QUEBEC -- A Quebec teenager is forced by her leftist father to wear a burqa to cover her revealing and provocative clothing and learn a thing or two about “the real values” in life.
This is not an episode of CBC’s comedy Little Mosque on the Prairie -- although it could match the family-friendly humour of the series -- but rather the framework of a comic book depicting how westerners deal with religious symbols and immigration.
With no heavy-handed jokes, Quebec cartoonist and graphic artist Francis Desharnais gently pokes at life’s foibles in his new comic strip, Burquette.
He reflects on the culture shock, Quebecers’ perceptions of immigration and the way the newcomers see their adoptive land as the province keeps debating how to better integrate immigrants.
The Quebec City-born artist first started to work on the project four years ago while in France in the midst of a heated debate on the place of religious symbols in schools -- namely the veil.
And he put the finishing touches to it back home during cross-provincial hearings on “reasonable accommodation” of minorities.
This debate provided a highly-publicized forum for ravings deemed racist and biased, enlightened occasionally by more reasonable voices. And it’s the latter that Mr. Desharnais wanted to emphasize.
“I wanted to paint the darkest possible situation (the teenager forced to wear a burqa) to show how a society reacts and deals with immigration,” said Mr. Desharnais, who has also done a few animated films. He worked on the National Film Board co-production Conte de Quartier, which received a special citation as Best Short Film at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.
Mr. Desharnais stressed that he didn’t have a specific message in mind when he did Burquette, and simply wanted to tell a story about life and tolerance, without being too obvious.
“It’s meant to be funny and lighthearted. This is not a political statement,” he said.
The main character in Burquette -- a teenager named Alberte by her father in honour of existentialist writer Albert Camus -- finds herself confronted by all sorts of prejudice when she shows up at school one day wearing a burqa covering her from head to toe, with only a mesh screen to see through.
“This is horrible. It makes you look fat,” says one schoolmate. Another laughs at her “ventilation shaft” costume, while her ex-boyfriend is disappointed to see her suddenly suffering from a “style handicap.”
Alberte’s leftist single dad, fed up with her superficial taste for clothes and popular icons, decided to force this on her to bring her around to reflect more on the human condition.
“In a year’s time, you are going to incarnate the ultimate human profoundness,” he tells his daughter.
Alberte, obviously, is far from being pleased and tries almost everything -- including running away to her mother-turned-stripper and starring in a TV reality show -- to force her father to change his mind.
“What she does triggers a range of reactions and that’s what I wanted to explore. My intention was not to poke fun at Islam or to point the finger at those who are less open to immigrants,” Mr. Desharnais said.
The jokes, while pointed at times, are never scathing.
“I didn’t want to be mean,” Mr. Desharnais said. “I wanted to give a voice to a certain type of immigrant, the one who wants to live in peace, share his values and his culture with us, without forcing it on us.”