Two Cultures

     Radio satire provides countries around the world with entertainment in a familiar voice and accent that expresses cultures of laughter in their local communities and languages and that does so in ways that confirm or transgress complex political and moral issues. Canadian radio satire needs to be understood as one example of how two distinct societies, English­ speaking Canada and French-speaking Quebec, laugh at themselves and at each other (Nielsen, 1999). Most of the time, the two audiences are not aware of exactly what it is the other is laughing about, because the vast majority of English audiences have no knowledge of French programs and vice versa. Although French-language satire on the private networks and on La Societe de Radio-Canada (the French public network) addresses the small number of French-speaking minorities across Canada, its primary audience lives in the province of Quebec, where the majority of French speakers reside. The distinctness of Quebec society is defined in terms of the French language and culture and its differences from the rest of Canada and North America. On the other hand, satire on the English-language private networks and on the publicly funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) addresses a distinctly English-Canadian society that is typically defined in terms of its differences from the United States rather than differences from French Quebec. As Nielsen suggests in his many writings on this topic, when a French or English accent appears in radio satire on either network, it is almost always about laughing at the other or at differences with America.

     A further difference in the way the two radio cultures within Canada have developed is readily identifiable. Although satire in English Canada has its origins in private radio networks in the 1930s, the public radio network has traditionally produced the majority of programs in this genre. This is explained by the possibility of filling the airwaves with programming from the United States. Although many early American satires were translated into French, the fact that most programs were not translated meant that a demand for local programming was stronger in French-speaking Quebec than in the rest of Canada (de la Guarde, 1991). In Quebec, private networks have pursued commercial programs, whereas the public networks have tended to produce more seriously engaged cultural and social material.

English-Language Satire

      The earliest examples in English-speaking Canada that mix serious and light radio satire themes were Jack Bawdry's Vancouver production of Millie and Lizzy (1930-35) and Art MacGregor and Frank Deaville's Calgary production of Woodhouse and Hawkins (1933-44). Bawdry's series was a political satire on the Great Depression from the point of view of two working-class women, and MacGregor and Deaville's series was a lighter satire on the theme of the "country bumpkin." The former celebrated working-class values and deter­ m in a tion, and the latter used a mixture of accent and vernacular to poke fun at rural traditions from a contemporary urban viewpoint. Two other figures at the light end of the satirical scale that would go on to dominate English-Canadian comedy until the 1960s also began their careers in this period. Johnny Wayne and Frank Schuster began in private radio in the late 1930s before eventually hosting a regular satirical series that would run from 1947 to 1950 before moving on to a career on television that would end in 1989. Wayne and Schuster's satires followed the burlesque format. The first act featured light stand-up comedy routines, followed by word plays and songs and then a parody of a contemporary play or musical that often included sexual (and, by today's standards, sexist) references.

     Toward the end of the 1930s, the publicly funded CBC came to dominate program production in almost all fields. From the outset, the CBC sought to bring together the best artistic talents from the various regions-Halifax, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Montreal-to create production teams for the national network based in Toronto. Between 1936 and 1961, the CBC produced more than 300 radio theater series, including more than 8,000 individual plays, of which half were original productions. Around 70 satiric radio theater plays were  broadcast between 1940 and 1952, of which 50 were written for the prestigious Stage series, directed by Andrew Allan. Allan produced over 450 shows during the first 12 years of the series. During the same period, more than 70 writers and over 1 50 actors and actresses were employed. A reading of the themes of all the plays produced by Allan suggests that the questioning of the social order was more evident at the beginning of the series (1943-48) than in the final period of production (1948-55).

     The influence of western Canadian satirical writers in the production teams of the Stage series was especially marked in the first period. Len Peterson (Saskatchewan), W.O. Mitchell (Saskatchewan), and Tommy Tweed (Manitoba), along with Fletcher Markle, Lister Sinclair, Bernard Braden, Andrew Allan (the director who brought the others from Vancouver), and, somewhat later, Alan King, made up the key writers whose texts severely criticized society. The writers of Stage who were famous for their critical satirical spirit came from western Canada, and those who were associated mainly with light drama and comedy that were generally non-controversial originated in central Canada (Ontario and Quebec). Generally, critiques of social class and the economy-that is, the expression of an active opposition to the social order-were most evident between 1944 and 1948. After 1948 social criticism became more introspective and focused on the questioning of such cultural norms as traditional family values or gender roles, rather than on social classes or the economic system.

     The distinction between serious and popular radio comedy has its origins in ancient forms, as was mentioned previously. However, it should be pointed out that the carnival origins of satire are heavily concentrated on grotesque elements and on reference to the lower bodily stratum. As one critic has remarked, "Vaudeville and music hall humour had been centered in the groin and heart. Radio humour located above the neckline" (Clark, 1997). In its first decades, radio satire presented a reified version of carnival laughter in the sense that there remained words that could not be uttered, comic reversals that could not be achieved, and levels of laughter that could never be expressed. In the golden age of radio, satire was sanitized. Nonetheless, certain of Stage's ironic satires did carry out a hierarchical inversion, one of the most fundamental conditions of seriocomic satire. In principle, the inversion is based on the carnivalesque logic of opposition, the simultaneous process of negation and synthesis that links the worlds of the "serious" and the "comic" rather than substituting one for the other or replacing higher strata with lower ones. Stage's radio literature is mediated by the moral horizon of the era and hence offered little or no swearing or grotesque realism.

     A key early figure who would challenge the moral and political horizon of his day was Max Ferguson, whose comic stylings in Rawhide began on the English-language CBC in 1958. Ferguson blended impersonation, satirical political comedy, and music in a morning radio show. His goal exceeded the lighter version of seriocomedy and purposefully pushed the limits of the genre. He is quoted as having said, "My goal is to be taken off the air." In 1961 his wish came true when Rawhide was canceled following a particularly acerbic attack on a member of parliament.

     Since 1960 CBC radio has produced over 80 satires in the form of one-hour radio plays and irregular mini-satires series. An example of the latter is the 15-minute weekly comedy series on the three-hour Morning program over the last 20 years. The Morning series also carried the Charlie Farquhusan character, a send-up of the rural-urban theme played by Don Harron, one of the program's early hosts. By 1971 the main satirical program for the CBC became the weekly half-hour series the Royal Canadian Air Farce, created by Roger Abott and Don Ferguson. In its early years, the Farce was a marginal series that broadcast the studio radio performance of four comedians. In its fifth season it shifted toward a more vaudevillian style and took its show on the road to perform live broadcasts on location. It continued to develop the old vaudevillian technique, and in 1996-its final season in radio-it remained one of the only live traveling radio comedy series in North America. Its style grew from a wide mixture of the short sketch, stand-up comedy, English music hall, and theater of the absurd. The Farce is probably one of the most important programs in Canadian radio history, given its pioneering role in stretching the possibilities of what could be said or presented in the genre on a public medium.

     In the 1990s the CBC produced a series of similar studio comedies such as the Frantics and Double Exposure and, more recently, live programs such as Radio Free Vestibule and Madly off in All Directions. All these series built on the farce's political satire, but none have retained the traveling live broadcast format in quite the same way. After 20 years on radio, the Farce transferred its production to the television studio, where it has enjoyed a successful run as a mainstream light and popular seriocomedy in the late 1990s.

     Since the 1980s, English-Canadian seriocomedy has had a whole cycle of popular successes both nationally and in the United States. Historically, this flight of talent has been from the visual arts and not radio. The exodus to the United States entertainment industry began in the early days of cinema. The vaudeville-style physical comedians have had the most success in the American industry, and many of them did get their start in radio satire-from Mary Pickford to Allen Young, Leslie Nielsen, and Jim Carrey. Young was the first to leave the CBC to star in the second biggest budgeted television program to come out of Hollywood in 1949: The Alan Young Show. Wayne and Schuster also did American television in the 1950s, and since the 1960s a disproportionate Canadian influence has been clearly observable in seriocomedy in the United States-from the late John Candy to Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Mike Myers, Howie Mandel, and many others (Pevere and Diamond, 1996).

French-Language Satire

     French-language radio satire also has its origins in private radio during the 1930s. The earliest examples of mixing serious and light radio satire themes for popular audiences are Eduard Baudry's Par le trou de la serrure ( 1932-33) and Alfred Rousseau's Les Amours de Ti-Jos et les memoires de Max Potvin (1938-45). Baudry's series was one of the first light cultural satires on day-to-day family life in Montreal, whereas Rousseau worked on one of the first burlesque-style variety programs, Radio-Divertissement Molson (1935-38), and developed it further in Les Amours de Ti-Jos (1938-45). Rousseau was the first to innovate through a burlesque and vaudevillian style that mixed songs, monologues, and character sketches. The celebrated Quebec radio dramatist Robert Choquette also began his career writing satirical series for private radio, as did Gatien Gelinas, who is considered to be one of Quebec's first indigenous playwrights. Chouquette's first works, La fabuliste La Fontaine à Montréal (1934) and Vacances d'artistes (1935)-like those of Gélinas, Le Carrousel de la gaiete (1937-38) and Le train de Plaisir (1938-40)-were weekly social satires that played with the reversal of upper and lower social strata by satirizing the poverty of French Canadians while celebrating their ability to create and express themselves in vernacular language. The most popular radio satire in the history of Quebec, which satirized social themes in the rural-urban context by using vernacular language and elements from the theater of the absurd, was Nazaire and Barnabie (1939-58) by Olivier Legare.

     A standard theme across the history of social satires on Quebec radio established in these early series relates to language. Social satires draw from the deep tension between traditional and modern culture through the ironic use of sub­ dialects, local oral traditions, and regional accents. Language is stratified from top to bottom and is defined through a struggle between the peripheral forces of popular speech and the centralizing pull of literary correctness. Language stratification plays a key role in establishing the scale of satire, which ranges from the serious to the light and which addresses audiences that are potentially both popular and scholarly. Historically in Quebec, private radio produced more of the lighter, "popular" entertainment and less of the more serious or "scholarly" radio plays. Radio-Canada does not produce as much popular entertainment as the private networks do, even though the public network often addresses a popular audience. Although private radio allows certain popular voices to speak in their own slang, Radio-Canada tends to treat the vernacular voice as something that can be innovated (as on private radio) but also, and more frequently, as something negative that should be corrected. Like the reader or the spectator, the addressee of satirical works on Radio-Canada is most often a listener from the middle class. He or she can be part of the popular or the scholarly audience, but when a popular addressee appears in a role, he or she is often the object of satirical ridicule, parody, or irony.

     Once we understand that the scale of narratives ranges from serious to light while the audience ranges from scholarly to popular, we can better situate the variety, burlesque, and satirical magazines that developed social satire from the 1940s to 1970. Among the best examples are the variety show Radio-Carabin (1944-53) by Emilien Labelle, Laurent Jodoin, and Paul Leduc; the cabaret show Chez Miville (1956-70) by Paul Legendre; and the satirical magazine Carte blanche ( 19 51-53) by Fernand Seguin, Andre Roche, and Roger Rolland.

     The variety show is composed of a mixture of songs, music, and light humorous skits. Each Radio-Carabin show lasted 30 minutes. The satirical skits often conveyed such serious social issues as housing problems and poverty and mocked "high society." The cabaret series Chez Miville, which aired every morning between 8:oo and 9:00 A.M., differed from the variety show. because it interspersed serious journalistic interviews or editorials on moral or political themes with periods of music and light skits. Comic stereotypes of the time were created through parody rather than political irony. Although the show avoided the most extreme versions of political satire and theater of the absurd, and although it was perhaps the most popular morning radio program throughout the 1960s, it ended very soon after the famous "October Crisis" in 1970. The federal government suspended civil liberties and sent orders for mass arrests of artists and intellectuals suspected of collaboration with the terrorist group le Front de la Libération de Québec, which had kidnapped and ransomed a federal politician and a British diplomat. Radio-Canada producers were reportedly very nervous about any political or moral satire, however light, that might be directed against the government of the day (Page and Legris, 1979).

     In contrast to the variety show or cabaret, the satirical magazine Carte blanche was designed especially to be critical. It was composed of distinct sections oriented toward a totalizing satire of Quebec culture and society. Although it remained faithful to the entertainment principle, its aims were more serious than those of the variety show or the cabaret. The series as a whole satirized the predominant worldview of the early 19 50s. The narrative scenes concerned paradoxes of the institutions of Quebec society. Theater, the novel, poetry, art, and music, as well as political parties, mass media, and educational and bureaucratic institutions, were all treated with irony and satire. The series addressed itself to a scholarly  audience of Quebec intellectuals and celebrities. Before the end of its third season, the writers (Seguin, Roche, and Rolland) decided to abandon the show rather than bow to the pressure of censorship.

     Satire on public radio after 1970 became increasingly intertwined with information, sports, and music. These programs replaced the cycle of dramatic and satirical programs that flourished in the pre-television era. Unlike English Canada, where the Royal Canadian Air Farce dominated public radio satire from 1972 to 1996, Quebec radio satire has been much more broadly distributed across a variety of programs that extend elements of the genres discussed previously. A surprising amount of satire continues to be produced on Quebec radio, but it is no longer sustained in a series format. On the private networks, satire is most typically used to enhance the morning shows (Y'a trop de bonne heure, hosted by Norman Brathwaite) and the afternoon drive-time programs (Y'e pas trop tard, hosted by Patrice Lecuyer). The topics of discussion in these programs range from news to sports, weather, the arts, and entertainment. The radio announcer who discusses the issues of the day often slips into a satirical, lighthearted dialogue or comic improvisation with his sidekick or with the regular specialist who comes on air to talk about traffic or weather.

     Radio satire on the private networks tends to have a sec­ondary role, in the sense that it is "sprinkled" into the show to lighten it up and is therefore only a small part of a larger program. On the public networks, satirical slots or capsules are introduced rather than "sprinkled" into daily cultural magazines. The main difference from the programs broadcast on the private networks is that the satires are animated by comedians and have their own well-blocked slots within the programs. For example, satire can be heard on the program Indicatif present in the sketch "Si j'etais premier ministre," in which well-known comedians such as Yvon Duchamps are asked what they would do if they were elected to political office. The comedians don't miss the opportunity to mock politicians and their institutions. Other programs, such as En direct, satirize news clips from television and parody journalists and other "serious" professions.

     Three of the most important seriocomedy radio satires from the 1970s into the 1990s were Rock et belles oreilles (1991-), Le festival de l'humour (1974-88), and Les insolence d'un téléphone (1968-96). All three were produced by Quebec's private radio stations. Rock et belles oreilles, a weekly one-hour satirical magazine in the tradition of Carte blanche, developed both light and serious parodies of language and of social conventions, advertisements, popular music, and television programs. Le festival de /'humour was a one-hour live satirical magazine that parodied the main news events each week. Les insolence d'un telephone presented a new kind of direct satire. The key segment in the program has the comedian Tex Lecors telephone people and pretend to be someone else in order to get a response and to engage the person in a mock dialogue. The show was a huge success and opened new ground, inspiring direct satire in various television programs, both French and English.

     Contemporary French-language radio satires draw from a long tradition of the light variety of cabaret and burlesque forms as well as the serious magazine and social comedies of the 1930s and 1940s. The nihilism and theater of the absurd that entered French-language radio in the 1950s often informs contemporary direct satires. The early social comedies established a tradition of social satire around the stratification of the French language in Quebec. Many of Quebec's most famous writers began their careers writing social satires. The best generic example of social satire on the French side, one that pushed the limits of critique of its own society, is the series Carte blanche (1950-53).

     Satire has a long history in private and public radio in Canada and Quebec. It is durable partly because of its capacity to adapt itself to any context and partly because its basic ingredients-critiquing tradition from the perspective of emerging contemporary values, reversing hierarchies, and stratifying language-have remained intact. Given radio's extraordinary durability as a means of communication, it seems reasonable to conclude that satire will develop new boundaries, which will in turn be challenged by new satires in response to new value orientations, generational contexts, and ever more innovative forms of experimentation in the local cultures of laughter around the world.