

17

Fig. 2..

Relations with In-Laws

The structure of the ceremony and the carnival

analysis of carnivalized artifacts and performances, then, involves plotting the structural features that they share with the corresponding ceremonies. In this sense one may talk about the structure of the carnival event. In the case of the Queens visit, Berthios cartoons transpose the narrative of the official ceremony into the narrative of a carnival, which presents the old regime as absurdly rigid and its main adherents as comically insane. They are then ritually destroyed and consumed. The ceremony and the carnival are represented in figure 2. The segment on the left illustrates the hierarchy of the ceremony. At its head is the Queen, who participates in all events and always occupies the place of honour. Next to her is the head of the Quebec state, Jean Lesage, who participates with the same intensity but keeps a respectful social distance. A little lower on the scale are the English Canadians, the loyal citizens to whom the public ceremony is unrestrictedly open. They are its heart, so to speak. The police occupy a slightly lower position. They lack the freedom of action that the English Canadians have, but they are still central figures during the procession, and they participate in all the public events. Finally there are the "federalists," the Quebec members of the Canadian Parliament. As we shall see, they are portrayed as low-status, honorary English. This position appears quite incongruous at first, because normally one imagines them among the guests of honour at the official banquet, the private part of the ceremony. For Berthio, however, they occupy a special place, diametrically opposite the royal couple. They prove to be the butt of the ceremony. The left-hand side of figure 2, then, includes all the categories whose members were active in the ceremony, arranged according to their status and their rate of participation. Those on the right-hand side were

i8

Carnivalization of Politics

excluded from the ceremony: Rene Levesque absented himself from the official banquet in Quebec, the Quebec people in general boycotted the procession, and the Marquis of Montcalm had been dead for two centuries. Accordingly, as we follow the perimeter of figure 2 counterclockwise from the Queen, we find that the participation rate continues to fall. The right-hand side has another signification, however, as we see when we move along the perimeter in a clockwise direction. Beginning again with the royal couple, we pass Montcalm, the Quebec people, and Rene Levesque. This structure illustrates the corresponding carnival roles, though there is no suggestion in the cartoons that they form a hierarchy, as those who partook of the ceremony did. The royal couple is the carnival king and queen. Next comes its mythical chief organizer, Montcalm. The Quebec public forms its heart. Rene Levesque appears as comic executor of the will of Montcalm, his chief fool-maker. The federalists again serve as the object of ridicule. The officers of the law and the (English) Canadians become lowrlevel, involuntary dupes, while the Quebec government is the high-level butt of the comedy. Thus, the further one moves in this direction, beginning with the royal couple, the lower is the rate of deliberate participation in the carnival. Like the Prince and Queen, the federalists form a link between the two hierarchies, thanks to their ambiguous position. In symbolic worlds, the two extremes usually come together in this way, for such structures are more often circular than linear. The centrality of this structure and the signification of the federalists will be shown in our examination of each individual cartoon. THE

A T M O S P H E R E AT THE

TIME

OF THE VISIT

The first cartoon (figure 3) shows the relations between the separatist movement and Montreal's anglophone population. Faced with the separatist peril, all the stereotyped haLits of the English have crumbled. These models of propriety have lifted their skirts like cancan dancers; these guardians of good taste have jumped onto the Chippendale table. The menfolk have lost their normal balance and sang-froid; abandoning their usual protective pose, they have hidden behind their ladies. Those who would normally maintain a respectful distance to avoid physical contact are now crowded together. The skimmer's eye is first struck by this uncharacteristic and indeed sacrilegious pattern. The consistent direction of the victims' eyes then

19

Relations with In-Laws

Fig. 3. "Help, Help" (Berthio)

points to its immediate cause, the mouse, and to Rene Levesque, the unnoticed intruder. The relationship between Levesque and the mouse is left ambiguous, but in any case Levesque is intently studying the victims' reactions to it. The mouse is advancing slowly: the English have all had time to see it, to leap onto the table and steady themselves while it has been advancing a short distance. Although they greatly outweigh and outnumber the mouse, the English have adopted the defensive and stereotyped feminine pose of the helpless prey, while the mouse moves forward like a predator. As a narrative, the cartoon is ambiguous. The mouse is now independent of Rene Levesque's manipulations, and it is neither obviously cornering nor obviously chasing away its prey. Levesque might extract concessions from the English and then catch or drive away the mouse, using his ritual power to acquire economic power, or he might simply be playing a practical joke. The connotations of this cartoon border on the ridiculous. A child's release of a mouse in a dining room during an adults' party might provoke a moment of panic, but it would hardly paralyse everyone. Yet

2O

Carnivaiization of Politics

the English, Quebec's capitalist class, are traumatized by the mere mention of independence, unable to respond with reason, to see the situation in perspective, to negotiate, or to defend themselves. Quebec nationalists have a magic word which devastates the English, forcing them to behave in ways altogether contrary to their culture. The mere invocation of the magic word by the minority can temporarily overturn the dominant English and their exploitive system. A communal reaction of horror is normally reserved for sacrilegious acts, such as those associated with carnival. This cartoon gives the first indication that, in the content of the frame, Berthio is carnivalizing the royal visit. The underlying metaphor in the content of this cartoons message is that separatism is to anglophones what a mouse stereotypically is to women. (The opposition between the English and the nationalists is the form of the message, which I shall elaborate in the discussion of later cartoons.) The mouses power is part of its status as a taboo object in the woman's traditional domain, the home. Anglophones of both sexes are similarly susceptible to panic whenever the taboo word "separatism" is uttered in their special domain, the Quebec power elite. Since he is polluted himself, Rene LeVesque the prankster can manipulate this taboo object. He induces the English to leap onto one of their sacred objects for protection against the ritual pollution he has introduced. In the second cartoon on this topic (Berthio 1967, 34), the content of the message shows Quebec as a volcano, exploding and emitting clouds of smoke. Its lava consists of a whole people, running in all directions, chasing after contradictory slogans; there is total confusion as people collide, trip and knock each other down, without caring. Lester Pearson, Canada's prime minister, enters Quebec from the bottom corner, a solitary, discouraged fireman with totally inadequate resources to subdue this flaming mountain. The form of this message is the opposition between federal anglophones and provincial francophones; this opposition is linked to the family metaphor by die anglophones' belief that the federal government should be able to control the provinces, just as a parent's return stills unruly children. It is noteworthy that in this cartoon, in comparison with Pearson, most of the Quebecois in the foreground are the size of children. The connotations for social life are that disorder reigns in Quebec, but the federal government is powerless. Its efforts at restraint are pathetic, and those symbols of federal order, biculturalism and cooperative federalism, have been knocked over. The chaos will last until its

2i

Relations with In-Laws

sources cool down. One can see everywhere the carnivalesque bursts of folly which give life and death at the same time (Bakhtin 1968, 19,38). For a limited period, most citizens are transformed into little comic devils, rushing here and there with vulgar and sacrilegious gestures and slogans. The third cartoon illustrating the atmosphere at the time (Berthio 1967, 61) shows relations between the francophone citizenry (la nation) and the state (1'etat), represented by the local francophone police. The everyday world is divided into these two camps. Police officers form a homogeneous group, and so do the citizens. The state faces a crisis of alienation in two senses. First, its representatives have abandoned the stereotype that terrorists are young, bearded, long-haired, dirty, and of dubious morality and loyalty. Unable to tell who is a threat to public order, the police treat everyone as a likely criminal. Since ordinary citizens are convinced that any police officer might club them at a moment's notice, the tension and alienation have erased any trace of joy or fun among the public. Since the police are responding to political instructions, it follows that Quebec's leaders are also alienated from the public, unable to distinguish federalists from independentists, peaceful persons from terrorists, or the legitimate exercise of a person's own rights from illegitimate violations of others' rights. Jean Lesage's Liberals, who campaigned in 1960 to modernize Quebec and to liberate it from the corruption of Duplessis and the old restraints of the Church, are now collaborating with the federal government to oppress francophones in the interests of the English. The form of the message in this cartoon is, unequivocally, the opposition between 1'etat (backed by the English) and la nation. The content of the frame is, again, carnival. Although "Masters in our own house" was Lesage's election slogan in 1960, the citizens now all walk with their hands folded above their heads, signalling that they are prisoners, not masters. The content of the message is that the police are to citizens what jailers are to prisoners. "Spending one's free time" is now reduced to ritual behaviour because the state has tried to erase any trace of carnival, believing that its principal duty is to restore order before the Queen reaches "her" Quebec. The efforts of the state have not been altogether successful, however. To escape assault by the police, two citizens adopt the pose of someone being frisked or of a child about to be slapped, showing with these ritual gestures that they are harmless and respect the law. This gesture of

22

Carnivalization of Politics

excessive conformity allows them, under a very serious exterior, to laugh at the police. Rather than reacting indignantly to police who cannot recognize their respectability, they seek to change the situation to a farce by acting as if everyone is guilty. Since it is impossible to punish everyone, everyone should be set free. The theme of taboo violation recurs in this cartoon. If the police had followed their regular practice, they would not have confused solid citizens with terrorists. However, since their anglophone masters cannot recognize either an independentist or a terrorist, the police are ready to distrust any francophone who might conceivably threaten their Queen. The first cartoon showed how Rene Levesque manipulated a taboo object to force the English to violate what was sacred to them. This one shows how the English manipulate another taboo object, the police, to force the Quebecois to violate their sacred freedom and individuality. THE

PREPARATIONS FOR THE VISIT

The fourth cartoon (Berthio 1967, 66) illustrates Canadian preparations for the visit at the highest level and exposes from another angle the crisis of the Quebec state in the early 19605. The metaphor underlying the content of the message here is that Premier Jean Lesage is a chief of police showing two subordinates a portrait of the Marquis de Montcalm, the losing general in the Battle of Quebec in 1759. Lesage is ordering them to keep Montcalm under surveillance until after the Queen's visit. Security is to be paramount; even the dead need to be watched closely if they had the reputation of being anti-British. In their excessive search for security Jean Lesage and the police have even lost the capacity to distinguish the living from the dead. It is noteworthy that a crucial political distinction is sacrificed to security in this cartoon. During the Lesage years there was a constant battle of protocol between Quebec and Ottawa. The Quebec government continually sought to be an equal partner with Canada in diplomatic relations with French-language countries and to have the right to sign treaties for economic cooperation and cultural exchanges with other francophone nations. Ottawa strenuously resisted these encroachments and was reluctant to delegate its prerogatives to any province. But this cartoon takes the battle one stage beyond equality: to meet the security fears about the Queen's visit, the provincial premier appropriates the authority to give orders to the federal police. Lesage is not merely siding with the English in Quebec; he is taking over their power, to use it in their interests!

23

Relations with In-Laws

The form of the message is, again, the contrast between the state and the nation in Quebec, while the content of the frame is, again, carnivalesque. The central connotation is the paradox that the dead are being watched because they are still alive. The icons of an enemy regime, defeated two centuries earlier, may still have legitimacy in the eyes of the Queen's Quebec subjects. Once more, a politician unleashes a taboo (the RCMP) to threaten the relationship of a people (the Quebecois) with a sacred object (their own history). In this double violation of taboos, carnival is shown at the highest echelons of the Quebec state. In trying to maintain order, the premier and the RCMP abandon themselves wholeheartedly to folly. Ironically, they are unaware of it, for they are making every effort to suppress and not to embrace the carnival. The fear of disorder has evoked in the state a superstition and paranoia altogether out of keeping with the calm, rational public image of Lesage's "equipe du tonnerre" (terrific team). The once nationalist premier identifies himself with the British so fully that he takes the lead in keeping an eye on a French-Canadian hero. For Berthio, Montcalm is as threatening to the political interests of Lesage as Quebec nationalists are to those of Ottawa. The fifth cartoon (Berthio 1967, 64) gives another glimpse into preparations at the highest level as the royal couple are about to leave London. Prince Philip, who has a reputation for bluntness and for rebelling against protocol, is reproached by the Queen for wearing a shirt inscribed "Vive le Quebec libre." The Prince's upright posture allows him to announce his political sympathies with clarity. While the Queen is dressed formally for a state occasion, the Prince's casual attire carries a provocative and unexpected slogan. Although he tries to appear casual, his averted eyes suggest that he is sensitive to the reprimand. The Queen is depicted as formal, domineering, and humourless, tightlipped in response to an act she sees as childish. This scene involves a double taboo: the consort has taken a political stand, since he is supporting the French- and not the English-speaking nationalists. So there is an implicit parallel with the earlier cartoons of Levesque and Lesage. The Prince can choose to reveal his support for Quebec nationalism, but if he does, he will immediately lose control, since others may use his stance as they wish. His gesture will gain a life and momentum of its own. The content of the message in this drawing is that the Prince is to the Queen as Quebec is to English Canada. The Prince and Quebec each occupy second place in their respective hierarchies. Each is the

24 Carnivalization of Politics more spontaneous partner and, at times, a source of embarrassment to the more staid companion. Each is a supernumerary who desires more independence from the one who holds the reins; each frets under the constraint of upholding the dominant partner on this visit where only police and dignitaries will be visible. Like Quebec, Philip has decided to liven up a dull event, protesting his situation by releasing a powerful taboo. It does not, however, produce the same effect in the royal drawing room as the mouse in anglophone Montreal, if indeed it was intended to. The Queen simply dismisses it as an immature attention-getting device. By being deviant in advance, in private, and to a person who is not directly threatened, Philip defuses the power of the taboo and provokes no sacrilegious behaviour in response. His gesture remains private, contributing to the carnivalesque content of the frame without exciting the Quebec public. Quebec has different significations for the two visitors. For the Queen, it is a luggage label, one more stage in the everlasting round of dutiful visits, which are successful if there are no incidents. For the Prince, Berthio suggests, Quebec is a country that deserves to be free; and he is ready, at least in the safety of Buckingham Palace, to affirm this. Similarly, Ottawa is seeking a calm visit, while Berthio's Quebec prefers to shake this artificial tranquillity through carnivalesque gestures. The sixth drawing (Berthio 1967, 57) shows the preparations under way at the local police department. Far from the opulence of the leaders, the officers are reacting frantically to robberies, threats, attempted crimes, and FLQ terrorist announcements. They fear that when the Queen arrives the city will not be presentable. A principal agency of the state is in complete confusion, torn by the contradiction between its ideology of peace through security and the reality of a national awakening. Since the police cannot distinguish what is serious from what is not, their command posts are chaotic. What matters most to the state is surface order during the Queen's visit. If there are disruptions, order must be reimposed by frantic activity. But the contradiction is too great; they cannot distinguish what is important, and their efforts are disorganized. This caricature does not reveal who brought the taboo object, disorder, into the sanctuary of the police, making the worshippers of order leap into disorder. But the theme remains pervasive: the attempts to become presentable appear to be achieving precisely the opposite: ritual pollution and disorder. The police and the Queen are the sacred guardians of social order in their respective scenes. Previous cartoons showed the leaders decreeing

25

Relations with In-Laws

order by keeping themselves well-dressed and issuing commands to subordinates. Jean Lesage gave orders to the RCMP, while the Queen gave comparable orders to Prince Philip. But we now see how difficult it is to create order at the lower levels. Instructions are not enough, and the preparations for orderliness are themselves disorderly. In the unstable Quebec of the early 19605, only a facade of order can be maintained. The connotation, then, is that order does not exist naturally in Quebec. Governments attempt to produce it from the top, and while the uniform appearance of their agents is part of this order, it is not sufficient to ensure it. In this cartoon, the threats to order have been reduced to a series of similar pieces of paper that the police must carry from the temple of order to make it "presentable." The alienation of documentary reality is progressing: people and incidents have been reduced to a set of documents that must be swept away. But threats are appearing so frequently that the police who cannot dispose of them all show signs of physical strain. Berthios carnival has thus spread into the very heart of the police force, laughing at their frenetic and ill-directed efforts. The power of the word has once more sowed ruin in the state apparatus, which cannot distinguish between a suggestion and an action, between a traditional crime and a political gesture. Folly reigns when security becomes absurdly important. SCENES

DURING

THE VISIT

The next cartoon (figure 4) is the first in a series of drawings on the visit itself. The police are arranged in formation, displaying their numerical strength, coherence, and total lack of sensitivity, emotion, or humanity. Security must come first, and to maintain it, the authorities must surround the Queen with symbols of her own power. No trace of pleasure, welcome, or excitement should be seen; in place of the people, the Queen should see only two rows of identical statues. The police have overcome the chaos that reigned in the previous cartoon simply by closing their eyes to crime and disorder elsewhere and devoting themselves entirely to demonstrating their physical size and discipline. A wall of orderliness has been set up on each side of the Queen. Disorder has been relegated to the niches in its mortar, and the nation has been relegated to the corners that the state does not need. The metaphor in the content of the message proclaims that orderliness is to the state what disorderliness is to the people. The form of the message is, again, the

26

Fig. 4.

Carnivalization of Politics

The crowd gets ready to greet Her Majesty (Berthio)

opposition between state and nation: state and nation are now overtly opposed. In this cartoon the nation consists of distinctive individuals, while the state's representatives are all identical. Domination is most effective if the colonized applaud the symbols of their colonization; when applause cannot be evoked, the state tries to create the illusion of massive support. In this case, the Queen is surrounded by those who obey the social order and deny their own humanity. The Queen sees no subjects who might deny her power or sovereign status, because the state has superimposed itself on the people, leaving them only the social space for which it has no use. There they can relax in atomized disorder, enclosed in cages formed by the legs of the police. The police must stay presentable and rigid: their duty is to erect, in the name of security, a complete barrier between the Queen and her francophone subjects, lest their disorder should pollute her. It is noteworthy that Berthios crowd contains no "demonstrators" trying to attract the attention of the Queen or of journalists. Songs,

27 Relations with In-Laws slogans, and other expressions of alternative viewpoints have been rigorously excluded from this crowd. The relations between state and nation become even clearer when Berthio depicts other kinds of spectators. The eighth cartoon in the series (Berthio 1967, 59) shows a different section of the audience, which the state is not keeping in order: the English Canadians. As a welcoming throng, they are hardly numerous, and they seem to be strangers to the area; but the Queen would not notice that. When English Canadians come out to salute the Queen, the state can relax. Only two police officers are on duty; they stand at ease, their clubs out of sight, curious about this distinctive little band. These people are allowed to "demonstrate" and carry placards because their loyalty is assured. Indeed, by climbing a lamppost, they are competing earnestly for preeminence in their display of fidelity to Queen and state: those who are lower down grimace, while those who are above appear quite satisfied. They press closely together, clinging nervously to the post. Both their physical proximity and their undignified ascent run counter to the stereotypes of their normal behaviour. They climb in order to see and be seen better, although this is really unnecessary. Here is another carnivalesque element: to show they are on holiday the English break important social conventions that express their respect for others. As we saw, the Quebecois in the preceding cartoon (figure 4), remained, by contrast, relaxed and stretched out on the sidewalk, little caring whether the Queen noticed them. They brought no welcoming message, in spite of their reputation for warm hospitality. The only local people who had come in large numbers were the police; and as their disciplined gaze was fixed straight ahead they were unlikely to catch more than a passing glimpse of the Queen. But the police do look up at the English crowd, showing curiosity and no fears about security or their own lack of numbers; whereas they looked down at the French crowd, showed no curiosity, and masked any fears they might have had about security behind their great numbers. The English, then, are strange but trustworthy to the state, whose officials can afford to be relaxed when outnumbered by them. Since the French were, on the other hand, familiar but untrustworthy, the police could not afford to be either relaxed or outnumbered by them. The ninth cartoon in the series (Berthio 1967, 67) reveals a third section of the audience, consisting of francophone members of the federal cabinet, all looking very pleased with themselves. They also have come to see the Queen and to be seen displaying their loyalty. If a crowd

28

Carnivalization of Politics

builds up they will occupy the front seat; if not, they will be highly visible to the royal party and to photographers. There are no police in sight, since there is no need for surveillance or protection in this neighbourhood where the boycott is complete. These "federalists" sit on the sidewalk with their feet in the gutter like innocent children, delicately holding their flags, the Union Jack, aloft with fixed smiles on their faces. The royal visit took place toward the end of Canada's lengthy flag debate, when Liberal and especially Quebec MPS were leading the movement to replace the Union Jack with a distinctively Canadian flag. This portrayal thus overtly aligns the three Quebec Liberal leaders in the cartoon with John Diefenbaker and the loyalist anti-French elements in the Conservative Party who wanted to keep the Union Jack. The Quebec Liberals are thus shown as traitors both to their party and to their constituents. The content of the message is that the federalist politicians are to Quebec what the gutter is to the limousine. While the anglophones broke taboos on modesty and proximity to celebrate their reverence for the Queen, these francophone ministers break the taboos about the symbolic importance of politicians. One expects to see them as guests of honour at a banquet, yet here they are on the sidewalk like little children. Seated astride the gutter, they give the impression that they wish to be in the first row of a large and enthusiastic audience. Berthio has turned their festive air ironically against them. He emphasizes that at the moment of their expected triumph, they have simply made themselves look ridiculous. The crowd that they expected has stayed home, and their gesture appears infantile. While depicting the three federalists as traitors to Quebec nationalism, Berthio gives them an individualism that he totally denied to the police and that he granted only sparingly to members of the English crowd. The three have individual shapes and heights, heads and faces, even though their clothes, flags, and briefcases are barely distinguishable. This generous portrayal of the federalists as recognizable individuals is sharply undercut by the caption, which hints that they will be the only three Quebecois welcoming the Queen. The caption separates the federalists from the police, implying that only the federalists are welcoming the Queen voluntarily. The constabulary does not therefore share the stigma attached to the federalists. In the tenth cartoon (Berthio 1967, 63) we see another aspect of the degradation that Berthio heaped on francophone federalist politicians.

29

Relations with In-Laws

To carry the long train trailing behind her gown, the Queen normally requires the assistance of several servants, who are honoured by their close and visible association with her. In this cartoon, it is the three federalists who are lifting the main weight of the train off the carpet. But instead of standing in a symmetrical pattern in full view, they are crawling invisibly in an asymmetrical array beneath the train. We see creeping men where we would expect parading children. There is a strong hint of childishness and vulgarity in the federalists' position behind and under the Queens skirts, a position that is at the same time degrading to the Queen. This time, vulgarity is the chosen form of sacrilege, in clear conformity with the carnival tradition. Bakhtin cites the example of a woman who celebrates by feigning to give birth in the street and then pulls a shapeless object from under her skirt as the onlookers laugh (1968, 22930,248). This cartoon presents a grotesque parody of a triple birth or excretion in the midst of a ceremony. The arrival of the Queen in Quebec City becomes the occasion for her transformation from honoured visitor to royal buffoon, an object of derision for the very federalists who lick her boots. Carried too far, their gestures of personal humility become a parodic humiliation of their monarch. They have invaded her personal space, turning adoration into sacrilege. But in spite of the humiliation, the Queen continues her ceremonial advance with a smile. From another viewpoint, there is a visual parallel between the Queen and a python representing the English Canadian world that has swallowed the innocent Quebecois federalists who are open to assimilation. The royal smile then has a very different signification, that of one that follows an excellent meal. Berthio completes his analysis of state and nation in the eleventh cartoon (1967, 62) with an imaginary scene sketching what would have happened if the Queen had strolled unprotected in Quebec. Stripped of the red carpet and protocol, she would have encountered the warm interest of Quebec's ordinary people, who would have shown a naive curiosity about her person and what she represented. But they would soon have found that she had come to sell cooperative federalism, Lester Pearson's formula for federal-provincial collaboration. The Queen would have shown no interest in "her" people, in fact, but would have stayed within her role, as impersonal as her portrait on a banknote. The state would still have maintained its distance from the nation, refusing the friendly confusion offered by the crowd.

30

Carnivalization of Politics

The content of the message here is that the Queen stands to the federal government as the worker to the employer: she is for hire. The symbols of the state, including the monarch herself, are for rent by the English rich; she is here for publicity, not conviviality. It is ironic that when the walls are removed, cooperative federalism leads to proximity but not to collaboration. The francophones are consistently expected to cooperate passively so the anglophones can celebrate federalism. When the state is absent the carnival begins. The people take over the Queen, who has become superhuman in size yet subhuman in her occupation. At the time of this cartoon, "la reine sandwiches" were being advertised in fast-food outlets in Quebec City, and the caption develops the incongruity: the Queen is a form of packaged nourishment, of government-sponsored, franglais fast food, the worlds biggest hot dog. The crowd shows its appreciation. The Queens smile in the previous cartoon was her response to a good meal, and this crowd is anticipating one too. The carnivalesque end is approaching; the monarch is about to be transformed into a queen-sized sandwich, an enormous, instant, collective meal, which the people will savour with admiration, before consuming with delight (see Bakhtin 1968, 199—202). In so doing, they will celebrate the end of cooperative federalism, the old regime associated with the interests of English Canadians. THE END AND THE AFTERMATH

The twelfth drawing (Berthio 1967, 65) shows that the Queen has had enough. The threats of separatists like Marcel Chaput frighten her, as they frighten all Berthio's English, forcing her, uncharacteristically, to hide under her bed. But her protective cordon of officers has evaporated, and to compound the nightmare, when she abandoned her official role two hotel employees became the enforcers; they are now taking on the posture, appearance, and actions of police dealing with a resistant demonstrator. They seize her leg, bend it terribly and drag her from her refuge in order to club and possibly rape her with a broom. Her cries do not induce them to relax their efforts. The carnival is reaching its triumphant climax as its queen is beaten and torn to pieces. The connotations are striking. Even the most highly placed and bestprotected Briton is beginning to believe that the cost of upholding the ethnic hierarchy in Quebec is too high. The English Montrealers who leapt on the table are matched by a monarch who dives under the bed. English power, for Berthio, is not unshakeable; the words of Levesque

3i

Relations with In-Laws

or Chaput can topple it faster than the deeds of terrorists. The last defenders of English power will be the francophone petty officials, who will forcibly prop up the Queen herself, if she threatens to yield to the charms of disorder. The thirteenth cartoon (Berthio 1967, 68) shows Jean Lesage on vacation in Rome after the Queens visit. Lesage is looking through a row of pillars held by human hands, as police would hold billy clubs. The caption "Roman holiday" recalls the links between two imperial epochs, as does the identification of pillars with billy clubs, which dominates the scene. The choice of Rome is not accidental. The connotations are again very rich. First, Jean Lesage is pictured as a devoted admirer of the state, its repressive power, and its physical monuments. Second, the Roman holiday connotes not only travel and classical civilization, but also the sacrifice of gladiators to amuse the power-holders and to distract a discontented populace. And third, since the sky traditionally signifies heaven, Lesage is looking through and beyond order and seeing heaven. Order is represented by the evenly spaced, disciplined police and not the individualistic, disorderly public. SOCIAL SPACE IN

BERTHIO'S

CARTOONS

My analysis of the metaphors in Berthio's cartoons is linked with his use of vertical space to reveal his spatial model of the social hierarchy. English Canadians appear in two cartoons (the first and eighth), elevated above ground level. Quebecois are subdivided into three groups, which occupy different spots. The police make five appearances (in the third, fourth, sixth, seventh, and eighth), always upright at ground level and thus below English Canadians. Ordinary citizens are found upright at ground level three times (in the second, third, and eleventh) and once lying on the floor (in the seventh). Federalist politicians are shown twice on the ground, once sitting (in the ninth), and once crawling (in the tenth). These numbers are tiny but the findings are consistent: English Canadians are at the top, followed by the police, citizens, and federal politicians. The connotations are that the higher locations are occupied by the state, the powerful, public order and private disorder, and British culture and the defence of homogeneity, tradition, and authority, while the lower locations are occupied by the citizenry, the powerless, public disorder and private order, individuality, Quebec culture, and challenges to tradition and authority. These clusters of oppositions form two

32.

Carnivalization of Politics

principal metaphors in the form of the message: high is to the state and the English as low is to the public and the French. These metaphors indicate Berthio's serious doubts that francophones were benefiting as much as anglophones from the rapid expansion of the Quebec state. The political and ethnic differences act as surrogates for social-class barriers in nearly all these cartoons: one notes, for example, the opulence (in the first and fourth) or the spartan simplicity of the interior scenes (in the sixth). There are three apparent exceptions to this very consistent use of space. First, the Queen occupies each social space once: she is well above the crowd in the eleventh, on the ground in the fifth and tenth, and recumbent in the twelfth. These positions reflect the cartoonist's contradictory portrayal of her as part symbol and part person. In the eleventh cartoon she is a symbol giving a front-stage performance and towering above the citizens. In the fifth, tenth, and twelfth, she is backstage. When she is backstage and in character she has normal height (in the fifth and tenth); but when she is out of character she is shown at floor level (in the twelfth). The second exception is the depiction of the federal ministers in the gutter (in the ninth cartoon) and under the Queen's skirts (in the tenth cartoon). These cartoons together with the fourth, in which Berthio places Lesage at ground level while reducing his federal counterparts to small children, are the only instances where politicians are portrayed as fools, even though this transformation is the stock-in-trade of caricaturists. The final exception concerns the single pair of attributes that do not fit the two major clusters. Such incongruous elements are generally the keys to semiotic structure. In the form of the message, the cartoonists main theme - English = the state = public order versus French = the nation = public disorder - is in counterpoint with a second theme English = private disorder versus French = private order. This is illustrated in the first and twelfth cartoons and in one other, the fourteenth (Berthio 1967, 41), which comes from the same collection but does not treat the Queen's visit. Here the French-speakers are secure and out of sight at the foot of a pole entitled "The Fall of the British Empire," whereas the English-speakers are very insecure at its top. Alongside the conventional social pyramid, where anglophones hold the few positions at the top, Berthio depicts a psychological pyramid which reverses this order. Although francophones are oppressed they are confident inside, while anglophones are privileged but fearful inside. Even though many francophones still support the English in their

33

Relations with In-Laws

present positions, they now face an independence movement that defies their stereotypes, and they cannot feel safe because they and their ally, the state, do not know the nature and size of this movement. Unable to tell their supporters from their opponents, they are easily surprised and confused, and they cannot respond rationally and effectively, as a result. BERTHIO'S VIEW OF QUEBEC'S POLITICAL CULTURE

We are now in a position to pull together the details about the content and form of the message, and to relate them to the content and form of the frame. Behind the variations in the message, one opposition is almost always maintained. Bakhtin (1968, 233-9,268-73) stressed that Rabelais used the carnival metaphor to criticize all that was rigid, out of date and taken too seriously. Bakhtin explained that rigidity is the clearest sign of a dying regime, while flexibility characterizes the new, untested one that aims to replace it. This transition is the central referent of carnival (Bakhtin 1968, 199,246,256; Frye 1957, 164-9). Flexibility is always associated with those on the carnival side in figure 2 (above); rigidity is the dominant, common trait of those associated with the ceremony. One might consider the police in the sixth cartoon to be an exception, but the possible flexibility of their bodies pales beside the rigidity of their attitudes and behaviour. In the context of 1964, Berthio identifies the sterile dying past with the Liberals, agents of the state, the Queen and the English. The living and malleable future lies with the nation and its agent Levesque. The federalists, the lower link between the two structures in figure 2, are ambiguous characters, since they have flexible bodies, but an extremely rigid loyalty. Their loyalty belongs to the English, although they do not oppress the nation. Whereas the English and the state are the villains, the federalists are only fools, laughable but hardly dangerous in their purely symbolic role. This fundamental opposition between the rigid and the flexible structures the form of the message. Closely linked to it is the form of the frame, a more complex but equally coherent division of family roles. The state and its functionaries - the police, the hotel workers, Jean Lesage - have the rigid traits of the traditional father, masculinity and authority; and they are associated with phallic symbols. Their masculinity and authority are symbolized by their work uniforms, large chins,

34

Carnivalization of Politics

and protruding stomachs; the dominant phallic symbols are the lamppost and the billyclub. The mere presence of these father figures contributes to social order, although occasionally they must use physical force. The other rigid person, the Queen, has the perfect posture and long and sinuous robes of a grandmother- or mother-in-law. Largely passive, she contributes to social order by her presence and example. The English Canadians are represented as father (in the eighth and fourteenth cartoons) or mother (in the first). The carnival myth leaves little room for the new generation to play adult roles. The Prince, Rene Levesque, Montcalm, and the Quebecois are therefore cast as the younger generation, flexible and resistant to their elders' ideas of order. They play tricks (in the first and fifth cartoons), become unruly (in the second), laugh at the adults (in the third), lie on the sidewalk (in the seventh), and approach sacred objects with fearless curiosity (in the eleventh). Their elders seek to restrain them by moral and physical discipline. As children in the carnival metaphor, they would kill their parents, destroy the rigid regime, and establish a new flexible society. Finally, the federalists occupy the special situation of the baby. They sit across the gutter and hide under grandmother's skirts. The baby has a special close attachment to her, but plays no significant part in family conflicts. Baby is too young to understand, less subject to social restrictions, and is thought amusing or cute when committing social indiscretions. In short, baby is not taken seriously (see Goffman 1979, 4—6). The metaphor of the family in its parent-child form fits neatly with the major oppositions in the form of the message — anglophone-francophone, manager-worker, order-disorder, and state-nation. While this metaphor is often found in the Quebec literature of the period, the novel element in Berthio's analysis is the assignment of the Quebec government to the same side as the federal government and the English. Berthio's critique accuses the Lesage government, which had sought to appropriate the state and put it in the service of the Quebecois, of being unable to break its deeply rooted links with English Canadian interests. The new father has become an ally of the grandmother, leaving the Quebecois as powerless children. This division of household labour could change, however, for the family metaphor is dynamic and can recognize changing compositions and developing interests. By carnivalizing the situation Berthio offers a message of hope. The regime of the ceremony has created a profound alienation in each group.

35

Relations with In-Laws

Its most remarkable fruit is the alienation of the Quebec nation from the Quebec state, which, it imagines, was successfully appropriated four years earlier. Brunelle later takes the same position: "By not establishing at the outset this simple distinction between recuperation as achieved by political power ... and debating as enshrined in the power of a collectivity to challenge the ploys of politicians, one simply cannot understand anything about history" (1978, 5, my translation). By reminding them that every ceremony has a carnival as its mirror image, Berthio reassures his skimmers that the Quebec nation can be reliberated. When the state is reunited with the nation, the people will truly become masters in their own house. Berthio's political outlook corresponded closely to the nationalist populism of the Parti Quebecois: "The focus of a 'nationalist populist' worldview is not on class but on a national collectivity that transcends all social divisions; the primary objective is not to secure a 'better deal' for labour, let alone establish a better 'labour-capital compromise', but to emancipate the national collectivity, and thus 'the people', from external domination" (McRoberts 1988, 282). Berthio's immediate community of interest (Press 1981, 60—2) was clearly the confident, committed Quebec nationalists. He expressed their deep revulsion that the repository of their political and social aspirations had disappointed them so dramatically within four years, and was ready to use its power against its own electors and culture (McRoberts 1988, 208-10,219). His mood was one of incivility and irreverence; accordingly he introduced taboo objects and laughed irreverently at the sacred to challenge the legitimacy of an authoritarian regime (Press 1981, 53—6). His irreverence parallelled that of Hubert Guindon (1988, xxvi), though Guindon and others emphasized that the new middle class and its bureaucratic order played a role in Lesages defeat by effecting too much change for traditionalists and the rank-and-file working class, yet too little for their own supporters (McRoberts 1988, 170-2). Berthio's world was relatively simple. Unlike Duncan Macpherson, for example, he did not have an elaborate menagerie of nationalists, revolutionaries, and terrorists in his cartoons. Those who were not agents of the state or federalist politicians were simply ordinary people. Quebec's many francophone groups were not dramatically distinguishable in his work. When subtleties were necessary, his characters carried placards or briefcases, but such differences were inconsequential by comparison with the overwhelming division between the state and the nation. Berthio's reference group or community of interest thus extended

36

Carnivalization of Politics

from the committed nationalist, who fully shared his viewpoint, to embrace all who were not servants of the state. At times it expanded even further to include the English. While the English were usually shown as the group in whose interests the state operated, on other occasions they too were depicted as its victims, oppressed by the very interests that were usually attributed to them.

3 Relations with Parents: Dupras Welcomes President de Gaulle

The most vivid illustrations of Canada's relations with its parent countries occur during royal and presidential visits to Canada, especially when these prove controversial. They have more immediacy than visits by Canada's prime minister to one of the parent countries, because Canada occupies centre stage when a parent visits and its people and resources are on display to a valued guest. Ordinary Canadians have the opportunity to observe the symbolic leaders of the parent country in action. The two major parental visits to Canada in the 19605 were at first glance striking contrasts. The Queen came to English Canada in 1964 as a beloved and welcome parent. She visited Quebec as a parent-inlaw, to relive symbolically the prewar visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, her mother. Times had changed: Quebec was engaged in a national awakening and remembered that the sequel to the earlier royal visit was a second bitter struggle over conscription. President de Gaulle came to Canada in 1967 in time for Montreal's Expo. To Quebec he was a parent who relived the 1944 liberation of Paris, symbolically, before a massive and enthusiastic crowd. The national awakening was now well advanced, with a newly created native elite and an alert, restless population providing the structural conditions that Guindon (1988, 27) considers prerequisite to national liberation. Conflicts of jurisdiction between Ottawa and Quebec had become commonplace, and a number of bombs had exploded in Montreal

38

Carnivalization of Politics

buildings that symbolized anglophone and federal domination. De Gaulle's enunciation of the nationalist cry "Vive le Quebec libre" from the balcony of Montreal's city hall so upset the leaders in Ottawa that he was asked to leave the country immediately. These two state visits were in some respects mirror images of each other, exemplifying the tension between the marriage partners, English Canada and Quebec. Each spouse welcomed its own parent warmly, but was frigidly correct toward the other's. Faced with this cold reception in Quebec, the Queen sought to be conciliatory and to express the dominant partner's interest in negotiating a more satisfying partnership. The president boldly expressed the frustrations of the subordinate partner, in a way that was interpreted as an invitation to change the marriage relationship radically, if not to abandon it. His cry was greeted with jubilation in some quarters and with fury in others. The repercussions lasted for some time. THE

CARTOONIST,

HIS

FRAME,

AND MESSAGE

Pierre Dupras explored and embellished de Gaulle's visit and its consequences in unusual detail. He produced a series of one hundred cartoons in his book Vive le Quebec libre (1967). In the foreword he warns the reader that the goal of caricature is not merely laughter; indeed, some of the cartoons are not at all funny and might seem trivial, or even nasty. In the tradition of the Parisian chansonniers, Dupras sees cartooning as a form of political commitment, a commentary on what people do. Both the words and the actions of the principal characters are treated as subjects of satire. Fifty-four of the cartoons include a newspaper headline to which the artist is responding. In consequence, the text is often much more prominent than in most contemporary cartoons, and the drawing may be crowded into one corner. Dupras relies on the same frame as Berthio: the family metaphor underlies its form and pure carnival its content. Carnival again focuses on the temporary vision of a better future, but Dupras sees its realization as much closer than Berthio imagined. The ceremony of the Queen's visit is mocked - not from within, as Berthio's laughter subverted it, but from without, by showing how radically different a genuinely popular state visit can be. There is an alternative structure and alternative values, a limited period of iconoclasm, an opportunity to say the unspeakable, and, at times, a substitution of the bawdy for the reverential.

39

Relations with Parents

The carnival metaphor is particularly appropriate when the cartoonist is working as part of the revolutionary opposition to an authoritarian regime. Not all cartoonists work in such situations or define themselves as Berthio did in the mid-1960s. Thus it remains to be seen how far carnivalization is a recurrent attribute of Quebec cartooning, and whether English Canadian cartooning differs in this regard, although preliminary results (Morris 1992) do suggest that when carnivalization occurs in (English) Canadian cartoons it is viewed much more negatively by the artist. Dupras' work forms an interesting initial test of the generality of carnivalization. He celebrated a very different type of state visit, at a time when the Rassemblement pour 1'Independance Nationale, the precursor of the Parti Quebecois, was becoming well-established and when Premier Daniel Johnson was claiming "Equality or Independence" for Quebec. Dupras shared Berthio's profound distaste for anglophone domination of Quebec. He saw de Gaulle's visit as the sparkplug of a national awakening, an irreversible mental liberation for the Quebecois. He believed the deterioration of the old regime had proceeded so far that the authorities would be unable to reimpose their order. Although the president's visit was brief and quickly curtailed by the federal government, the damage to traditional Quebec quietism was, in Dupras' view, irreparable. The old form of government could not merely be ridiculed; it could be toppled, as part of a search for new middle-class values and role models that French Canada's cultural traditions could not provide (Guindon 1988, 36). The content of Dupras' message is very consistently that of liberation from a rotten regime. The giant grandparental figure of the French president strides on stage to a tumultuous welcome, proclaiming freedom for Quebec and permanently changing French-English relations in Canada. The liberation and carnival metaphors that compose the message are both examples of an archetypal narrative in which a rigid old regime is replaced by a flexible new one, which Frye (1957, 189-93) calls the myth of the old king. However, the metaphors differ in that liberation involves a specific hero and represents the change as permanent, whereas carnival gives credit to the people and is less clear that the change will endure. Like Berthio, Dupras promoted a populist nationalism "rooted in culture and politics, but with a program sufficiently ambiguous as both to deny social classes and to integrate firmly class interests, all in the name, naturally, of the nation as a whole, indivisible in principle,

40

Carnivalization of Politics

Fig. 5. Relationships among the main characters in Dupras' work

fragmented in practice" (Laliberte 1978, 92). His work drew explicitly on the conservative nationalism of de Gaulle and of Canon Groulx, who had been a right-wing voice in the wilderness until the new middle class resurrected his ideas (Guindon 1988, 30; Delisle 1992, passim). Guindon argued (1988, 42-4) that the new middle-class leadership of Quebec nationalism was making alliances with and fighting against two adversaries at once: with conservative nationalists, such as Groulx and the Union Nationale of Duplessis and Daniel Johnson, against the economic power of the English and with the English against these same conservative nationalists, in promoting modernity and an active state apparatus. Its goal was to realize a middle-class vision of a modern state, using state power to expand job opportunities for francophones in both the public and private sectors (Guindon 1988, 51—2,62). The form of Dupras' message is a highly complex structure of oppositions, much more elaborate than Berthio's simple contrast between the state and the nation. It can again be depicted by two complementary semicircles (figure 5) corresponding, as in figure 2 (chap. 2), to the ceremony and the carnival, but Dupras' cast is numerically much richer, each position holding a number of persons with the same traits. The villains' and traitors' area on the left-hand side of the diagram contains, in descending order of power, the Queen and President Johnson; Lester Pearson; the Quebec federalists, who include formerly nationalist Jean Lesage; and the Maudit Anglais. Opposite is the heroes' area, occupied by President de Gaulle; Premier Johnson and the Union Nationale; the

4i

Relations with Parents

Quebec people; and the symbolic Quebec patriot. Each faces a symbolic polar opposite with matching characteristics. At the foot is the fools' area. The good fools are the police, confused by the contradiction between their responsibilities during the Queens and the president's visits. The bad fools are the assimilated francophones from Ontario and Acadia, who are shown betraying Quebec nationalism by their ignorance. THE

EARLY STAGES OF THE

VISIT

Sixteen cartoons relate to the early stages of de Gaulle's visit: the journey across the Atlantic, the arrival in Quebec, and the triumphant journey through excited crowds to Montreal. The dominant character is clearly de Gaulle himself, who appears in twelve of the sixteen drawings. The Quebec premier, Daniel Johnson, and the crowd appear in four each, while the Queen is seen in two and mentioned in two others. The major form of the message here is the contrast between the success of the president's visit and the failure of the Queen's: this contrast underlies seven of the sixteen drawings. Five oppositions between President de Gaulle and Queen Elizabeth are prominent. The president is generally upright (in 10 of the 12) and readily visible (in 12); the Queen is either seated (in 2 of the 4) or invisible (in 2). Compared to others, de Gaulle is unusually tall (in 6 of 6), whereas the Queen is average or short (in 4 of 4). The president offers protection to Johnson (in 3 of 4) but needs none himself (in 9 of 12), while the Queen does need protection in Quebec (in 3 of 3). De Gaulle is triumphant (in 4 of 4), while the Queen is weary and defeated (in 3 of 3). The president, then, is depicted as Quebec's beloved father, the Queen as the mother-in-law, well aware that she is unwelcome. The links between being an in-law and needing protection are stressed in several drawings. De Gaulle remains on his battleship when in "federal territory," and the Queen is offered a bullet-proof riot-squad vehicle and Joan of Arc's old armour for her next state visit. The oppositions between de Gaulle and Daniel Johnson occur in three respects. The president wears white (in 10 of 12), while the premier is always in black (in 4 of 4). In relation to others de Gaulle is tall (in 6 of 6), Johnson average or short (in 3 of 3). Finally, de Gaulle offers protection (in 3 of 3), while Johnson accepts it (in 3 of 3) for himself or the Queen. As head of the Quebec household, Daniel Johnson is shown as cunning and instrumental in welcoming de Gaulle. The crowd, in white, are the young, innocent children.

42. Carnivalization of Politics The most conspicuously carnivalesque theme in these cartoons is the reversal of power and respect between anglophones and francophones, which occurs at least seven times: the Queen is offered head-to-toe protection; the RCMP fears that it needs protection in Quebec; Prince Philip mutters obscenities in response to the Queen's imperiousness; confederation is a rickety house that would collapse if Quebec withdrew its support; Daniel Johnson is important enough to call President de Gaulle, but Lyndon Johnson is not. The main supporting carnival theme is the obvious joy of the Quebecois, depicted in six cartoons. THE MONTREAL SPEECH

The slogan that dominated de Gaulle's Montreal speech itself is the subject of five cartoons. President de Gaulle is of course the central character; his supporting cast consists of two servants, along with Daniel Johnson, Canon Groulx the prewar nationalist historian, Pierre Bourgault the leader of the independentists, and the French army of liberation from World War II. Once more the president is a tall figure in white who stands erect and gives orders. The contents of the messages in these drawings convey several ideas. First, words are powerful because they inspire action: the president has time to listen to the words which Bourgault suggests for his speech in Montreal; the liberation of France is implicitly parallel to the nonviolent overthrow of English power in Quebec. When the court declares independentist bumper stickers legal, de Gaulle orders his chauffeur to put two on his official limousine. The independentist slogan is likened to a giant balloon, exploding and causing reverberations in heaven where Canon Groulx, dressed in white like de Gaulle, is overjoyed. The second message is that de Gaulle is using the resources of the Quebec and French states to wage war on the status quo. The president, always in military uniform, is commanding his own servants and those of his hosts; he is often addressed as "Mon general." Two of the cartoons allude to bombs and military liberation. This war on the status quo is in complete contrast to the drawings of the Queen's visit, where Berthio and Dupras portray the state waging war on the people of Quebec and their liberty. The third message is that the French president is following the ideas, if not the specific urging, of the main nationalist figures: Canon Groulx, Daniel Johnson, and Pierre Bourgault. Johnson and Bourgault are explicitly shown as initiators or coconspirators. The fourth message is

43 Relations with Parents that the president is defying diplomatic protocol to take public stands on important issues during his state visit. These four messages are all coherent, focusing on the reappropriation of the state by nationalists, through de Gaulle's initiative. This inverts the ceremonial social order for the limited duration of the official visit. The fifth message is altogether different. While the crowd warmly supports the president's and the nationalists' subversive activities, it is clear that the minor officials do not. The two servants follow orders solemnly and without the enthusiastic sense of licensed release that Dupras finds in the crowd. The army officers following de Gaulle into Paris show no thrill about this historic event. Their attitude recalls the antinationalism of Berthio's petty francophone officials and contrasts forcefully with the eager celebration by the general public of what they assume is a short-lived vacation. A N G L O P H O N E REACTIONS TO THE SPEECH

Dupras portrays anglophone reactions in two distinct sets of cartoons: seven showing their actual response, and two showing what they wish they could do. In the first set, three categories of persons can be isolated: the anglophone leaders (Lester Pearson, John Diefenbaker, or John Robarts), who appear in all seven; the francophone federalists (Jean Marchand and Pierre Trudeau), who appear in three, and Charles de Gaulle, who appears in two. Daniel Johnson is absent from this set. The anglophones and the president are diametrical opposites whenever there are consistent differences. The francophone federalists are identified with the anglophones in status and appearance, but they are intermediate in their reactions. The colour scheme of the previous sets is maintained: the president is always in white military attire, while the Canadians always wear black civilian clothes. The opposition between a general and a politician is once more in evidence, superimposed on the oppositions between a French and a Canadian leader, and between a parent and his adult child. The moral overtones of black and white are much more pointed in the content of the messages in this series. Each anglophone is portrayed once as a true villain. Robarts is a tyrant who has bound and gagged the French minority in Ontario. Standing with one foot on this group's stomach, he insists angrily that the French leader's visit will not change Ontario's relations with Quebec or French Canada. Lester Pearson is

44

Carnivalization of Politics

depicted after Philippon's classic caricature of Louis Philippe, in which the monarch's face is gradually transformed into a pear.1 Dupras, however, adds a new twist: the pear is so rotten that its resident worm has deserted it. A parallel portrayal of John Diefenbaker begins with an angry man and transforms the Conservative leader into a raging devil. The other principal theme of the content of the message in these seven drawings contrasts control with lack of control. As the Frenchspeaking hero, de Gaulle understands what is being said; he remains calm and in command; he is powerful and articulate in conveying a message that is represented as his own. The anglophones on the other hand are the villains who do not know enough French to understand the presidents slogan, even though it has been popular in Quebec for some years. They are very slow to understand what is being said, partly because they have trouble believing their ears. As soon as the francophone federalists translate and confirm what is said, the anglophones become so uncontrollably angry that they cannot even stand. They are rendered impotent and speechless by these taboo words. The francophone federalists are located between these two extremes. They are quick to understand the literal meaning and broader significance of the presidents speech. As the conduit between French and Canadian leaders they are neither full of their own speech nor speechless. But they are full of another's speech, both in the sense that they are passing on de Gaulle's message and in the sense that its unexpectedness and its massive emotional impact make it their sole preoccupation. In one cartoon (figure 6) Marchand turns aside in despair to soliloquize that this is a catastrophe; how can he break such news to Pearson and Diefenbaker? Marchands problem is his identification with both sides. For a brief moment he is a tragic victim, turning aside from the action to lament that the unthinkable has happened. He alternates in these scenes between calm and despair, between being in control and being unable to exercise any control. He does not equivocate, distort, or modify the message, which he can hardly avoid translating in some manner. He does, however, dramatize his translation, taking up a flag and an exaggerated pose before satisfying their curiosity. Jean Marchand, then, is the married child, trapped by dual loyalties to a parent and a spouse who are engaged in vigorous verbal combat. For the anglophone spouse,

i "Une poire" also signifies a fool to the cartoon's skimmers.

45

Fig. 6.

Relations with Parents

"What does he say?" (Dupras)

de Gaulle in this set of cartoons is the forthright and interfering motherin-law, attempting to rescue her deserving daughter but misunderstanding the situation. Pierre Trudeau, who appears once in this set, takes a mediating stand quite different from Marchand's, that of the indifferent spouse who identifies neither with partner nor with parent and who avoids the intergenerational conflict and pain by continuing to read Playboy. The effort to maintain harmonious relations throughout the parental visit does not seem worth making, so he leaves the others to resolve their

46

Carnivalization of Politics

own dispute, to play out their little drama. Trudeau wears a polka-dot shirt, which adds a fresh element to Dupras' colour scheme: a mixed black and white or motley costume representing the political or public fool. Daniel Johnson returns to the stage when Dupras portrays how, in his view, anglophones would like to react to Quebec nationalism. Johnson would be caught and hanged for his defiant slogan "Equality or Independence," and de Gaulle would be reprimanded by world opinion and by his own parliament in France. Anglophones would punish francophones, as a traditional husband disciplines his wife or child who uses offensive language. The neighbours would rebuke grandfather for encouraging the wife or child to misbehave. Anglophones would be strong in action to compensate for their weakness in words, their speechlessness. French-speakers, who are so strong in words, would be weak when action was called for. The anglophones would have their feet on the ground and would be staying; the francophones, feet in the air, would be leaving this country and even this life. The English would see themselves admired and well-supported numerically in this instance; they would believe the French are alone and shunned. While in Berthio's drawings the English knew their position was insecure, Dupras' rich array of oppositions presents them as arrogant and ruthless. They respond to Johnson as a traitor or child murderer. Spousal murder is considered to be justified when it is committed in response to blatant infidelity or a vicious assault or to an insult to the gods so severe that divine retribution might destroy the whole tribe. The temporary banishment of a parent-in-law similarly bespeaks a critical rupture of intimate social relationships. Dupras portrays the banishment as a ridiculous over-reaction: in one cartoon Pearson jumps up and down and screams at de Gaulle; in another a tiny Pearson and a tiny Diefenbaker throw mud at de Gaulle's white outfit. Here we have another indication that taboo words destroy the veneer of a people who think themselves the embodiment of calm and reason. F R A N C O P H O N E REACTIONS TO THE SPEECH

Twelve cartoons focus on francophone reactions to de Gaulle's speech. These do not portray any English Canadians. The content of Dupras' message is that, as foreigners who do not understand the president's

47

Relations with Parents

message, the English are a source of discomfort and tension. They have shown their insensitivity by erecting a monument to Lord Nelson, who had no links to Quebec, and by arranging for de Gaulle to make a major speech in French in front of it. The French leader is shown privately expressing relief that, thanks to the impact of his speech, he will be spared the "ennuyeux" English portion of his trip. The portrait of the president remains consistent: a tall military figure dressed in white who understands what is happening, acts independently, and takes charge. In this set of cartoons, however, he is usually seated backstage among friends, rather than standing with arms raised in public. The first scene shows de Gaulle under arrest with two independentists who are accused of shouting the same separatist slogan as de Gaulle, but the police officer who has brought them all to the station appears apprehensive about his achievement. Two drawings show de Gaulle relaxing with Daniel Johnson, explaining that he has said nothing revolutionary, and enjoying the prospect of leaving Canada without visiting its English bastions. The last drawing featuring de Gaulle shows hin\ laughing uncontrollably at the sight of Bona Arsenault, symbol of the traditionalists within the Quebec Liberal party.2 As de Gaulle's speech recedes in the narrative sequence of cartoons, the president becomes more completely relaxed. Initially he is ill at ease beside the two independentists and the police officer; he turns his back slightly, as if unsure of the reaction he has provoked. Although he is still solemn when explaining his meaning to Johnson, he relaxes quickly thereafter. The two independentists, dressed simply in white trousers, accept the consequences of expressing their political convictions in public. Daniel Johnson, still in black civilian clothes, supports de Gaulle and is convinced that the people of Quebec have not been shocked by de Gaulle's behaviour. Johnson's black clothing indicates, however, that his support is not altogether altruistic: the electoral advantages he draws from the presidential visit are enhanced when his rival, Jean Lesage, criticizes the speech. Johnson therefore takes pains to identify himself with the French president: he jumps into his arms and wears his outfit.

2 McRoberts describes Arsenault as "a veteran of provincial politics whose political worldview was probably not significantly different from that of Duplessis" (1988, 143). Many Arsenaults were of Acadian origin. For a fuller account of Bona Arsenaults career, see Belanger, Desjardins and Frenette (1981, 670-89).

48

Carnivalization of Politics

The federalists are more critical of de Gaulle. Jean Marchand tears out all his hair, and Jean Drapeau identifies himself with Canadian unity by wrapping himself in the new flag while Gerard Pelletier stands dumbly by. The three are dressed in black, but Drapeau's trousers blend into the white of a flagpole. All three are shown to share the anglophones' shock and displeasure over de Gaulle's use of the nationalist slogan, and they are isolated and speechless. Lesage is portrayed as intermediate between nationalists and federalists; he claims that most Quebecois do not agree with the president's sentiments. None of these figures is novel, but fresh information comes as Dupras elaborates the range of his francophone characters. Three cartoons are devoted to the Acadians and Bona Arsenault, whom Dupras treats as their leader; one to ordinary Quebecois citizens; and, as we have seen, one features a police officer. These characters permit a more complex portrait of the spousal generation and a first glance at one of the children, the French minorities in other provinces. The police officer arresting de Gaulle and the independentists is in uniform, but without his jacket, and he is shorter than the two independentists and dwarfed by the president. The officer represents the "litde person," or child, among the police. Although he is following standing orders in making his arrests, he is clearly uncomfortable about his accomplishment. Something seems wrong - de Gaulle does not belong with the other two - yet the officer is careful not to question orders in public. His expression indicates that it might have been dumb to go by the book. By portraying the conventionally unthinkable, that a distinguished foreign visitor would be treated like a common criminal, Dupras underlines the irony of arresting demonstrators but honouring a visitor for uttering the same slogan. His police officer and president are uneasy, but the two independentists are nonchalant, as if it were normal to be arrested for this activity. Neither demonstrator is indignant or protesting. The citizens of Quebec are shown once in this set of cartoons. Their significance becomes clearest in contrast with the representation of the Acadians, the French-speaking minority in the Atlantic provinces of Canada whose ancestors were conquered and deported by the British before the French colonizers were driven from Quebec and Montreal. In the metaphor of the three-generation family that is the form of the cartoon frame, the Acadians are one of the children. In behaviour, the Acadians have little in common with the French leader; they are far removed from his discourse and firmly reject his

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Relations with Parents

attempts at liberation. The Acadians are irrecoverably submissive, primitive peasants who are surrounded by symbols of a dead tradition and who have changed nothing but their language since the sixteenth century. English Canada has won their gratitude and assimilation by offering them the dream of all Canadians - a free trip south. Acadians, then, stand for the unliberated French Canadians (Morris 1994). For Dupras, they symbolize and typify the person who rejects the liberation that the president has offered. Compare this representation with the drawing of ordinary Quebec citizens at the foot of Nelsons column. They wear modern dress, white coats and black pants, and they stand erect, not in a worshipful pose, before the symbols of anglophone domination. They openly discuss these symbols of past humiliations and their irrelevance to contemporary life in Quebec. By contrast, the Acadians' worship excludes discussion and makes no distinction between colonial history and everyday life today. The urban and technologically complex life-style of modern Quebec clashes with the agrarian, technologically simple life-style of Acadia; the healthy francophone culture of ordinary Quebec citizens is set against the unhealthily anglicized culture of the Acadians. Quebec has vital traditions that it is modernizing by desecrating colonialist statues and by rationally discussing liberation. Acadia has lost its historic cultural vitality and is surrounded by symbols of death: the cross, the declining British empire, a disappearing religious tradition, a discouraged priesthood, a dying language, the rejection of liberation, patched clothing, and an assortment of dead seafood. Symbolically, the Acadians are not only the babies in the family: they are also the greatgrandparents in their second childhood. They kneel in the dirt and mutter a confused mixture of English, French and Latin that makes little sense; they have learned very little from their sad history. The real and imaginary Acadian leaders occupy an intermediate place in Dupras' schema between the spouses and the babies. They are children, responsible in part, yet ignorant and playful. One Acadian leader, who solemnly intones his unliberated opinions, clearly cannot understand his people's usual view of their deportation. The other leader, Bona Arsenault, is depicted as a clown king with a baby's rattle, a bouncy ball, a broken sceptre, a dead fish, and other mock-serious symbols of the carnival monarch. De Gaulle has difficulty bearing the physical discomfort of his uncontrollable laughter on seeing Bona. Although the solemn Acadian child wears the black modern dress of the spousal generation, Bona, the comic child, wears the traditional mixed black and white

5O

Carnivalization of Politics

outfit of the jester and his mediaeval opposite number, the absolute monarch (Zijderveld 1982, 117-26). The thoughts, actions, and props of the two Acadians are all childish, although their appearance is mostly adult. Bona, who is a large child, is contrasted with the president, who thinks him too large to be cute. But Bona presents himself as serious and dresses like the ruler of a mediaeval court, his hands showing his permanent symbolic control over church, economy, and state, even though he represents only a small powerless people who are not free and do not in fact have their own state. Bona is an old-fashioned amateur ruler who hurts his image by displaying his own inferiority with great seriousness, without recognizing that he is creating a comic effect. On the other hand, the president does not present himself as serious in this set, even though he represents a large people, powerful and free, who do have their own state. He wears contemporary attire, and uses his hands to show a real but only temporary lack of control over mind and body. As a modern, professional ruler off duty, he can afford to hurt his body by laughingly displaying his own superiority. We can see, then, that the complexity of the form of Dupras' message, the oppositions that convey its content of liberation, do not alter Dupras' frame. The carnival content and family form are retained, though here Dupras' metaphor of the family is more elaborate than in any other set. ASSESSING THE EFFECTS

WITHIN

QUEBEC

The next set of twenty-seven cartoons assesses the impact of the visit on Quebec politics. The ordinary citizens are shown briefly as unable to account for what has happened, yet they are expected to tidy up the fallout. A group of workers is charged with replacing all the Englishlanguage signs with French ones Jong the route the president has travelled. The workers show no awareness that their task is significant; it is only a source of income, not an act of national awakening. A pair of gravediggers comments that Guy Favreau must have turned over in his grave during de Gaulle's speech, but they perceive no revolutionary implications in it. A police officer is puzzled but not indignant about the cost of security during the Queen's visit. Thus while middle-class public employees were a major driving force behind the Quiet Revolution (Guindon 1988; Coleman 1984), as Dupras and Berthio see it, their

5i

Relations with Parents

working class counterparts do not appreciate the gift of liberation that their presidential visitor brought. The metaphor of a gift is the content of the message in seven of the eight cartoons showing de Gaulle himself. The tall military gentleman in white bequeaths a plastic bomb, his clothes, his pouch, his height, and lessons in deportment for a head of state. His gifts nearly always disturb the status quo (seven times), generally after he takes the initiative (five times). He usually acts or speaks in favour of Daniel Johnsons aspirations for a politique de grandeur (five times), and he helps to exaggerate Johnson's modest height in order to protect Johnson symbolically from danger and opposition (six times). In this series the president's opposite is the mayor of Montreal, Jean Drapeau, who appears three times. Drapeau, who appears in black, acts primarily to preserve Canadian unity. This is perceived by Dupras as opposing Quebec's liberation, and Drapeau's other traits support this view. In one cartoon, Drapeau is shown as Judas, betraying Quebec in return for a position in the federal cabinet. The offer is hardly firm, since it comes from the party in opposition, the Conservatives, yet it suffices to lure the mayor into speaking against what Dupras sees as Quebec's best interests. (Ironically, Jean Drapeau claimed at the time to be speaking on behalf of Quebec to francophones in the "central provinces," but his silent and private activity within Quebec contrasted with his vocal and public actions elsewhere.) But Drapeau is a poor communicator: he is not understood by francophones to the west, nor does he understand nationalist aspirations within his own province. So his audience finds no interest in him, and many listeners fall asleep. The president, on the other hand, is faithful to Quebec's best interests, and he scorns both federal parties. He remains in Quebec but makes no ironic claim to speak for the province. His vocal and public activity within Quebec contrasts with his silence and lack of public activity elsewhere in Canada, and unlike Drapeau, he is a good communicator, clearly understood by francophones in Ottawa and fully grasping nationalist aspirations in Quebec. Jean Lesage and his accomplice Pierre Laporte are contrasted with Daniel Johnson in their reactions to the president's visit. Though Lesage and Johnson both wear black civilian clothes and are both of average height, Johnson hides on three occasions in de Gaulle's clothes, pretending to be a tall military officer in white. Johnson seeks to be a head of state, taking over the policy of aggrandizing Quebec's powers that was a major trademark of the Lesage government earlier in the decade. He

52.

Carnivalization of Politics

applauds the constitutional disturbance caused by de Gaulle's oration, accepts gifts from his French guest, and cunningly uses de Gaulle to make largely symbolic challenges to Lesage. Lesage, meanwhile, is losing his ownership of the policy of aggrandizement. He behaves like a petty politician, deploring the disruption of the status quo, so he receives no gifts from the president and is left on the floor while de Gaulle elevates his rival. At one point Lesage challenges Johnson with a shoulder charge and a clenched fist, but Lesage is unsuccessful in relying on physical force rather than cunning, and he cannot use Charles de Gaulle as an ally. The final pair of opposites are Rene Levesque and Bona Arsenault. Levesque initially wears white, whereas Arsenault remains in black throughout. Arsenault is firmly and volubly against "damned intellectuals," left-wingers, independentists, and others who disagree with his opinions. He seeks a homogeneous Liberal Party composed of men exactly like himself, and he physically prevents Levesque from speaking. But Levesque questions, albeit silently and not very forcefully, the compromisers, the middle-of-the-roaders, and the federalists within his party, while trying not to limit its diversity. Unlike Arsenault, however, his features change as the narrative moves forward. Dupras cites a newspaper that has accused Levesque of lacking courage because he did not leave the party, as Francois Aquin did, to protest Lesage's repudiation of the president's speech. Dupras backs this up by portraying Levesque in increasingly negative terms as his decision to fight from within the party becomes clearer. His clothing changes from white to striped and then to black, and his words from a critical questioning of protest to a lengthy, strident self-justification. He moves from the distant background to the foreground, from an inconspicuous spot among several leading figures to a position as soloist in the limelight. The gag over his mouth becomes larger and more permanent, and he is no longer able to smoke as a result. Dupras' message here is that the more firmly Levesque decides to remain within the party, the more surely he is silenced and isolated. Although he is loquacious in the final scene, he has only himself to address and he is alienated from his most characteristic habit - smoking. Since these Quebec politicians are almost all of the spousal generation, they are children in relation to the French leader. This can be seen in their relative sizes, the childishness of their rivalries and assaults, and in the efforts of Daniel Johnson to snuggle or hide in the parent's embrace or garments. One cartoon cites a clipping in which Johnson announces,

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Relations with Parents

"I am going to receive General de Gaulle like a father." As de Gaulle's opposite, Jean Drapeau avoids childishness in two of his three cartoon appearances; but in the third he is seen on the floor surrounded by mail, expressing bewilderment at the presence of a clumsy time-bomb. ASSESSING THE

EFFECTS

FRENCH-ENGLISH

ON

RELATIONS

Finally, there is a set of thirty-four cartoons that assess the effects of de Gaulle's visit on French-English relations within Canada. These drawings feature the main protagonists from the earlier sets along with three new allegorical figures. One is a heavy, ugly woman in white, whom Dupras names "Confederation"; she moves very slowly and is said in one drawing to be one hundred years old. An allegorical male figure, who appears in the white costume of the 1837 Patriotes' Rebellion in Quebec, could be called the "Quebec Patriot." His opposite number, who is dressed in black, wears a bowler hat, and carries a rolled umbrella, and who makes bigoted, provocative remarks against the French language and those who speak it, will be called the "Maudit Anglais." Dupras builds a double signification into the figure of his Quebec Patriot, who contradicts the Maudit Anglais and negates Confederation (Greimas and Courtes 1982, 308—18). His only interaction with Confederation refers to the past: the Patriot is shown moving along a tightrope from a pole marked "1867" to one marked "1967," carrying Confederation on his back. If one or both should fall, the United States is waiting far below to catch them. The Patriot wears white, looks downcast and asks why it is always his job to protect and support Confederation. Her elegant dress and jewellery suggest that she is the idle or helpless boss. The Patriot interacts with his contradiction, the Maudit Anglais, in three cartoons, which are diachronic narratives set in contemporary surroundings. The Patriot's opponent is active, younger than Confederation, and in better health. The Patriot apparently changes substantially in his new surroundings, although one can draw only tentative conclusions from this tiny sample. Dupras employs a diachronic form in only seven of the one hundred cartoons that explore de Gaulle's visit. Two show the anger of Diefenbaker and the rottenness of Pearson in the wake of the president's speech; two show the crumbling of the Maudit Anglais' air of decency and sang-froid; and these three show the new, aggressive triumph of the Quebec Patriot over the Maudit Anglais'

54

Fig. 7.

Carnivalization of Politics

The two solitudes (Dupras)

habitual arrogance. The mild, suffering servant of the past has a new air of self-confidence - and his trousers change from white to black. While never starting a fight, he now reacts violently and successfully to old provocations (see figure 7, for example) and establishes his right to be treated with respect in public and to govern himself.

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Fig. 8.

Relations with Parents

Interactions among Dupras' principal characters

Symmetry requires a set of political figures who correspond to these allegorical figures. Dupras supplies this by showing how de Gaulle's speech exaggerates the differences between Pearson's approach to Quebec and Diefenbaker's. Although they are alike in exploiting Quebec's good nature and in childishly resenting de Gaulle's intervention, de Gaulle's speech tears off their common cultural mask to reveal Pearson's weak corruption and Diefenbaker's nastiness. In these later representations, Pearson is calm, dressed in pinstripes with eyes shut, passively accepting whar has happened. Diefenbaker, however, is angry, dressed in black with eyes wide open, actively resisting the change. This contrast closely matches the contrast between Confederation and the Maudit Anglais. The changes in both the Quebec Patriot and the Maudit Anglais or Diefenbaker are attributed to the success of the president's visit. The newly found confidence of the Patriot parallels the unmasking of his counterpart. The Anglais' public tranquillity and sense of superiority are rudely shattered by the speech and by the Patriot's new response to provocation. The Anglais is now inwardly turbulent, unable to cope calmly with equality between the language groups. This contrasts strongly with the public excitability and private calm of the president, in command of the emotional crowd and at peace with himself and with the Patriot. We have already seen the same contrast in Berthio's drawings. The structure of relationships among Dupras' characters is complex, but the patterns become apparent when the characters are arranged in a sociogram showing who appears and interacts with whom (figure 8). One of the central features of this sociogram is the four-sided figure containing President de Gaulle, Lester Pearson, Confederation, and the Quebec Patriot. In figure 9, one connecting line has been drawn for each cartoon in which two of these four characters are featured together. When this diagram is considered as a semiotic square, it is easy to see

56

Fig. 9.

Carnivalization of Politics

Sociogram of Dupras' central characters

that both possible relations of negation — between Confederation and Charles de Gaulle, and between the Quebec Patriot and Lester Pearson - are depicted at least twice in the series. Similarly, both relations of contradiction - between Confederation and the Quebec Patriot, and between de Gaulle and Pearson - are depicted at least twice. The axes of this square contrast francophones with anglophones horizontally and current political chiefs with past allegorical figures vertically. It is also clear from this diagram that the relations of implication between Canada and its present leader or between Quebec and its contemporary champion are never depicted. In Dupras' world the characters meet both their symbolic and their material opposites, but they never interact with their own analogues. The oppositions are spelled out, and the artist points up the contrasting traits of francophones and anglophones. But implication as a semiotic process is never shown. The relationship between an allegorical and a material representation of a nation, or between its past and its present, is not clarified in these drawings. A second semiotic square can be added to show John Diefenbaker and the Maudit Anglais (figure 10). It is apparent again in this second square that Dupras depicts all the relations of negation and contradiction, while avoiding the relations of implication. The correspondence between any political chief and the matching symbolic persona is left for the skimmer to explicate, and the exactness of the correspondence is not explored. Quebec's francophone leaders are connected with most of the national figures shown in the two squares. Daniel Johnson meets Confederation and each current politician, but not the Quebec Patriot, with whom he has a relationship of implication. Jean Marchand, a Quebec federalist in Ottawa, meets each politician and the Quebec Patriot, but he has no contact with Confederation, with whom he has, again, a relationship of implication. The minor figures Pierre Trudeau and Gerard Pelletier communicate only with de Gaulle and the Quebec Patriot, while Jean

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Fig. 10.

Relations with Parents

Twin semiotic squares: Dupras' French-English relations

Lesage sees only the Patriot. None of these contemporary Frenchspeakers is portrayed with the Maudit Anglais. On the other hand, Jean Drapeau, a Quebec-based federalist, encounters everyone, and he is shown at one point in a relation of implication, as we shall see in a moment. There are thus three principal axes of opposition: anglophones versus francophones, Quebecois versus non-Quebecois, and those sympathetic versus those hostile to Quebec nationalism. This structure enables Dupras to locate the anomalous Jean Drapeau, a francophone Quebec political leader who has succeeded even though he has shown no sympathy for Quebec nationalism. Dupras, who suspects Drapeau of seeking to resolve this contradiction by joining the federal cabinet, depicts him as Judas. But Drapeau becomes the reluctant host for de Gaulle's unforgettable speech. Dupras shows de Gaulle calmly emptying the open intestines of a deceased Confederation while Drapeau reluctantly looks on with prudery and revulsion. The mayor is thus warned that if he persists, his political future will be little brighter than that of Confederation. This is the only cartoon in which a relationship of implication is shown. By depicting Drapeau's childish innocence, the only ambiguous element in the series, Dupras locates him as a babe in neutral territory between two great opposing forces. The other Quebec federalists, whether exercising power in Quebec City or Ottawa, are classified as traitors. When they appear together they are shown in harmony, with nationalist differences put aside. When one of them appears with de Gaulle or the Quebec Patriot, he is in a relationship of opposition. The first general conclusion we may draw from this series of cartoons is that de Gaulle's visit raises old linguistic animosities alongside a new spirit of liberation in Quebecois and that the Quebec federalists, in Dupras' eyes, must ally themselves with the anglophones as a result. Francophone divisions are also intensified in the wake of de Gaulle's speech.

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Carnivalization of Politics

The second conclusion follows from the absence of relations of implication. Although there is an identity in Dupras' drawings between the material and symbolic realms and each allegorical figure is clearly embodied in certain political leaders, the politicians usually do not meet their symbolic counterparts. (The only exception occurs involuntarily when de Gaulle forces Drapeau to face the fatal illness of Confederation.) By this rule, since the Quebec federalists meet the Quebec Patriot but not Confederation, we may conclude that the federalists are located on the English side of the divide by Dupras. Third, the characters encounter very diverse environments. Excluding the ambiguous Drapeau-Confederation cartoon, federalists are generally seen among their allies: in four of five drawings of Trudeau and Marchand and in three of four drawings of Lesage and Drapeau. While Berthio portrayed the federalists as children, Dupras shows them as generally protected from their opponents. Diefenbaker, however, is less protected; he meets six allies and five adversaries. Pearson and Johnson are even less protected, meeting seven allies in nineteen cartoons and three in ten respectively. De Gaulle is the least protected of all, with only three allies in fourteen cartoons. The allegorical figures live in a totally hostile world, facing only opponents one-on-one. As a result, they are the most adult figures and, in the tradition of the solitary hero or heroine, the furthest removed from political alliances or compromises. Dupras uses them to symbolize maturity and purity of principle. The fourth conclusion relates to the double opposition between francophone and anglophone and between nationalist and federalist. The Quebec Patriot is decisive in dealing with the Maudit Anglais, who denies his language and ridicules his ethnic origin. The Patriot responds with physical gestures, even when outnumbered, and emerges the victor. But he is much less comfortable when faced with political decisions. Most notably, he hesitates to execute Confederation when Drapeau pleads for one last chance to rescue her. On the other hand, Daniel Johnson is in his element making and benefiting from nationalist political gestures during the visit. He is fearful when he faces the ethnocentrism and especially the numerical advantage of the anglophone provincial premiers, and he cowers as they roll up their sleeves to obtain vengeance for the "de Gaulle affair." While the Patriot struggles against the ethnic aspect of English Canadian nationalism, Johnson battles its political side. He is especially outraged when Lester Pearson claims Canada's right to minerals beneath Quebec soil by urinating on a map and claiming that underwater mineral rights

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Relations with Parents

have always been a federal responsibility. From this perspective, Drapeau and Marchand are francophones whose political skills blind them to the importance of independence as a necessary condition for the freedom of an ethnic minority. They cannot see that to become fully adult, Quebec must seize its liberty.

4 Quebec and Ottawa as Spouses: Can They Live Together?

In the last two chapters we examined Quebec's relations with the parent countries through the eyes of Berthio and Dupras, two nationalist cartoonists. The head of the parent country was portrayed much more favourably than the head of the parent-in-law country. Berthio made full use of mother-in-law imagery in representing the Queen, while Dupras showed de Gaulle as the traditional liberating hero.1 Both these characters stem from the comic form of the myth of the old king (K. Burke 1966, 382-6; Frye 1957,164-76). Both characters fit the metaphor of carnival, although in Dupras the carnival ended when its king, de Gaulle, was expelled by the Canadian authorities. In the remaining chapters, we shall focus on cartoons that portray Quebec's relations with its spouse, Ottawa, and with its children, the English-speaking minority within the province. These cartoons are very different from the cartoons in previous chapters, for several reasons. First, the content of the cartoonist's frame for a topic generally includes a statement about the subject's position in the family-stratification

i It would be a mistake to suppose that the gender of each head of state is crucial to the success of the cartoon. While gender adds colour and piquancy, the underlying argument could be sustained if the gender of each head of state was reversed. French tradition contains several heroic women and alazon men.

61 Quebec and Ottawa as Spouses system, and Quebec plays the role of the spouse or parent, rather than the role of the child or child-in-law. This change is important because in relation to its parents, Quebec must occupy a formally subordinate position, perhaps well into adulthood (cf. Rosenthal and Marshall 1986). The resulting experience of social and physical inferiority can have a major effect on its view of its own position in the social hierarchy and on its approach to relations with its parent. (Schwartz 1981, chap. 5). Conversely, Quebec occupies a dominant position in relation to its children, and the resulting experience of social and physical superiority can also have an impact on its ideological stance. The second important difference is that the cartoons reflect the very different political climate of the 19705. In Canada in the 19605, state visits were a major spectacle because governments were lavish and political activists used state visits to draw attention to their claims. In the 19705, interchanges with the parent governments were private and low-key; after de Gaulle, no French president visited until 1987. Although disputes about language rights flared regularly, they did not attract much political satire until the Parti Quebecois introduced strong language legislation in 1977. Even then, most cartoonists treated the legislation as a comic monster with few teeth and saw little threat to English in its main provisions. Relations between Quebec and Ottawa remained controversial from 1960 to 1979, but the satire changed substantially. Central to the 19605 were Jean Lesage s campaign to augment Quebec's constitutional powers, caricatured by Berthio, and Daniel Johnsons quest for the symbolic trappings of sovereignty, caricatured by Dupras. But after 1966 there was little transfer of power to Quebec, and the Union Nationale and Liberal governments in Quebec made limited use of existing powers. The repeated failure of Quebec's constitutional initiatives in the 19705 increased the appeal of independentism (McRoberts 1988, 211-16,227), and the modernization that provoked these initiatives undermined the legitimacy of Confederation itself. Rene Levesque could not be dismissed as Canon Groulx had been (Guindon 1988, 28,51,126), and the rivalry and alternative visions of Levesque and Pierre Trudeau became central. While Trudeau reversed traditional federal policies by championing equal language rights for French and English in every province, and saw bilingualism throughout the federal government as the best way to offer new opportunities to Quebec francophones, Levesque and his supporters replied that Quebec should give the same priority to French that English Canada had always given to English.

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Carnivalization of Politics

The third important difference is that the triumph of the Parti Quebecois in the 1976 election transformed Berthio's and Dupras' relationship with the government and challenged them to lampoon the party that came closest to embodying their own aspirations. On the other hand, the more cynical and moderate nationalists, such as JeanPierre Girerd, were faced with a government that had overstepped the limits of their own enthusiasm for change. Each of these three interconnected changes offers a plausible alternative explanation for the shift, which we will see in Girerd, from a carnivalesque focus on parental relations in the 19605, the golden age of youthful rebellion, to a hyper-carnivalized picture of spousal and child relationships in the 19705. When we have examined the trend toward hyper-carnival in the drawings of Girerd, we will turn to one significant corpus that permits some discrimination among the three explanations: Berthio's drawings (1967) of the efforts of Jean Lesage to secure more independent decision making for Quebec. HYPER-CARNIVALIZATION

Writers on mediaeval and Renaissance ritual generally claim that our contemporary social structure is insensitive to the manifestations of folly. Zijderveld is particularly insistent: the jester has vanished, never to return, and to seek a contemporary equivalent is fruitless (1982, 123-30). Bakhtin thinks modern society is too fragmented and alienated for carnivals to flourish; they have become reified, more rigid in form and content, and they have been transformed into commodities and tourist attractions that are marketed for profit in countries where Latin culture remains strong (1968, 33—4, 171, 177). Turner (1974) is less certain, since he considers transition rituals a feature of all societies and analyses their liminal elements. But his only examples are from Catholic countries, one example from mediaeval times and one from contemporary Latin America. Goffman (1974, 1979), too, is less certain than Zijderveld or Bakhtin. But he does stress that rituals are always open to framing, keying, and deviant performances, including overt rebellion and quiet subversion through satire and parody. Even though carnivals have lost some central elements through reification, as long as humour remains an effective tool in struggles between social order and social disorder, carnivalization will continue to be a useful concept. We have seen (chap, i) that hyper-carnival retained three of the six key features of carnival, while quietly dropping the other three. It

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Quebec and Ottawa as Spouses

continued to invert certain social positions and values, to celebrate bodily distortion and indulgence, and to promulgate foolishness over sainthood; and it used these elements to promote the association of politics with foolishness. But popular participation and control, the focus on a joyful game where the citizens rejoiced in their communitas, and the idea of the immortality of the people, three elements that promulgated the virtue and short-lived triumph of the people, disappeared from democratic cartooning. In editorial cartoons these elements were inverted, and the citizenry was portrayed both as the victims of the present politicians and as the fools who would reelect them, or an equally foolish bunch, at the next opportunity. Hyper-carnival can be defined n Goffman's (1979) terms as stylized discourse about the carnivalesqu elements that lurk in events. On this definition, editorial cartoons are hyper-carnivalized, since they necessarily contain messages about the values that should underlie carnivals and about the features of politics that make it particularly prone to carnivalization and to keying (Goffman 1974, 41-82). Since the filters in hyper-carnivalization, unlike those in ritualization, retain whatever is playful, disorderly, and satirical, one would expect hyper-carnivalized cartoons to be original, zany, and heavily satirical, and to celebrate joyously the bodily imperfections, mental limitations, and pretensions of those they lampoon. But polyphony would be reduced (Bakhtin 1968, 7-20,215-31) since access to the editorial columns of the newspaper is narrowly restricted, and cartoonists are subject to certain ideological boundaries (Breger 1955; Press 1981, chap. 3-6). While carnival temporarily demolishes an outdated and rigid social structure and joyously mocks the solemn religious ceremony, hypercarnival undermines political decision making and favours a more hierarchical model, especially that of business (Morris I989a,i992). Politics is lampooned from the perspective of early capitalism and the bourgeois idea that talk in place of economical, constructive action is mere quarreling — wasteful, destructive foolishness. Cartoons, then, are a satirical antidote to the misplaced seriousness of political ceremonies, dramas, and especially campaign literature (Morris 1985, 158-60). Carnival offered its participants a limited period of license over unlimited space. On major festival occasions, carnivals could be found throughout a very wide geographical area, perhaps throughout most of what educated Europeans at the time regarded as the civilized world (P Burke 1978, i-n). But although there might be struggles to begin early or to protract the fun, the carnival's duration was relatively fixed and

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Carnivalization of Politics

well known in advance. As hypercarnivals, however, cartoons occupy a limited space on the editorial page, but they persist over a very extensive period of time. Both carnival and hyper-carnival show nature and social disorder upsetting culture and social order, but for different reasons. Both involve the temporary shaking of a rigid structure by people who are too flexible to accept it indefinitely and who are laughing at what they cannot overthrow. But whereas carnival was a popular movement of the people themselves laughing at the folly of the system, hyper-carnival is a commercially organized venture laughing at the folly of the system only in the name of the people, who do not themselves participate. The citizens were indeed dominant figures at the heart of carnival, since they occupied the key role of fool-makers through whom chaos temporarily overthrew social order. In hyper-carnival, on the other hand, the public are passive bystanders, fools and victims of their political chiefs, who enjoy laughing at them from outside. The role of fool-maker is appropriated by the cartoonists, who rely on their own professional judgment or on the advice of their editors when choosing the topic and content of the daily drawings. The cartoon is a professional product, packaged as part of a newspaper or as an entry in an anthology of caricatures, a commodity to be owned, bought, and sold.2 It might express widely held sentiments, but it is in no sense a community event or public property. In carnival, the people mocked the religious authorities. It is difficult to pinpoint the main beneficiaries, but they were probably the political power-holders, who, at the time, used jesters for the same purpose (Zijderveld 1982, chap. 3). Cartoonists working under an authoritarian regime still find the carnivalization of the autocrats very effective (Press 1981), but hyper-carnival is used in democratic regimes to mock the political leaders and the people themselves. The main beneficiaries are not immediately apparent, but on closer inspection they appear to be the economic leaders whose good judgment and constructive behaviour

2 Indeed, in 1986, while the federal government was proceeding with plans to set up a National Museum of Caricature in Ottawa, Canadian cartoonists were organizing within their professional association, the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, to clarify questions of ownership and to set prices for their work (Globe and Mail, 28 July 1986).

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Quebec and Ottawa as Spouses

are implicitly contrasted with the poor judgment and destructiveness of the politicians and the people (Morris i989a).

GIRERD'S CARTOONS ON OTTAWA-QUEBEC RELATIONS Jean-Pierre Girerd began his cartooning career in his native Algeria in 1956 and then moved to the American Midwest. He visited Montreal for the first time in 1964 and worked for Metro Express and several Quebec magazines during the era of the Queens and the presidents state visits. In 1968, he joined La Presse, a staunchly federalist newspaper, to replace Berthio and has been there ever since. Desbarats and Mosher describe him as able to "approach all subjects in an equally cynical and teasing manner" (1979, 237). The frame for Girerd s analysis of the content of Ottawa-Quebec relations is hyper-carnival, and in this fundamental respect it differs from Berthio s and Dupras' portrayals of the state visits. Nearly all the drawings of Girerd studied here date from 1978—9, when the Parti Quebecois held power and both Pierre Trudeau and Rene Levesque had powerful, enduring support in Quebec, often from the same voters (Bergeron 1978, 54). Using the metaphor of the odd couple, which subtends the content of his message, Girerd focuses less on the distinctive policies of the two men than on their mutual indispensability. Quebec and (English) Canada are shown, paradoxically, as distinct yet inseparable, ill-matched but matched, unable to agree either on living together or on separating. "Were he to return today, Lord Durham would no doubt be astonished to learn that, despite the application of his proposed remedy, his initial observation holds true. Quebec and English Canada still seem to be 'two nations warring in the bosom of a single state'" (Guindon 1988, 125). This is Girerd s theme, and it is also brilliantly captured in Les tetes h Papineau (Godbout 1981), where an anglophone and a francophone share the same body but find themselves so often at loggerheads that they eventually seek a surgical separation. Girerd explores the content of this message, incompatibility coupled with interdependence, through a wide range of rich metaphors: person and shadow, employer and employee, a pterodactyl, a cheeky underdog, a flag that moults, a minister of the environment who pollutes his charge, a premier who urinates on another's "Welcome" sign, a man who retains his umbilical cord, a fistfight over the foolishness of ethnic discord, displays of rivalry, and dogs that growl the names of national heroes.

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Fig. ii.

Carnivalization of Politics

Those two are inseparable (Girerd)

Political Postures

Since these cartoons are not ordered in a narrative sequence, we shall study them in four paradigmatic clusters whose subjects are political postures, Ottawa's initiatives, Quebec's initiatives, and public fables. The first cluster includes three cartoons showing the interaction and posturing of a federal leader with his Quebec homologue and one showing ordinary citizens celebrating their national holidays. In the first cartoon (figure n), Rene Levesque appears as Pierre Trudeau's shadow. Their bodies are almost identical, but their heads are easily distinguished. Since a shadow connotes a faithful reproduction and since the differences are restricted to one small critical spot, Girerd implies that the similarities outweigh the differences. But while each depends on the other, the shadow is clearly the lesser of the two. Trudeau's greater size, his three-dimensionality as a person, the greater detail in his features and his placement in front of Levesque,

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Quebec and Ottawa as Spouses

all underline his primacy. The shadow is often blurred or invisible and can imitate but never initiate. Moreover, a person can manage a shadow: Trudeau can manipulate Levesque to play on public fears, and by connotation, the more powerful federal government is better able to take initiatives than the Quebec government, which can only imitate. Rene Levesque is portrayed, then, as a tenacious follower, more dependent on Pierre Trudeau than Trudeau is on him. Since a person can survive without a shadow, but a shadow cannot survive the death of its person, the drawing implies that while their careers are inextricably intertwined, Trudeau is the senior partner and has more potential to survive alone than Levesque. Girerd inverts the conventional wisdom that these two are political opposites, so irreconcilably different that no elector can support them both, and he questions the popular belief that no negotiation between them can be successful. Their vows to rout one another seem to him hollow, for they are two representations of the same person, joined at the foot and moving in unison. Even the difference in size is superficial, since one is a scale model of the other. Under the heading "Two hyphens," the second cartoon in this cluster illustrates two formulas for conjoining a partially incompatible pair. Rene Levesque and Pierre Trudeau are, respectively, the hyphens that join sovereignty to association (to create the Parti Quebecois slogan relating Canada to Quebec after independence) and Canada to Quebec. The formulas differ in two respects. Levesque combines long words through his short, plump person, while Trudeau combines short words through his long, thin person. Levesque links abstract geopolitical concepts, while Trudeau links concrete geographical units. But these differences pale before the similar structures and the identical expressions of hostile distrust. Each leader seeks to reconcile a pair of opposites, and each reacts negatively to similar efforts by the other. The third cartoon about posturing depicts what a press release described as a "serene and cordial encounter" between Quebec's Claude Morin and Ottawa's Marc Lalonde, the ministers most directly responsible for relations between the two governments. Since the Quebec government was independentist and Ottawa was aggressively federalist, many skimmers would have been apt to dismiss a joint assurance of serene, cordial relations with a laugh. They would have assumed that such a meeting would be full of conflict. Girerd, however, again inverts popular wisdom by representing the press release as an understatement. His cordial Lalonde is thin, upright, with large pointed features, animated

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and interested, totally engrossed in his monologue. His serene Morin is plump, recumbent, with small rounded features, uninterested and fast asleep. Physically, they are an odd couple in many respects. Conversationally, they are equally poorly suited because the role of eager talker requires a partner who plays the good listener. In this instance, with typical irony, Lalonde fails to notice that his counterpart is not a good listener. Nevertheless, a kind of symbiosis is achieved because Lalonde's droning creates the lulling atmosphere that puts Morin to sleep. The fourth cartoon illustrates a display of English-Canadian patriotism. Girerd inverts the traditional idea that Saint Jean-Baptiste Day is a time for major celebrations, while Canada Day is just an extra day off work. With British modesty, a francophone puts a Quebec flag beside the flowers on her balcony. With Gallic exuberance, an anglophone couple cover their balcony with Canadian flags and add more to the top of their door. To underline this display, the couple stands together, arms across their chests like an aggressively smug, dominant group, while their neighbour adopts a submissive posture. In this rivalry, traditional British moderation gives way to a boastful American-style patriotism. Ottawa's Initiatives Two cartoons illustrate initiatives of the federal government, whose ostensible purpose is to ensure francophone participation in federal activities, thus undermining the desire for a separate Quebec. The first cartoon shows another official statement from Marc Lalonde, noting Quebec's ample representation at a federal reception for Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who has a typically Quebecois surname. But when Lalonde elaborates, he undercuts his own argument by hinting that this was accomplished only by choosing Quebecois as waiters. Girerd underlines several messages here. First, his focus on waiters implies that few of Quebec's notables are present as guests of honour. Second, his focus on employees implies that Lalonde thinks Quebecois are more interested in jobs, however humble, than in honour. Third, by depicting the stereotypical traditionalist who takes the persistence of the old division of labour as a sign that all is well, Girerd implies that some people would be elated by Lalonde's news. The contrast between the Ottawa and Quebec representatives is very striking in this drawing. Lalonde is tall and close shaven; he wears modern formal dress, does mental work, speaks official French, and occasionally slips into English. He provides employment, saying that all

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is well, although he knows this to be false. The Quebecois, conversely, is short and unshaven; he wears old-fashioned work dress, does manual work, speaks rustic French, and does not slip into English. He accepts employment, believing that all was well, and thinks this is true. The content of the message has shifted here from the odd couple to the master and servant. Inseparability and incompatibility are still the twin themes; master and servant need each other, even though they are too dissimilar to be compatible. Because social distance compounds their differences, only employment can establish a relationship between them. Lalonde underlines his power to favour Quebecois, but he fails to mention that he offers only temporary, low-status jobs. His humble servant takes Lalonde at face value and responds favourably. With this style of interaction and the citizen's costume, Girerd evokes a picture of political relations from the Duplessis era. He suggests that because the citizens of Quebec voted massively for the federal Liberals in the 19705, the Liberals reciprocated by steering government jobs into Quebec. The result is that there has been only one change since Duplessis: patronage is now general; jobs are assigned according to collective voting patterns, not the household voting patterns used in Duplessis' day. The second cartoon about federal initiatives shows Girerd's assessment, in 1979, of the impact of more than ten years of the federal Liberals' scheme to promote "French Power" by placing more francophones at the top levels in Parliament and the civil service. Although the caption "French Power" is the English term for an idea originating in French Canada and designed to benefit francophones, this highly imaginative drawing does not portray federalism as a formula for combining unity with diversity (K. Burke 1962, 357-77). It shows, instead, that the concept of French Power in the federal state involves many contradictions. The drawing shows three birds that lack recognizable features, but the caption tells the skimmer that they are Trudeau, Marchand, and Pelletier. They have bones but no flesh or muscle; their residual parts are hollow but tough, inflexible and enduring. These creatures with birds' wings, heads, and feet but human legs, thighs, and ribcages can fly but not breathe or eat. They travel in formation but cannot see or react to their surroundings. The skimmer does not know where they are going. They are leaders without followers, ancient but not dead. The skimmer has to suspend common sense and belief in the laws of nature, because these creatures defy both. The metaphor is arresting. French Power is a flying skeleton, a cluster of linguistic and political contradictions. It is hollow and insubstantial,

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Carnivalization of Politics

yet it persists and moves. Having life but no means to sustain it, it defies popular wisdom. It is altogether unrealistic, yet through Girerd's talent the glancer can conc e both its existence and its unreality. Nature has been carnivalized by ulture, producing a triple absurdity. Quebec's Initiatives

Five cartoons illustrate i tiatives that Quebec took in dealing with Ottawa, ostensibly to undermine the dominance of federal symbolism. The first cartoon suggests that the schemes originating in Quebec City are as contradictory and comic as those coming from Ottawa. The Quebec Minister of the Environment, Marcel Leger, is shown (mis)translating ecology into politics for partisan purposes. The caption stresses the minister's slowness to discover and attack the "true proble ." The picture is again rich in contradictions and irony. Looking very satisfied with himself, Quebec's environmental watchdog is polluting the air with his own pipe smoke and creating litter while claiming to clean up. When he finds a material problem, he responds with a symbolic act: to lower a Canadian flag, he climbs the flagpole to unfasten it. He chooses the hard way when a much easier and less spectacular way is available. Having a bevy of officials to undertake material acts, he is content to make only a symbolic gesture himself. Faced with a tough, challenging ecological problem, he offers a soft, hackneyed political solution. Contradictions, then, are endemic to both levels of politics. The second cartoon continues the theme of the falling federal symbol, a wooden maple leaf. Rene Levesque is shedding crocodile tears about the inevitability of Quebec independence, but his right eye, partly concealed behind his hand, reveals an expression of satisfaction, which one would expect from him. He presents independence as a legitimate event, in accord with the laws of nature. Once again, Girerd illustrates a politician (mis) translating ecology into politics to suit his own rhetorical purpose. It is autumn, Levesque is saying, and it is natural that the maple leaf, or Canada, will fall. If politics was a natural phenomenon, its symbols and relations would wither; and if Canada was a natural phenomenon it would lose its distinctive foreground, Quebec, and become only a background. Here the odd couple is shown syntagmatically; political arrangements will inevitably change but, ironically, not in the way Levesque expects. If the leaf falls, it will be replaced in the spring by a new one, making Canada intact again!

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Quebec and Ottawa as Spouses

In the third cartoon, Rene Levesque turns Canada's traditional gibe, what does Quebec want? on its head, expressing in English his perplexity over what Canada wants. His strategy is analogous to Canada's in two ways. First, he chooses English to ensure that his hearers will understand. Second, his stock question implies that anglophones are to blame for poor communication of their own interests. Girerds rhetorical answer to Levesque's question has the same tone, since it attributes independentist sentiments to anglophones, and claims reasonableness as a virtue of francophones. In the fourth drawing, which elaborates the contradictions in FrenchEnglish relations, Rene Levesque has stepped out of his car to urinate on a sign welcoming him to Ontario, but his action shows his disregard for Ontario and the English language in a way that embarrasses his francophone companion. He has acted like a boy — or a dog. Although he is a premier and although he acts like a person, turning his back to the road and passersby, he urinates on a public sign like a dog or wolf marking the bounds of its territory. As he departs he leaves something material behind, but only waste matter. He is asserting a symbolic territorial claim against the English message that the sign was beaming into Quebec; but because the claim is a personal and not an official act, it is too symbolic and transient to deface the sign permanently. In this cartoon, unusually, the nature-culture opposition is central. With its sign, Ontario has initiated, collectively and well above ground level, a public, cultural act that Quebec will absorb into its culture. Quebec responds in person and near ground level with a private, natural act that Ontario will absorb into its nature. By showing the provincial Liberal leader, Claude Ryan, as equally a prisoner of political dilemmas, the final drawing in this set reminds us that the opposition parties must also face the contradictions inherent in federal-provincial relations. Girerd drew Levesque as focused on Quebec's rebellion and incompatibility with Canada while degrading the value and symbols of mutual dependence, but he depicts Ryan as blissfully unaware of any incompatibility and determined to show interdependence as positive. As in the drawing of Levesque entering Ontario, Canada is represented in this final drawing as culture and Quebec as nature. Canada, represented by a wooden maple leaf, is rigid, erect, and dominant, while Quebec, represented by Ryan, is flexible, kneeling, and submissive. They are linked by an umbilical cord that is natural to Quebec yet foreign to Canada. It is difficult to imagine this cord as a conduit for food and waste since it appears to act as a chain. If the

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Carnivalization of Politics

economy is Ryan's body, his umbilical cord reveals how illusory is the mastery that Ryan claims for Quebec. His Quebec would be larger than Canada if he stood upright, yet Ryan continues to kneel submissively, a posture implying that the dependency originates in Quebec, not Canada. Public Fables

In the three remaining cartoons Girerd focuses on the general public and the problems they face in relating to each other across ethnic boundaries. In the first cartoon in this set, a Quebecois and an Italian Canadian agree on the foolishness of discord over a song, but their reasons for agreeing that sports and politics do not mix are so different that they come to blows in spite of themselves, using their strongly divergent valuations of Canada's national anthem as the pretext for their fight. Singing, which brings them together but also drives them apart, serves as a synecdoche for their joint activities. The second cartoon is reminiscent of Dupras' cartoons featuring the Quebec Patriot and the Maudit Anglais, but this time the arrogant anglophone becomes conciliatory as the francophone aggressively pursues his political rights. The two are contrasted in their facial features, height, build, clothing and props, and workload — the francophone is carrying two big suitcases - and in their ability to speak French and their readiness to take rapid physical action. As a result of an argument, the shorter francophone assaults the taller anglophone, moving him from an upright, superior, comfortable, and physically imaginable position to a recumbent, inferior, uncomfortable, and physically unimaginable position. The anglophone's demeanour changes from arrogance to humility, from rigid opposition to flexible compromise, from that of one who announces ex cathedra to one who pleads for approval. Since neither figure wishes to break off the relationship, even though they are incompatible in many ways, the Patriot's demand for independence, backed by muscles that he has hitherto restrained, allows him to reach his traditional and long unattainable goal of "special status" within confederation. The final cartoon (figure 12) shows a growling match between two dogs. An aggressive English dog makes a noise that could be construed either in natural or in cultural terms, as "woof, woof" or "Wolfe! Wolfe!" This creature looks like a bulldog, but it is only a mongrel, physically strong and bearing lower-class features like spots, stubble, and dripping

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Fig. 12.

Quebec and Ottawa as Spouses

The two dogs (Girerd)

saliva. The balloons enclosing its words and thoughts are shaggy and crudely shaped. A Quebec dog, which has the mien of a purebred aristocrat with white hair, no stubble, and no saliva, is at first surprised by the mongrels bark, but it eventually retaliates with a witty repartee that is unlike any conventional animal sound and can only be interpreted culturally, as "Montcalm." This word repels and silences the aggressor, whose tail droops as its opponent's tail rises. By delicacy and wit - even its balloons are clean-cut — it symbolically reverses the Battle of Quebec. RELATIONSHIPS AND

THEMES

We can classify Girerd's drawings on dealings between Ottawa and Quebec in two quite distinct ways by focusing either on the relationships depicted or on the general themes. Three different relationships are depicted: Ottawa and Quebec as spouses (in six of the thirteen cartoons), Quebec personified as a politician or an allegorical creature interacting with Ottawa as a symbolic object (in five), and Ottawa as a tall or parental figure confronting a short or a childlike Quebec (in two). As we have seen, the spousal depiction centres on two adults of similar age and size whose lives are unavoidably entwined. The two are often portrayed literally as husband and wife: Girerd usually shows them as neighbours, coworkers, or employer and employee. Even when their social status and power are unequal, as in a marriage, this inequality is not matched by major differences in size or age. The politicians who interact with symbolic representations of English Canada are all from Quebec, since Girerd does not assume that his readers are familiar with English Canadian political figures. Even his

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Carnivalization of Politics

federalists are cabinet ministers from Quebec. When neither Pierre Trudeau nor Marc Lalonde is the key federal actor, Girerd portrays Canada allegorically, always as an object: Leger lets the Canadian flag drop; Levesque warns that the maple leaf will soon fall from the flag; Ryan's umbilical cord is joined to a plywood maple leaf; Levesque urinates on a "welcome" sign; and "French power" appears as three pterodactyl skeletons (Trudeau, Marchand, and Pelletier) flying through the English Canadian night. Two cartoons use marked differences in size to indicate a parent-child relationship between Ottawa and Quebec. One is the federal banquet scene in which Lalonde claims that Quebec is well represented because all the waiters are Quebecois, a claim that pleases a very small FrenchCanadian drawer-of-water in traditional costume. The other is the cartoon comparing the mental contortions of Pierre Trudeau, who hyphenates Canada with Quebec, with the contortions of Rene Levesque, who hyphenates sovereignty with association in his referendum slogan. The prime minister is portrayed as much taller than the premier, and since the short words "Canada" and "Quebec" leave room for a longer hyphen than do "sovereignty" and "association," the drawing implies that holding Canada together is a more adult-sized challenge than choosing Levesque's option. Class differences in manner and clothing are never obvious in Berthio or Dupras. But Girerd uses these differences to convey the major theme of anglophone and federalist social superiority. Class differences never handicap and often favour (in three cartoons) Girerd's anglophones and federalists. The theme of social superiority is reinforced in five of the six cartoons showing size differences, where English speakers or federalists appear to be larger than their Quebec counterparts. (The relationship between size and social status is fully and convincingly explored in Schwartz 1981.) A second major theme, observable in nine of the thirteen cartoons, is the ability of independentists and francophones to disrupt the social order. Only one cartoon shows a similar anglophone initiative. In all instances the francophone disruption is successful, although some of the changes are subtle and largely symbolic. Others are shown as substantial, however, most notably when the Quebecois punches the English Canadian and threatens independence, thereby inducing the anglophone to ask with exaggerated politeness whether special status would still be acceptable. The inability of anglophones to stifle incipient change is a recurrent corollary of this theme.

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When the symbols of anglophone and federalist superiority are challenged by francophones and independentists, the federalist response is usually wooden and ineffective. Even so, only the most rigid refusal by anglophones to consider a special status for Quebec provokes sufficient francophone anger to induce tangible change. There is little reason to suspect that premier Levesque's hurried urination on the welcome sign will substantially alter Canadian history, and while there are multiple ironies in the caption's comment that Quebec's minister of the environment is finally attacking the real problem by dropping the Canadian flag, there is, again, little tangible change as a result. We have seen that Berthio treats slogans as powerful but uncontrollable forces for change, while Dupras focuses on one slogan whose impact he finds powerful and wholly beneficial. Girerd, on the other hand, underlines some of the contradictions in the federalist "French Power" slogan, which he portrays as empty rhetoric. It is an EnglishCanadian characterization of the mission of Trudeau, Marchand, and Pelletier; indeed there is no corresponding popular phrase in French. This absence of French substance in the slogan corresponds to the absence of physical substance in the three skeletons, whose characteristics are clearly inexplicable by conventional science and whose conduct can only be regarded as miraculous or magical. As a structure French power is only a living relic in federal politics and the federal cabinet, yet French power is well known and successful in Quebec. As a slogan, French power is the ideology that sustains what would otherwise be the deadest thing imaginable. We should notice also that in six of the thirteen cartoons, Girerd uses the culture-nature opposition to portray Quebec or independentism as natural and Canada or federalism as cultural. No cartoon reverses this association, which makes francophones appear as living, while anglophones are portrayed as dead. Since French power is bicultural, it follows that it is only half alive. It follows also that whenever Quebec challenges the status quo, its challenge strengthens nature at the expense of culture. Conversely, the one change initiated by anglophones - the dog who says Wolfe - would strengthen culture at the expense of nature. Quite consistently, then, increased power and status for francophones is represented as a triumph of nature over culture, the reverse being true for increased anglophone power. In a western culture that takes pride in dominating nature, the reassertion of natural elements is, symbolically, a reevaluation of the minority group s culture. An attempt is being made to reclaim the concept of nature from its ideological use as

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Carnivalization of Politics

synonymous with the inevitability and timelessness of capitalist culture. To be "natural" in these drawings is to subvert the anglophone federalist social order by becoming independent, by urinating on signs in English only, and by illustrating the artificiality of an umbilical link to a wooden maple leaf.

HYPER-CARNIVALIZATION IN GIRERD'S CARTOONS Since Girerd's drawings all include an important inversion of values, structures, or popular wisdom, the content of his frame is clearly hypercarnival. Girerd distorts the features of politicians, depicting them as fools when they engage in social dramas and ceremonies where there is very little popular participation or triumph. Only "Wolfe and Montcalm" show a trace of the joyous games played by the public in pure carnival. The cartoons show politicians or ordinary citizens, but never any interaction between them. The locus of carnival has thus moved. Carnival is no longer a celebration in which the people take over official ceremonies, treating as folly the solemn oppressiveness of their elite. Now, foolishness is in charge, and the fool-maker is the cartoonist. The public is either excluded or rendered as foolish as the politicians. BERTHIO'S CARTOONS ON OTTAWA-QUEBEC RELATIONS

Berthio's (1967) work on Ottawa-Quebec relations dates from the Lesage era, 1960-66, and is roughly contemporary with the Queen's visit. Our analysis of this set will shed some light on the merits of our several alternative explanations for the differences between Berthio's and Dupras' cartoons on the parent-in-law visits, on the one hand, and Girerd s on relations between spouses, on the other. If it turns out that Berthio's drawings on spousal relations rely on carnival as the content of their frame, the differences in era and artists will offer the better explanations for the differences. But if these cartoons appear to be based on hyper-carnival, the topic of the cartoon and Quebec's role in it will offer the more viable explanations. One of the earliest drawings (Berthio 1967, 26) focuses on Andre Laurendeau's move from his position as editor of Le Devoir to that of cochair of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism and on the perils awaiting a francophone in this post: the commission

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had conducted an extremely thorough review of French-English relations but conspicuously refrained from proposing a political structure within which change should take place. Equipped only with a bathing suit and a copy of his paper, Laurendeau, who looks straight ahead, standing on tiptoe, is set to plunge into the water among the open jaws of the sharks of biculturalism. The sharks' pose shows their eager anticipation: perhaps he has repeatedly delayed his plunge, or perhaps they have already devoured some who have entered this deceptively calm water. We can see clearly the symbolism of duty, represented by the copy of Le Devoir and the fixed gaze, located almost directly above the sharks, the symbols of danger: a prudent person would look down and withdraw. The outcome of Laurendeau's plunge would be a sacrifice, because the commission is depicted as political death, but the sacrifice is hardly carnivalesque. The subject of the second cartoon (Berthio 1967, 32), from 1963, is also bilingualism. Having set up the Royal Commission, Prime Minister Lester Pearson is faced with an ultimatum from Jean Lesage on the division of powers. Since there is only a name plate and a pad of blotting paper on the prime minister's desk, he is freed from paper work and can concentrate his whole attention on this one brief document. He notes that "ultimatum" is a Latin word and wonders whether the Quebecois are compounding the complexities of language and culture by speaking and demanding full rights for a third language. Pearson is showing the document to someone in the room, and to the skimmer, although only its heading and signature can be distinguished. Head on hand, he looks bewildered by its threat, its time limit, and perhaps its content. The initiative has obviously come from a Quebec impatient with customary intergovernmental bargaining. Relations between Pearson and Lesage are so conflictual that an ultimatum has become an acceptable part of negotiations. The prime ministers expression does not suggest that he interprets Lesage's gesture as purely formal, designed only to convince his followers that he is actively pursuing Quebec's interests. While these two cartoons give few clues that an ironic eading is appropriate, the third leaves little doubt. Lesage and Pearson are portrayed as professional wrestlers, though their large bellies and spidery limbs mock any assumption that they are experts (figure 13). A crowd watches, laughing and relaxed, while Jean "Tiger" Lesage holds his federal counterpart in an arm and head lock on the floor. But since Pearson has risked spoiling the ritual by laughing like the audience,

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Fig. 13.

Carnivalization of Politics

"Pretend it hurts, Lester!" (Berthio)

Lesage must remind him to simulate pain. This advice, coupled with the stereotype of wrestling as "scripted," clarifies for the skimmer that these are entertainers whose script requires a display of federal agony as the provincial hero overcomes his federal counterpart. There is clearly no hint of carnival here, since the spectators sit passively in their seats, enjoying the show, but neither participating nor becoming emotionally involved in the outcome. Disorder would enter only if Lesage could not prevent Pearson from joining in the general laughter. The two politicians are playing games: Lesage is performing seriously, but not representing Quebec's interests; Pearson is not even performing seriously. This heavy overt irony suggests a doubly ironic reading. Perhaps the audience, realizing this, is directing its laughter at the obvious ineptitude of an actor who cannot even keep a straight face. Or perhaps the two leaders are a comedy team that parodies wrestling, and the audience does not take even the parody seriously. The next drawing (Berthio 1967, 23) returns with greater ambiguity to this theme. Lesage and Pearson appear to be meeting with aides or with other premiers, but Lesage alone has put papers on the conference table

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entitled "Needs of the provinces." Pearsons flexible, highly pragmatic style of federal-provincial relations, "cooperative federalism," sought to respond to Quebec's frequent initiatives as they arose, without proposing constitutional changes that the other provinces would reject (Thomson 1973, 15). To Berthio, Pearson's cooperative federalism is just a game allowing Lesage to draw up and distribute long lists of "needs" that he attributes to every province. Read literally, cooperative federalism is really a conspiracy to ignore the interests of the people. So Pearson diplomatically ignores and destroys Lesage's lists while the expressions of the onlookers suggest that no one has invested any emotion in the lists or is trying to change the situation. There are no ordinary citizens in this drawing, and no representative is concerned enough to engage in significant activity on their behalf. The fifth cartoon (Berthio 1967, 25) shows another aspect of federalprovincial relations. Rene Levesque, who has already nationalized Quebec's eleven private power companies to form Hydro-Quebec, is in Ottawa with a truck to pick up family allowances, unemployment insurance, and pensions on behalf of the Quebec government. Many anxious bureaucratic eyes watch as Levesque negotiates his truck through a narrow Victorian archway. The alarm of the bureaucrats contrasts with the matter-of-fact expression of Levesque, who has grasped the initiative and appears confident. While the bureaucrats outnumber him, they show no organized resistance. The sixth cartoon (Berthio 1967, 38) offers a different view of Jean Lesage, while continuing to imply that the Pearson government is not about to discuss any significant change. Disappointed by the stalemate at the 1964 federal-provincial fiscal conference, the weary, depressed Quebec premier leans for support on the statue of his predecessor, Maurice Duplessis. Duplessis refused to negotiate with Ottawa because he rejected an interventionist role for the state, whereas Lesage is negotiating to extend his government's powers. To Berthio, their experiences have both been highly frustrating, since a radical change in tactics has not produced greater success for Quebec. Lesage, whose programmes sought to sweep away Duplessis' backwardness and corruption is now a humble, disillusioned learner at his feet. The seventh cartoon in this set (figure 14) portrays the relations between Lester Pearson and Jean Lesage as a physical combat. Through a window we see the heads and shoulders of the two men, whose faces are serious, even grim. Although he is not in a corner, Pearson has his

8o

Fig. 14.

Carnivalization of Politics

"I can't move back any further" (Berthio)

back to a wall, and Lesage presses forcefully against him. The prime minister explains that he cannot back up any further, but there is no indication that the premier is relenting. Since the force used by Lesage has loosened several bricks, the drawing suggests that Lesage is trying his best within the rules accepted by the two. But the skimmer cannot be certain whether Pearson is indeed collaborating by trying to move further back. While Berthio sometimes accuses Lesage of only going through the motions, his more consistent criticism is directed against the rules that prevent agreement on substantial change. On this interpretation, it is evidently the wall and not Pearson's body that prevents any further retreat; this reading suggests that federal resistance to Quebec's interests is more structural than personal. Dale Thomson's (1973, 15) assessment of Lester Pearson is the same: Pearson was willing to make pragmatic accommodations but

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strongly opposed to structural change. Only by pushing the prime minister through the weaker joints of the structure can Lesage hope to effect significant and lasting alterations. The eighth cartoon (Berthio 1967, 24) imagines the end of a conference involving Quebec and Ottawa. Jean Lesage has said goodbye to Lester Pearson and taken away all the furniture, leaving Pearson to sit with legs apart on the floor. It is not clear whether Quebec has seized Ottawa's furniture or simply reclaimed its own. The prime minister is helpless or stunned while Lesage and his allies depart. Perhaps what was asked for and refused during negotiations is now simply being taken without resistance. We can see several reversals here: the guests have either brought their own chairs, or they are walking away with their host's; their host, who would normally stand to wish them a good trip, sits silently on the floor; and the most powerful politician in the land has lost his seat and rests helplessly below his less powerful colleagues. The final drawing in this set (Berthio 1967, 35) reintroduces Rene Levesque, one of the strongest Quebec nationalists in Jean Lesage's cabinet, beneath a portrait of the prime minister, who wears a Santa Glaus outfit. Parodying a children's song — Je ne crois plus au Pere Noel — Levesque announces that he no longer believes in Pere Nobel, Lester Pearson, the federal leader who has recently won the Nobel Peace Prize. His pun draws a parallel between the child's emancipation from belief in Santa and the Quebec nationalist's liberation from thinking that the federal system is good for Quebec. The spatial patterns in the cartoons in this set are consistent with Berthio's work on the Queen's visit. In the first three, Pearson and Lesage are approximately equal in height and closeness to the ground. In the last, when Lesage switches his strategy from discussion among equals to vigorous appropriation, he is drawn erect and victorious, while Pearson sits defeated on the floor. Levesque, however, is shown looking up at the federal representatives in two drawings. His position is appropriate for one who is engaged in toppling the power hierarchy and whose goal is subversion. We can see, then, that Berthio employs reified carnival to depict spousal relations in the mid-1960s. Although the pictures just discussed span the same period as the Queens visit, there is no sign in them of a creative, chaotic, polyphonic general public. The audience consists only of passive spectators at a show, rather than active participants in social change. There is no sign of the rigid, decaying social world whose doors have burst and whose inhabitants run freely, defying its major taboos.

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Carnivalization of Politics

In its place is the closed world of politics that admits the public only when presenting a front-stage performance. Berthio satirizes these performances, claiming that the apparent pressure for change is simply a stage pose behind which Lesage and the other performers collaborate to resist changes that would benefit Quebec. As part of this pose, Lesages posture is much more flexible in these cartoons than during the Queen's visit, except when he carries away a heavy chair after the difficult conference with Pearson. Here he finally accepts that action and negotiation are incompatible and becomes the rigid and autocratic guardian of order. Since Berthios appreciation of Jean Lesage varies with the subject, a comparison of the two contemporaneous Berthio series suggests that the subject explored in the cartoons is more important than the time-period in influencing Berthios choice of the frame for his content. When the royal visit is the subject, the premier is shown allied with the federal government and the English, pitting the state against the nation. When the subject is Ottawa-Quebec relations, Lesage is shown learning by experience and becoming more uncompromising in his dealings with the Pearson government. One sees him change from flexible, phoney, and ineffective to rigid, genuine, and effective, far from the carnivalesque ideal. The state has won a battle, and Lesages rigidity has served the Quebec people well. Thus, Berthios changing view of Jean Lesage leads him to use different frames for his content on these two subjects. When Lesage supports the Queens visit, Berthio replies with carnivalesque drawings, but when Lesage and Pearson argue over control of Quebec's affairs, Berthio responds by exposing their politics as hyper-carnival. With hyper-carnival he implies that political systems lack the flexibility required to respond to national aspirations. A Quebec government serving the nation's interests would unilaterally seize the resources it required, and it would involve the people in so ridiculing the federal structure that it would collapse. Girerd sometimes shows similar sympathy for nationalist aspirations, but after seeing the PQ in action, he is much more sceptical of the notion that independentists are better equipped than federalists to realize them. The abundant contradictions in Quebec politics reflect the deep-seated ambivalence of a minority that desires to fly but lacks the means, desires to advance without eyes or a sense of direction, and desires to enjoy the advantages of autonomy without sacrificing those of belonging to a larger federation.

5 Ottawa and Quebec: Can They Live Apart?

INTRODUCTION

This chapter focuses on the debate preceding the 1980 referendum on Quebec independence, the context in which Girerd explores most fully the ambiguities and contradictions experienced by Quebecois in formulating a policy on French-English relations. The Parti Quebecois proposal called for fundamental constitutional change to establish a relationship that combined political sovereignty with close economic association with Canada. The Quebec Liberals' counterproposal clearly endorsed federalism but called for increases in the Quebec government's jurisdiction. Both parties sought a new version of the Canadian family in which the wife would have more powers. The federal government, meanwhile, sought to reconcile two forms of the Canadian family metaphor. The ethnic form, which has been central to our analysis here, represented Canada as a family consisting of two founding ethnic groups. The political form represented Canada as a single (federal) parent with ten (provincial) children, one of whom happened to be French, and all of whom deserved equal treatment in spite of significant variations in age and character (Morris 1984). Politicians devoted much of their energies in the 19805 to reconciling these

An earlier version of this chapter appeared as Morris (1989^.

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two forms. The Pepin-Robarts report and the Meech Lake and Charlottetowjn agreements sought this reconciliation by increasing the powers of all provinces equally while permitting variations in the extent to which they might choose to exercise them. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Constitution of 1982 sought, on the other hand, to assign each form to a particular sphere. The ethnic model was to govern citizens' rights in relation to governments, and here certain language groups were to be privileged. The political model was to regulate intergovernmental relations, implying strict equality for every province. The federal governments position represented the maximum in concessions to Quebec that it thought would be tolerable to (English) Canada, in the light of claims from the Maritime provinces for a strong federal presence and from Western provinces for less centralization (McRoberts 1992.). The Quebec Liberals, for their part, were promulgating the minimum concession that in their view would be acceptable to Quebec. It remained to be seen whether constitutional language could cover the discrepancies between these two federalist positions. Girerd's diagnosis of Quebec's ambivalences and contradictions can be fruitfully compared with that of the writers on the referendum campaign and its aftermath: Jean Larose, Leon Dion, William Coleman, Dominique Clift, and Gerard Bergeron. A distinguishing mark of the 19605 and 19705 was the almost unanimous support among Quebec artists and intellectuals for political independence (Balthazar 1986, 146; Dion 1987, 152; Larose 1987, 45). The alliance of nationalism and culture pre-empted any critical reflection, any awareness of the different motives behind the nationalism of the artist and of the politician (Balthazar 1986, 146), or any awareness of the very varied expectations about how a PQ government might implement its populist programme through a technocratic state (McRoberts 1988, 241—2). Artists tended to identify political independence with life, creativity, and a return to lost authenticity, and this identification persisted in the "Yes" campaign during the referendum (Larose 1987, 44,48). Larose thinks that the nationalist myth credited the people with "a strength, a nobility, a greatness, a boldness which only the gesture it had not yet made could confer on them" (1987, 52).' Berthio glorifies this unanimity, showing a people united under its new

i All translations in this section are mine.

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elite to free itself from oppression. The PQ transferred this confidence to the state: "On the condition that a firm and clear political will prevails, we are convinced for our part that truly miraculous changes could result [from sovereignty], that numerous obstacles which are presently insurmountable would become perfectly solvable technical problems" (Parti Quebecois 1972). The durability of this discourse and the victory of the Parti Quebecois in the Quebec election in 1976 convinced believers that independence was inevitable (Larose 1987, 47-9,52). The presence of Lise Payette in the PQ cabinet seemed to confirm that women's and Quebec's liberation were advancing hand in hand, even though Payette herself (1982) deeply lamented her lack of real influence. But the social basis for the myth of liberation was limited: independentism was, according to Guindon (1988, 31,41-3,47-52), largely the dream of a new state-employed middle class whose economic and status opportunities were very severely limited by the combination of anglophone economic power and the narrow scope of the Quebec government prior to 1960. Leon Dion comments that because Quebec nationalist thought had remained virtually unchanged since the 19605, more recent socioeconomic changes and the outlook of young people had passed it by. "What strikes me most about our Quebec imaginary [sic] is the lack of importance it gives to such 'modern' realities as the city, ecology, industry, and economic factors in general, not to mention peace" (1987, 166). Quebec artists had focused on the negative aspects of modernization in North America and on U.S. imperialism and the cultural erosion and alienation that resulted. The young, however, were fascinated by friendship, love, automation, terrorism, nuclear armament, and finding a good job, problems for which the Quebec state could hardly be a useful tool (160—i). Consequently, the referendum results "confirmed the extent to which the Quebec souverainiste movement had been a preeminently generational phenomenon" (McRoberts 1988, 328). Although independentism synthesized the glowing hopes and deprived economic situation of most artists, its general popularity had not grown markedly since 1970. Support for the modernization and expansion of the Quebec state was indeed producing a backlash by 1966 (McRoberts 1988, 171). Coleman (1984, 225) and Clift (1981, 154-65) emphasize that the heart of the "No" campaign was an alliance of groups that had benefited little from the welfare state and the Quiet Revolution: anglophones, business people, the elderly, nonunionized workers, housewives, ethnic minorities, the poor, and the less educated. Lacking a

86 Carnivalization of Politics coherent ideology, but attributing their dissatisfaction to the excessive emphasis on state action, they rallied round North American individualism and rejected Quebec nationalism. This opposition crystallized when Lise Payette contemptuously described as "Yvettes" those older women who seemed to her unliberated from the French Catholic world in which they had grown up before the Quiet Revolution (Fraser 1984, 221-4). Many of this older generation associated independence with socialism, with France and modernity, with the unjustified interference of artists in politics. They viewed independentists as adolescents who insult their mothers, take over the family car, engage in premarital sex — and help themselves to control of the state. These people needed to be ousted from centre stage and disciplined (Larose 1987, 56-61; Trofimenkoff 1982, 331). The defeat of the referendum had a dispiriting effect on intellectuals and produced a vacuum for most of the 19805 until a new generation of business leaders, who were much more critical of the interventionist state, came to head the nationalist movement when the Meech Lake Accord was rejected. For Larose (1987, 15), the film The Decline of the American Empire admirably captures the disembowelling of the nationalist movement. Mario's violent sexual abuse of his woman friend symbolizes a people "which has not succeeded in providing reasons to live from its own culture and which raises its sexual organs as a last argument to oppose its disappearance" (16-17). Gerard Bergeron (1981), the principal contemporary analyst of the referendum campaign, concentrates on its three leaders: Trudeau, Levesque, and Ryan. The referendum was a head-on collision between the views of Trudeau and Levesque, the "terrible twins" or "antibodies" (Dion 1980, 340). However, the structure set up for the campaign required a federalist Quebec politician to head the "No" team, while Levesque led the "Yes." Claude Ryan had the necessary intellectual stature for the "No" and could be rejected later for a traditional Liberal politician if he did not win the next provincial election (Dion 1980, 178). Since Ryan and Trudeau were by no means comfortable allies, this structure ensured an asymmetric three-way fight in which, as Rene Levesque put it, "one must first know who is fighting whom" (quoted in Bergeron 1985, 204). Girerd was by far the most prolific visual commentator on the referendum campaign and its lengthy preliminaries. As a cartoonist he sought to maintain a critical distance from the protagonists, while working on an openly federalist editorial team. Girerd responded to this problem

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by stressing three contradictions in popular thought. First, the opposition between "selfish" politicians and "public-spirited" artists led to inconsistencies among "Yes" supporters. Second, the opposition between imaginative children and pragmatic adults led to Girerd's metaphor underlying the content of the message: these were children playing at being adults. Finally, the surface discord between "Yes" and "No" leaders concealed a common agreement to produce an extravaganza on the backs of the people (Bergeron 1985, 222). The family metaphor thus governs, once more, the form of Girerd's frame. The form of the message is the opposition and collaboration between the "Yes" and "No" campaigners. Finally, as will be seen in the next section, reified carnival is the metaphor in the content of the frame for Girerd's representation of the referendum ceremony. THE C E R E M O N Y AND THE CARNIVAL

Girerd's carnivalization does not depict Rene Levesque's government as a dying regime, ridiculous in opposing the communitas (Turner 1974) of the people. Nor does it portray the "No" team as supple and mil of life, with Claude Ryan as a merry little prankster setting off a reckless celebration of life. His citizens are not demonstrably more virtuous than their leaders. Girerd certainly laughs at the excesses when the drama of the referendum ceremony (K. Burke 1962; Duncan 1968; Duvignaud 1970) becomes too intense and degenerates into childish quarrels. And he brings out its carnivalesque elements: the inversion of the political order, the pretentions of the orators, the contradictions between words and deeds, the sacrilege of disorderly intemperate electors, and the tyranny of body over mind. He does not share the optimism of those who saw a good and a bad team, rather, he laughs at both. He shows that significant change is unlikely in a political world consisting largely of fools who are rarely worth taking seriously, and he invites the skimmer to laugh from the sidelines at political irony and foolishness. The electors choose the stars, but limited contact between audience and stage and among the spectators hinders the development of polyphony. Like most cartoonists in democracies, Girerd depicts a reified carnival. Bakhtin's paradoxical concept of carnival allows one to see how the artist enters the drawing, not to participate in an extravagant adventure as Berthio does, but to observe with ironic, mocking detachment.

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Girerd's nation is not opposed to his state; his politicians and people alike are foolish. As the form for this content, Girerd portrays the two referendum alliances as children taking part in an adult ceremony. Goffman's (1979) conception of childish behaviour will throw some light on Girerd's strategy: • The child comes with all needs satisfied, so there is no good reason to think far ahead. • The child has orientation licence, and so can drift off, cry, laugh, and act incongruously. • The child can expect protective intercession when performing difficult tasks. • The child has first chance at certain little treats. • The child's offences are more easily erased; a loving protector stands in the wings to give relief from adult realities and constraints, so the child can play and experiment. In short, the child does not need to take life as seriously as an adult (Goffman 1979, 1,4-5). Girerd's caricatures illustrate many aspects of childishness. His politicians are sometimes so enthusiastic and solemn that they parody adult behaviour. They play very seriously with chains of polysyllabic words, adopt exaggerated poses, or appear in a scene where the form is correct but the content is outrageously wrong. Sometimes their status as children overcomes their attempts to be adults, and they follow their impulses, breaking the solemnity with a practical joke or a faux pas. They shout or perform magic tricks, hinting that the skimmer should not take them too seriously. At the end of the campaign they all jump into the washing-machine because, as typical children, they are inevitably grubby. When the referendum interlude is over, it is time once again to administer the modern state like adults. These important elements of carnival are at the heart of their ceremonial performance. The grave and the ridiculous alike originate in the child-politicians who lead the two alliances. THE

PROCESSES OF THE

CAMPAIGN

Between the Parti Quebecois' election victory in November 1976 and the vote in May 1980, Girerd devoted over fifty drawings in La Presse to the referendum campaign. The present analysis covers the eighteen

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drawings in the Mosher collection that appeared before April 1979 and Girerd's final four drawings published between 20 and 30 May 1980.2 For convenience, they have been grouped according to seven themes: defining government policy, framing the referendum question, setting out a campaign strategy, debating in public, persuading the voters, discussion among the electorate, and understanding the outcome and aftermath. This organization does not correspond to the order in which the cartoons appeared. Defining Government Policy Two cartoon sequences illustrate the process of defining government policy as PQ leader Rene Le'vesque struggles to define the "Yes" campaign's ideology. In the first cartoon sequence, at a party dinner, Levesque insists that sovereignty and association are inseparable, yet both are distinct from independence. (This became a theme of the "Yes" side's campaign literature.) Levesque admits that the difference between sovereignty-association and independence would be difficult to establish clearly, and to avoid awkward questions, he whispers to the waiter to water down the wine of Pierre Bourgault, the member most likely to raise questions. Levesque's hesitancy was in regular conflict with Bourgault's boldness about burning bridges with Canada (Guindon 1988,156). There are several childish elements in this cartoon: there are balloons suggesting a birthday party; Levesque focuses on aiming his cigarette smoke between the balloons, with eyes closed lest one should burst; Levesque tricks Bourgault by tampering with his drink; and Le'vesque wears a nightshirt in the first two pictures in the sequence. The role of the child who is the centre of attention is thus superimposed very neatly on that of the master of ceremonies in this drawing as Rene Levesque alternates between presiding at a banquet and celebrating his birthday. As a result, the drawing contains two of Goffman's childish traits: orientation licence during a meal and the protective intercession of an adult, the waiter.

2 Certain news worthy incidents, notably the "Yvette" affair, took place in the interim, so all Girerd's cartoons between these dates were checked. No new theme appeared after March 1979, and the artist paid very little attention to the "Yvette" affair. This limitation in the sample does not therefore distort the analysis.

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The second sequence consists of six sketches of Levesque. The premier hesitates to spell out to an interviewer the links between his main concepts of sovereignty, association, and independence. He shrugs his shoulders, ducks a question, and glowers evasively as Richard Nixon did during Watergate. He is impatient when pressed to be orderly and decisive about such details of his governments plans for an independent Quebec such as separate citizenship and a distinctive currency. He is equally hesitant when he is asked if he would like a cup of coffee. This question produces a marked change of mood in Levesque, but his discourse continues in the same rut. Girerd thus portrays a man who resists clear decisions, whether private or public, while expecting a clear decision on sovereignty from the voters. Behind him is a party that harbours quite conflicting views on the desirability of collaborating with Canada even on economic policies and that needed more than two years to decide on its proposals for sovereignty-association (McRoberts 1988, 258,300-2). On a literal reading Levesque is childish, since he has licence to change his emotional state rapidly and to act incongruously. He pursues very short-term goals, unaware of the consequences; he counts on the protection of two forgiving adults, the interviewer and the skimmer; he avoids the subtler traps of the interview, but falls into the most obvious. Since his discourse is consistent — consistently indecisive and evasive — the skimmer is left to decide between an ironic and a literal reading. On one ironic reading the interviewer is trying to lure Levesque into a series of traps; after escaping every one, Levesque trips on the first innocent question from the interviewer offering coffee. On another reading, the interviewer is innocent and Levesque duplicitous, but in the end the interviewer wins the battle of wits leaving Levesque unable to decide even about coffee. In each of the two sequences the chief guardian of order in Quebec, the champion of a peaceful transition to a new social order, is revealed to be rife with disorder. Neither his incoherent thought nor his manipulative style respects the rationality and democracy underlying his party's rhetoric. The connotations are clear: for Levesque, order is unimportant. A "Yes" vote would not lead to a lucidly planned programme but to furtive and unpredictable stratagems. Nature, spontaneity, openness to the future, intuition and manipulation - all children's attributes - are worth much more than the corresponding adult traits - culture, planning, control over the future, reason, and democratic discussion. The voters are not being asked to choose or reject a concrete programme, but only a personified national ideal.

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Can They Live Apart?

The "Yes" option is inseparable, for Girerd, from the personalities who lead the team. Levesque is perceived as relying on his personal popularity and on voter confidence in his government as his major assets (McRoberts 1988, 343—4). Uniting "Yes" supporters behind him, however, means silencing alternative visions of independence. The price of unity is acceptance of the main qualities of the leader. A vote for independence is a vote for confusion and disorder, as a result. Framing the Referendum Question It was an open secret that a campaign for outright independence would lead to a heavy defeat for the PQ. The debate on the "Yes" side centred on whether a very moderate proposition could be found that would produce a majority for the "Yes" team. The short-term objective of the "etapistes" was to win a mandate for a first step toward independence. This implied a harmless, non-threatening request to which few could object, or that would cause such confusion that "Yes" seemed the more conservative answer. The chosen strategy of independence-by-stages harboured a number of serious contradictions, however. A party in power can achieve some policy objectives within federalism, and many felt very ambivalent about sacrificing these by losing an election or the referendum. But the more a party follows this route, and the more it demonstrates that it can supply "good government," the more it risks alienating its militants, while convincing its opponents that federalism is indeed workable (McRoberts 1988, 290-7). These contradictions were reflected in the search for a winnable referendum question. It lasted more than a year and may have bewildered supporters of the "Yes" option by suggesting that the campaign was one of political marketing by career bureaucrats and not of political mobilization by an aroused citizenry (Guindon 1988, 115-18). Girerd drew two cartoons on this topic in June 1978. In the first, Rene Levesque is in a chemistry laboratory using an extraordinarily long glass tube to distill the purest referendum question that science can offer (figure 15). The utterly unscientific result combines the key slogans of both the "Yes" and "No" campaigns with those of anglophones opposed to constitutional change. The question is doubly carnivalesque, since it incorporates several contradictions and inverts the expected sequence, giving the federalist slogans first. A "Yes" would thus be a federalist response, even though Claude Ryan's team was known to be working for

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Fig. 15.

Carnivalization of Politics

The question (Girerd)

a "No" vote. To complete the confusion, although the question begins "Are you for or against," it instructs the reader to reply "Yes" or "No." In the PQ'S hands, scientific precision has taken obfuscation to new heights. In the second drawing on the referendum question, Levesque uses the social apparatus of a cabinet meeting and an extraordinarily long, plain cabinet table to distill the most impure question that politics can offer. The suggestions from the cabinet are so varied and incompatible as to be carnivalesque. Pierre-Marc Johnson proposes to invert the political order - "a strong Canada within a united Quebec." Robert Burns favours "a dotted line along the Ottawa River" and Camille Laurin "a Canada freed from a sovereign Quebec." Lise Payette, bored with the whole discussion, is much more concerned that her favourite Tricofil cooperative knitting factory should win the order for the new Quebec flag. Like science, politics has failed to produce a question acceptable to more than one person. Rene Levesque and Jacques Parizeau explain why: the real question is too simple and would never produce a positive reply. A short-term victory has become, to Girerd, the government's principal goal. In both drawings the PQ makes a ludicrous attempt to manipulate a sacred object, first science and then the democratic process, for electoral

93 Can They Live Apart? purposes. In Berthio's cartoons, each participating group violates its own sacred objects as part of the carnival. But in Girerd's, the manipulation of sacred objects for profane partisan goals is humourously ineffective. Neither democracy nor science offers an efficient way to choose a question or to run a referendum. Setting Out a Campaign Strategy Three cartoons satirize the process of devising a strategy for victory when voters are reluctant to approve any major move toward independence. One of the three imagines a back-stage conversation between Rene Levesque and his chief strategist, Claude Morin. Morin suggests a weekend polling day, because electors would be less sober. By associating success with insobriety, a PQ victory is again caricatured as a triumph of disorder and unreason. The Quebec citizenry, it is suggested, would never support Quebec independence while sober. The Parti Quebecois entered office in 1976 with an enviable reputation for expertise, professionalism, and freedom from corruption. Girerd does not laugh at their competence or honesty but focuses instead on their mesmerization by the Quebec independence issue, presenting their goal as irrational and quixotic. Morin, the most experienced and rational of the PQ technocrats, recognizes that the chances of winning the vote could be maximized by choosing to stage the referendum when the public is least inhibited by its culture and social order. The ideal referendum, for this otherwise very rational government, would thus be a carnival of debauchery, not a solemn ceremony. Though no government could officially organize a carnival, the ballot could be held at the most carnivalesque moment. This substitution of a game for a duty is central to Girerd's conception of the organizers as children. The next cartoon about strategy is an imaginary PQ campaign rehearsal. The party dignitaries are dressed as religious leaders who ally themselves visually, as they often did verbally (Laurin 1978, 115-27), with the Church as preserver of Quebec's distinctive language and culture in North America. Rene Levesque, as his name suggests, is their whiterobed bishop, his pastoral staff topped by the PQ logo, holding his omnipresent cigarette and raising his hand in a victory salute. The men in his cabinet stand to his right in ecclesiastical garb, while Mother Lise Payette sits on his left on a tiny footstool, ready to resign unless a prayer is offered to Saint Tricofil. Rene Levesque assures them that Paradise is on their side. "So is Steinberg's," adds Jacques Parizeau. Camille Laurin

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and Pierre O'Neill emphasize that Hell is red (Liberal) and federalist while Seventh Heaven is blue and full of fleurs-de-lys. For voters who prefer pictures, Camille Laurin shows a portrait of Pierre Trudeau as the Devil. And Claude Charron tells the audience to ask for the PQ'S new Child's Catechism. The faces are properly solemn in this drawing, but the inversion of religious elements produces a burlesque effect. The PQ is shown as incapable of distinguishing the secularity of politics from the holiness of religion. Further, the party leaders' effort to follow their own ritual has itself become comic. Levesque is unable to resist smoking; Parizeau interrupts with a joke; and there is no seat large enough for Payette, whose mind is still on Tricofil. The Parti Quebecois is not only claiming to fill the former role of the Church. In these cartoons it is also being identified with the ultramontane, right-wing faction that throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century condemned the Liberals from the pulpit as too progressive and heretical. By portraying the ideal state of the new middle class as remarkably similar to that of the old, Girerd shows the PQ imitating the most conservative elements in traditional Quebec, trying to impose conformity to their social order. Claude Ryan, meanwhile, was repeatedly charging the PQ with "tactics that resemble fascism" (McRoberts 1988, 325). Other commentators have argued that nationalism has become the contemporary religion in Quebec; here its more fervent practitioners are depicted as inheriting the intolerance and dogmatism of the Catholic right. Exceptionally, Girerd appears in his own cartoon to denounce this foolishness. In seeking a political victory, the most progressive and intellectual party in Quebec's history is now stifling liberty of thought and expression, using the weapons that its precursors in Cite libre had opposed so doggedly. The new social order beyond the disarray of shortterm PQ tactics looks surprisingly like the old intolerant French Canadian nationalism. There is at first viewing a major contradiction here. Previously, the Parti Quebecois was comic and too disorderly even to manage a successful ceremony. Now it is accused of trying to impose a very strict social order, in defiance of Quebec's recent history, but its efforts to reintroduce order by appealing to right-wing elements in Quebec nationalism are, again, comic. This apparent paradox can be resolved by finding the underlying common element, which is the idea of uncritical trust. Previously, the party leaders appealed to idealists like

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Can They Live Apart?

Pierre Bourgault to forego abstract or principled criticism, to stand behind their leaders and support any form of the "Yes" option they chose. Girerd showed that such leaders, backed by such trust, generate some quite extraordinary proposals. Now, in their clerical costumes, they are again asking for complete trust, aligning themselves with those who frequently did so in the past. Once again Girerd demurs: politicians simply do not merit such blind loyalty. The final cartoon about campaign strategy shows Doris Lussier, the independentist actor who played Pere Gedeon, a figure representing the light-hearted side of traditional Quebec. Lussier appeared in several advertisements for the "Yes" option. Girerd tells his skimmers that saying "No" to separatism but "Yes" to sovereignty-association is to make a rudimentary mistake - in the old phrase, like mistaking a pig's bladder for a lantern. If the cartoon is read literally, the party propagandists, through this figure of traditional rural wit and wisdom, are manipulating their audience by showing a bladder and telling everyone, with the appealing smile of a trustworthy figure that, notwithstanding its appearance, the bladder is really a lantern. If the cartoon is read ironically, Pere Gedeon is fully aware of the trick being played; his grin connotes that his claim is only a carnivalesque joke. In either case, the ruse is too clumsy to deceive anyone. The comic leaders who are too confused to lead, who expect blind trust like the old-fashioned priests are conducting a comic advertising campaign that would persuade or fool no one. The Public Debate The public debate is portrayed in three cartoons. In the first, Rene Levesque stands on a stool on top of a book in order to appear as tall as Pierre Trudeau. Both leaders lean forward with open mouths, clenched fists, and angry expressions, yelling pairs of cliches and slogans. Levesque shouts a remark supporting the "Yes" side, and Trudeau counters with a similar one for the "No." Their ejaculations range through political slogans, advertising captions, and proverbs, in no particular order. Each seeks a cliche that the other cannot match, producing a parody of Corcoran's analysis (1979, 157-61,166-8) of American political speeches as strings of short, disjointed utterances. The two protagonists appear well matched in height, posture, mental agility, seriousness, endurance, emotion — and triviality. As each orator builds a tower of word-bubbles, its insignificant content contrasts vividly with its significant volume. There is no winner in this debate, but this

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hardly matters since the artist's dog is the only audience. The leaders' discourse is alienated from everyday life and even from itself. The irony is largely situational: the leaders are too intent to notice the rest of the world at the very moment when they seek widespread attention. Their debate is a carnivalesque children's imitation of adult behaviour. Having quickly lost its political content, it has become bizarre and nonsensical, marginal to any social activity and disconnected from daily life. The second drawing is equally ironic and carnivalesque. Claude Morin and Claude Ryan accuse each other of taking a position in response to an unknown question. The leaders transform their ceremonial debate into a comic routine, but here too they fail miserably, since even Girerd's dog finds them a wearisome pair. Once again we see children mocking adult activity, unable to outwit each other or hold an audience. The last cartoon about the public debates again finds them disappointing either as education or as entertainment. Rene Levesque and Claude Ryan enter an arena under the caption "A very pretty pose being offered by this figure-skating couple", which is quickly undermined by the caricatural style. Levesque's perpetual cigarette, Ryan's hairy, skinny legs, and the elderly ugliness of the pair contravene every stereotype of figure skaters. Girerd's choice of setting underlines their collaboration and not their potential rivalry. Different as they are, they will need to practise together for many months to become proficient, and they will fail or succeed together. The face and mouth of the only spectator underline the irony as he disdainfully announces that there is nothing here worth seeing. This time Girerd inverts his own metaphor in the content of the message: the two leaders have become old men playing the role of youths, instead of children playing the roles of adults. But the result is the same nevertheless, and the two are a comic failure. We can see, then, that in each cartoon, the audience is ignored or nonexistent, and Girerd comments in each that the shows are neither educational nor entertaining. They are effectively private activities that exclude public participation. Further, the pequistes quickly trivialize each encounter, and the federalists immediately follow suit in reducing the heart of an adult ceremony to a childish exchange of trite remarks. One would never suspect that the referendum debate generated soulsearching conflicts over the future of Quebec and tore many families apart. Significantly, Girerd does not comment on relations between Trudeau and Ryan during the campaign (Bergeron 1978,1981,1985) or on Ryan's

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Can They Live Apart?

deep suspicion of every intervention by Ottawa (Fraser 1984, 219-21). In effect, Girerd ignores the differences within the "No" camp by according different roles to its two leaders. Differences among the "Yes" leaders are portrayed as surface reflections of comic eccentricities among people too vague or too manipulative to take stands or clear ideological positions. Persuading the Voters

Four cartoons illustrate the efforts of "Yes" leaders to influence the public. The first shows Rene Levesque confronting two very different pairs of hecklers. Dressed in white, he first encounters two long-haired hecklers in casual dress who angrily shout an independentist slogan. Then, dressed in grey, he meets two short-haired hecklers in formal dress who look down their noses and call out a federalist slogan. His response to each is the same: with arms spread and a slightly helpless expression he pleads that sovereignty-association represents the middle of the road. "It would be preferable to no gain at all," he tells the independentists. "It would be preferable to complete independence," he tells the federalists. One could read this discourse literally as a claim to be offering a reasonable compromise between two extremes, but the well-known numerical superiority of the federalists supports an ironic reading. Levesque's appeal to the pure independentists is realistic: if they do not ally with Levesque they have no hope of success. The federalists, however, already constitute a majority and have nothing to gain. Levesques misleading reply to the federalists undermines his own parry platform by proposing that sovereignty-association would actually be better than independence. Once again, he is portrayed as caring mainly for electoral victory and ready to trample on anything that hinders it. The second cartoon shows the heart of the Parti Quebecois cabinet — Levesque, Charron, Parizeau, Payette, Burns, and Jacques-Yvan Morin — in a large igloo with four Inuit leaders who, in broken French, propose a referendum on their nations independence from Quebec. They turn the PQ'S main slogans against it, accusing the PQ government in its turn of colonialism and insensitiviry to linguistic minorities. The cabinet indignantly charges its hosts with effrontery, economic heresy, crime against humanity, and with breaking up the country (Quebec) — the traditional ripostes of (English) Canadians to Quebec independence. The tables are turned completely on the PQ, which must now insist on "one country, one nation, one language." But it is not clear that this

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Carmvalization of Politics

slogan weakens the Inuit's case, as it is intended to do. Levesque and one Inuit leader are nose to nose, their hostility reflected in the faces and words of their supporters in the background. Another clicheshouting competition is under way in a "primitive" setting that matches the "primitive" debate. The absence of furniture and the leaders' poses suggest that these are babies playing at politics. Like a child, the premier has a temper tantrum when "his" native people apply his arguments to their own situation. The third cartoon in this set takes literally Lise Payette's dictum that the referendum would be won by mouth-to-mouth contacts. A solitary male canvasser seizes a Quebec woman who answers her door by the buttocks, and, with a contented smile, he embraces and kisses her heartily. Dishevelled and shocked, she returns to her husband to announce, "That's it; their offensive has begun." Their leaders' comic antics have spurred the "Yes" troops to abandon debate in favour of carnivalesque persuasion. But once again they fail: their sexual technique is no more successful than their oratory. Girerd has added a very powerful new irony here: Lise Payette, the Cabinet's only feminist, is credited with unintentionally legitimating the sexual harassment of women voters! The fourth cartoon shows Rene Levesque at a table with a child (figure 16). There is a cake between the two consisting of four layers topped by a strawberry or cherry. Levesque invites the child to have some cake and the child replies, loudly and rudely, "No!" Levesque, furious at this reply, leans forward and announces menacingly that he will repeat the question and this time he wants a clear, honest answer. The child is nonplussed. Girerd's caption comments, "And what if the answer should be 'No'?" Read literally, the script does not make sense. Only an adult would refuse this fabulous cake, but only a child pretending to be adult would refuse it abruptly. Furthermore, a parent faced with an inexplicable refusal would persuade or punish; the question would be repeated only if the parent could not believe his or her ears, and then the child would not be accused of dishonesty. The dialogue would make sense on another reading, a role reversal in which Rene Levesque is a spoilt child asking a parent (the other) for a favour. Levesque the child is subtler than the parent, asking if the parent would like a piece of cake. The parent, recognizing the barely hidden implications, refuses brusquely, so the child threatens to repeat the question until the embarrassed parent submits. Knowing the parent's fondness for cake, the child demands a

99

Fig. 16.

Can They Live Apart?

And if the answer should be "No"? (Girerd)

straightforward reply that will legitimate their indulgence. Although this reading does make sense, there is nothing in the picture to confirm that both characters know and that the skimmer should be able to guess that they are playing at being one another. Typically, in a simple metaphor, the artist superimposes two scenes (Lhote 1973; Floch 1985) to demonstrate their similarities. But in this

ioo

Carnivalization of Politics

case, we need three scenes, three readings, and the concept of "playing at" or keying (Goffman 1974) to make literal sense of it. It is difficult to imagine a third, ironic reading of figure 16 in which Levesque is honest, while the child is lying. One might, however, plausibly suppose that both cake and question are loaded. The child would then refuse abruptly and decisively on recognizing the trap. Rene Levesque, disappointed and angry, would then accuse the child of lying. On this reading, Levesque is not a parent interested in the child's welfare, but a salesperson who has sugar-coated his dubious product. But he is doubly inept, since even a child knows enough to resist his offer and since he becomes angry and tries intimidation, whereas an experienced seller would remain calm and try another tactic. The readings have a common connotation: Levesque is incompetent but determined to win by methods that work with an electorate conceived as a spoilt child, whom Levesque seeks to browbeat by yells and endless repetition. Honesty and respect for the people are being sacrificed to the overriding demands of victory. Girerd takes only one look at the activities of the "No" team. The federalist canvas was relatively uneventful, colourless, and low-key, and Girerd ignores the disagreements between Claude Ryan and Pierre Trudeau. He notes, however, the federal resources that Trudeau harnessed to the campaign by showing the prime minister ordering the RCMP to check Radio Canada's French language coverage of the campaign for independentist bias. The RCMP has shed its old image of outdoor police riding through the bush to arrest criminals in favour of a new image of indoor police sitting through newscasts to apprehend political dissidents. Girerd uses the figure of an overweight officer to suggest that, indeed, his life, and the life of the RCMP, has long been sedentary. Discussion Among the Electorate Girerd's first drawing about discussion among the electorate probes the parallel ambivalences in the decision making of the Quebecois. A female passenger in a Volkswagen asks the male driver why he bought such a car knowing that it would be difficult to heat in winter and very expensive to repair. To evade this question he asks why she, as a Liberal, voted for the PQ knowing that it was committed to independence? The woman's legitimate indignation and desire to correct a flaw in their car are neutralized by the man's artificial indignation and desire to deflect attention from his past mistake by scoring a debating point.

ioi

Can They Live Apart?

This couple serves as a metaphor for relations between politician and citizen. The politician faced with criticism can blame the voter whose "irrationality" elected him and can conclude that such irrationality disqualifies any critic of his performance! The second drawing in this subset uses the familiar metaphor of a couple to look at Canada-Quebec relations. The man, as usual (Morris 1984), is (English) Canada and the woman Quebec. With a self-satisfied look the man offers flowers to the woman, and the cartoonists balloon enclosing his words ends with a flourish. After a moment of perplexity, her expression changes to anger. As she retorts with a bolt of lightning, "If I had my economic independence I would not need you to buy me flowers," he and his flowers wilt. The liberationist is represented here as ungracious, ungrateful, and altogether disagreeable as she deconstructs the federalist's version of reality. She is larger than he is in every dimension and more verbose - the stereotype of the verbal tyrant. Reversing their economic relation, she acts here as the oppressor and he as the oppressed. By implication, a federalist woman would be grateful for the gift, accepting politely that federalism is profitable. The final drawing in this subset shows a couple trying to cope with a barrage of referendum publicity. One figure has long hair, the other short, and they relax over a drink; a speech for the "Yes" option is in progress in the background. After hearing that sovereignty-association would strengthen Canada, the long-haired listener comments that citizens must ask themselves whether this statement is true, before voting in the referendum. The short-haired listener, head spinning, responds, "It's funny, this type of conversation has the same effect on me as pot." An overdose of culture, the result of the debaters' mental gymnastics, has the same effect as too much nature in the form of marijuana. The irony here is more situational than verbal. The ceremony has so bewildered some electors that they are incapable of making an informed choice. The aim of democratic consultation has been overwhelmed by the aim of winning at all costs, with the paradoxical result that the legal activity of opening one's mind to persuasion has the same effect as illegally opening one's body to a drug. Understanding the Outcome and Aftermath A central function of myths is to establish and reaffirm priorities among opposing social values, to keep a balance but not an equality between, say, prudence and courage, independentism and federalism. Myths do

IO2

Carnivalization of Politics

this by transposing a social hierarchy, in which one value is a little more important than its opposite, into a dramatic sequence of events in which a hero representing one value triumphs over his adversary who represents the other (K. Burke 1966, 56-94; Duvignaud 1970, 57). In the case under study here the independentist loses a crucial struggle to the federalist. The ceremony and the carnival end together, with the sacrifice and resurrection of the defeated leader, but the conflict will resume at an appropriate time, perhaps with new leaders. Although the priority of federalism is confirmed, the independence option keeps an important core of faithful supporters who will one day renew the struggle. Indeed, while the victory celebration of the "No" side in Verdun was disorganized and attracted relatively few supporters, the Paul Sauve arena was packed by defeated workers for the "Yes" option. "Common sadness for a dream postponed, on the one hand, shared sighs of relief from an apprehended nightmare on the other - these were the dominant crowd moods on the evening of the joyless victory" (Guindon 1988, 113). Following the vote, Girerd drew four comments on the result and its impact. When the voters' decision was announced, Girerd's drawing made a rare appearance on the front page of La Presse. His dog reassures its friends the flower and the bird that the sun still rises and the earth still turns. Life in the heavens will continue, and normal post-carnival life will reassert itself in Quebec. Three final caricatures appeared in the next ten days. In these drawings Girerd portrays the ending of carnival with graphic metaphors. The first, entitled "Pieta" after the famous painting, shows Levesque as Christ, unconscious in a loin-cloth at the foot of a cross as his tearful disciples Claude Charron and Lise Payette as Mary Magdalene look anxiously for signs of life. Although previously Girerd represented these two as the most impulsive and childish members of the cabinet, they now remain faithful when the others have scattered. Payette clasps her hands in prayer, and perhaps her prayers have been answered, for Levesque has not died. As Payette says, "he's still puffing away." A few days later Levesque has rallied to organize a new ceremony, a general cleansing, for his lieutenants. Lise Payette, Jacques Parizeau, both Morins, Claude Charron, and several others strip and climb into an enormous washing machine, creating a scene that recalls dusty children plunging into a bath at the end of a fine summer day. Levesque, the oldest bather, brings up the rear and adds, the detergent. The skimmer sees faces, breasts, bellies, buttocks.

IO3

Can They Live Apart?

Although there is no carnivalesque dismemberment in this drawing, all distinctions of party rank disappear in a celebration of communal nudity. Beneath the cross, Rene Levesque kept his loin-cloth and Lise Payette her religious garments. But here everything is in view as the team rotates before the public. In a final touch of irony only Claude Charron, the baby, discreetly hides his genitals. This cartoon offers one further inversion. The cabinet is fully carnivalized - equal, corporeal, entangled, in communitas and outside any social control. In the moment of liminality (Turner 1974,13), the cabinet members are suspended between their roles in the ceremony that has concluded and their roles in everyday life. They are momentarily free of any social constraint just when, paradoxically, they are at the mercy of a huge machine. To mark the return to normal life, Rene LeVesque is depicted in the final drawing in this set back in harness several days later, as a drawer of water, with a scowl on his face and a cigarette in his mouth. The caption indicates that he is off to Ottawa to negotiate a renewed federalism in good faith. The holidays are over, and the child-ruler must conceal his disappointment and return to his regular duties. No* further comment is needed; the situational irony is abundantly clear. The party that has just lost the referendum will retain power with a renewed mandate to pursue its opponents' policy - an interpretation that the electorate confirmed the following year (1981) when the PQ won the provincial election. SPATIAL RELATIONS AND

CARNIVAL

ROLES

Girerd's spatial framework is less striking than Berthio's, since Girerd's major characters rarely interact, and even when they do, a plotting of the locations of the main characters — to the left, to the right, or in the centre of the picture — yields no patterns. However, there is consistency in the height of some characters and their placement in the foreground or background. Pierre Trudeau and Claude Ryan are regularly shown as taller than Rene Levesque and Claude Charron; and these two, in turn, are consistently shorter than other Parti Quebecois cabinet members. The voters and canvassers tend to oe smaller than any of the political leaders, and the cartoonist s dog is the smallest of all. Trudeau, Ryan, Levesque, and the Inuit leaders are the most likely figures to be placed in the foreground; the cabinet and

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Carnivalization of Politics

Background

Middle Ground

Foregound

Tall

-

PQ Cabinet

Trudeau, Ryan

Medium

-

-

Levesque, Inuit, Charron

Short

Canvasser

Voter

-

Very Short

Dog

-

-

Fig. 17.

Size and position according to role in Girerd's referendum drawings

the voters generally occupy the middle ground, while the canvasser and the dog are most likely to be seen at the rear. Figure 17 illustrates these relationships between size, position, and political role. The figures toward the top right-hand corner, the federalists, are the most prominent in these drawings. The independentists take the next most visible spots, followed by the voters, canvasser, and dog, in that order. Pictorial eminence and political power are thus positively correlated, the only exception being the greater prominence of the Inuit in relation to the solitary canvasser. On the other hand, pictorial eminence is not clearly associated with ethnicity, as it is in Berthio's work. Nor is flexibility an important variable here: the PQ leaders are shown as quick to bend their principles for victory. Only Pierre Trudeau and the RCMP officer display the rigidity that Berthio associates strongly with Lesage and the Queen. The major formal relationships in this series are spousal. The leaders of the "No" option are the same size as nearly all those who are prominent in the "Yes" camp. Neither party has precedence over the other in the cartoons. This formal equality, however, masks two inconsistencies, or more complex features. First, since Rene' Levesque and Claude Charron are always small, Girerd is evidently caricaturing their modest stature, but their facial expressions and Levesque's pose on all fours in the cartoon set in the igloo suggest that both are also childish. Moreover, Levesque is petulant and immaturely indecisive in several encounters: the wife thus shows a childish side. Second, there are clear gender patterns among the PQ. The strongest example is Lise Payette, whose attire follows traditional feminine norms, in defiance of her feminist reputation. Her perennial knitting, her evident boredom in cabinet, her place in the resurrection scene, and her threats to resign differentiate her sharply from the men. When she condemns Inuit independence as a "crime against humanity," though she is imitating Trudeau, she goes far beyond the narrowly political and economic accusations that the men make. In the skating scene, Claude

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Can They Live Apart?

Ryan's deportment and figure-skating costume contrast with the supermasculine tenor of Pierre Trudeau, though in the other depiction of Ryan, such traits are not very noticeable. These complexities or inconsistencies enrich the cartoonists analysis by probing the confusion and debate behind each team's facade of unity. Thanks to these extra personages, the relationship between Quebec and (English) Canada can be represented as spousal without stereotyping one team as the husband and the other as the wife. Each team is shown to have masculine and feminine, supportive and subversive, belligerent and peace-making traits and factions. The additional characters, then, could be interpreted as the masculine and feminine elements in each spouse's personality and not as separate roles that need identification. Alternatively, these characters could be relatives or close associates of the spouses. In either case they serve to elaborate the spousal characters and, in particular, to underscore the feminine and childish elements in the independentist organization, elements that are portrayed as an important but not the sole source of disorder. Girerd's dog, cat, bird, and flower can be compared to the francophone federal MPS in Berthio's work. In Berthio, the francophone federalists represent the comic infants who keep crossing the line between delightful cuteness and an embarrassing lack of socialization. They exemplify the playfulness and innocent disrespect, though not the vulgarity, of pure carnival. In Girerd, the dog, cat, bird, and flower are the child-judges (Empson 1950, 254), puzzled and wearied by the foolishness and pretentions of the influential. They are little adults who keep crossing the line between distancing themselves from such stupidity and recognizing that it is part of their own character. CONCLUSION

In this chapter we have examined a cartoonist who uses the carnival metaphor in a very different political context from Bakhtin's (1968, chap. 3) original location of carnival in a rigid and outdated regime that was losing its power to oppress the populace. Bakhtin's pure carnivals were joyous spontaneous uprisings where, for a limited period around religious festivals, conventional values were inverted. Chaos and vulgarity reigned as solemn ceremonies were publicly mocked by lower-status urban dwellers, either informally or in the performance of soties (Arden 1980). Simultaneous with these popular outbursts were the fool shows of the jesters who satirized the Church and humbler courtiers under the

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Carnivalization of Politics

protection of the more powerful (Zijderveld 1982). The jesters provided entertainment; they were alter egos saying from behind a mask of folly what the ruler wished but found it impolitic to say in the open. As we have seen, the cartoonist ridiculing politics on behalf of business is the indirect heir of this tradition (Morris i989a). As a democratic cartoonist laughing at politics as a way of life, Girerd continues this tradition of the fool-show, although his hyper-carnivalesque humour serves a less radical goal, for Girerd's citizens are no wiser than his politicians. As in Berthio, the myth of the dying king is reenacted in a comic vein, but only to confirm priorities, not to provoke a major political reconstruction. The different objectives are apparent at several points. Levesque is resurrected and resumes his activities, whereas Berthio's Queen is destroyed and does not return. Girerd underlines the subordination of principles for the sake of victory, but Berthio displays the elevation of one principle into an absolute value for its own sake. Girerd's pencil excoriates all parties, while Berthio reserves his satire for the British and their accomplices. As I argued in chapter i, cartoons in the tradition of capitalist democracy use the reified carnival metaphor as the content of the frame within which they portray the foolishness of political ceremonies such as the referendum. In this imaginary world the public are simply the spectators whom the leaders wish to attract to their ceremonies. Girerd and the skimmer, who is envisaged as a sophisticated, alienated spectator amused by satire and irony, collaborate in laughing at the leaders for their foolishness and inability to achieve their goals. Although the social structure is inverted and taboos are broken, there is no polyvocality. The implications are conservative or perhaps mildly reformist, but above all cynical. Girerd's citizens have the leaders they deserve, and the domain of politics is one of paralysing foolishness rather than refreshing action.

6 Between Parent and Child: Quebec and its Language Minority

INTRODUCTION

In this final empirical chapter we look at the changing parent-child relations in Quebec between 1969 and 1979 as francophones became the dominant group and brought in new language legislation. Language laws were controversial throughout this period. The Liberals held power in Ottawa from 1963 to 1979 and in response to growing discontent in Quebec during the 19605, established the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, which produced voluminous research (1969) on French-English relations. It recommended widespread changes but was unable to agree on a new division of political powers that satisfied Quebec's desire for greater autonomy. When Pierre Trudeau replaced Lester Pearson as prime minister in 1968, he countered Quebec nationalism with steps to extend bilingualism from coast to coast, concentrating his efforts on making the federal government fully bilingual so that citizens might use the language of their choice and francophones would have a fair share of federal employment opportunities. The Liberals' broader goal was to respond to traditional FrenchCanadians' grievances wherever their numbers justified by bringing francophones' language rights across Canada up to the standard that anglophones enjoyed in Quebec (Guindon 1988, 70). The main impact would occur in the "bilingual belt" surrounding Quebec (Castonguay 1991; Castonguay and Marion 1974; Joy 1972; Havel 1972; Hautecoeur

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Carnivalization of Politics

1979) and within the civil service, where a new linguistic structure was, in effect, being proposed. Those who remained unilingual would be restricted to lower positions, since supervisory posts would be awarded only to those who became bilingual. The opposition parties tacitly agreed to support bilingualism as a necessary condition for equality of opportunity and the unity of Canada. Outside Quebec, these changes, often of greater symbolic than material impact (Breton 1984), aroused strong resentment that crystallized politically in the late 19805. In Quebec, the Union Nationale came to power in 1966. Unrest arose when francophone nationalists began to insist that parallels between the anglophone minority in Quebec and the francophone minorities in other provinces were misleading. Free educational choice was assimilating more young people into English than into Quebec culture (Castonguay and Marion 1974), since, given a free choice, four-fifths of immigrant children in Quebec were attending English schools. Unilingual anglophones already earned more than bilinguals, while unilingual francophones were the poorest (Royal Commission 1969, 3A: 15—24, 61—86; Boulet and Lavallee 1983). Union Nationale Premier Jean-Jacques Bertrand responded with Bill 63, which enshrined parents' freedom to choose their children's language of instruction and which passed with almost unanimous Liberal support. When the Liberals took office in 1970 they introduced a more comprehensive language policy, Bill 22. Under Bill 22, immigrants could still choose the language of their children's education, provided that the children showed "sufficient knowledge" of it. But French became the only official language in Quebec, and hesitant steps were taken to encourage the use of French in the private sector in Quebec (McRoberts 1988, 228-9). The legislation mildly encouraged anglophones to learn French but did not modify the broad language rights they had enjoyed since 1867. Federal policy did little to satisfy the new francophone middle class, which found itself increasingly in competition with anglophones for jobs in business that had been effectively reserved for anglophones under the earlier pattern of "mutually satisfying self-segregated institutions" (Guindon 1988, 33,58,77). A top priority of the new francophone middle class and the state apparatus it led was to safeguard the primacy of French in Quebec against the threat of a declining birth rate and continuing assimilation. If Quebec was not predominantly francophone, bilingualism was pointless. In their model of equality, English rights in Quebec had to be reduced to ensure the dominance of French. To argue otherwise was to

log

Between Parent and Child

confuse the Rights of Man with the Rights of Englishmen (Guindon 1988, 87-90). Many argued further that French outside Quebec had too weak a future to justify pan-Canadian bilingualism. After its election victory in 1976, the Parti Quebecois introduced much stronger language legislation with Bill 101, requiring corporations to have a French name, public signs and advertisements to be in French only, French to be the sole official language of local government and parapublic bodies, and large firms to establish and follow a policy of increasing the use of French. Children were required to attend French schools unless their parents or siblings had attended English-language schools within Quebec. A French Language Office would supervise these changes and set regulations on what constituted acceptable French names and terms. Because the clauses in the bill promoting better opportunities for francophones were dropped under pressure from business, Bill 101 did promote the more widespread use of French but not the advancement of those whose ethnic origin or mother tongue was French (McRoberts 1988, 279-82). Any resident who spoke French competently was entitled to the same opportunities. Although some of these symbolic changes were radical, "the changes it introduced ... [were] in fact largely incremental in nature" (McRoberts 1988, 276). During this period, the anglophone population was changing. The number whose mother tongue or ethnic origin was British had been declining for some time as the centre of economic power gradually shifted from Montreal to Toronto. The anglophone working class had adjusted to the use of French with co-workers while continuing to use English with superiors. The anglophone middle class had been largely protected, however, against both job competition from francophones and any necessity to learn French. As the decline grew more marked, English-speaking institutions relied increasingly on their ability to absorb most of the new immigrants to Quebec. In this context of declining anglophone economic and demographic power, the increasingly vocal francophone nationalism formed a ready scapegoat. Anglophones bitterly denounced Bills 22 and 101, focusing in particular on the pressures to integrate immigrants into the Frenchlanguage public school system. Governments which sought to legislate language use were condemned both as dictatorial and as responsible for the decline of anglophone institutions. While the English language media were prominent in this denunciation, the business elite was largely silent and, indeed, was part of the exodus that lay behind the decline of anglophone institutions.

no

Carnivalization of Politics

This chapter examines the art of two cartoonists who responded to this language legislation: Girerd from the dominant group and Aislin from the minority. Both cartoonists had been active since the 19605; but whereas Girerd began by lampooning Bill 63, most of Aislin s work came in response to Bill 101. A VIEW FROM THE

DOMINANT

GROUP:

GIRERD

Although Girerd's drawings on language for La Presse reveal major evolutions in his style, the principal metaphor in the content of his message remains consistent: much ado about nothing. He focuses mainly on Quebec governments, whom he implicitly and increasingly identifies with the thousands of nationalists demonstrating against Bill 63. He draws average francophones as indifferent and the federal government as effectively absent, even when Quebec undermines federal policy. He also illustrates the laboured ineptitude of the anglophones trying to comply: few (English) Canadians favoured an equalization that reduced English minority rights. The first cartoon introduces the background to the pressure for language legislation. A tourist guide has stopped by a large sign welcoming his group to Montreal. Corralling them with a bullhorn, he points to the inconspicuous acute accent on "Montreal" that is "the French presence in North America." Montreal, long claiming to be second only to Paris among francophone cities, greets travellers with a sign indicating that it is basically English-speaking, with an occasional dash of French. On a literal reading, although the francophone guide regrets that French is swamped by English across the continent, he is also proud that it has nevertheless survived (Laurin 1978). On an ironic reading, he is reassuring anglophones: even in the French heartland, English is so dominant that local people are proud to offer signs and full service in English. The reality of oppression is effectively concealed, since tourists notice only a slight accent, a minor exotic touch. Anglophones are happy with a francophone reality that titillates but does not disturb them. But few are paying attention anyway, and the guide is really making much ado about nothing. In Girerd's second cartoon on language, which contains two drawings, Jean-Jacques Bertrand and his education minister face a massive stone wall symbolizing the opposition to Bill 63. The premier is driving a child's go-cart that has a handle and possibly a horn, but no brake or

in

Between Parent and Child

steering mechanism. In the right-hand drawing, he warns his cabinet that steering will be difficult. Later, in the left-hand drawing, he announces carelessly that perhaps they will not have to avoid the wall. But the skimmer can easily anticipate the fate of fools who did not grasp an obvious "fact" (McRoberts 1988, 216-17). The third cartoon shows an opponent of Bill 63 explaining the protests against the bill to Girerd s dog. The objective of the protests is to save the French language, but ironically, every protest technique has an American name - teach-in, sit-in - as if none is indigenous or has a French equivalent. The dog is puzzled that only American social technology can save French culture and that Americans should be the ones to rescue the French language from anglicization. It seems strange that the culture that is destroying the French language has bred a counter-culture that might save it, but dog and skimmer are expected to accept this paradox as self-evident. The last cartoon in Girerds early style shows Rene Levesque telling real or imaginary anglophones, in French, that they have misunderstood him. He tries to overcome their hostility with a pose of exhortation and their deafness to French by shouting, but we see few tangible results from his substantial emotional effort. The fifth cartoon, drawn in Girerds more mature style, depicts three people discussing "the situation" (figure 18). A francophone asks in French, "What do you think of the situation?" then pauses and translates this question for his anglophone hosts. The male anglophone gives a stereotyped response, trying with his mate to look at ease. Their dog mimics them, its position very uncomfortable but its body relaxed. The irony is partly concealed but widely repeated in the setting. A closer look reveals that their normal living-room furnishings have been replaced by suitcases, belying the surface appearance of the room and the host's reassuring words in a household that is ready to move at a few hours' notice. French may be an unknown language and its increasing dominance may not be a topic for polite conversation with anglophones, but those who lack even the simplest French realize that their situation in Quebec is precarious, so they are living out of suitcases on constant alert. While the nationalists combine maximum emotional effort with minimum tangible results, these anglophones counter with minimal emotional effort and maximum tangible results. The remaining cartoons in this set, which are all in Girerds mature style and which appeared after the Parti Quebecois took office in 1976, satirize the PQ'S more aggressive French language policy. Two show the

in

Fig. 18.

Carnivalization of Politics

No cause for panic, old chap (Girerd)

PQ response to Liberal efforts to delay Bill 101. In the first, the ascent of a balloon marked "101" is slowed by the combined weight of the opposition leaders dangling in midair from a rope. Pilot Camille Laurin waits with arms folded as House Leader Robert Burns threatens to cut the rope. In the second, a less patient Laurin is ready to use his comfortable majority to limit parliamentary opposition with the guillotine. Both cartoons invoke the threat of death to silence opponents. The political sacrifice of the minority is translated into physical terms; the closure of debate is re-presented as disproportionate punishment. Five cartoons explore anomalies that arise in applying Bill 101 rigorously and literally. If corporations must devise French versions of their names, why not individuals? In the first drawing, Camille Laurin, with clenched fists, narrowed features and a frown, insists on new surnames for three ardent nationalists, Robert Burns, Pierre O'Neill, and PierreMarc Johnson. To satisfy the zealots the origin of their male ancestors must be concealed immediately to eliminate any symbolic Britishness.

ii3 Between Parent and Child Laurin the psychiatrist-politician is ironically accused by Girerd of a paranoid obsession with racial purity, which, in Laurin's ideal party, replaces any interest in significant material change. Girerd also satirizes the PQ'S attempt to legislate vocabulary. In the next cartoon on Bill 101, Transport Minister Marc Lessard is drawn as a little boy recording his regrets to an adult. He apologizes for having used the English word "scrap" when there is an acceptable French equivalent but then builds his apology around two other English expressions. Although his words reflect his party's sentiments about Ottawa, he fails once again to use the French his colleagues demand. Since anglicisms are deeply engrained, even within the PQ cabinet, a major emotional and symbolic effort is needed to achieve even a small reversal of the trend toward linguistic assimilation. In the next cartoon on Bill 101, which deals, again, with proper French, Rene' Levesque reflects on Lessard's lapse and wonders whether some international road signs should be scrapped as well, but he recognizes the facetiousness and incongruity of rejecting English words that are current in French in the mother country. Since assimilated English words are widely used in the French-speaking world, it would be foolish to replace them with pure but dying French words. Using a visual gag to underline the point that the purpose of language is to facilitate understanding, Levesque suggests that Quebec stop signs should feature a large dollar sign ($). Girerd reiterated this in another cartoon showing a new idea for a Quebec stop sign, an octagon marked "W.C." The letters signify "Woooh, caline," which angry farmers traditionally shouted to halt their horses. The last cartoon in this set portrays yet another farmers idea. The command "Woooh," the farmer claims, is more authentic than the "Arret" that nationalists paint over Quebec stop signs. Moreover, "Woooh" is not a dangerous anglicism, but it is universally understood from cowboy films. Levesque laughed at his own suggestion of a dollar sign, and the farmer places his new sign at a dead end, where none is needed. Pushed to its logical conclusion, the PQ'S language legislation leads only to laughter and confusion. Girerd thus distinguishes four categories of language. Unassimilated English words such as "scrap" are widely used and comprehensible to both language groups: Girerd points out that it is hard to stop using them. But to the Quebec government they are bad, since they displace viable French equivalents. Assimilated English words like "parking," are in French dictionaries, internationally understood, and very widely used

ii4

Carnivalization of Politics

in France. The Quebec government rejects them because they are English, but Girerd finds this foolish. On the other hand, both Girerd and the government agree that widely used words like "arret," which are understood only by francophones, are good. And both agree that archaic French words like "stationnement," little used and incomprehensible to some French-speakers, are foolish choices. The next two cartoons considered the impact of the language legislation. Camille Laurin is televisions Mr Handyman, trying to attach a wedgeshaped accent to a sign. In the first cartoon, both sign and accent appear to be made of metal and both reverberate loudly as Laurin works. But only noise and shock result from his efforts. In the second cartoon, Laurin tries to attach a wooden accent using glue, string, and a clamp. He has the air of a weary parent supervising a reluctant and obstinate child. Neither string nor clamps look very secure. Characteristically, Laurin alters the proprietary label on his glue bottle from "Lepage" to "Lapage." Girerd turns next to the problem of technical vocabulary by showing a family driving a car whose icy windshield has made driving difficult. The wife in the picture uses English words to advise her husband to improve his vision by turning on the wipers and fan. The daughter in the family cries out that they are coming to a stop sign, but the father ignores both warnings and scolds the child for not using the proper Quebecois word, "arret." Here, the message of the earlier cartoons is explicitly carried much further. The husband, like the government, is in charge. Like the government, he ignores the substance of others' suggestions and judges them by their form alone, his emphasis hinting that he is repeating an old argument. His wife and daughter, like the general public, are rebuked for using English words without thought of linguistic purity. But on this occasion Girerd goes further: the husband ignores the substance of his family's discourse, the problem of seeing well enough to drive the car safely. By analogy, the government is ignoring serious problems, while concentrating on formal imperfections in the use of French. The next drawing alludes to the refusal of Steinberg's supermarkets to defy Bill 101. Camille Laurin links Steinberg's decision to the firm's advertising claim that it is on "our" side. But Girerd's dog suggests that only politicians would believe the decision reflects more than commercial self-interest. Government, then, is naive, talkative, and francophone; business is more sophisticated, quiet, and anglophone. Two drawings offer glimpses into government efforts to teach French to anglophones. One features Camille Laurin, who believes that language

ii5

Between Parent and Child

and role retraining must be concurrent. A typical Englishman, who is being taught to draw water, the stereotypical francophone job, protests in English - "I don't like it too much" - and then in French. But his French deteriorates quickly, so he must regress to English. Laurin remains suave, confident, and reassuring throughout, his eyes and hands focused on the task at hand while his agitated and hesitant pupil seeks reassurance. The pupil's hands are uncoordinated and his eyes are fixed in a stare. For the new master, work is the enduring, central part of life; for his student, it is only a temporary, peripheral, leisurely pursuit that fails to be fun. This cartoon could be read literally, as a solemn exercise in teaching and learning new roles, or it could be read ironically, as a clown act. The massive nose, comic ears and teeth, checked suit, long flat shoes, and water buckets that Girerd uses to portray the Englishman all point to the auguste (Bouissac 1976). The white-faced clown representing Laurin is a hyper-cultured psychiatrist, with unquestioned motives and professional authority, linking impeccable appearance and manners with gentle, manipulation of mind and body. French is associated excessively with culture here, and English with nature — reversing the usual anglophone stereotype that British culture built Canada, while French nature provided only babies, manual labour, and raw materials (Price 1980, 205— 70). By carrying the association of French with culture to an extreme in the clown metaphor, Girerd is using one of his metaphors (politicians as clowns) to suggest mockery of another (French as culture). For Cardinal Leger in the next cartoon, a gentle approach is also desirable. While Laurin's secular skills seek physical and mental rehabilitation or degradation, Lexer's heavenly talents concentrate on spiritual regeneration or embarrassment. Bill 101 alerts His Eminence to yet another kind of disabled person: the linguistically handicapped. Those who were once privileged and envied are now underprivileged and pitied. In the past, the Church vigorously defended its flock from urbanization, anglicization, and Protestantism. Now, it can vigorously assimilate Quebec's urban, Protestant anglophones. So Leger, who is famous for his work with the physically handicapped, lifts his eyes to heaven and prays for these linguistically handicapped anglophones. In the final cartoon in this set, a francophone asks a stranger if he has noticed any changes since Bill 101 became law. The stranger's answer, "Oh! Yes," is brief and in English, concealing whether the question has been understood. A dog is given the last word. Linguistic differences are trivial, it says: a steak is the same in both languages. It is the material world that is important: it means warmth, dryness, contentment, and

n6

Garni valization of Politics

mutual comprehension. The unimportant symbolic world means only cold, wetness, discord, and misunderstanding. There is little patterning in Girerd's cartoons on language legislation. The positions of the figures in the drawings, their size and flexibility are all very similar. There are, however, two consistent differences in the few cases where language groups appear together. First, francophones consistently stand to the left of anglophones; and second, francophones invariably initiate the interaction. The two differences are related, since a cartoon, like a comic strip or a painting, is usually read from left to right (Dondis 1973, 22-31). A common theme of the series is that francophones take the initiative on language, while anglophones simply respond. The couple with no furniture puts on a brave face, but the francophones are in command. The francophones have noticeably superior language skills in each situation and invariably catch the anglophones flat-footed. The Quebecois are clearly dealing with a linguistically impotent minority. Although their leaders introduce major symbolic changes, francophone citizens often undermine them by using English words. Anglophones are expected to understand a simple French sentence, but they are free to reply in their own tongue. The overall impact is very limited as a result, and the energy of francophone leaders and anglophone resisters quite out of proportion to the changes achieved. Moreover the excessive focus on language distracts the government from much more urgent questions. Thus while politics makes foolish symbolic changes, business produces serious material change. The public, finding it hard to change its ingrained habits, simply echoes the politicians' foolishness. However, these drawings do show the Quebec parent securing conformity in one respect: the anglophone child does learn to understand simple questions in French, although no English speaker succeeds in formulating a good French sentence in reply, and some never try. Even this modest parental expectation implies that francophones speak their own language well. So the legislation does pressure them to practise what their government is preaching, and Girerd enjoys illustrating their ambivalence: the parental signal is, in effect, "Do as I say, not as I do." This mixed message is one reason why there is little material change as a result. A VIEW FROM THE

MINORITY

GROUP:

AISLIN

Aislin, who drew in the Montreal Gazette, is the other cartoonist whose work on Quebec language legislation is featured in the Mosher collection.

H7

Fig. 19.

Between Parent and Child

"Speak French, English dogs!" (Aislin)

Like Girerd, he probes the impact of the legislation on his own group and their ambivalent reactions to it. Unlike Girerd, he draws little on the subtleties of the language itself; rather, he caricatures the officials who are responsible instead. The federal government again remains out of sight, although the role of major Montreal anglophone institutions is explored. The first cartoon, drawn in 1977, contrasts a simple Quebecois nationalist slogan with the convoluted response of an Anglo-Quebec intellectual, as the anglophone tries to explain the language situation to a visitor (figure 19). The Quebecois slogan is brief, precise, and populist: "speak French English Dogs," it says. It makes language the central issue, and linguistic assimilation the principal goal: to drive out English, but not those who speak it. The "shouting sign painters" (Reid 1972) are now campaigning in English. The anglophone s intellectualist response is verbose, vague, and elitist; it identifies no central issue or principal goal. The nationalists brutal simplicity conveys a deliberate meaning to locals, in a familiar language. The intellectual uses kindly obfuscation to moderate the effect of a message from strangers writing in an unfamiliar

n8

Carnivalization of Politics

language. The francophones message is a command, stark and angry in white on a black background. The anglophone s is a statement, calm and nuanced in black on white. But the visitor gives more attention to the sign than to his host, preferring inclusion in the simple to exclusion from the complicated. Both the francophone sign painter and anglophone speaker are divorced from their interlocutors, even though the sign painter presumes to know what is good for them and the intellectual insists that only he truly understands. They both also become divorced from their own words. The sign painters words are compressed into written English and left behind anonymously. The anglophone's are expanded in spoken English in the form of a caption outside the picture, where they remain. The nationalist slogan excludes conversation from the frame; the anglophone speaker in turn prevents the cartoonist from adding a caption and so leaves him speechless. The cartoonist has become an "outsider" too (cf. Goffman 1974, 241, 345-8). Aislin's use of the anglophone's speech as a caption has other consequences. It permits a starker picture, since the slogan can dominate both pedestrians. It indicates that the anglophone's explanation is still incomplete when they leave the slogan behind, since the anglophone cannot attract and hold the visitor's attention as long as they are passing the slogan. The earliest of these cartoons point to potential excesses when parliament regulates language use. In another early cartoon, an Irish Montrealer stands before a judge, charged with carrying a "Happy St. Patrick's Day" sign clearly written in English (figure 20). He should know that French must have precedence on his sign. Because a law that is intended quite sensibly to govern serious commercial signs for a general audience can be applied quite absurdly to signs used by an ethnic group for joyful celebration, the institution embodied by the judge is expanding its traditional jurisdiction. The judge, who is bewigged and in robes, demonstrates his expertise in court language. Equipped with a gavel symbolizing order, and an undamaged charge sheet, this exemplar of acceptable behaviour and language reads an accusation that is foreign to him. He towers over the accused, has the right to speak first, and is ethnically neutral. The accused, who wears a traditional Irish costume complete with shamrock, stands with bared head, carrying a broken stick and a damaged piece of paper symbolizing disorder. This exemplar of unacceptable behaviour and language stands down low as he hears the accusation

ii9

Fig. 20.

Between Parent and Child

Happy St. Patrick's Day (Aislin)

against him. He has no expertise in court language and is duty bound not to speak first. Unlike the judge, he is ethnically committed, but the group he represents is quickly losing its traditional social position. On the evidence, so far, the heavily redundant signals can be read literally. The main support for an ironic reading lies in the skimmers sense that the Irish placard is not a commercial or government announcement, but the judge looks only at his documents, and the offending placard escapes his gaze. The judge's wig and dandruff do give a secondary clue, however, for here the state shows itself to be doubly foolish, neglecting both the appropriateness of the charges and the appearance of its representative. The state s desire for order has led it to manufacture disorder where none previously existed, since it fails to distinguish harmful from innocent activity. By extending his ridicule to

I2O

Carnivalization of Politics

the law, Aislin implies that the accused has no reason to display the penitence that the law expects. The third cartoon in this set features two men in a bar, expressing their nostalgia for the simpler ethno-religious classifications of the past. It was easier in the old days when there were the English and the French, readily distinguishable, and the Irish, who were intermediate between the two because they were anglophone and Catholic. Now, they complain, francophones are themselves subdivided into "sovereignty associationists" and "constitutional reformists", so it is no longer possible to classify strangers simply and permanently by their outward appearance. Political labels are changing, and there are now new ways to give offence. The referendum campaign drew this new social boundary only among francophones, since almost all anglophones were federalists. There was no buffer group like the Irish, nor were the federalists used to seeing so many former ethnoreligious "enemies" in their camp. Aislin is suggesting that the linguistic boundary is the most lasting: the "Irish" are losing their distinctiveness, and traditional political categories may not endure. In 1970 Canadian troops entered Montreal to protect federal and anglophone business offices from francophone bomb attacks, and the city was an occupied territory until the kidnappers of James Cross and the murderers of Pierre Laporte were found. The fourth drawing represents the language bill and the Office de la Langue Fran£aise as a second invasion. This military occupation again targets the most prestigious areas — the troops invade Westmount — but this invasion occurs under very different orders. The first occupation brought troop carriers belonging to the Canadian Armed Forces, with anglophone soldiers and an unobtrusive commander, to act defensively in protecting anglophone property from terrorists. The second is shown using tanks loaned to the French Language Office, with francophone soldiers under a fanatical commander, to act offensively in protecting French language rights against peaceful citizens. In this cartoon Aislin dramatizes a minor theme of the preceding cartoons: the use of a weapon quite disproportionate to the task at hand. The enormous slogan in the first cartoon, the criminal charge for a friendly sign in the second, the intellectualized names of opposing social groups in the third, and now a picture of a tank in this cartoon - each underlines the message that francophone language policy is excessive, and the attempt to establish a new order in Montreal is causing only ridicule and disorder. The means are not justified even if the goal is, within limits, desirable.

in

Between Parent and Child

Aislin shows two possible anglophone responses: fight or flight. In one cartoon, the proprietor of a small cafe called Ed's fights against a French Language Office employee who insists that the apostrophe and "S" on his sign do not conform to the law. Obediently, Ed mounts a ladder and amends it in such a way that it falls to the ground, crushing the language official and saving the other signs from censure. The "S" is taken down, but it, in turn, takes down the official. The letter that offends sensitive francophones becomes a weapon, adding material injury to symbolic insult. The expressions of anglophone hostility towards the official - Ed calls him a turkey - and pleasure at his fate do not suggest any tinges of regret. The government's victory is only pyrrhic: conformity is enforced, but an official is lost and everyone is cheering. Big, verbally skilled government has been outwitted by small, manually skilled business, and culture, in the form of the official, has been reduced to nature, in the form of a turkey. The power and status system is doubly reversed in this cartoon. Francophones who hold political power have failed to impose their vision of linguistic justice. Except for "Ed's," the English signs are still in place. The anglophones all stand above the solitary francophone official lying on the ground. The symbolic supremacy of English and its users is overwhelming; their opponent is incapable of further speech. The social class system is also reversed. The working class proprietor and patrons have overcome the middle-class official, who ends up at the foot of the drawing. Anglophones thus triumph over francophones, business over government, and working class over middle class. While the association of anglophones with commerce and francophones with government is long-standing, that of francophones with higher status work is relatively new. The second cartoon on retaliation shows Camille Laurin, the person most responsible for Quebec's language policy. As Laurin refers with polite formality for "our respected English colleagues," he looks uneasily over his shoulder at the approach of an embodiment of the angry anglophone subconscious. The contrast between the two figures is dramatic. Laurin has the physique, facial expression, and attire of culture and the middle class, while the English-speaker, who looks like a cross between The Avenger and The Hulk, exudes nature and the working class. This strange character is about to attack from behind, but Laurin has few resources for physical self-defence.

172

Carnivalization of Politics

The next drawing is more explicit about anglophone grievances. A speaker is listing fourteen landmarks of English Montreal that have gone since Quebec's language policy was implemented. While shrugging some off, the speaker becomes progressively more irate until he loses patience completely. This is the only character in the series whose social class is unclear. But whatever his priorities, he is adamant about one thing: English-speakers must defend the sacred elements of their culture. The remaining cartoons focus on flight as the only alternative to fighting the language legislation. First we see a middle class man who is resolved to stay. He is loyal enough to Montreal to say no to Toronto, and open enough to change to call himself a Quebecois and not a Quebecker. But when his limits are reached, he makes a New Year's resolution to quit rather than fight. From his position in the Montreal Gazette, Aislin comments next on the demise of Montreal's other English daily, the Montreal Star. A customer is bewildered and saddened at its fate, even though the Star has been closed for some weeks by a strike. One further support for his way of life is gone; a major source of local information is lost, partly as a result of the shrinking English-language market. The Stars disappearance is in sharp contrast with the behaviour of the customer, who remains in Quebec, as an advertisement in French from the federal government is urging him to do. A comparison of this cartoon with the cartoon on Ed's cafe reveals two marked differences in symbolic patterns. First, the French words of the advertisement clearly dominate English words here; at Ed's the reverse is true. The advertisement is aimed at francophones, whose devotion to Canada is presumed to be uncertain. The ambivalence of English Quebeckers does not concern the federal government, which is acquiescing in the choices the provincial government is offering the English. Second, government is shown here as impotent and immobile, but loyal and good, business as potent and mobile, but fickle and bad; the reverse is true at Ed's. These changes accompany the symbolic shift from working-class retaliation to middle-class submissiveness. One element alone remains constant: the association of business with English and government with French. The next cartoon is the only one to illustrate a working-class man — his name is Al — who prefers to flee (figure 21). His partner supports his sentiments, but questions his middle-class and corporate response. He finds it excessive, just as others found the language legislation

123

Fig. 21.

Between Parent and Child

"But moving our head office?" (Aislin)

excessive. For these workers, head office is a beer parlour. The term "head office" is perhaps a straight joke, but it may betray ATs aspirations to social mobility. Thus by drawing a working-class character who does not fight back, Aislin links this behaviour with middle-class aspirations. The final cartoon in this set reinforces the now familiar pattern of middle-class anglophone flight. McGill University has arranged its graduation ceremony so that successful anglophone students can leave for Toronto as soon as they receive their diplomas. The exodus of younger middle-class anglophones is not a meandering stream based on soulsearching individual decisions, but a river of effortless, carefully orchestrated choices. The assembly-line production of graduates will be complete only when they board the bus. Although previously women were absent from decisions to fight or flee, this emigration is composed equally of women and men. Since young people at graduation are free from family ties and since gender is no longer a factor, it is now part

124 Carnivalization of Politics of the university's graduation ceremony that all graduates should leave the province smoothly and without hesitation. In Aislin's drawings the impact of Quebec's language policy is very different for middle- and for working-class people. This is probably because job opportunities were thought to be deteriorating more rapidly for middle- than for working-class anglophones, for several reasons. First, middle-class work relied more on verbal skills, so language was more central to it. Second, English was more often the customary language of work in middle- than in working-class occupations (Gendron Commission 1972, 91,107); linguistic changes in the work force were taking place mainly among white-collar and management positions. Third, the thrust for Quebec nationalism came mainly from the middle class (Guindon 1988). Since the civil service was almost entirely francophone, Quebec's language policy was aimed at management positions in the private sector. The young were more willing than the middle-aged to move, since the young had better employment opportunities if they did. Those now in service work would eventually suffer from the decline in the anglophone population, but the immediate impact would fall mainly on the young looking for work. Since attrition was the preferred way to reduce the work force, the supply of new jobs was far below the rate of retirements. The violence is overt in several of Aislin's drawings. The tank assault on Westmount and die arrest of the Irish celebrant connected institutional violence to the language debate; the thug approaching Laurin and the sign dropping on the bureaucrat connect individual acts of physical violence to die debate. There is impersonal verbal violence, as well, in the "Speak French" slogan. Two patterns are noticeable. First, institutional violence is usually directed by anonymous, unseen francophones against anglophones in general. Individual violence, however, is returned by recognizable, visible anglophones against individual francophones. Second, in each case the violence is directed largely against the middle class. Only the Irish celebrant is ambiguous in this respect. The underlying metaphor in the content of the message is the orga nized physical and verbal assault by francophones against anglophones. The anglophone working class fights back while the middle class flees, but neither response is well organized. When Al and his buddy move their head office, this is a unilateral decision by Al. When Ed's patrons applaud his action, they neither volunteer nor are invited to participate. There is no indication diat the Irish celebrant was arrested with an

I2j Between Parent and Child organized group, or that friends and relatives are present to support and plead for him. The impending assault on Laurin is a solo adventure. The McGill graduation ceremony alone is an organized, collaborative response, but it supports the linguistic change. It is true that most francophones are also portrayed alone, but they are all officials carrying out a coordinated policy. The anglophones, in contrast, act alone to defend their interests - either against francophone attacks or against the implication that no outsider can fully understand. We can conclude from this study of Aislin's drawings that the frame of the content is, generally, reified carnival. The social structure is partially inverted as francophones who assert their institutional power succeed in driving out the middle class, even though they are defeated by working-class resistance. The skimmer is invited to ridicule the excessive and absurd methods of the francophones, but there is little joy, collaboration, or control among the middle class, who flee when victimized by government policy. It is true that a few working-class figures like Ed do subvert the language legislation with a pure carnivalesque gesture, but this is not pure carnival, because resistance does not erupt spontaneously, nor is it organized collectively. There is, in short, no communitas.

7 Conclusions

A COMPARISON WITH EARLIER WORK

As I mentioned in chapter i, I have already argued in my earlier book on Canadian editorial cartoons, Behind the Jester's Mask (Morris I989a), that cartoonists in Western capitalist society can be seen as the jesters of the bourgeoisie. This conclusion was not based on a surface analysis of cartoon content. The drawings do not consistently side with capital in labour disputes, nor do they consistently favour right- over left-wing political parties. Indeed, many cartoonists take journalistic professionalism to mean political neutrality and are determined to expose official foolishness, whichever party is in power. This is again true in the present analysis; the content of the cartoonists message, expressed through a great variety of metaphors, is liberation from foolishness. In Behind the Jester's Mask, the content of the cartoonists frame is the metaphor of the fool show, with its expectation that the excesses of politics will be exposed to ritualized ridicule, releasing tensions surrounding the exercise of power without directly challenging that power (Zijderveld 1982). The ridicule does not emanate from a neutral stance, however: it is linked to the form of the message (Golding and Murdoch 1979). In their choice of oppositions and associations for structuring their message, cartoonists equate democratic politics with foolishness by constantly lampooning those in power. Less overtly, they contrasted politics with business, which they generally equate with good sense. The

127 Conclusions form of the frame for my analysis in the Jester's Mask, where I focused on relations between dominant and minority groups — in French-English and Canadian-American cartoons — was chosen for its substantial importance in Canada. This second book, which has focused on Quebec cartoons from the 19605 and 19705 using semiotic and symbolic action theory, has confirmed some of the findings of Jester's Mask while modifying others. The content of the message remains the same in this book: the cartoons are again preoccupied with liberation from political foolishness, though the representations of public openness to liberation are very different in the Quebec cartoons. In the Quebec context, Bakhtin's concepts of pure and hyper-carnival provide a deeper understanding of the content of the frame than relatively simple references to the metaphor of the fool show. The demonstration of the fruitfulness of the theory of carnival and hyper-carnival in the Quebec context has been one of the original contributions of this book. My very different treatment of carnival in (English) Canadian cartoons, where carnival is reprehensible disorder (Morris 1992), and my very different strategy of data analysis in the Jester's Mask, where the general characteristics of cartoons from across Canada are coded and analysed together, largely conceals the presence of carnival. The fool show metaphor is useful, however, as a reminder that cartoons are a show deliberately planned by someone and not a spontaneous event, as pure carnival might imply. The form of the message in the Quebec cartoons is again an overt opposition: not between business and politics, but between French and English or Quebec and Canada. In fact, business is barely visible, although in many cartoons the Englishness of business is taken for granted. Struggles to acquire and use political power are the focus this time. Anglophones who hold and cling to power are viewed as rigid and foolish losers; francophones who seek power for Quebec are generally presented as heroic winners. Francophones who exercise power, whether in Quebec or in Ottawa, are generally shown to be as foolish as their anglophone counterparts, though some of them are more devious than rigid. The cartoonists offer a range of variations on this French-English opposition. The nationalist cartoons of Berthio, dating from the 19605, contrast "the state" with "the nation." Since the English are identified with both political and economic power and the francophones who hold political power are shown as an executive committee of the English, a

128

Carnivalization of Politics

contrast between business and politics is scarcely possible. The striking form of Berthio's message is the opposition between the Quebec people and the current rulers, regardless of their common ethnic background. Several years later, business is again absent from or merely implicit in Dupras' work; politics is the locus of both struggle and foolishness. Here the analysis is more complex, however, because there are now politicians who represent the nation and who give it touches of foolishness that are absent in Berthio. The principal hero, however, is President de Gaulle, a foreign visitor. By the 19705, when Girerd s and Aislin's work appeared, the independentists were attaining power. Their efforts to make French the dominant language of everyday life are shown as extremist and silly, but the inherent good sense of business is scarcely the metaphor for these two cartoonists. In Girerd the state is a comic exaggeration of the nation, but in Girerd and Aislin the opposition between state and nation has vanished. While francophones are still the initiators of change, making anglophones look foolish by their inept attempts to defend their past privileges, even the French-English distinction is disappearing. The francophones who do gain office become foolish in their turn, as if power is a magic wand that transforms good nationalists into foolish politicians. In Morris 1984, I suggested that the metaphor of the nuclear family offers a way to make sense of Ontario's rhetoric in response to the possibility of Quebec independence. This study of Quebec cartoons shows that metaphor to be too narrow. The metaphor of a traditional, three-generation, sexist family underlies many if not most Canadian editorial cartoons on French-English relations. As we have seen, the people of (English) Canada and Quebec are pictured as husband and wife, unable to live comfortably together, but unable, as well, to bring themselves to separate. Anglophones in Quebec and francophones elsewhere relate to them like dependent sons and daughters, alternately docile and rebellious. France and England relate to them like parents or in-laws whose visits bring forth delight from one spouse and resentment from the other. The most striking difference between the cartoons I studied in my earlier work and the Quebec cartoons studied here, then, is the eclipse of the business-politics opposition from the form of the message in the Quebec cartoons. Indeed, business is virtually absent from these Quebec cartoons, for several reasons. First, as already noted, for much of this period English and business were almost synonymous, so a French-

129

Conclusions

English opposition implied an opposition between politics and business. Second, the francophone political elite, which frequently collaborated with business interests while employing nationalist rhetoric, softened the starkness of the contrasts and drew much of the nationalists' fire. Third, the populist nationalism of Quebec stressed the unity of the nation. Although Dupras showed francophone workers as largely focused on jobs and unmoved by national liberation, media workers and intellectuals in general emphasized the role of the state in transforming civil society and directing economic development. Most of them assumed that the problems of class conflict in Quebec were largely due to the concentration of business in anglophone hands; once this ceased, the state and business would work harmoniously together to develop a modern French-speaking society. In this spirit, the Parti Quebecois came out strongly on the workers' side in labour disputes involving the anglophone managements of companies such as Pratt and Whitney, but was torn and conspicuously silent when francophone management was involved, as in the strike at La Presse in 1970. The Liberals, for their part, worked very closely with business on questions such as language legislation, where business interests might be adversely affected (Fournier 1976). For these reasons, then, the cartoonists in Quebec did not act overtly as the jesters of the bourgeoisie. Berthio and Dupras did not echo a chamber-of-commerce view of politicians. And since Girerd never drew business leaders in relation to the issues studied here, it is difficult to say whether he considered them any less foolish. Aislin too paid very limited attention to business activities in these contexts. His general strategy identified big business with the middle class and individual flight, and family enterprises with the working class and individual retaliation. For all four cartoonists, politics remained foolish, while business followed its own interests. THE

GENERALITY OF THE

RESULTS

Over twenty years ago, there was a debate about the possibility of a general theory of political cartooning. On the strength of several case studies, Streicher (1967) proposed the key dimensions of such a theory. Coupe (1967) responded that far more case studies were needed to supply a firm basis for generalization, even about the major dimensions. Some ten years later, Press (1981) offered a much simpler general theory, arguing that the nature of cartooning was generally a function

130

Carnivalization of Politics

of the political system. A dictatorship restricted cartoonists to propaganda for the regime - or to silence. Vulnerable autocratic regimes produced the golden age of cartooning, with few holds barred and systemic change at stake. Democratic regimes favoured gadfly cartoonists whose function was to represent their communities of interest and to keep office holders honest, while interpreting the distant, complex, and unfamiliar in terms of the nearby, simple, and familiar. In this book we have confirmed the importance of communities of interest whose outlooks cartoonists espouse and have sought to elucidate the communities of the major Quebec artists of two decades. By distinguishing between frame and message and form and content, we have revealed the multiple metaphors combined within a single drawing. While confirming the importance of the metaphor of the Canadian family as the form of the frame, we have discovered substantial differences between Quebec and (English) Canadian cartooning in the content of the frame and in the form and content of the message. Because of these differences, only very limited generalizations can be made. On the other hand, a careful reading of Press' theory indicates that it may be possible to tie these differences together. The carnivalesque work of Berthio and Dupras came, arguably, from an age of vulnerable autocratic regimes, a period of national uprising and anti-colonialist activity that has long since passed. Working in a more democratic regime, Berthio switched to hyper-carnival when depicting QuebecOttawa relations, and Girerd consistently preferred this content for his frame. Perhaps carnivalization has vanished with the upheavals and optimism of the 19605, to be replaced by hyper-carnival and a general cynicism about democratic political change. But I should add that this interpretation of Girerd's work as profoundly pessimistic contrasts with Press' conclusion that contemporary cartoonists see capitalist democracy as basically good, but needing fairly regular minor adjustments. AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH! CARTOONS AS CIRCUSES

When analysing documents like cartoons, we must constantly bear in mind that they are open to alternative interpretations. The most serious challenge comes from those who construct viable competing or complementary frameworks for understanding the documents. So it will be worthwhile, in conclusion, to look at one alternative interpretation: Paul Bouissac's work (1976,1978,1985) that suggests a different metaphor for

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the content of the frame, that of the circus. Bouissac argues that circus acts portray the unthinkable; they illustrate the comic inversion of social rules as a way of answering subversive questions from children when adults lack the words to respond. Circus animals behave like people, and circus people like animals; circus people produce without working and work without producing. Clowns wear boots that are ludicrously inappropriate for walking, but admirable for someone who happens to fall off a tightrope and needs to grasp it with an outstretched foot. Clown acts open with an inverted qualifying test (Legare 1980, 1982), where the clown demonstrates complete incompetence in an elementary task. They then build up to a glorifying test that requires extraordinary agility. Cartoons begin from a similar inversion: fools who fail the simplest qualifying tests have been put in charge of the country. They display proper energy, but their hard work is comically misdirected. They seek to be successful, but effect only symbolic, not material change. They seek to be accountable, but replace substance by posturing and appearances. They are serious, but in argumentative talk rather than collaborative action. Consequently, the cartoonist judges their endeavours to be quite disproportionate to their accomplishments. Like the clown, they fail their qualifying test and evoke only laughter. But like the clown act, as well, their continued performance eventually leads to triumph. Governments survive most votes of confidence, and relatively few cabinet members resign. Individual parties sometimes fail glorifying tests by losing elections, but there is victory at the system level. The losers are replaced by others who are surprisingly similar. One bunch of fools is displaced, but their successors will be equally foolish. However ill-adapted to exercising power, the opposition party has shown that it is well suited to winning our votes when we are discontented. The system has passed another glorifying test. Whereas Bakhtin examines the inversion of structures, Bouissac concentrates on the inversion of rules. This more precise focus permits us to identify ethnic and power rules in the cartoons, and the clashes between them. Ethnic Rules Four ethnic rules emerge in the cartoons we have studied in this book. First, we find surface conflict in ethnic relations, but underlying collaboration. The consistent re-presentation of ethnic relations in family

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terms confirms the message that the ethnic division of labour and differences of interest should lead to differences over minor details, coupled with harmony on more important matters. The earliest cartoons in this study, those of Berthio and Dupras, faithfully embody the sexist family metaphor and portray the old regime in old-fashioned family terms. More recently, gender has been less prominent as the form of the frame within which cartoonists have thought about ethnicity. Four other indicators of a family metaphor are often present, however: the age, size, and role differences appropriate to a family, and the small number of dramatis personae. Most drawings show one to three politicians as adults or children, unless there is a crowd scene. Whether they are partners, rivals, or different generations, their relationships readily correspond to wellknown family patterns: it is difficult to imagine another small group that combines common property, proximity, and intimacy, with ambivalence, rivalry, and conflict, as the family does. The family provides a versatile image dominating the cartoons, a form of the frame that stresses the unity underlying the surface oppositions. A second ethnic rule underlying these cartoons is that, increasingly, the state is being asked to resolve ethnic conflicts, to prevent discrimination, and to reduce inequalities in the distribution of symbolic and material rewards (Glazer 1975; Kallen 1982; Lafontant 1993; Nevitte and Kornberg 1985). It has become the forum for public recognition of each group's values and life-style and for bestowing symbolic privileges or penalties (Gusfield 1963; Breton 1984). Berthio s francophones demolish the Queen's honorific position and military protection with laughter. Dupras' de Gaulle is immensely popular and triumphant among francophones; through his heroic verbal gesture he leaves anglophones and federalists defeated. In most of the cartoons, Quebecois nationalists count on their state to develop francophone businesses, end anglophone economic domination, preserve the French language, provide good government, and lead the population to effective independence from (English) Canada, while minimizing the impact of class, gender, and other differences that might threaten the unity of the people. A third rule is that ethnic groups are internally homogeneous but collectively divergent from one another. Accordingly, ethnically homogeneous cartoons never portray heroes and villains; they appear only in cartoons about inter-ethnic relations. Berthio's and Dupras' work is imbued with hope and impending change, as good francophone citizens are about to overcome a bad anglophone regime. Within a decade their

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Conclusions

leaders and their optimism alike are replaced by Girerds politically neutral satire on francophone politicians alone, and the public turns from participation to laughter from the sidelines. The fourth ethnic rule is that the minority group seeks successfully to alter the linguistic and political status quo, while the dominant group seeks unsuccessfully to maintain it. The minority is regularly able to take small initiatives that render the dominant group foolish because it is unable to counter them. In (English) Canadian cartoons, the minority similarly plays an enterprising and proactive role, while the dominant group limits itself to defensive reactions. Power Rules Power is the ability to assemble and use resources to make and carry out decisions in the face of opposition. Editorial cartoonists concentrate their attention on those who exercise power by holding high public office. They stress four main rules about political power. First, it is focused on managing impressions more than interests. Conscious that re-election is never far away and that decisive action is likely to create more opponents than supporters, politicians, whether good or evil, are constantly seeking the limelight, posturing, and looking carefully for public attention and approval before they act. Cartoonists therefore portray most of them as fools, manipulating a gullible public with energetic but unproductive activities designed mainly to improve their own image and to ensure re-election. Some, indeed, behave in this way even when the public is not watching. Only the most rigid villains care little for public approval. Second, the exercise of political power rests on persuasion more than action. Posturing and rhetoric are mechanisms intended to generate enough enthusiasm and resources to persuade others to accomplish tasks at ones request. The successful politician is not a rugged individualist assaulting problems single-handed. That strategy might be appropriate for business, but in politics it leads to foolishness and sacrifice (K. Burke 1966, 82—4). Success means persuading others to do the work and then either sharing the credit or avoiding the blame. Third, since politics is a social drama about status and symbols (K. Burke 1954, 238—9), political action concentrates on symbolic change. Few material effects are visible, even when the energy expended is substantial. Judged by tangible results, politics is a massive waste of resources. A new language policy is extensively debated, elaborated on

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reams of paper, and enforced with the full power of government; but the net result is the removal of an apostrophe from a cafe sign and the injury of a civil servant. Fourth, politics is concerned with making changes of principle: establishing the right to address the federal government in either official language, to be educated in English in Quebec, or to choose one's own sovereign. Decisions about principles sound fine, but their translation into sets of precise and detailed regulations governing daily conduct poses both serious and silly problems. Cartoonists illustrate some of the more excessive examples: the Irish Montrealer charged with bearing a friendly placard in English only; the instruction to the RCMP to keep an eye on Montcalm during the Queen's visit; the imaginative suggestions for a truly Quebe'cois stop sign. Conflicts Between Ethnic and Power Rules The cartoons do not limit themselves to illustrating ethic and power rules; they also point out the conflicts between them. Three conflicts are notable. First, the idealism of ethnic nationalism is subverted by the experience of holding power. The joyous crowds of Berthio and Dupras expect a glorious future when francophones replace anglophones as their rulers; but the change in language and allegiance is shown by Girerd to make very little difference in politicians' behaviour. Berthio continued drawing long after 1967, but it is significant that little if any of his work from the 19705 is judged as outstanding as the work he did in the middle and late 19605 (Desbarats and Mosher 1979). The dominant change in Quebec cartooning by the time of the referendum defeat in 1980 was the replacement of the hopefulness of certain sections of the public by confusion and cynicism. Teams of highly intelligent, rational Liberal and PQ ministers were making decisions as autocratically or as manipulatively as their Union Nationale predecessors. Once in power, the new middle-class francophone politicians yielded to exactly the same temptations and situational pressures as their forerunners. The anglophone villain gave way to the francophone fool, but political behaviour remained remarkably stable. Second, the nationalists' pursuit of their more imaginative visions foundered once they attained power and were obliged to translate them into concrete, pedestrian regulations. Girerd documents in great detail how the Parti Quebecois ideal of sovereignty-association is gradually but clearly replaced by the goal of staying in office and referendum strategies

135

Conclusions

come to be judged by their impact at the polls. Berthio shows Jean Lesage going through the motions rather than vigorously pursuing greater self-determination for Quebec. Dupras shows Daniel Johnson making the maximum electoral capital from each element in de Gaulle's visit and doing little to further the interests of Quebec. Third, the net result of intensive political agitation and state intervention in ethnic relations, according to all these artists, is the diversion of political energies to produce symbolic rather than material change. The cartoonist who mocks the politician for achieving very little tangible change is, from this perspective, performing "the most powerful function of the clown, ... his exposure of the incongruities between the values cherished by the community and the means taken by individuals and groups to achieve those values" (Duncan 1968, 99). From another perspective, the artist is commenting to diose who do not welcome the proposed change that very little of substance will result. In this respect, the cartoonist has moved from low satire of individuals to high satire of democratic politics as an institution. K. Burke (1954), Breton (1984), and others have reminded us, however, that symbolic change can be very important and should not be disdained as "mere window dressing," either in the sense that it is easily attained or that it is popularly regarded as trivial. The history of multiethnic states has shown that they are minefields, easily exploding over issues of symbolic importance. Berthio and Dupras are, in this respect, revolutionary cartoonists, seeking major symbolic change and assuring their skimmers that it is coming. Girerd, on the other hand, seeks to reassure those who might react violently to political change that the change they are witnessing is not the thin end of a crucial wedge and that life will go on much as before.

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Index

Acadians, 41, 47-50; as greatgrandparents, 49 advertising: as hyper-ritual, 8—9; in relation to behaviour, ii Aislin. See Mosher, Terry anglophones. See English Canadians; Montreal, anglophones Aquin, Fran£ois, 52 Arden, Heather, 16, 105 Arsenault, Bona, 47—50, 52 Atlantic provinces, 7, 84 Auerbach, Erich, n Badeaux, Guy, 12 Bakhtin, Mikhail M., 8-9, 13, 15, 29-30, 62-63, 87, 105, 131 Balthazar, Louis, 84 Barthes, Roland, 6, 8, 10 Begin, Menachem, 68 Berger, Peter, 4 Bergeron, Gerard, 65, 86—87, 96 Berthiaume, Roland (Berthio): and royal visit as carnival, 13-36, 87; compared with Dupras, 38-43, 60, 127-8, 130; compared

with Girerd, 60—2, 106, 127—8, 134—5; and family metaphor, 132; and FrenchEnglish differences, 55, 104, 129; and OttawaQuebec relations, 76-84; and Quebec federalists, 58, 105; and social class differences, 50, 74 Berthio. See Berthiaume, Roland Bertrand, Jean-Jacques, no Bouissac, Paul, 115, 130-1 Bourgault, Pierre, 42, 89,

95 Breton, Raymond, 108, 132, 135 Brunelle, Dorval, 35 Brunei, Michel, 15 Burke, Kenneth, 10, 60, 69, 87, 101, 133, 135 Burke, Peter, 63 Burns, Robert, 92, 97, 112 business, contrasted with politics, 6, 63, 65, 121—2, 126, 129, 133 Canada, family metaphor, 7, 15. 34> 37-8, 76, 83-4, 87, 101, 128, 132-3

capitalism: in advertising, 89; and cartoons, 106, 126; and the English in Quebec, 20; as natural, 6, 76 carnival: aftermath of, 102-3; Bakhtin's theory of, 9-11, 13, 33, 62-4, 87, 105, 127; in cartooning, n, 39; as content of the frame, 1518, 20, 38, 60, 65, 76; contrasted with ceremony, 15-18, 29, 33-5, 40, 87-8, 102—3; contrasted with hyper-carnival, 10—n, 623, 76, 130; folly in Quebec as, 21; as an ideal type, 10; and multiple voices (polyphony), 10, 63, 81, 87; royal visit as, 20, 24-30; and sacred objects, 93; structure of, 16-17; rigidity of, 33, 39 cartoons and cartoonists: and capitalism, 6, 64; as carnivalization, n, 63—4; from cartoonists' perspective, 13, 38; as circus, 130; content of frame, 8-10, 13, 15-18, 20, 23-4, 33, 38, 50, 60, 65, 76, 82, 106,

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Index

125-7, 130-1; content of message, 5-6, 23, 25, 33, 42, 44, 51, 65, 96, no, 124, 126-7, 13°; as creative use of metaphor, 5; domestication function of, 5, 7; as fool-makers of politicians, 64, 76, 133; form of frame, 7, 15, 33, 38, 50, 76, 83-4, 87, 127, 130-2; form of message, 6-7, 206, 32-3, 39, 87, 120, 126— 8, 130; on gender, 18, 60, 85, 104, 132; as hyper-carnivalization, 63—4; and ideological limitations, 63; as jesters of the bourgeoisie, 7, 64-5, 106, 126, 129, 135; as negotiated social documents, 4, n; as outsiders, 118; and political regimes, 129-30; as professionally neutral, 126 Catholic Church, 94-5, 105— 6, 115 ceremony, contrasted with carnival, 15—16, 29, 33, 35, 40, 87-8, 102-3 change, symbolic versus material, 131, 133, 135 Chaput, Marcel, 30, 31 Charron, Claude, 94, 97, 102-4 childish behaviour, Goffman's theory of, 88—9 civil servants: federal, and official bilingualism, 108; federal, and Rene Levesque, 79; in Quebec, 117, 121, 124-5 Clift, Dominique, 85 Coleman, William D., 50, 85 community of interest, cartoonist's, 35, 130 Confederation: contrasted widi Quebec Patriot, 53; legitimacy in Quebec, 61; as symbolic figure, 42, 53, 55—8 content of frame. See cartoons and cartoonists, content of frame

content of message. See cartoons and cartoonists, content of message Cook, G. Ramsey, 14 Corcoran, Philip E., 95 Coupe, William A., 129 Courtes, Joseph, 53 de Gaulle, Charles: anglophone reactions to speech, 43—6; and conservative nationalism, 40; contrasted with other figures (see oppositions, de Gaulle); effects within Quebec, 50-3; effects on French-English relations, 53-7; francophone reactions, 46-50; Montreal speech, 42—3; as parent to Quebec, 37, 40, 52; as parent-in-law to English Canada, 38; presidential visit, 37-61, 128, 132, 135; and Quebec nationalism, 5L 55-7 democracy. See politics, democratic Desbarats, Peter, 12, 13, 65, 134 Diefenbaker, John, 28, 43-6, 53. 55-8 Dion, Leon, 84-6 documentary reality, 25 domestication function of cartoons, 5, 7 Dondis, D.A., 116 Dorfman, Ariel, 4 Drapeau, Jean: as child, 57; contrasted with de Gaulle, 51, 53, 57; as Judas, 51, 57; and Quebec nationalism, 57-9; reaction to de Gaulle, 48 Duncan, Hugh D., 87, 135 Duplessis, Maurice, 21, 40, 69. 79 Dupras, Pierre: compared with Berthio, 38-43, 60, 75-6, 127-8, 130; compared with Girerd, 62, 72,

75-6, 106, 127-8, 134-5; and de Gaulle's visit, 37— 59; and family metaphor, 132; and social-class differences, 74, 129 Duvignaud, Jean, 87, 102 England as grandparent, 15, 128 English Canadians: in Berthio's cartoons, 14, 17-20, 22, 27—32, 34, 36; and class differences, 74; as culture, 71, 75-6; as husband, 7, 101; and social order, 74, 77—9, 116, 128, 133; intellectuals, 117-8; and Daniel Johnson, 46; leaders unknown to Girerd s skimmers, 73; learning French, in, 115—6; as object, 74; and Quebec nationalism, 40, 65, 68, 72; and the Quiet Revolution, 85; reactions to de Gaulle, 43-6; and sacred objects, 16, 18, 22. See also Montreal, anglophones. Ericson, Richard V., 4, 6 e"tat, opposed to nation, 21, 23, 25-7, 42-3 ethnic rules, 131-5 Favreau, Guy, 50 federalist MPS, 17, 18, 27-9, 31—3, 40, 43; as children, 28, 32, 34; and de Gaulle's speech, 44, 48,57-8; as representatives of Ottawa, 74 Floch, Jean-Marie, 99 folly: in Quebec, 24—5; in contemporary life, absence of, 62 fool-king, in carnival, n, 16, 18, 60, 102-3, 106 foolishness, as feature of politics, 6, 32, 63, 87, 94, 106, 126, 129, 133-5 form of frame. See cartoons and cartoonists, form of frame in

145

Index

form of message. See cartoons and cartoonists, form of message in Fournier, Pierre, 129 frame, analysis of, 5, 7-8. See also cartoons and cartoonists: form of frame in; content of frame in France. See de Gaulle francophones. See minorities Fraser, Graham, 86, 97 French-English relations: effect of de Gaulle speech on, 53—7; Quebec's ambivalence, 83, 100-1; and Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, 77, 107 French Power, 69, 75, 82; and language policy, 107-8 Frye, Northrop, 16, 33, 39, 60 gender: depicted in cartoons, 18, 60, 104, 132; as metaphor, 33—4, 101; and support for independence,

85 Gendron Commission, 124 Girerd, Jean-Pierre, 12, 60— 76, 83-117, 129-30, 133-4; compared with Berthio, 60-2, 106, 127-8, 135 glancer. See skimmer Godbout, Jacques, 65 Goffman, Erving, 5, 8, 10, 34, 62-3, 88, 100, 118 Gombrich, E.H., 5—6 Greimas, Algirdas J., 53 Groulx, Canon Lionel, 40, 42, 61 Guindon, Hubert, 35, 37, 39, 40, 50, 61, 65, 85, 89, 91, 101, 107-8, 109, 124 Hall, Stuart, 4 Hirschkop, Kenneth, 9 Hjelmslev, Louis, 5 Holquist, Michael, 9, hyper-carnival: in Aislin, 125; in Berthio, 81-2, 130; contrasted with carnival, 10—

n, 62-3; in Girerd, 62-5, 76, 87, 106; in relation to behaviour, n hyper-ritual, Goffmans theory of, 8 ideology: anti-independentist, 85-6; and the capitalist state, 7; and cartooning, 63; and family metaphor, 7; of French Power, 75; and metaphor, 6; and referendum campaign, 89—90; and secondlevel signs, 8 independentism. See nationalism, Quebecois Johnson, Daniel: and anglophone premiers, 58; and carnival, 40; contrasted with de Gaulle, 41, 135; contrasted with Jean Lesage, 51—2; and early stages of de Gaulle's visit, 41-2; and Montreal speech, 42-3, 46; and Quebec nationalism, 39, 47, 51, 55-8, 61 Johnson, Lyndon, 40, 42 Johnson, Pierre-Marc, 92, 112 La Patrie, 13 La Presse, 65, 88, 102, no, 129 Laliberte, C. Raymond, 40 Lalonde, Marc, 67-8, 74 language legislation in Quebec, 61, in, 128; and anglophone response, 109, 118-25; and assimilation, 108; and business, 114, 121— 2; and francophone language use, 112-16; ignoring serious problems, 114, 116, 133-4 language policy, of Ottawa, 61, 84, 107-9 Laporte, Pierre, 51, 120 Larose, Jean, 84, 85, 86 Laurendeau, Andre, 76—7

Laurin, Camille, 92-4, no, 121-5 Le Devoir, 76—7 Le Jour, 13 Le Maclean, 13 Legare, Clement, 131 Leger, Cardinal, 115 Leger, Marcel, 70, 74 Lesage, Jean: contrasted with Daniel Johnson, 51—2; defeat in 1966, 35; as federalist, 40; as opposition leader, 47—8; and Quebec nationalism, 21, 33-4, 56— 8, 61-2, 77-82, 104, 135; and royal visit, 14, 17, 22— 3, 25, 31-3, 76, 82 Lessard, Marc, 113 Levesque, Rene: as cake salesman, 98-100; and Canadian nationalism, 70—1, 75; as child, 86-103; collaboration with Claude Ryan, 96; contrasted with Bona Arsenault, 52; contrasted with Pierre Trudeau, 61, 65-8, 74; as dog, 71; indispensability to Trudeau, 65-8, 95; and language policy, HI, 113; and Quebec nationalism, 52, 61, 74, 79, 81, 97; and Quebec referendum, 86103; and royal visit, 18-20, 22, 23, 30, 33, 34 Liberals: federal, 69; Quebec, 28, 33, 47, 52, 61, 134; Quebec, and the Church, 94; Quebec, and language policy, 108, 112, 129; and Quebec referendum, 83-4 liminality, 10, 16, 62, 103 Lussier, Doris, as Pere Gedeon, 95 McGill University, 123—5 MacRae, Donald G., 5, 35, 61 McRoberts, Kenneth, 47, 84, 85, 90, 91, 94, 108, 109, in Mailloux, Stephen, 4

146

Index

Marchand, Jean: and de Gaulle's visit, 43-5, 58; and French Power, 69—70, 74—5; as married child, 44; and Quebec nationalism, 56—9; reaction to de Gaulle's speech, 48 Mattelart, Armand, 4 Maudit Anglais: contrasted with Quebec Patriot, 534; as symbolic figure, 40, 53, 55-8, 72 Meech Lake Accord, 84, 86 message, content of. See cartoons and cartoonists, content of message message, form of. See cartoons and cartoonists, form of message metaphors: Canada as family, 7, 15, 34, 37-8, 76, 834, 87, 101, 128, 132-3; Canada as object, 74; of carnivalization, 62; of child-judge, 105; of children, 28, 32, 88, 96, 98, 105; of circus, 115, 130-1; in content of frame, 8—9; in content of message, 5— 6; of crucifixion, 102; of father, 37-61, 73, 74, 76, 116; in form of frame, 7; in form of message, 6—7; gender as, 33—4; Mr Handyman, 114; and ideology, 6; of jester, 7, 64—5, 106, 126; of language teacher, 115; of liberation, 37-59. 85, 126-7; of mother-in-law, 14—36, 60, 76; of odd couple, 65—73; PQ as religion, 94; Quebec as shrew, 101; and social class, 74; wrestling as, 77-8; of young and old, 34 middle class: anglophone, 109, 122-5, I29> anglophone, and violence, 124; francophone, and independence movement, 85, 94;

francophone, and language policy, 108—9, I2I > 124—5; francophone, and Quiet Revolution, 50, 129, 134 minorities, official language: Acadians, 41, 47-8, 109; as children, 7, 107; in Ontario, 41, 43, 51, 109; in Quebec, 107-125 Montcalm, Marquis de, 18, 22, 23, 34, 73, 76, 134 Montreal: anglophones, 18, 24, 30; de Gaulle's speech in, 37—8, 42—3; demographic changes, 109; fight or flight options, 121-4, 129; FLQ activities, 37, 120; institutions, 117, 122, 124; intellectuals, 11718, 123; and language rights, 107-10, 134; learning French, in, 115-16; responses to language legislation, in, 118-25; and violence, 124 Montreal Gazette, 122 Montreal Star, 122 Morin, Claude, 67-8, 93, 96, 112; and etapistes, 91-2 Morin, Jacques-Yvan, 97, 102 Mosher, Terry (Aislin), n, 12, 13, 65, 116-25, 128-9, 134 Mosher Collection, 11—12, 89, 116 Murdoch, Graham, 5, 126 myth, of the old king, 39, 60, 106

nationalism, Quebecois, 13, 14, 23, 42, 68; disruptive effects, 74, 77-9, 116, 128, 133; as anglophone scapegoat, 109; and business leaders, 86, 129; compared with Acadian nationalism, 49; conservative, 40, 85, 94; and de Gaulle, 42—3, 51, 56—7; and Jean Drapeau, 51; and English

Canadians, 20, 65; and federalist MPs, 17, 18, 279; as foolish politics, 128, 134; and Girerd, 62, 82; independentists, portrayal of, 47—8, 101; and intellectuals, unanimous support of, 84; and Inuit, 97—8, 103-5; an(i Johnson government, 39; and language legislation, 61, in— 16, 128, 133—4; and Lesage government, 21, 33, 34; and Rene Levesque, 52, 97; opposition to, 85—6; and personified national ideal, 90; and Parti Quebecois populism, 35, 65, 84, 129, 132; slogans, 117-18 O'Neill, Pierre, 93, 112 Office de la Langue Francaise. See Quebec, French Language Office old regime, in cartoons, 167> 39, 132 Ontario: as eldest child in family, 7, 128; francophones in, 41, 43; Rene Levesque and welcome sign, 70 oppositions: Bona Arsenault and Rene Levesque, 52; artist and politician, 84, 87; business and politics, 6, 63, 65, 121-2, 126, 128, 133; Canadian and French leaders, 43, 44; carnival and ceremony, 10, 15-16, 29, 33-5, 40, 87-8; change, material and symbolic, 131, 133, 135; child and parent, 43, 74, 86; control and lack of control, 44; culture and nature, 64, 70, 71, 75-6, 90, 101, 115, 121; de Gaulle and Acadians, 48, 50; de Gaulle and anglophones, 44; de Gaulle and Bona

147

Index

Arsenault, 50; de Gaulle and federalist MPs, 43; de Gaulle and Jean Drapeau, 51' 53« 575 de Gaulle and Daniel Johnson, 41; de Gaulle and Queen Elizabeth, 41—2; deeds and words, 87; disorder and order, 24-6, 34, 64, 90-1, 93—4, 119—20; employer and worker, 34, 65, 73; English and French, 20, 27, 29-32, 34, 40, 46, 568, 65, 68, 72, 117-18, 120, 125, 130, 132, 134; etat and nation, 21, 23, 25-7, 29, 34-6, 40, 42, 43, 88, 128; federalist and nationalist or independentist, 58, 82, 102; flexible and rigid structures, 33, 39, 104; a general and a politician, 43; the Inuit and the Parti Quebecois, 97-8; Johnson, Daniel and Jean Lesage, 51; Levesque, Rene and Pierre Trudeau, 61, 65-8, 86; master and servant, 69; Ottawa and Quebec, 22, 24, 37, 65, 67-9, 74; old and young, 34, 83, 85, 124; state and nation (see oppositions, etat and nation) Parizeau, Jacques, 92—4, 97, 102 Parti Quebecois: and acceptable French, 113—14; cartoonists, relation to, 62, 82; as Catholic Church, 94; and class conflict, 129; election victories, 85, 88, 93, 103; and gender patterns, 104; and independence issue, 83, 93; and Inuit, 97-8; language policy, 61, 109, 111—14; and nationalist populism, 35, 65, 84, 129, 134; precursors, 39; and wording of

referendum, 91-2; slogans, 67; and state, role of, 85; and uncritical trust, 94-5; winning at all costs, 101, 104, 134 Payette, Lise, 85—6, 92-4, 97— 8, 102-4 Pearson, Lester: and cooperative federalism, 29—30, 79— 81; and de Gaulle's visit, 40, 43-6, 53, 55-8; putting out Quebec fires, 20; and Quebec nationalism, 77-82 Pepin-Robarts Report, 84 Pelletier, Gerard: and French Power, 69-70, 74-5; reactions to de Gaulle, 48, 56 Philippon, 44 police: and de Gaulle's visit, 47-8, 50; and Queen's visit, 14-18, 21-8, 30-1, 33 politics, democratic: as clowning, 131; as foolishness, 32, 63, 87-8, 94, 106, 126, 129, 133, 135; as ritual, 10; contrasted with business, 6, 63, 65, 121—2, 126, 129, 133 power rules, 133-5 Press, Charles, 5, 35, 63, 64, 129 Price, Kenneth A., 115 Prince Philip, 14, 18, 23-5, 34. 42. Quebec: as child of de Gaulle, 37, 40, 52; effect of de Gaulle's visit, 50-6; election, 1976, 85; as nature, 71, 75—6; as parent, 61, 116; selection of cartoons from, 12; and special status, 74—5; as volcano, 20, 25; as wife, 7, 61, 101 Quebec City, 14, 15, 29, 30, 37. 7° Quebec federalist MPS, 17, 18, 2 7~9> 3i> 335 as children, 28, 32, 34; and de Gaulle, 40, 43, 44, 48, 57-8

Quebec, French Language Office, 109, 120—i Quebec Patriot: contrast with Confederation, 52—3; contrast with Maudit Anglais, 53-4; as symbolic figure, 41, 53, 55-8, 72 Quebec referendum: aftermath, 101—3, 120; background, 83-7; campaign processes, 84, 86, 88-9; campaign strategy, 93—5; carnival and ceremony, 878; carnival roles, 93, 103-5; and cartooning, changes in, 134; and children playing as adults, 87—103; as collaborative rip-off, 87, 96; defining government policy, 89—91; the electorate, 100—i; framing the question, 91—3; and independence by stages (etapisme), 91; and Inuit, 97-8, 103-5; persuading the voters, 97-100; public debate, 95—7; and sexual harassment, 98; spatial roles, 103-5; Yvette phenomenon, 86, 89 Quebecois: disruption of social order, 74, 77—9, 116, 128, 133; ambivalence about French-English relations, 83, 100-1; animosities, internal, 57; as children, 20, 34, 41; and class differences, 74; contrasted with Acadians, 49; contrasted with English Canadians, 27—32, 34, 40, 41, 46, 56-65, 68, 73, 105, 117-18,120, 125, 127, 130, 132, 134; language use, 11216; and language policy, federal, 61; and minorities, ethnic, 72, 85; as nation, 21, 31, 34; as Queen's subjects, 23, 27; reactions to de Gaulle's speech, 46—50; and sacred objects, 22; and

148

Index

violence, 124; as waiters, drawers of water, 68, 74, 103; workers and small officials, 30—1, 50 Queen Elizabeth II: as mother-in-law, 38, 41, 60; contrasted with de Gaulle, 41-2; visit to Quebec, 1337, 76, 82,104,106,132 Quiet Revolution: and middle class, 50; and working class, 51 Rabelais, 13 Rassemblement pour I'lndependance Nationale, 39 Reid, Malcolm, 117 reified carnival. See hypercarnival Ricoeur, Paul, 3 rituals: Goffman's theory of, 8, 10, ii, 62; medieval, 62; in politics, 10 Robarts, John, 43, 84 Rosenthal, Caroline J., 61 Royal Canadian Mounted Police: and Jean Lesage, 22— 4,134; needing protection in Quebec, 42; and Quebec referendum, 100,104 Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, 76-7, 106, 107 rules: ethnic, 131-5; power, 133-5

Ryan, Claude: as child, 86— 103; collaboration with Levesque, 96; Ottawa, relations with, 71-2, 74; and Quebec referendum, 86-7, 96, 100, 103-5 sacred objects and taboos in cartoons, 16, 20, 22-4, 28, 29. 35, 92 Saint Martin, Fernande, 3 Schwartz, Barry, 61, 74 semiotic squares, 56, 58 semiotics: Barthes' model of sign, 8, 10; and sociology, 3, 5; and visual material, 3,5,6 separatism as threat to anglophones, 19-20 skimmer and domestication function, 5; and negotiated meaning, 4, 87, 88, 106, 125 Smith, Dorothy E., 4 social construction of real-

ity, 4 social space in cartoons, 313, 81, 103-5, "6 sociology: and semiotics, 3, 5; and visual material, 3, 5 soties, 16, 105 state, opposed to nation, 21, 23, 25-7, 32, 42-3 Stone, Sharon D., 6 Streicher, Lawrence H., 129

taboo objects. See sacred objects and taboos Thomson, Dale C., 79, 80 Trofimenkoff, Susan M., 86 Trudeau, Pierre E.: contrasted with Rene Levesque, 61, 65-8, 74; and de Gaulle, 43, 45—6, 58; as devil, 94; and French Power, 69—70, 745; indispensability to Rene Levesque, 65-8, 95; as prime minister, 74, 107; and Quebec nationalism, 56; and Quebec referendum, 86, 95-6, 100, 103-5 Turner, Victor, 8, 10, 62, 87, 103 Twer, Sheldon, 4 Union Nationale, 40, 61, 134; and language policy, 108, in—12 Wagner, Claude, 14 Williamson, Judith, 8, 9 working class: anglophone, 109, 121-5, I29; francophone and Quiet Revolution, 51, 69, 129; and independence, 85 Zijderveld, Anton C., 50, 62, 64, 106, 126