25 years after 'Titanic,' Quebec's love for Celine Dion will go on
The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Friday, November 8, 2024


25 years after 'Titanic,' Quebec's love for Celine Dion will go on
Mario Bennett’s cramped basement apartment which is decorated with Celine Dion memorabilia in Montreal, Canada on Thursday Dec. 2, 2022. The outpouring that greeted the singer’s announcement that she has a rare neurological condition showed how both Celine fandom, and ideas of national identity in her home province, have evolved. (Guillaume Simoneau/The New York Times)

by Dan Bilefsky



MONTREAL.- It was a Friday night in Montreal, and hundreds of euphoric revelers were dancing and singing “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” at a sold-out Celine Dion tribute party. One young man vogued in a homemade version of the gold-tinted headpiece of singed peacock feathers that Dion wore at the Met Gala a few years ago. Another gawked at a minishrine of Dion-inspired wigs, showcasing her hairstyles through the decades.

“In an era of arrogant stars, she is always authentic,” Simon Venne, the voguer, a 38-year-old stylist, gushed. “She is everything to us, a source of pride, our queen.”

If there was ever a sense that Quebec, the French-speaking province of Dion’s birth, was conflicted about Dion’s rise to global superstardom with pop hits that she often sang in English, it has been dispelled. She now occupies an exalted space here, experiencing a cultural renaissance as Quebec’s younger generation has unabashedly embraced her: Radio Canada, the national French language broadcaster, parses her life on a podcast translated as “Celine: She’s The Boss!” A recent docuseries called “It’s Cool to Like Celine Dion” explored her appeal to millennials. And Celine Dion drag competitions have been surging.

Dion’s emotional announcement this month that she is suffering from a rare neurological condition called stiff person syndrome, forcing her to postpone tour dates, was met with an extraordinary outpouring. Québécois politicians from across the political spectrum, including both Quebec’s premier, François Legault, and the head of a party advocating Quebec’s independence from Canada, jockeyed to express sympathy for Dion, 54. Fans commiserated over social media.

A headline in Le Devoir, an influential Quebec newspaper, called her “Celine, Queen of the Québécois.” Dion, the newspaper noted, had attained the status of untouchable icon after years of being panned by critics and mocked by others.

“It’s like hearing your aunt is sick,” Venne, the feathered fan, said. “Celine is famous around the world, but here she is family.”

The intensity of the reaction here — 25 years after the premiere of the blockbuster film “Titanic,” which helped make Dion’s bombastically exuberant “My Heart Will Go On” ubiquitous — shows how much Celine fandom and ideas of Québécois identity have evolved over time as the province, like its most famous daughter, has come of age.

During a recent visit to Celine Dion Boulevard in Charlemagne, a soulless stretch of road in the gritty working-class town of about 6,000 on the outskirts of Montreal where Dion was born, a group of 20-somethings said it was no longer embarrassing to admit to liking her music.

“Being stuck at home during the pandemic made people nostalgic for the past, and everything old and vintage is in fashion,” said Gabriel Guénette, 26, a university student and sometime Uber deliveryman, explaining why he and his friends were singing “The Power of Love” during karaoke nights. Dion’s unbridled message of hope and optimism, he added, resonated during uncertain times.

Older residents in Charlemagne still refer to her as “notre petite Celine” — our little Celine — and recall her days as a shy teenager who performed French ballads with her 13 brothers and sisters at her family’s restaurant. Younger residents — including Meghan Arsenault, 15, who attends the high school Dion did — grew up singing her songs.

Across Quebec, a Francophone province of 8.5 million people that has been buffeted by centuries of subjugation and fears of being subsumed by the English language, Dion has at times been a polarizing figure. Even as many fans ardently embraced her, she was dismissed by some critics as the cultural equivalent of poutine, the Québécois snack of french fries and cheese curds drenched in gravy drunkenly and guiltily consumed at 3 a.m.

Some elites balked at her success, seeing in her sprawling working-class family, her garish outfits and her broken English an uncomfortable mirror of an old Quebec they preferred to forget. Some considered her quétaine, cheesy in Québécois argot.

And her singing in English has, at times, been an affront to hard-core Francophone nationalists. But when Dion thanked the audience with a “Merci!” at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta in 1996 after singing “The Power of the Dream,” the single word reverberated across the province, an affirmation that French Canada had gone global.

(END OPTIONAL TRIM.)

Martin Proulx, a producer who hosted the podcast “Celine, She’s the Boss!” recalled that as a gay teenager in Montreal in the 1990s, he hid the fact that he was listening to her “Let’s Talk About Love” album on his Sony Walkman.

“It wasn’t cool to love Celine when I was in high school. Kids my age were listening to hip-hop and heavy rock, and she was for soccer moms who watched Oprah,” he recalled.

Now, he said, he could proudly proclaim his ardor, in part because a more confident Quebec has shed some of its past complexes. Members of the younger generation of Québécois, he said, seem less hung up than their parents or grandparents on issues of language and identity, and more likely to embrace Dion’s global stardom, financial success and bilingualism as a template for their own international aspirations.




“We used to roll our eyes. Now we think she’s pure genius,” Proulx said. “She never changed. We did.”

Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Quebec-born music director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, said his first memory of Dion was from 1984, when he was 8. Dion, who was 16, sang a song about a dove in front of Pope John Paul II and 60,000 people at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium. Nézet-Séguin said he had surged with pride that she was a fellow Quebecer, and said he sees Dion as a “diva” in the operatic sense of the word.

“When I think about a diva, I think about personality, having something recognizable artistically, and one can’t deny the virtuosic aspect of Celine’s singing,” he said.

The intense interest in Dion is hardly limited to Quebec. “Aline,” a highly unusual, fictionalized film drawn from her life, drew buzz at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.

When a musical parody of “Titanic” called “Titanique” recently moved to a larger off-Broadway theater in New York, its producers promised “More shows. More seats. More Celine.”

And Dion is set to appear alongside Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Sam Heughan in a romantic comedy called “Love Again” that is expected in theaters in North America in May.

The fascination with Dion endures in part because her Cinderella story never grows old. As the youngest of 14 children of an accordion-playing butcher and a homemaker from Charlemagne, Dion’s first bed as a child was a drawer.

At the age of 12, she cowrote her first song, “Ce n’était qu’un rêve,” with the help of her mother and her brother Jacques. Her brother Michel sent a cassette demo to impresario René Angélil, who became her manager and, later, her husband.

Dion had a complete makeover, disappearing for 18 months in 1986 to study English, cap her teeth, perm her hair, and take voice and dance lessons. A star was born.

When Angélil died in 2016, two days before his 74th birthday, his two-day, meticulously choreographed funeral at Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica was televised by the CBC, the national broadcaster, and flags were lowered at half-staff across Quebec. Dion, veiled in black, stood by her husband’s open casket for seven hours, greeting Quebec dignitaries and the public.

In the years since, Dion recast her analog image for the Instagram era. A Vetements Titanic hoodie she wore in Paris in 2016 broke the internet. A few years later, she stole the show at the camp-themed Met Gala, in an Oscar de la Renta clinging champagne-colored bodysuit embellished with silvery sequins.

Her zany, self-deprecating appearance on James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke in 2019 from Las Vegas, during which she sang “My Heart Will Go On” in front of a replica of the Titanic’s bow at the Bellagio Hotel fountain, helped some people who had made fun of her realize that she was in on the joke.

Now her fandom seems as strong as ever.

Mario Bennett, 36, who works at a concert hall, began covering every inch of his cramped basement apartment with Dion memorabilia at the start of the pandemic. He said that throughout his life, her powerful voice had been a clarion call to dream big. Among his prized possessions is an unauthorized collectible Celine doll, wearing a version of the midnight blue velvet gown that the singer wore to the Oscars in 1998.

“She makes me feel that anything is possible,” he said.

Guy Hermon, an Israeli drag queen who emigrated to Montreal a decade ago and absorbed Quebec culture — and the French language — by trying to embody Dion, said he had never been a fan of her music but invented his Dion alter ego, Crystal Slippers, out of necessity on the Dion-obsessed Québécois drag circuit.

After years of mimicking Dion, he said he had come to appreciate her.

“She just wants everyone to be happy,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.










Today's News

December 21, 2022

Archaeologists devise a better clock for biblical times

Grants of £1.8M for bold and experimental projects awarded to 45 museums and galleries

Ball from Judge's 62nd home run sells for $1.5 million

Miró Universe - a selection of Miró's works - on view at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico

The austere beauty of Egypt's long-distance hiking trails

Internationally recognized collection of Japanese Netsuke achieves $1.9 nillion at Bonhams

King Charles III Is the new face of U.K. money

25 years after 'Titanic,' Quebec's love for Celine Dion will go on

The Philadelphia Museum of Art announces new curatorial leadership

Family loosens grip on New York Irish group and its Gilded Age mansion

Six emerging Asian designers to know present new creations inspired by iconic pieces from the V&A's collections

Quentin Blake at 90: WHite glove sale at Bonhams

Ugo Rondinone opens an exhibition at Petit Palais

'The Shipping Forecast' by Mark Power to be published January 2023

Julien Saudubray "Voir Double" currently on view at Anna Zorina Gallery in Los Angeles

Review: In 'Between Riverside and Crazy,' real estate gets real

New exhibition at Rosenfeld Gallery: Alona Rodeh "CITY DUMMIES"

Art on the Underground announces 2023 programme including new commissions

Winchester says 'hello' to 'A Farewell to Art: Chagall, Shakespeare and Prospero'

Portland Art Museum presents an immersive, site-responsive installation by multimedia artist Jeffrey Gibson

The Royal Scottish Academy receives the Blackadder Houston Bequest

New Broadway labor agreement includes pandemic-prompted changes

How to increase your followers overnight with 'Ig-Autolikes'?

10 Reasons Why Jewellery is The Perfect Gift

How HHC Compares to Other Cannabinoids

Basic structure and production process of turntable bearing

Simple Money Management Advice for New College Students

Some Standard Etiquette Points & Correct Size of Cowgirl Hat

Chinese best lithium ion battery company a complete guide




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez
Writer: Ofelia Zurbia Betancourt

Attorneys
Truck Accident Attorneys
Accident Attorneys
Holistic Dentist
Abogado de accidentes
สล็อต
สล็อตเว็บตรง

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site Parroquia Natividad del Señor
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful