The “Affaire Jutra” and the figure of the child

摘要

On February 13, 2016, the advance publicity for Yves Lever’s biography of iconic Quebec filmmaker Claude Jutra dropped a bombshell: Several individuals interviewed for the book claimed to have been victims of Jutra’s sexual advances as children or teenagers. Lever’s allegation that the filmmaker had been a pedophile unleashed a highly mediated scandal in the Quebec arts scene. At first, several well-known commentators expressed indignation at this black mark on Jutra’s reputation on the basis of anonymous allegations thirty years after his tragic suicide. For instance Lise Payette, the legendary journalist and politician, vehemently rejected Jutra’s “execution at dawn.” Yet despite numerous passionate defenses by key cultural figures, the scandal that came to be known as the “Affaire Jutra” (the Jutra Affair) was not so easily dissipated. On February 17, Montréal daily La Presse published the anonymous testimony of a man given the pseudonym “Jean” describing his sexual abuse over a decade from the age of six at the hands of Jutra, a friend of the family (Pilon-Larose).