Monsieur Lazhar: the ideal immigrant in the neoliberal Québécois imagination

Abstract

The ability of Canadian films to bring the immigrant experience to the centre of public debate is certainly impressive. Monsieur Lazhar (2011) depicts the life of one such immigrant without the blemishes of Hollywood's essentialist tropes. The film tells the story of an Algerian exile who physically escapes the violence of civil war in his native land, only to find himself trapped in a new psychological battle zone of a Québec community torn apart by suicide and grief. As a substitute teacher, he ultimately becomes the surrogate cultural guardian and saviour of a cadre of Canadian children. This critique will examine the humanism of lead character Bachir Lazhar, his transformation from a French-speaking Algerian to a displaced francophone exile, and the characteristics that make him an admired and welcomed immigrant by francophone Canadians. Analysed within the context of postcolonial theory and identity politics, this article will expose the collapsing categories of identification which mandate that his valour and magnanimity depend upon negating his own Algerian cultural identity. In short, the more Bachir Lazhar is ‘fetishized’, in other words viewed within the narrow confines of cultural fetishism (ethnic food, tea-drinking habit, and belly dancing), the easier it becomes for the Canadian viewer to embrace him.

Keywords:

• francophone film
• postcolonial
• immigrant
• exile
• refugee

Notes

1. All translations from French are my own.

2. Most of the film reviews centre on Bachir's role as a teacher, rather than as an immigrant, and focus on the theme of education rather than exile. This partly explains all the attention accorded to Bachir's determination to challenge the bureaucracy that was impeding better learning and communication between teachers and children. To this end, Holden (2012), film critic for The New York Times, has written that Monsieur Lazhar sustains an exquisite balance between grown-up and child's eye views of education, teacher-student relations, and peer-group interactions. The students come quirkily alive in superb naturalistic performances devoid of cuteness and stereotyping. Like no other film about middle school life that I can recall, Monsieur Lazhar conveys the intensity and the fragility of these classroom bonds and the mutual trust they require.

3. Mahmood Mamdani connects the emergence of this racialist discourse to the post 9/11 ‘war on terror’ policies and exposes what he calls ‘the central message of such discourse: unless proved to be “good,” every Muslim [Arab] was presumed to be “bad”’ (2004, 15).

4. Falardeau has his lead character incessantly negate the use of Arabic in several scenes. When Bachir goes to claim a package in Québec, the Algerian clerk recognizes the box used for the package. It bears the brand of a certain local jam, and he says nostalgically that it used to be his favorite. Bachir responds in French. Abdelmalek (Seddik Benslimane), the only Arab student in his class, speaks Arabic to Bachir in the schoolyard, but Bachir instructs him to speak French on school grounds. While the class is posing for a group picture, Abdelmalek tells him in Arabic, “أدخل في العائلة”, or ‘Join the family.’ Again Bachir responds, ‘Speak French in school.’ This position of intolerance dictated by Falardeau confirms that the desirable immigrants are expected to disengage from their cultures and languages and help resist not only Anglophone hegemony but also the voices of their own identities.