Do you know the famous slogan of May 1968: “It is forbidden to forbid”?
It dates from a time of openness, freedom, even liberation.
But in April 2023, in this era of closure, political correctness, forbidden words, thought police, a new slogan would have to be invented: “We must warn to warn”.
The situation has become so ridiculous that I no longer know whether to laugh or cry.
I WARN YOU !
This Wednesday, April 12, on Radio-Canada radio, Pénélope McQuade received Janette Bertrand and Dany Laferrière. But if you go to the national broadcaster’s website to listen to this segment in replay, a warning warns you: “We would like to advise you that the following segment contains a word that might offend some people”.
But what is this word dangerous, damaging, annoying, disastrous, malevolent, reviled, harmful, harmful, prejudicial, dreadful, serious, sinister, poisonous, treacherous, virulent (yes, I went to write down all the synonyms of the word dangerous)?
This is the sixth word in the title of Dany Laferrière’s great success: How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you have understood correctly. Even when one of our greatest authors, member of the French Academy, dubbed by numerous literary prizes, darling of the Quebec literary world, pronounces the title of HIS OWN BOOK, the august house of Radio-
Canada finds it relevant to warn Canadian taxpayers: “We would like to advise you that the following segment contains a word that may offend some people”.
But who, what normally constituted individual, will roll into a small ball if Laferrière himself quotes the title of his own book, which he wrote with the sweat of his brow?
Mess ! Is there anyone in that box who has seen the absurdity of the strictly Orwellian and Kafkaesque situation?
What is the next step ?
Neither Normand Brathwaite nor his biographer, Isabelle Massé, will be able to pronounce the title of the host’s biography How to Work Like a Negro Without Getting Tired ? This book was published in 2012… it’s amazing how things have changed in just 11 years!
THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN
The most absurd thing regarding the radio-Canadian warning is that in the interview, Dany Laferrière takes the trouble to say that he would still be a factory worker if he had been white and his book had been called How to make love with a white man without getting tired.
Laferrière also takes care to specify: “I am one of the only writers who has the right to use the word black. Do not abuse. Even when I used the word black or the word nigger, it was in a universal sense”.
I agree with you, Mr Laferrière, it should not be abused.
But when a state corporation “warns” us that we might be “offended” by an author who quotes the title of his own book, I consider that to be… abuse.
