Berto_Tony_201307_PhD .pdf - University of Guelph

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from a popular film and then a local example, he tells how those in positions of dominance
violently bully the marginalised for whom suicide can be their final means to escape the
torment. Harvey not only accuses the mayor of enjoying the suffering that the mayor's
pronouncements foment, but he also instantiates that suffering when he beats Boucherie.
Grignard's script allows his characters to map out the potential consequences of the mayor's
declaration, by showing the operation and violence of homophobia and systemic
heteronormativity in their world. By exposing these consequences, youth alienation,
violence, suicide, familial discord and failure of self-realisation (through remaining
closeted), the text works to destabilise any value, civic virtue or "politically acceptable"
meanings that might be considered to have arisen from the mayor's proclamation (Leishman
64).
Grignard's text also challenges mainstream social orthodoxies about teenage
sexuality. Canadian political and social organisation reflects the notion of homosexuals as
diseased in its history of regulating sexuality for adults and youth. As mentioned in Chapter
Four, the age of consent for vaginal sex was lower than for anal sex at the time of the play.
As discussed, these differing laws of consent police presumed gay sexual behaviour more
restrictively than heterosexual behaviour (Department). The thinking behind such laws
illuminates a number of connected presumptions concerning youth and sexuality. The first
is that the sexuality of youth is malleable: developmentally immature youth may try
homosexuality and – to borrow from a contagion model – become a homosexual by doing
so (Sheldon 7; Angelides 73; Howe 135).
The second idea is that society looks upon children or youth who are gay as
undesirable. This reasoning justifies unequal laws that may keep young people away from a