In 2018, the historical musical play SLĀV generated many political comments in Québec’s mass media. Using a semi-emergent content analysis, this exploratory article describes the thesis offered by some protagonists in the newspapers who mainly stated polarized opinions or political proposals, based their arguments on distorted or undefined concepts and engaged in a dialogical stalemate. Deliberately or not, debaters acted as if the aporia generated by the parallel conduct of their monologues ensured the effectiveness of their interventions; as if their interventions were to convince others to adopt their positions, as if the real and formal aims of the debate were diverging. It is less necessary to convince an opponant (formal aims) than to persuade a third party (real aims); everything happens as if this petitio principii was a means to that end. The article concludes that the misappropriation of the concept "cultural appropriation" in the public space calls for the problematization and analysis of media productions relating to the past which suggest or reinforce identities and call for action.