André Loiselle is Dean of Humanities and teaches film studies at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Loiselle holds a BA in Theatre from Université du Québec à Montréal, and an MA and a PhD from the Department of Theatre and Film at UBC. He joined St. Thomas in 2018 to become Dean after twenty years at Carleton University in Ottawa. His main areas of research are Canadian and Québécois cinema, theatricality in cinema, the horror film and screen adaptations of drama. He has published over forty refereed articles and chapters in scholarly anthologies, as well as a dozen books, including CINEMA OF PAIN: ON QUEBEC'S NOSTALGIC SCREEN (2020, with Liz Czach), THEATRICALITY IN THE HORROR FILM (2019) and THE CANADIAN HORROR FILM: TERROR OF THE SOUL (2015, with Gina Freitag). His current research explores the theatricality of horror spectatorship.
C.R.A.Z.Y. By Robert Schwartzwald Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2015, 178 pp.REVIEWED BY ANDRE L... more C.R.A.Z.Y. By Robert Schwartzwald Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2015, 178 pp.REVIEWED BY ANDRE LOISELLEJean-Marc Vallees C.R.A.Z.Y. is a bittersweet coming-of-age story about a gay character named Zac (Marc-Andre Grondin), who struggles throughout his childhood, adolescence and early adulthood to find his place among his eccentrically conventional family and earn the respect of his charming, but shamelessly homophobic father, Gervais (Michel Cote). The film was the biggest critical and commercial success of 2005 in Quebec and, over a decade after its release, it remains among the ten top-grossing movies ever made in the province. As such, C.R.A.Z.Y. is unquestionably deserving of a book-length study; and Robert Schwartzwalds contribution to the "Queer Film Classics" series, edited by Matt Hays and Tom Waugh for Arsenal Pulp Press, certainly delivers an eloquent, informative and insightful examination of the film. As would be expected of a single-film monograph like this one, Schwartzwald s short volume provides a detailed account of the films production history (26-39), a nuanced reading of its intricate narrative structure (44-50), sophisticated visual composition (50-62) and evocative musical score (77-93), as well as a discussion of the broader Quebecois (63-74) and gay (117-131) cultural contexts within which the film operates. Moreover, Schwartzwald does a good job of accounting for some of the linguistic subtleties that might be lost in translation for an Anglophone spectatorship. For instance, his accurate interpretation of the expression "tu men feras pas un fifi" (113) goes a long way to demonstrate the manner in which Vallee and his co-author, Francois Boulay, use every-day French Canadian idioms to construct a complex and multi-layered scriptBut what comes as a most pleasant surprise is Schwartzwald s unexpected critique of C.R.A.Z.Y.'s putative status as a "queer classic". C.R.A.Z.Y.s queemess is especially dubious in terms of its happy ending, which shows a saccharine reconciliation between Zac and Gervais who, even in his old age, still refuses to discuss his now middle-aged son's sexual orientation. As Schwartzwald pointedly asks:Is it problematic, then, to speak of C.R.A.Z.Y. as a queer film? Certainly, if by queer we mean a work that has at its core the refusal to stabilize categories of gender or sexuality. C.R.A.Z.Y. is quite orthodox throughout in its representation of sexual difference as a chance occurrence, but all the same innate and incontrovertible [...] Nor is C.R.A.Z.Y. queer, if by that we would mean that it critically explores the fluid ways in which sexual practices and identities are alternately included or excluded from what Gayle Rubin calls the "charmed circle" of social legitimacy [... ] In the narrator Zac, the film has arguably produced the sexually non-threatening and ultimately deferential gay citizen who has won his position inside the "charmed circle" of the early twenty-first century. (136-137,138-139).It is refreshing to read a book that does not simply assume the undisputable merit of its subject-matter only because it happens to have been deemed worthy of inclusion in a "classics" series.Highly manipulative in its calculated insertions of beloved "oldies" and classic rock favorites on the soundtrack, deliberate references to the quaintness of 1960s Quebec, and unapologetic reliance on melodramatic cliches, such as maternal sacrifice, unrequited love and violent sibling rivalry, C.R.A.Z.Y. comes across as a skillfully-crafted mainstream film that never aims to shock or disturb its audience. As Schwartzwald suggests, its gay content could easily be dismissed as just a trendy variation on the conventional sexual-awakening trope of the coming-of-age narrative. But ultimately, the author chooses to redeem C.R.A.Z.Y and claim that, in spite of its penchant for homonormativity, it remains a valid film from the perspective of queer spectatorship. …
L’émission ayant obtenu la plus haute cote d’écoute de l’histoire de la télévision québécoise fut... more L’émission ayant obtenu la plus haute cote d’écoute de l’histoire de la télévision québécoise fut un épisode de la série La petite vie (mars 1995), mettant en vedette Serge Thériault et Claude Meunier dans les rôles de « Moman » et « Popa » Paré. Dans les années 1980, Thériault et Meunier, sous le nom de scène « Ding et Dong », étaient devenus célèbres pour leurs spectacles de cabaret qui incluaient des sketchs avec les personnages de Popa et Moman. Passés à la télévision au cours des années 1990, Popa et Moman sont devenus de véritables phénomènes de société. Pourtant quand Meunier et Thériault tentèrent de transposer leur humour absurde au grand écran, dans Ding et Dong, le film (1990, Alain Chartrand), la critique fut méprisante. Par une analyse culturelle et formelle des spectacles, de la série télévisée et du long métrage, cet article tente d’expliquer le succès extraordinaire de Moman et Popan à la télé et l’échec de Ding et Dong au cinéma.
L'adaptation cinématographique de la pièce de théâtre Being at Home with Claude, de René-Dani... more L'adaptation cinématographique de la pièce de théâtre Being at Home with Claude, de René-Daniel Dubois, débute avec un prologue en noir et blanc qui nous montre les antécédents du drame original. Ce prologue, créé de toutes pièces par le cinéaste Jean Beaudin, a plusieurs fonctions, dont celle de fournir certaines données sur le meurtre qui précède l'interrogatoire constituant l’ensemble du texte de dubois. Mais au delà de son rôle informationnel, cette préface illustre aussi de façon subtile, surtout par son utilisation très brève de la couleur pour représenter le sang qui gicle, le processus d'adaptation auquel la pièce a été soumise. En analysant les rapports qui existent entre le texte original, le film dans son ensemble et le prologue, en particulier au niveau des signifiants chromatiques et des modes de visualisation empruntés par beaudin pour cinématiser le propos de la pièce, cet article tente d'offrir une lecture de Being at Home with Claude qui situe l'oeuvre dans le contexte de certaines théories comparatives du cinéma et du théâtre.
C.R.A.Z.Y. By Robert Schwartzwald Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2015, 178 pp.REVIEWED BY ANDRE L... more C.R.A.Z.Y. By Robert Schwartzwald Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2015, 178 pp.REVIEWED BY ANDRE LOISELLEJean-Marc Vallees C.R.A.Z.Y. is a bittersweet coming-of-age story about a gay character named Zac (Marc-Andre Grondin), who struggles throughout his childhood, adolescence and early adulthood to find his place among his eccentrically conventional family and earn the respect of his charming, but shamelessly homophobic father, Gervais (Michel Cote). The film was the biggest critical and commercial success of 2005 in Quebec and, over a decade after its release, it remains among the ten top-grossing movies ever made in the province. As such, C.R.A.Z.Y. is unquestionably deserving of a book-length study; and Robert Schwartzwalds contribution to the "Queer Film Classics" series, edited by Matt Hays and Tom Waugh for Arsenal Pulp Press, certainly delivers an eloquent, informative and insightful examination of the film. As would be expected of a single-film monograph like this one, Schwartzwald s short volume provides a detailed account of the films production history (26-39), a nuanced reading of its intricate narrative structure (44-50), sophisticated visual composition (50-62) and evocative musical score (77-93), as well as a discussion of the broader Quebecois (63-74) and gay (117-131) cultural contexts within which the film operates. Moreover, Schwartzwald does a good job of accounting for some of the linguistic subtleties that might be lost in translation for an Anglophone spectatorship. For instance, his accurate interpretation of the expression "tu men feras pas un fifi" (113) goes a long way to demonstrate the manner in which Vallee and his co-author, Francois Boulay, use every-day French Canadian idioms to construct a complex and multi-layered scriptBut what comes as a most pleasant surprise is Schwartzwald s unexpected critique of C.R.A.Z.Y.'s putative status as a "queer classic". C.R.A.Z.Y.s queemess is especially dubious in terms of its happy ending, which shows a saccharine reconciliation between Zac and Gervais who, even in his old age, still refuses to discuss his now middle-aged son's sexual orientation. As Schwartzwald pointedly asks:Is it problematic, then, to speak of C.R.A.Z.Y. as a queer film? Certainly, if by queer we mean a work that has at its core the refusal to stabilize categories of gender or sexuality. C.R.A.Z.Y. is quite orthodox throughout in its representation of sexual difference as a chance occurrence, but all the same innate and incontrovertible [...] Nor is C.R.A.Z.Y. queer, if by that we would mean that it critically explores the fluid ways in which sexual practices and identities are alternately included or excluded from what Gayle Rubin calls the "charmed circle" of social legitimacy [... ] In the narrator Zac, the film has arguably produced the sexually non-threatening and ultimately deferential gay citizen who has won his position inside the "charmed circle" of the early twenty-first century. (136-137,138-139).It is refreshing to read a book that does not simply assume the undisputable merit of its subject-matter only because it happens to have been deemed worthy of inclusion in a "classics" series.Highly manipulative in its calculated insertions of beloved "oldies" and classic rock favorites on the soundtrack, deliberate references to the quaintness of 1960s Quebec, and unapologetic reliance on melodramatic cliches, such as maternal sacrifice, unrequited love and violent sibling rivalry, C.R.A.Z.Y. comes across as a skillfully-crafted mainstream film that never aims to shock or disturb its audience. As Schwartzwald suggests, its gay content could easily be dismissed as just a trendy variation on the conventional sexual-awakening trope of the coming-of-age narrative. But ultimately, the author chooses to redeem C.R.A.Z.Y and claim that, in spite of its penchant for homonormativity, it remains a valid film from the perspective of queer spectatorship. …
L’émission ayant obtenu la plus haute cote d’écoute de l’histoire de la télévision québécoise fut... more L’émission ayant obtenu la plus haute cote d’écoute de l’histoire de la télévision québécoise fut un épisode de la série La petite vie (mars 1995), mettant en vedette Serge Thériault et Claude Meunier dans les rôles de « Moman » et « Popa » Paré. Dans les années 1980, Thériault et Meunier, sous le nom de scène « Ding et Dong », étaient devenus célèbres pour leurs spectacles de cabaret qui incluaient des sketchs avec les personnages de Popa et Moman. Passés à la télévision au cours des années 1990, Popa et Moman sont devenus de véritables phénomènes de société. Pourtant quand Meunier et Thériault tentèrent de transposer leur humour absurde au grand écran, dans Ding et Dong, le film (1990, Alain Chartrand), la critique fut méprisante. Par une analyse culturelle et formelle des spectacles, de la série télévisée et du long métrage, cet article tente d’expliquer le succès extraordinaire de Moman et Popan à la télé et l’échec de Ding et Dong au cinéma.
L'adaptation cinématographique de la pièce de théâtre Being at Home with Claude, de René-Dani... more L'adaptation cinématographique de la pièce de théâtre Being at Home with Claude, de René-Daniel Dubois, débute avec un prologue en noir et blanc qui nous montre les antécédents du drame original. Ce prologue, créé de toutes pièces par le cinéaste Jean Beaudin, a plusieurs fonctions, dont celle de fournir certaines données sur le meurtre qui précède l'interrogatoire constituant l’ensemble du texte de dubois. Mais au delà de son rôle informationnel, cette préface illustre aussi de façon subtile, surtout par son utilisation très brève de la couleur pour représenter le sang qui gicle, le processus d'adaptation auquel la pièce a été soumise. En analysant les rapports qui existent entre le texte original, le film dans son ensemble et le prologue, en particulier au niveau des signifiants chromatiques et des modes de visualisation empruntés par beaudin pour cinématiser le propos de la pièce, cet article tente d'offrir une lecture de Being at Home with Claude qui situe l'oeuvre dans le contexte de certaines théories comparatives du cinéma et du théâtre.
The Zombie narrative, at least in cinema, has always dealt in some way with the issue of leadersh... more The Zombie narrative, at least in cinema, has always dealt in some way with the issue of leadership: either as a metaphor for dictatorial leadership where the Zombie embodies an enslaved follower; or as a study in human inventiveness, where the Zombie menace compels the Living to come together and adopt various leadership styles to respond to attacks from the Undead. This talk briefly explores various modes of leadership as embodied in tales of the cinematic undead.
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