Friday, September 4, 2009

Funding of the Arts

As we all know Quebec is a little French province inside a big English country. Because of history people from Quebec grow up with a negative prejudice on Federal government. This video expresses it in a very particular and especially funny way. It is a parody of the representative from Quebec trying to get funds for culture and arts from the Canadian Government. In real life the Federal Government made a large cut on Quebec’s cultural and arts funds. As this video is made by Pro-Quebecois, they are trying to laugh at the Federal government to give a revolution feeling to the population. They want us to let the Federal government know we’re not happy about that cut. In fact, the main difference between English speaking and French speaking people is the language. As a result, people who speak a language they don’t need or care about will automatically have major oral and written weaknesses and this is what they are trying to exploit in this video. This video is really attracting because it has many things inside that are liked by Quebecois, such as “La complainte du phoque en Alaska”, a very popular song from Beau Dommage. We can see two really well known faces from Quebec in this video too: Michel Rivard and Stéphane Rousseau. Another thing that hits our curiosity is the last sentence brought at the complete end of the video; it mentions that every simple dollar put in the culture and arts will bring up to 10 or 11 times more direct or indirect earnings. All this put together makes a very successful advertising because it gets to Quebec people feelings and brings out the inferiority complex many Quebecois have against the Federal Government. We can be sure it brought many discussions around the dinner table.

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