Tabloid porn in Quebec

Abstract

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Canadian region of Quebec saw a proliferation of tabloid newspapers, of uniform dimensions, covering a wide range of sensational genres (such as crime and celebrity gossip). Increasingly explicit content of a sexual character cut across these genres, marking each of these genres with elements of the pornographic. At the same time, a number of tabloid papers emerged devoted exclusively to sexual content, typically o ff ering softcore photographic imagery of nude bodies and sexual activity which accompanied journalistic narratives (of variable veracity) chronicling sexual behaviour. The generalization of the tabloid form, this article suggests, has had particular e ff ects on the ways in which these papers have survived. While, on the one hand, the tabloid form and use of cheap newsprint materials have contributed to a sense of the valuelessness of these papers, the manner in which the pornographic is very often ‘ hidden ’ within other sensational genres has allowed many of these papers to survive in contexts of preservation from which they might otherwise be expelled.