Representing ethnicity in contemporary French visual culture 9781526107503

Citation preview

Representing ethnicity in contemporary French visual culture

Representing ethnicity in contemporary French visual culture JOSEPH McGONAGLE

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Joseph McGonagle 2017 The right of Joseph McGonagle to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

ISBN  978 0 7190 7955 9  hardback First published 2017 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or ­appropriate.

Typeset in Minion by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

Contents

List of figures vi Acknowledgementsviii Introduction1 1 Changing notions of national identity: engaging with ethnicity

20

2 Shaping spaces: representing people of Algerian heritage84 3 From the past to the present: parameters of Jewish identity129 4 A multi-ethnic metropolis: representations of Marseille 178 Conclusion233 References237 Filmography252 Index256

Figures

  1 Félix selects which kite to buy in Drôle de Félix (dirs Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau, Pyramide, 2000)43   2 Amélie at work in Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 20th-Century Fox, 2001)  72   3 Aïcha begins her new role in Aïcha (dir. Yamina Benguigui, Elemiah/Auteurs Associés/France 2, 2009) 121   4 Patrick and Aïcha celebrate after her father blesses their relationship in Aïcha 4: Vacances infernales (dir. Yamina Benguigui, Elemiah/Auteurs Associés/ France 2, 2012) 126   5 Annette is reunited with Jo at the Hôtel Lutétia in La Rafle (dir. Roselyne Bosch, Gaumont, 2010) 150   6 Julia uncovering family secrets and Sarah’s past in Elle s’appelait Sarah (dir. Gilles Paquet-Brenner, UGC Distribution, 2010) 155   7 Eddie celebrates Sabbath with Dov’s family in La Vérité si je mens! (dir. Thomas Gilou, Océan Films (Paris), 1997) 164   8 Eddie and friends celebrate Serge’s wedding to Chochana in La Vérité si je mens! 2 (dir. Thomas Gilou, Warner Bros Pictures, 2001) 170   9 Paul and Michèle in La Ville est tranquille (dir. Robert Guédiguian, Diaphana, 2001) 194

Figures

10 Daniel wearing French national colours in Taxi 2 (dir. Gérard Krawczyk, ARP Sélection, 2000) 11 Alain driving to work in Taxi 3 (dir. Gérard Krawczyk, ARP Sélection, 2003) 12 Opening credits to the first episode of Plus belle la vie (France 3, 2004)

vii

210 216 225

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of selected material featured here previously appeared in the following articles: ‘Ethnicity and visibility in contemporary French television’, French Cultural Studies, 13(39) (2002), 281–92, doi: 10.1177/095715580201303904; ‘The multi-ethnic metropolis: Representing Marseilles in recent photography,’ Journal of Romance Studies, 8(1) (2008), 31–42, doi: 10.3167/jrs.2008.080104; ‘Gently does it: Ethnicity and cultural identity in Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau’s Drôle de Félix (2000)’, Studies in European Cinema, 4(1) (2007), 21–33, doi: 10.1386/seci.4.1.21_1 (reprinted by permission of Taylor and Francis Ltd, www.tandf.co.uk/journals); ‘The end of an era: Marseilles at the millennium in Robert Guédiguian’s La Ville est tranquille (2001)’, Studies in French Cinema 7(3) (2007), 231–41, doi: 10.1386/sfc.7.3.231_1 (reprinted by permission of Taylor and Francis Ltd, www.tandf.co.uk/journals). I am grateful to the publishers for allowing me to include reworked versions of this material. Equally, I extend my thanks to Cambridge Scholars Publishing, who granted permission for me to include revised material from ‘Having the last laugh: Representations of Jewishness in La Vérité si je mens! and La Vérité si je mens! 2 (Thomas Gilou, 1997 and 2001)’, in France at the Flicks: Trends in Contemporary French Popular Cinema, ed. by Darren Waldron and Isabelle Vanderschelden (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007), pp. 171–83. All translations, unless otherwise ­indicated, are my own.

Acknowledgements

ix

The completion of this book would not have been possible without the support of many friends and colleagues. These include: Jonathan Hensher, Barbara Lebrun, Jill Lovecy, Annie Morton, John Perivolaris, Henry Phillips, Matthew Philpotts, Ursula Tidd, Isabelle Vanderschelden and Darren Waldron. Thanks to you all for the many ways in which you helped this project see fruition. I must also state my gratitude to the anonymous reviewers whose feedback at both proposal and manuscript stage helped shape this final publication and, of course, to the entire team at MUP whose good humour, patience and understanding are surely unparalleled. Finally, I am indebted to Mary McGonagle, Kathleen McGonagle and Alex Sowerby for their love and encouragement throughout this book’s long genesis and their unshakable faith that it would eventually see the light of day. This book is dedicated to the memory of my father, Hugh Joseph McGonagle, who passed away too soon during its ­completion.

Introduction

Between 1995 and 1997 the French photographer Luc Delahaye conducted a rather peculiar project. While travelling with a concealed camera on the Paris metro, he began making hundreds of black-and-white portraits of unsuspecting passengers. Eighty of these were then published together as L’Autre (1999). A novel contribution to debates surrounding the visual representation of alterity, Delahaye’s surreptitious photography of strangers raises several legal and ethical issues. Viewers may question, for instance, who qualifies as “other”  in his photography and what right, if any, a photographer has to take such photographs of others. They might also wonder whether alterity can be captured on camera at all. The metro passengers whose portraits were published are, visibly, ethnically diverse and the way their images appear can be read as a mise-en-abîme of how the concept of ethnicity has habitually been framed in France. Delahaye’s uniform portraiture suggests equivalence and that differences can be levelled between the sitters. Given that the travellers remain nameless and that aspects of their lives and ethnicities are undisclosed, however, this humanist approach risks homogenising differences tout court among his cosmopolitan cohort. In this way, Delahaye’s project exemplifies the dominant political philosophy in France – French republican universalism – that legally asserts equality among French citizens and, despite patent societal inequalities, historically has refused to distinguish between them. This, combined with several other factors, ensures that the study of how ethnicity is represented in

2 ­

Representing ethnicity

France,  especially visually,  remains particularly intriguing. This book probes some of the diverse ways in which different ethnicities have been represented across contemporary French visual culture. As Cole (2005: 201) has argued, France is well placed geographically. By sharing a land border with six European countries and being connected to England by an undersea channel, it can plausibly claim to be at the crossroads of Europe. Directly across the Mediterranean lie three Maghrebi countries it formerly ruled and it still possesses overseas territories in the Caribbean, South America and in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It also continues to maintain its global reach by fostering a sense of shared cultural and linguistic heritage among the group of French-speaking countries that constitute la francophonie. Accordingly, mainland France itself is, ethnically, far from homogenous; its population has ‘consistently been the most cosmopolitan of any European  nation’ (Cole 2005: 201) and it has a long and rich history of welcoming migrants throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Despite such ethnic diversity, acknowledging the importance of ethnicity within France remains complex and difficult. This has been demonstrated repeatedly over recent decades. Calls in the late 1990s for quotas for ethnic minorities to appear on French television were met with widespread derision and Nicolas Sarkozy was roundly attacked for advocating positive discrimination in employment laws in November 2003. The main reason for this reaction is that such affirmations of ethnicity are at odds with the French Republic’s principle of universalism, which insists upon non-differentiation of its citizens as a guarantee of egalitarianism. As the first article of the French Constitution states: ‘la France est une république indivisible, laïque, démocratique et sociale. Elle assure l’égalité devant la loi de tous les citoyens sans distinction d’origine, de race ou de religion’ (France is an indivisible, secular, democratic and social republic. It ensures the equality of all citizens before the law, without distinction of origin, race or religion). Nevertheless, as Lloyd (1999: 38) points out: The Jacobin view of equality runs the risk that real inequalities between citizens might be ignored: if all citizens are equal what space is there to understand social stratification based on gender,

Introduction

3

ethnic group or income? Neither does the idea of an equal citizenry provide any guidance regarding the position of foreigners living in France who are the main subjects of contemporary debates on race and ethnicity.

Advocates of French republican universalism might retort that it is a political project en chantier rather than the finished product: an ideal not yet attained that the Republic forever strives to achieve. This, however, does not negate the fact that Liberal universal humanism … puts ‘others’ in a double bind: it demands that they abandon an identity that, while oppressive, is also constitutive of their very existence. And it also obscures the dynamics of oppression beneath the assertion of a universal human essence that ‘we’ all share. Liberal ideology and the Western humanist tradition, as well as ‘canonical’ philosophy and political theory, have indeed all frequently functioned as exclusionary ­discourses. (Kruks 2001: 94)

French republican universalism is clearly in line with this tradition and accordingly has traditionally refused to define French citizens according to their ethnicity. Indeed, as Lloyd (1999: 37) states, following the 1789 Revolution: ‘in order to produce a French nation, certain indigenous ethnic identities were suppressed, in ways which are now acknowledged to have involved an unacceptable denial of human rights’. Today, the concept of ethnicity remains tainted in France for at least two further reasons. First, distinguishing between citizens on ethnic grounds conjures up for many the anti-Semitic government policies of the Vichy period. Second, Jacobin tradition judges any distinction between citizens as tantamount to discrimination, which would lead only to the segregation and communitarianism deemed characteristic of what French commentators term Anglo-Saxon society. The result is a worrying disparity between abstract equality and practical inequalities that the French republican model has repeatedly proved unable to prevent or resolve. One of this book’s key concerns, therefore, is how ethnicity is represented at all in a culture where it has traditionally been elided. While French republican ideology and government policies can hardly determine all visual practice or fully regulate

4 ­

Representing ethnicity

discourses surrounding ethnicity in France, clearly creative sectors and cultural industries do not exist in isolation from the political realm. Moreover, given the overwhelming support for universalism among French society, media and politicians, the continued inculcation of a strong republican ethos via the French state education system, and the weight historically given to reproducing its symbolic power by French academic disciplines (such as the social sciences), its enduring influence should not be underestimated. A study of the way ethnicity has been represented in France in any era could be enlightening, but there are many reasons why focusing specifically on the period since the 1980s is particularly important. Events have ensured that the last three decades have been a highly charged time for debates surrounding ethnicity and the attendant areas of national identity, immigration and citizenship. They saw ethnicity placed firmly on the French political, social and cultural agenda: a place where, given its persistent ­topicality, it duly remains. 1981 heralded the Socialist François Mitterrand’s first presidency and initially his government sought to break with the anti-immigration policies of his conservative predecessor Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. The right of families overseas to join ­economic migrants in France was reinstated, the financial incentives  designed to encourage their repatriation were suspended and  an amnesty was declared on foreigners working without permits. Meanwhile, the nationwide 1983 ‘Marche pour l’égalité et  contre le racisme’ (March for equality and against racism) raised  public consciousness of the plight of the descendants of postwar Maghrebi migrants settled in France, many of whom were relegated socially and spatially to banlieues lying at the extremity of urban centres, suffered discrimination at the hands of municipal authorities, police and employers and endured recurrent racist attacks. It led to the formation of high-profile anti-racist groups such as France Plus and SOS Racisme, which did much to sensitise the French public and mediatise such attacks and practices. Nevertheless, their essentially republican outlook later qualified their support for some ethnic minority causes (Blatt 1997). The mid-1980s saw the Socialist government adopt a change of tone. Faced with the electoral success of the far-right National

Introduction

5

Front party and right-wing politicians competing on an antiimmigration platform, financial incentives to encourage migrants settled in France to return to their country of origin were reinstated in 1984 and new restrictions were introduced on family reunions. Later, the election of Jacques Chirac as Prime Minister of a centre-right government in 1986 brought the Pasqua law, which further toughened entry and residence regulations for foreigners. In the autumn of 1989 the place of Islam in France began to attract unprecedented political and media interest. When the headmaster of a state school in Creil, north of Paris, suspended three young Muslim women for wearing headscarves – because he judged it contrary to long-standing French laws on secularism in French schools – his decision became a major political controversy and was quickly dubbed the ‘affaire du foulard’ (headscarf affair). Forced to act, the Minister of Education Lionel Jospin reinstated the students – a decision later upheld by the Conseil d’État, which ruled that wearing religious insignia did not per se constitute an act of proselytism and therefore did not contradict French laws on laïcité. Instead it found the headmaster at fault for not respecting the young women’s right to profess their religious faith, a right guaranteed by the Republic. The subject resurfaced in 1994 when the Education Minister François Bayrou – a member of the centre-right Édouard Balladur government elected the previous year – issued a circular to headteachers urging them to ban religious insignia perceived as ostentatious precisely because, in his eyes, they did promote religion. Although the circular technically applied to symbols of any religious denomination, it was clear that the Islamic headscarf was once again the target: this was confirmed during an interview by Bayrou himself when he declared crucifixes and yarmulkes to be less ostentatious in ­comparison (Hargreaves 1995: 127). The 1990s also saw nationality, citizenship and ­immigration laws generally made more restrictive. In 1993 the Interior Minister Charles Pasqua further limited foreigners’ entry and residence rights and facilitated police identity checks. Four years later, the Debré law further tightened existing legislation and made it easier to expel those judged to be residing illegally in France. The

6 ­

Representing ethnicity

Méhaignerie law of 1993 removed the right to French nationality at birth from those born in France to foreign parents – making them wait until the age of sixteen, after which they had formally to request French nationality before the age of twenty-one in order to receive it. The Guigou law of 1998 then reinstated its automatic conferral for applicants from the age of eighteen. Although this could technically be granted to applicants after reaching thirteen, it may well have done little to dispel any anxiety surrounding an applicant’s status. The situation of those in France without work or residency permits also became increasingly precarious. Known ­collectively as sans-papiers, they faced immediate deportation if found without them, regardless of their length of stay in France or family commitments. After a series of highly publicised protests in the late 1990s, controversy grew and they became a cause célèbre for French cinema: in February 1997, fifty-nine film directors spearheaded an appeal for civil disobedience against the Interior Minister Jean-Louis Debré’s bill requiring citizens to inform the authorities when lodging foreign visitors in their homes. The national demonstration that followed in Paris attracted 100,000 protestors. In June 1997, Debré’s successor under the Jospin government, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, announced an amnesty and specified the criteria France’s estimated 250,000 illegal residents would have to meet in order for them to be granted an official legal status. Eventually 80,000 were given residency permits, renewable annually, but were still left reliant on undeclared employment and unable to access social security benefits (Fysh and Wolfreys 2003: 216–20). Post-millennium, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s second place in the first round of the 2002 presidential elections shocked French society and provoked mass demonstrations nationwide. Chirac comfortably won the contest with 82 per cent of second-round votes but – notwithstanding the important contributory factors of a low voter turnout, the fragmentation of the plural Left alliance and an ineffective campaign by the Socialists – the fact that the National Front polled so well (receiving 4.8 million votes in the first round and 5.5 million in the second) revealed that a significant number of the French electorate remained so anxious about French

Introduction

7

national identity that they approved of the Front’s brand of xenophobia and racism. The following year, France’s relationship with Islam faced new scrutiny when, following several reports of young Muslim women refusing to unveil at school, the Raffarin government decided to legislate. The new law, which came into force in September 2004, policed dress even more strictly than before, banning outright the wearing of any visible religious symbol in French state schools. While this categorically outlawed Christian and Jewish symbols as well as those linked to Islam, the fact that – once again – it was a spate of media reports focusing on Muslim women that led to legislation did little to diminish the impression that the French State’s primary target remained Islam. Furthermore, the many weeks of rioting that took place throughout France during the autumn of 2005 – largely seen as symptomatic of the failure of France’s integration model – provided further evidence of how topical the subject of ethnicity in France remained and provoked a significant degree of soul searching as commentators sought to explain how such a prolonged period of widespread violence could suddenly ignite across mainland France. As Hargreaves (2015) has argued, however, the continuing failure of French state institutions to combat discrimination towards ethnic minorities effectively in the intervening decade suggests that little has been learned about the source of the rioters’ discontent and consequently augurs ill for the future. Debates surrounding ethnicity and cultural identity have, therefore, played an important part in French politics, culture and society throughout the last three decades. Furthermore, this is a particularly opportune moment to study how ethnicity has been configured in France given the series of challenges from specific groups that the French republican universalist model has had to withstand during this period. Such challenges have found its grand narrative wanting and provided further proof that Universalism has turned out to be an illusion obscuring just another particularism – yet one which mobilized all the resources of a growing industrial/institutional/ideological complex in the attempt to convert this illusion into reality. The universal citizen was, in fact, the abstract product of bourgeois individualism and Western patriarchy. (Silverman 1999: 133)

8 ­

Representing ethnicity

The 1990s in particular saw a series of once supposedly private concerns become increasingly public. First, the signing by the Jospin government of the European Charter of Regional Languages, which would have allowed the official use of regional and minority languages, threatened to displace the Republic’s unilingual policy of only ever allowing French. This was, however, later blocked in June 1999 by the Conseil constitutionnel, which declared that it not only contravened the second article of the French Constitution, which states that French is the language of the Republic, but also, by crediting rights to specific minority groups, breached the Republic’s indivisibility of French citizenry. The French Constitution was, nevertheless, altered during this period following momentum to inscribe the principle of parity between men and women in politics in it. Despite the fact that French republican universalism promises equality among citizens – regardless of sex – women in France were only enfranchised in 1944 and in the 1990s France had proportionally almost the lowest number of female parliamentary members in the EU (Dauphin and Praud 2002: 5). Debates split commentators across the political spectrum but eventually a majority was in favour, many recognising that the universal citizen had not in fact been genderless but male. From July 1999, the French Constitution henceforth specified that French law should promote equal access by both women and men to elective offices and posts and stipulated that political parties must implement it. In addition, November 1999 saw a civil partnership agreement, known as the Pacs (Pacte civil de solidarité) become law. Intended to acknowledge the existence of cohabiting gay, lesbian and heterosexual couples in French state legislature, the Pacs enabled those living together and sharing an intimate relationship to receive some of the legal and monetary advantages only enjoyed previously by married heterosexual couples (Tidd 2000: 183–4). It was another groundbreaking reform and one that duly challenged the primacy of heterosexuality and marriage in France. Moreover, with particular regard to ethnicity, as Fysh and Wolfreys (2003: 207) note, from the mid-1990s onwards, the French abstract citizenship model was ‘either increasingly ignored in practice, or more and more consciously called into question as

Introduction

9

a diverse range of actors discovered the category of “race” as a major structuring factor affecting the life chances of immigrants and immigrant-origin youth’. As noted previously, positive discrimination in the workplace was mooted by Nicolas Sarkozy in 2003. Four years earlier, however, a previous incumbent at the Ministère de l’Intérieur, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, had urged police forces – while explicitly ruling out the introduction of any quota-based system – to reflect the ethnic diversity of the nation better by directly encouraging the recruitment of young people from a variety of different heritages (Schnapper 2003). The former Prime Minister, Édouard Balladur (2005), meanwhile, subsequently joined calls for minorities in France to be awarded special status and even suggested that France could learn positively from the experience of the US: all the more surprising given how routinely approaches dismissively labelled as Anglo-Saxon continue to be demonised in France. Such measures to acknowledge the importance of ethnicity as a valid component of lived experience nonetheless still attract controversy, as illustrated by events in the early 2000s in Corsica. A referendum on Corsican devolution, which would have formally divided the supposedly indivisible Republic, was only narrowly defeated on 6 July 2003 but the island found itself once again at the centre of controversy in September 2004. A settlement to end the strike by workers from the SNCM (Société Nationale Maritime Corse Méditerranée — the national ferry company that operates services to and from the mainland) included a clause that stipulated a preference for new employees to be Corsican residents, provoking cries of outrage from leading French politicians on both the left and right. Other forms of positive discrimination have, however, already been established outside the workplace. Two examples from the education sector are the extra funding given to schools in areas known as ZEP (Zones d’Éducation Prioritaire) and the programme launched in 2001 by the Parisian grande école the Institut d’Études Politiques to facilitate the recruitment of more students from deprived areas. Therefore, contrary to the unilateralism that typifies much of French republicanism, as Cole (2005: 212) argues, there is ‘an essential duality in French discourse’ which means that ‘in

1­ 0

Representing ethnicity

practice, French governments adopt more pragmatic responses than they profess in public’. For instance, while the primacy of French as the sole language of the Republic has been reasserted, governments have at the same time financed regional language initiatives. Equally, although politicians have singled out aspects of Islam as contrary to republican values, the building of mosques has received government support and an organisational framework for Islam in France has been established. In fact, while governments have at times sought compromises, it is republican institutions such as the Conseil d’État and Conseil constitutionnel that have remained steadfast – both appearing ‘determined to preserve a stato-centrist [sic] interpretation of Frenchness’ (Cole 2005: 213). So while there is general resistance to change in French republicanism, it would be unfair to overlook its simultaneous flexibility and periodic ability to reach such accommodations. Nevertheless, as events since the 1980s in France have repeatedly shown, debates concerning any official affirmation of ethnicity have proved particularly contentious. The recurring polemics that surround the issue of collating statistics based upon ethno-racial categories within French society provide a case in point (Simon 2008). As Sabbagh and Peer (2008:  4) point out, the fact that even an anti-­discrimination organisation such as the HALDE (Haute Autorité de Lutte contre les Discriminations et pour l’Égalité) rejected moves to collect such data,  although not surprising, only reinforced the enduring power of official state colour blindness. Indeed, as the first c­ hapter’s discussion of contemporary French television will show, while increasing initiatives have been taken to improve French television’s representativeness in terms of ethnicity, stakeholders have also conveniently adopted the catch-all term diversité as a means to avoid providing the granularity that specifying societal differences necessitates. As we will see, the ways in which the French audiovisual sector has grappled generally with the question of how to reflect better contemporary French society’s ethnic diversity on screen reveal much about both the politics and poetics of this area and the stakes of representation more widely in a culture where visualising ethnicity presents its own very specific challenges.

Introduction

11

Having broadly established the socio-historical context underpinning this period in question, I will now outline further why this book analyses representations of ethnicity in the field of contemporary French visual culture. Throughout the late twentieth century and since 2000, visual culture has provided a key means through which questions of ethnicity and cultural identity more widely have been explored in France. Three of the most culturally prominent media within it are cinema, photography and television, and it is on works taken from these contrasting but complementary areas that much of this book concentrates. Despite the clear links between them, studies specifically analysing these three particular media in France alongside each other remain highly unusual. The fact that all are lens-based media, mutually influence one another and have contributed significantly to twentieth- and twenty-first-century French cultural production nevertheless facilitates and justifies a comparative approach. While this is duly adopted here in each of the four chapters that follow, each medium naturally has its own specificities and constraints – whether technical, cultural, ideological or financial  –  and is subject to differing regulations and expectations. My aim, therefore, is not to elide such important distinctions but to instead maintain the tension between them in order to examine what unites and divides them in terms of how each has represented different ethnicities. In doing so, this book endeavours to probe the  pivotal role that contemporary French visual culture as a whole has played in making societal sameness and difference in France visible. Notwithstanding the novelty of this approach, this study is part of an expanding field which investigates the interrelations between ethnicity and contemporary French visual culture. The study of French cinema’s representation of ethnicity became  established in the 1980s and the 1990s saw it grow in prominence in French Studies. Tarr’s (2005) work on the representation of Maghrebis and French people of Maghrebi heritage in French cinema was pioneering in this domain and both Rosello (1998, 2001) and Higbee (2001b, 2013) have also addressed aspects of ethnicity in French cinema. Several edited volumes on French cinema – such as Hayward and Vincendeau

1­ 2

Representing ethnicity

(2000), Ezra and Harris (2000) and Mazdon (2001) – have also included chapters that engage with ethnicity. The predominant focus, however, has largely been on films featuring people of Maghrebi heritage in France and on those set within banlieues, and relatively few ethnicities in films outside these paradigms have been considered. Furthermore, in comparison with cinema, both photography and television in the contemporary era remain markedly overlooked in French Studies and very little research has been conducted into how  either has constructed ethnicity. This study therefore aims to help address these lacunae by analysing how a variety of ethnicities in France have been represented across contemporary French visual culture. Before introducing each of the four chapters that follow, I shall first outline my theoretical approach. For the purposes of this study, I take ethnicity to be a sociocultural construction as well as a lived experience: imagined but not imaginary, with real and tangible effects. As Fenton (2003: 50, 114–15) has observed, the term “ethnicity” is a concept that has proved particularly difficult to define and whose meaning and import vary according to cultural context. For him, The development of a unitary theory of ‘ethnicity’ is a mirage, as is the search for an ultimately precise definition of ethnicity or ethnic groups. However enticing the word ‘ethnicity’ may be – and it appears to have trapped any number of writers in its web – it is mainly a descriptor for a broad field of interest. Of itself it has no precise point of reference, of itself it has no explanatory power … the variants or ‘forms’ of ‘ethnic groups’ are at least as significant as the common ground between them, and the contexts in which they may be found are the source of explanation rather than any inherent qualities of ethnicity itself. (Fenton 2003: 136, original ­emphases)

It is for this reason that the historical context surrounding the area of ethnicity under discussion is established at the beginning of each of the following chapters and that only tentative definitions of the general term itself can ultimately be offered. With reference to the particular specificities of contemporary French society, ethnicity is viewed here as a group consciousness formed

Introduction

13

according to culture and heritage, rather than biological differences, which is ‘grounded’ as well as constructed. Ethnic identities take shape around real shared material experience, shared social space, commonalities of socialization, and communities of language and culture. Simultaneously these identities have a public presence; they are socially defined in a series of presentations (public statements, assertions, images) by ethnic group members and non-members alike. These social definitions are part of the continuous construction and reconstruction of ethnic identities. (Fenton 2003: 194–5)

Ethnicity is also a term that, in the words of Hall (1996: 446): acknowledges the place of history, language and culture in the construction of subjectivity and identity, as well as the fact that  all  discourse is placed, positioned, situated, and all knowledge is contextual. Representation is possible only because enunciation  is always produced within codes which have a history, a ­position within the discursive formations of a particular space and time.

In other words, it does not exist in isolation and although this book’s primary focus is on how ethnicity is represented within contemporary French visual culture, this does not mean that other aspects of identity are not also considered in conjunction with it. Indeed, to overlook the crucial ways in which ethnicity interacts with age, gender, sexuality and social class, among other factors, would be to ignore the important intersectionality that characterises this field and societal experience generally. Accordingly, within each case study that follows, due attention is paid to a range of such aspects as they intersect with and via representations of ethnicity. As will become clear, even if visualising ethnicity can pose particular challenges within contemporary French visual culture, such representations are always already in dialogue with other important aspects of lived experience and this study therefore attempts to do justice to the evident complexities of identification and representation that characterise ­contemporary French society. Throughout this book a wide range of theoretical texts are used in order to navigate such a diverse terrain. Using a broadly

1­ 4

Representing ethnicity

poststructuralist and cultural studies framework, Derrida’s deconstructive approach to texts and Foucault’s work on power and discourse are important influences, as is that of Hall on ethnicity and representation. In order to analyse the specificities of different media, a range of works that focus on film, photography and visual culture as a whole are also cited. The burgeoning interest that this broad area has attracted over the last decade from French scholars  –  prominent examples including Blanchard, Bancel and Lemaire’s edited volume La Fracture coloniale: la société française au prisme de l’héritage colonial (2006) and the work of the ACHAC (Association pour la Connaissance de l’Histoire de l’Afrique Contemporaine) group more widely in probing the legacies of colonial history in postcolonial France  –  facilitates engagement with relevant critics in France whose work illuminates the interrelations between ethnicity, French society and aspects of visual culture. This study’s guiding principles are that culture is a site of ongoing struggle, a process not an object. Fields of culture are traversed by relations of power which circumscribe who is represented, when, where and how and help determine the positions practitioners and viewers can occupy. As the relationship between language, meaning and culture is not predetermined but constructed socially, however, such spaces are contradictory and are therefore subject to continual renegotiation. Moreover, representation does not passively reflect what is perceived as reality but in important ways constructs it and, more widely, social relations themselves: as Dyer (1993: 1) argues, ‘how we are seen determines in part how we are treated; how we treat others is based on how we see them; such seeing comes from representation’. Culture is, therefore, resolutely ideological and is the site where ‘everyday struggles between dominant and subordinate groups are fought, won and lost’ (Procter 2004: 11). It plays a constitutive part in society and has real political effects, as demonstrated by Foucault whose notion of discourse delineates how systems of representation can be organised to this end. Historically specific, a discourse can comprise a web of images, statements, philosophies and practices that gain authority during a particular period. In this way, these discourses regulate representation and experience, produce subjectivities and structure r­epresentation. Thus in the words of Foucault (1969: 61):

Introduction

15

on ne peut pas parler à n’importe quelle époque de n’importe quoi; il n’est pas facile de dire quelque chose de nouveau; il ne suffit pas d’ouvrir les yeux, de faire attention, ou de prendre conscience, pour que de nouveaux objets, aussitôt, s’illuminent, et qu’au ras de sol ils poussent leur première clarté. (‘one cannot speak of anything at any time; it is not easy to say something new; it is not enough for us to open our eyes, to pay attention, or to be aware, for new objects suddenly to light up and emerge out of the ground’) (Foucault 2002: 49)

This has particular importance with regard to the relationship between visual representation and ethnicity, given the stigma often attracted by those who appear to differ visibly from the ethnic majority, and it means that one can speak of how a ‘racialized regime of representation’ (Hall 2001: 245) is often at work within discourse. Artists, directors, photographers and writers evidently must always make choices during the genesis of their works which have important consequences with regard to the potential meanings works generate and their attendant reception by viewers. Their choices may nevertheless be limited and limiting in a number of ways: for instance, economically (dictated by access to financing); or institutionally (the exhibition of their work depending upon the politics of film funding organisations or gallery owners). The poetics of representation cannot be separated from its politics and, because of this, it is important to situate works within the era in which they were produced. Cultural products may appear to reflect their era, rail against it, or adopt an intermediate position but they never exist in a historical vacuum. I therefore view each of the works considered as an ‘instantiation’ (Jones 1998: 12) – both an articulation and a reflection – of the factors that characterise representations of ethnicity in contemporary France as well as indications of shifts over time within and across the discourses that surround them. As I will argue, they each engage compellingly with questions of ethnicity in contemporary French visual culture. Turning now to the structure of this book, in order to consider a broad range of ethnicities, four different areas have been chosen for analysis. The first chapter begins on a national footing

1­ 6

Representing ethnicity

by considering how ethnicity interacts with representations of Frenchness. In a country with such a strong sense of national identity and powerful republican ethos, the dialectic between the French nation and the French Republic’s universalist political doctrine is particularly intriguing. This chapter considers how the two coexist visually and stresses the need to interrogate how whiteness in France has been represented. In addition, in order to counter the Paris-centrism that has historically characterised studies of this area and in much of French visual culture itself generally, the chapter’s corpus here purposely comprises works that challenge the capital’s hegemony by concentrating on life in the provinces. The second chapter addresses a highly symbolic group in contemporary France – namely, its largest and arguably most visible or marked ethnic minority: people of Algerian heritage. The representation of Maghrebis and those of Maghrebi heritage in French cinema – and in particular of the younger generation mostly born in France to post-1945 Maghrebi migrants settled there – is an established topic in French film studies, which has documented the increasing visibility afforded this section of French society since the 1980s. Rather than consider Maghrebis and those of Maghrebi heritage as one sole category – and consequently run the risk of eliding important differences between them – all the works I consider focus specifically on how people of Algerian heritage fare in contemporary French visual culture. Furthermore, as the depiction of Maghrebis and those of Maghrebi heritage in contemporary French cinema is now so well documented, this chapter deliberately examines instead a range of works from different media, including a selection of works by a prominent Franco-Algerian artist, an important trilogy of text-image books and a popular téléfilm franchise. In spite of France having the largest Jewish population in Europe, little attention has been paid, outside Holocaust Studies, to representations of postwar Jewishness in France. My third chapter tries to redress this imbalance. Moreover, repeated acts of antiSemitism throughout the 1980s and 1990s in France and increasing reports of its resurgence post-2000 make its study all the more pertinent. With French Jews often portrayed as a c­ ommunity in a climate where communitarianism – dismissively dubbed la solution

Introduction

17

anglo-saxonne – is demonised by French media and politicians, how Jewishness is constructed across contemporary French visual culture is particularly absorbing. Furthermore, given that many French Jews would be considered white-skinned,  whether and how practitioners differentiate between whiteness and Jewishness (an ethnicity marker based on cultural, religious and geographical factors, among others) also deserves ­scrutiny and forms part of this book’s more general aim of deconstructing representations of whiteness in contemporary France, in  keeping  with Dyer’s (1997:  4) project to stress the importance of ‘making whiteness strange’ by defying its apparent invisibility in order to highlight its contours and attendant socio-cultural collocations. Despite the Republic’s success at fashioning the French nation from such a large geographical and linguistic expanse, the continued importance of regional identities is another distinctive feature of contemporary France. Critics noted a return to the provinces in late-1990s French cinema and my final chapter focuses on one of the most culturally and historically important areas of provincial France: Marseille. While a range of other French cities could also merit attention – including those considered by Marshall (2009) in his delineation of the French Atlantic – Marseille is particularly important because of the symbolic place it occupies as France’s second city and the Mediterranean port’s justifiable claim to be France’s southern capital. Despite its prominence in French culture, there have been very few studies of how the city has been represented visually. As my final chapter will show, la cité phocéenne – in many ways positioned as Paris’s Other – has been imagined as both Mediterranean melting-pot and Latin hotbed. As the city where as many as over a hundred distinct ethnic groups reportedly reside, it is increasingly deployed as an important symbol of contemporary France’s ethnic diversity. Adopting such an approach, focus and structure has advantages and disadvantages. Scrutinising this area via a series of case studies necessitates selection, prioritising some over others, consequently resulting in the omission of works that might otherwise have deserved consideration. While some of the works featured here have already attracted critical attention, the vast majority has attracted little or none, and this book duly probes

1­ 8

Representing ethnicity

areas of contemporary French visual culture that – despite their popularity  – are yet to enjoy significant levels of critical exposure, especially within the areas of photography and television. Nevertheless, some readers may have expected to find an explicit focus upon two key areas: blackness and bande dessinée. With regard to the former, although not the subject of a discrete chapter, representations of blackness are analysed throughout this book and form an important strand of its consideration of how ethnicity has been represented in contemporary French visual culture. In so doing, it aims to complement work from scholars such as Thomas (2007), Ndiaye (2008) and Tin (2008), who have probed representations of blackness within contemporary French society and culture. In relation to bande dessinée, it is certainly true that examples from this medium could have been incorporated within each chapter. Important work in this area with regard to colonial and postcolonial culture has been conducted by a number of scholars, including Miller (2007) and McKinney (2011, 2013), and where elements of a cartoon aesthetic are deployed within the work selected, these are duly highlighted. The omission of a case study precisely in this area was certainly unintentional and is more a reflection of the relative limits that this methodological approach imposes: to do justice to each of the works closely analysed within this book, each requires sufficient space. Furthermore, the importance of covering the wide variety of media scrutinised here – including cinema, photography, television and the visual arts – and also a broad range of case studies encompassing both popular culture and works of less mainstream appeal automatically meant that some elements of contemporary French visual culture had to be left out. Similarly, the choice of focus within each of the following four chapters may also invite debate. Whereas many readers may welcome the first chapter’s scrutiny of how Frenchness, whiteness and ethnicity interrelate within contemporary French visual culture, why focus on people of Algerian heritage, Jewishness and the city of Marseille in the chapters that follow? Earlier sections above made the case for why each of these specific areas deserves critical attention, but their mutual inclusion here is deliberate:

Introduction

19

by including such chapters, this book attempts to scrutinise not only how ethnicity in contemporary France has been represented in terms of notions of national identity, but also in relation to postcolonial subjectivities, cultural and religious identities and regional specificities. Naturally, other such categories of identity could have merited inclusion and scrutiny but, as the subsequent chapters demonstrate, compelling reasons justify this focus on these specific areas. Given the problematics of representation posed by French republican universalism as dominant political ideology – where championing ethnic difference risks being interpreted as communitarianism and theoretically colour-blind equality perennially trumps other concerns –  how can different ethnicities be represented visually? The following chapters argue that, over the last three decades, many works across French visual culture have confounded such zero-sum logic by engaging meaningfully with the challenges of representing ethnicity within such a context. As will also become clear, however, the enduring power and legacy of French republican universalism are such that its ideology continues to penetrate far and wide across this field and with ­far-reaching consequences.

1 Changing notions of national identity: engaging with ethnicity

As the Introduction made clear, since the early 1980s France has experienced an important period of significant political and social change. Many prevailing notions of national identity were redefined as the descendants of post-World War Two migrants to France (and especially those of Maghrebi heritage) came of age. Laws on nationality and citizenship were repeatedly revised, and controversy raged over measures that purportedly challenged the primacy of French republican universalism as well as others that sought to bolster it. The relations between ethnicity and national identity duly became a subject that recurred regularly in the media, and one that often attracted fierce debate. The furore generated by the creation of the Ministère de l’Immigration, de l’Intégration, de l’Identité nationale et du développement solidaire following Nicolas Sarkozy’s election as president in 2007 proved a particular case in point. It quickly became known more by shorthand terms such as the Ministère de l’immigration et de l’identité nationale, which reflected the frequency with which Sarkozy and his government chose to dwell on both these areas and their desire to present them as profoundly linked. Moreover, the ruling UMP party’s predilection for focusing on French national identity and positioning immigration as threatening to it formed a key hallmark of Sarkozy’s presidency and was seen by critics as a deliberate strategy to attract National Front voters. The announcement by the Minister of Immigration and National Identity, Éric Besson, that he had earmarked November

Changing notions of national identity

21

2009 to February 2010 as a time for reflection and national debate on the values of French national identity – just ahead of regional elections in March 2010 – was symptomatic of such government policy. This initiative also formed part of a wider instrumentalisation of history, memory and national identity during Sarkozy’s reign, whose approach lacked both in subtlety and sophistication. To cite one of many examples: Sarkozy’s commissioning of a report to scope out plans for a future museum of French history; a project that, as Thomas (2010: 3) points out, was ‘diametrically opposed in its aims and aspirations to the conceptions of French history that have defined the CNHI’. Opened in 2007, the CNHI (Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration) – later rebranded the Musée de l’histoire de l’immigration and belatedly inaugurated by President Hollande in December 2014 – has provided a highly visible and important space within the French capital for visitors to engage with the historical and contemporary legacies of migration across French society. Moreover, the centrality of visual culture among both its permanent and t­emporary exhibition spaces underlines its primacy in enabling visitors to explore the many complexities of this area: complexities that often seemed to escape many French politicians in power throughout this period. This wider era was also characterised by a series of polemics about the relationship between French national identity and ethnic and religious differences in French society more generally, epitomised by the introduction of legislation, which came into force in April 2011, outlawing the covering of the face in public. Specifically targeting Muslim women who wear garments such as the niqab or burqa, it marked a significant development in the evolution of legislation and government policy since the late 1980s regarding the wearing of garments on religious and cultural grounds. This had been largely spurred by the events known collectively as the three headscarf affairs, which saw governments move from prohibiting in state schools garments judged to be conspicuously religious in character – such as the headscarf – to eventually banning there any visible symbols whatsoever that were deemed to be religious. Whereas such legislation focused upon the highly symbolic space of the state school classroom

2 ­ 2

Representing ethnicity

and other areas classified as part of the French republican public sphere, the jurisdiction of the “burqa law” extended beyond these to cover all public space: a major change that instigated a widespread debate about French republican values and the place of Islam in France. Such controversies highlighted once again the extent to which the relationship between national identity and ethnicity, along with religious and cultural diversity, remains a contested field in France. As this chapter will demonstrate, this has certainly been the case within French visual culture since the 1980s too, where France and Frenchness in relation to ethnicity have been represented in contradictory ways. On the one hand, France’s ethnic diversity has clearly been more readily acknowledged within visual culture, and growing numbers of ethnic minorities have appeared and risen to prominence across it. Since the 1980s, the visibility of French citizens of black and Maghrebi heritage in cinema has notably increased and several French male actors of minority ethnic heritage – such as Jamel Debbouze, Gad Elmaleh and Jacques Martial – have become stars. Conversely, blockbusters such as Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001) – commonly abbreviated to Amélie and discussed at the end of this chapter – and his Un long dimanche de fiançailles (2004), along with popular films such as Nicolas Philibert’s Être et avoir (2002) and Christophe Barratier’s Les Choristes (2004) nostalgically posited France both historically and in the contemporary era as an idealised, white and largely ethnically homogenous space: a vision of France that clearly resonates abroad too, given their international success. This chapter will therefore probe the parameters of such trends both within cinema and more widely across contemporary French visual culture. It will do so by examining – via a series of detailed case studies – several of the ways in which ethnicity in relation to France and Frenchness has been represented visually since the 1980s. The first section addresses the work of a photographer whose images encompass two major national celebrations held during this period: the 1989 bicentenary of the French Republic’s founding and the events held to mark the year 2000. Both occasions provided opportunities to reassess the French republican legacy

Changing notions of national identity

23

and to reassert its enduring relevance (Leruth 1998, 2001).  Luc Choquer  –  subject of a major retrospective at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris in 2010 – addresses both these symbolic moments in his photography and is considered first in this chapter. His book Planète France (1989) depicts France during the mid-to-late 1980s and, by incorporating traditional signifiers of Frenchness and republican insignia, interrogates notions of nationality and citizenship in late twentieth-century France. His follow-up DVD-ROM, Fragments du futur (2001), collates images of France’s inhabitants throughout the 1990s and shows a distinct change in tone, positioning France as a place of increasing ethnic diversity. His subsequent book, Portraits de Français (2007) supplements these predecessors by adding images of France post-2000: all three will be studied to assess how France and French society are represented in Choquer’s work and how his depictions of them evolve over time. Attention will then turn to a film that similarly shows ethnicity playing a pivotal role in contemporary France: Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau’s Drôle de Félix (2000). Its eponymous hero – the highly unusual choice in French cinema of a Frenchman of Maghrebi heritage who is also gay and HIVpositive – travels the length of the mainland in search of his father and, by avoiding many major cities, allows the film to showcase less urban landscapes in French provinces. The film provides an absorbing portrait of France and French society as Félix’s journey progresses, during which the connections between ethnicity and national identity in pre-millennial France are probed. Although merely a modest success at the French box office, the film has attracted sustained attention from critics in the decade following its release: its afterlife as an object of analysis will therefore also be briefly considered, pondering why the film has been privileged in this way. The following section will then scrutinise another integral part of contemporary French visual culture – television – by focusing on an area of increasing public debate and media scrutiny: the under-representation of ethnic minorities on French television screens. As will become clear, French television channels’ relative inertia in this area compared to other European broadcasters and

2 ­ 4

Representing ethnicity

the general slow pace of change are compounded by the peculiar challenge French programme makers face: namely, how to better reflect the ethnic diversity of French society without flouting the tenets of French republican universalism, which theoretically outlaws any quota-based system and therefore powerfully inhibits the recognition of societal difference. The chapter then closes by returning to cinema to assess a rare example of the issue of representativeness and ethnicity raised in the French film industry. Although a huge success in France and an international box-office hit, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie (2001) attracted controversy due to the perception that his film pointedly obscured the ethnic diversity of contemporary central Paris. The brevity of the resulting polemic in France was revealing – such criticism predictably dismissed by many commentators almost as quickly as it was raised – but the fact that the issue was broached at all in French cinema was striking and tellingly exposed both the fault lines that define it as a subject in contemporary France and the ideological stakes at play. By analysing such a variety of different works that engage directly with questions of ethnicity and Frenchness, this chapter examines several important themes and tropes that have recurred throughout French visual culture during this period. Crucially, it will also demonstrate that notions of French national identity across these different media, as testified by this range of works, have remained far from static since the 1980s. No place like home: France and French society in the ­photography of Luc Choquer Although yet to acquire the widespread recognition enjoyed by some of his contemporaries, the photographer Luc Choquer has developed a compelling body of work since the 1980s which explicitly interrogates contemporary notions of France and French society. Planète France, Choquer’s first book publication, established his trademark style of brightly coloured flash photography and marked a distinctive divergence from black-and-white postwar humanist photography, which had increasingly come back into vogue in France from the mid-1980s onwards. His

Changing notions of national identity

25

preference for carefully composed portraiture also differentiated him from much reportage-style photojournalism: a particularly popular genre of photography in France. This was undoubtedly why the editor and fellow photographer Claude Nori, quoted on the book’s jacket, described it as no less than ‘le premier portrait contemporain de la France et de ses habitants’ (the first contemporary portrait of France and of its inhabitants). Focusing solely on life in mainland France, Choquer’s book characterises the métropole in a number of ways. An emphasis upon French cultural life and heritage runs throughout, with shots of the Palais Garnier in Paris and a portrait of the popular band Les Rita Mitsouko along with nods to the worlds of art, fashion and sport. The main focus, however, remains upon “planet” dwellers and the spaces they inhabit, with the camera often penetrating domestic spaces. Frequently it is the quirkiness of life that catches Choquer’s eye and his wry look at French society encourages viewers to see it afresh. This occurs particularly in his treatment of French republican institutions and insignia, such as in the portrait of two légionnaires (Choquer 1989: 61). Dressed in uniform and staring impassively into the camera, they should cut imposing figures. By picturing them both full-length while mirroring each other in stance and pose, however, Choquer lends them the air of marionettes: a potentially rather acerbic comment on the role the French Foreign Legion has played in buttressing French foreign policy. Furthermore, the prominence of their uniforms and the range of colour and texture shown recall some of the portraiture for which the artists Pierre and Gilles became famous (Pierre et Gilles 2007) and chime with the humour and hyperrealism their images often evoke. The embrace of a similarly kitsch aesthetic here also accentuates the légionnaires’ alterity within this landscape, despite their location being Aubagne, the Legion’s headquarters. Moreover, by photographing them away from any recognisable sign of military life and in dimly lit, barren surroundings Choquer renders them rather alien to his planet: the camera’s low angle and their upright stance, along with the luminosity of the camera’s flash which bounces off their bodies, might even suggest that they have been beamed down from the sky shown above. With no identifiable

2 ­ 6

Representing ethnicity

landscape or other figures in shot, the portrait emphasises their otherness in Choquer’s world: a fitting allusion given the legionnaires’ association with deployments beyond rather than inside France, and underlining the resolutely metropolitan focus of the wider book. Choquer’s idiosyncratic view of life in France and French society extends to other images that include symbols of Frenchness and the Republic. So rather than show the bicentennial celebrations of 1989 in full swing, his photograph ‘Marie, Simon et Anne, après une fête commémorative de la Révolution, 1989’ (Choquer 1989:  57) instead captures their aftermath by showing a tired white woman and two white children, posing in front of a house at night, presumably having returned home from festivities. They make a striking tableau: no one smiles or looks at the camera directly and the boy’s tugging of the woman’s shawl and the girl’s apparent slumber suggest they had posed at length. Since the time of carnival has elapsed, however, the woman’s tricolour cockade and the costumes they wear are no longer of use. This sense of obsolescence is reinforced further by the stylised way in which the costumed figures are arranged and by photographing them once their composure seems lost, a choice that also subtly highlights the artifice of the pose within portraiture more widely. Representing bicentennial celebrations through the family and children might traditionally connote the continued relevance and renewal of the French Republic. These subjects, however, seem distracted and their costumes out of kilter. The staleness of the proceedings seemingly implies that the vision of republicanism celebrated bears little resemblance to life in late-1980s France, and that its legacy may now be out-of-date. French Revolutionary colours are also found elsewhere. In one image (Choquer 1989: 25) a tricolour flies high above four white boules players, middle-aged or older in appearance, standing outside a large hut. The symmetry between their bodies and the flagpole implies their rectitude as citizens, while the plaque behind them marked ‘Cabanon No 35’ indicates subdivision and order. The boules that each player carries – a quintessential, albeit caricatural, marker of Frenchness – infer the ludic, but the formality of their V-shaped arrangement and the leading woman’s

Changing notions of national identity

27

rather guarded expression also connote a certain defensiveness, which is accentuated by the players’ cordon-like formation, providing a barrier between viewers and the hut and flag behind. Humour is created, however, by the disjuncture between the casualness of their dress – summer clothes and beachwear – and more formal demeanour. Moreover, the seriousness of some  of their expressions is somewhat subverted by the sorry state of the tricolour above them, which flies raggedly with a large tear between its white and red segments. By showing it flying in reverse, Choquer creates a sense of disorientation heightened by the camera angle, which forces viewers to tilt their heads to the right to observe the group straight on. Viewing the photograph therefore becomes mildly dizzying: entirely in keeping with Choquer’s sideways look at symbols of French national identity. These three photographs therefore question the vitality of certain archetypal symbols of France and the French Republic, associating them with long-established traditions and older generations. In contrast, the majority of images in Planète France feature the young: epitomised by the book’s front cover, which shows two young male swimmers posing side-by-side. Their contrasting skin colours – one boy is white, the other is black – also herald the ethnic diversity of Choquer’s planet, which he depicts in an intriguing way. Two portraits stand out. The first (Choquer 1989: 43) shows a young black woman, perched upon two boxes, between a pair of decorative curtains adorned with paper cocktail umbrellas that hang behind her on a windowless wall. The playful air this creates is accentuated by the doll shown beside her and the toy held by her son, seated below. She is shown wearing a fluorescent pink leotard –  whose colour matches her large hoop earrings and lipstick – and the light catches her raised right thigh, which is uncovered above her black knee-length socks. This striking combination of décor and dress suggests an air of performance and fantasy, perhaps leading viewers to ponder the agency of the sitters and query their complicity in such image making. As the only black woman photographed in Planète France, this portrait is already unique: it is exceptional in other ways too. Its inclusion acknowledges metropolitan France’s significant black

2 ­ 8

Representing ethnicity

population and, although the viewer is given no details about her ethnic heritage, were one to presume that she is of Martinican or Guadaloupean heritage, the portrait could be interpreted as a comment on the prominence of mothers in many Caribbean cultures and families, the cult of the body among some black diasporas, and the dark brown bottle alongside her – possibly of rum – as an allusion to the role of trade, history and migration in the formation of ethnicities. Unlike the many white women pictured throughout the book, however, this portrait seems coded in other specific ways: her pose emphasises her athleticism, while her lustrous blonde and brown mane of hair connotes animality. Although this depiction of black female sexuality might recall images from Jean-Paul Goude’s Jungle Fever (1982) – where the black Jamaican-born singer Grace Jones was photographed in a series of provocative poses –  this woman’s comparative unease and self-consciousness form a striking counterpoint: her sideways glance, covering of her chest with her hands, and possibly nervous stroking of her hair appear more defensive than assertive gestures before Choquer’s lens. Furthermore, this tension between display and concealment is highlighted by the use of composition and lighting by Choquer. Despite the range of colour and texture recorded by the camera, its flash fails to illuminate the dark-coloured floor and area beyond the room’s doorframe: a third of the portrait is consequently covered in darkness and almost completely obscure. This emphasises the lack of light due to the windowless wall, but also augments the enigma of the subjects photographed: who are the people pictured, and why has this location been chosen? The title given to the image in the book’s key – ‘Sarcelles, 1988’ – answers neither question but the revelation that the setting is the Parisian banlieue, a key site of social exclusion throughout the 1980s and beyond, invites reflection on the life chances afforded metropolitan France’s black population in the late twentieth century. The amount of darkness within the setting and apparent lack of natural light similarly suggest a sense of enclosure and seclusion. Elsewhere in the book (1989: 47) an image made in the banlieue to the west of Paris – titled ‘Nanterre, 1985’ – shows a younger woman, possibly of Moroccan heritage, staring directly at the

Changing notions of national identity

29

camera as she sits indoors beside a window. Its view reveals a grey, desolate urban landscape at odds with the homely interior of oranges, beiges and browns and a floral patterned curtain. In contrast to the previous portrait, this woman is dressed more conservatively in a long skirt and fully buttoned-up blouse, and a piece of fabric covers most of her hair. Although the pentagram upon it appears black rather than green, the square of pinned red fabric hung above her on the wall strongly recalls the Moroccan national flag. The image therefore appears to chime with the coming of age throughout the 1980s of many people who then self-identified in French society as “beurs” – a name coined to designate children of Maghrebi heritage, whose parents emigrated to France from the 1950s onwards. Although a term later spurned by many as its use as a synonym for the catch-all term “Arabe” grew, at the time ‘those who called themselves Beurs circumvented the simplistic choice with which outsiders tended to confront them, insisting that they be labelled as either French or Arab’ (Hargreaves 1995: 105, o ­ riginal ­emphases). Tellingly, by showing the young woman placed by both the flag-like fabric inside and world symbolised beyond the window, the photograph positions her between two such poles in mid-1980s’ France. The two appear very different spaces, however, and the contrast between the warm-coloured interior and bleak exterior might lead viewers to interpret the image as a critique of the status of women of Maghrebi heritage in French society. The young woman’s position and posture – seated solely in the lower quarter of the photograph, directly beneath the apparent flag, and facing away from the window – may also suggest a further sense of confinement: potentially pandering to the stubborn stereotype in France whereby women of Maghrebi heritage are perennially labelled ‘“victims” of patriarchal Muslim cultures’ (Freedman and Tarr 2000: 2), and a view notably expressed throughout the French media during the first affaire du foulard which began in the same year Planète France was published. The windowpane’s prominence in the image and the young woman’s proximity to it arguably suggest, nevertheless, that any confinement intimated is neither complete nor definitive.

3 ­ 0

Representing ethnicity

Furthermore, her return of the gaze signals a subject unwilling to remain passive and, in contrast to the implicit objectification of the young black woman’s body seen earlier, her unsettling look back at the camera challenges any voyeurism. Shown between two signifiers of France and Morocco, she resists definitive placement: her body, almost parallel with both the wall and window, duly situated by the dividing line between inside and out that the window frame’s horizontal section symbolises. Choquer therefore presents a complex and contradictory representation of these minority ethnic women in Planète France: both confounding trends but also potentially reinscribing certain stereotypes in contemporary metropolitan French society. Before leaving this “planet”, however, an important structuring effect merits mention. The list of images states that almost all the photographs were taken either in the Parisian banlieue or in Southern France: it therefore reveals how metropolitan their scope is, despite the book’s planetary ambitions. Furthermore, a link arises here between location and ethnicity: in contrast to the mobility of the white French majority, almost all ethnic minorities photographed are pictured in Parisian suburbs. While this might risk reinforcing stereotypical representations of the banlieue as the exclusive preserve of ethnic minorities in contemporary France, the inclusion of such images could also simultaneously encourage viewers to reflect both on the extent to which such spatial segregation has become a defining feature of life in contemporary France and on which power relations persist in sustaining it. When working subsequently on his Fragments du futur project, Choquer’s journeys were more wide-ranging. From 1995 to 2001, he periodically travelled along the Paris meridian that crosses France from North to South – a key focus of Bastille Day 2000 millennium celebrations (Leruth 2001) –  photographing and filming interviews with residents along it. Part-funded by the French government’s ‘Mission pour la célébration de l’an 2000’, the images he created were subsequently exhibited at the Forum Culturel de Blanc-Mesnil in 2001 and compiled in an accompanying DVD-ROM, which comprised 129 photographs and 82 video clips. Many of them would later be included in printed form in his book Portraits de Français (2007) and as part of his

Changing notions of national identity

31

2010 career retrospective exhibition in Paris and, accordingly, it is these still images’ photographic qualities that will primarily be analysed here. It should be pointed out, however, that the viewing of pixelated versions on screen of the original photographs via DVD-ROM necessarily creates different conditions of reception (Mirzoeff 1999: 30). Some of the attendant effects of Choquer’s use of multimedia technology will therefore duly be addressed by focusing on the mediating effect of the globe-shaped group of words on the DVD-ROM’s start screen, under which the images are classified and via which viewers access them. Turning first to the corpus of images themselves, despite the futurity his project’s title heralds, considerable continuity with Choquer’s earlier images exists and this is furthered by the inclusion of several images from Planète France. His signature photographic style remains but the emphasis upon domesticity and individuals is heightened: very few photographs are taken beyond the home and garden and almost all are full-length portraits. The choice of lexis upon the start screen confirms Choquer’s penchant for the archetypal with categories such as ‘Napoléon’, ‘tradition’, ‘château’ and ‘bleublancrouge’. The latter hosts a particularly arresting image: one that, in contrast to those found in Planète France, specifically associates French republican insignia with a non-white ethnic minority. It shows a young man of Maghrebi heritage standing before a background patterned with images recalling French revolutionary periods, which include a film reel showing a triumphant Marianne, clearly based on Eugène Delacroix’s painting ‘La Liberté guidant le peuple’ (1830). This reference to celluloid is significant: throughout the late 1990s several actors and comedians of Maghrebi heritage came to prominence in the French film industry, most notably Jamel Debbouze who in 2002 became the first non-white actor to become France’s highest grossing film star. His earnings that year of €2.12 million (Charnay 2003) largely derived from his role as Numérobis in Alain Chabat’s Astérix et Obélix: mission Cléopâtre (2002) and his performance in Amélie will be discussed at the end of this chapter. Given the young man’s pose, comparison between him and Debbouze is not gratuitous. Although unclear from the portrait

3 ­ 2

Representing ethnicity

itself, the fact that it also appears in the category entitled ‘handicap’ implies the young man may have a disability, his pose of left hand upon right shoulder perhaps suggesting he does not have full use of both arms. This, coupled with his Maghrebi heritage (confirmed by the image’s simultaneous inclusion under the category ‘Maghreb’), further strengthens similarities between him and the actor, since Debbouze lost the use of his right arm following an accident at the age of thirteen (Neath 2002). The portrait can duly be read as a challenge to traditional assumptions of Frenchness – the latter embodied by the figure of Marianne alongside him – as only ever able-bodied and ethnically white. Moreover, although the young man pictured conforms to the implicit republican equation of citizenship as male – as Silverman noted: ‘the universality of Man turned out to be the somewhat less-than-universal brotherhood of French men’ (1999: 131, original emphasis) – Choquer effectively particularises the French Republic’s ‘abstract and disembodied citizen’ (ibid.) by placing a disabled brown-skinned young man of Maghrebi heritage alongside images of the Revolution that ushered in the utopianism of modern French conceptions of citizenship. The whiteness that pervaded representations of republican imagery throughout Planète France is replaced here by a greater acknowledgement of the ethnic diversity of French citizenry, and the life-size pictures of children from a revolutionary period that appear behind this young man suggest he is in his rightful place, shoulder-to-shoulder with the enfants de la patrie whom the first line of ‘La Marseillaise’ rallies. Furthermore, the scope and size of Choquer’s 2001 project allows far more ethnic diversity to be displayed; signalled by the DVD-ROM start screen itself, where the categories ‘métis’, ‘Maghreb’ and ‘Islam’ sit alongside the more stereotypical connotations of Frenchness outlined above. These three categories warrant closer scrutiny. Examination of the images classified in the ‘métis’ category reveals that Choquer’s conception of métissage is not confined to people of dual ethnic heritage but also includes families and couples where the ethnic heritages of individuals differ. In this sense Choquer chimes with the continuing vogue for the term in France, which ‘aims to avoid the loss of difference that was implicit in both the older French assimilationist

Changing notions of national identity

33

model and the American “melting pot”’ (Yee 2003: 411) and –  by championing the mixing together of different ethnicities and ­cultures – is positioned as a panacea to fears of increasing ­communitarianism and ethnic segregation in French society. Nevertheless, the choice of images found there seems more curious than celebratory. A portrait of a family grouping jars due to their mostly blank expressions and the conspicuous prominence of a table behind which they sit and off which the camera’s flash bounces, serving as a reminder that ‘the artificiality of portraiture as a method of packaging individuals in neat containers of personhood is often much more obvious in less agreeable instances of representation’ (Brilliant 1991: 83). This sentiment recurs in Choquer’s intriguing photograph of the dual-heritage winner of the 1998 Miss Ile-de-France title. Ostensibly a convenient opportunity to document French society’s increasing ethnic diversity – in the same year when the multi-ethnic heritage of the World Cup-winning French national men’s football team was championed extensively in the French media as proof of social cohesion and national unity in the Republic – the fixed pose and stare of the pageant winner strangely mirror those of the array of porcelain dolls that stand behind her. Joined by her white-skinned mother and darker-skinned brother, both of whom are also unsmiling, only the sash she wears reveals her status. Choquer’s sober and formal portrait of this family grouping records her success for posterity: the relative modesty of their surroundings, however, suggests few riches await this winner. Turning to the category ‘Maghreb’, here a foreign flag features once again with two men shown leaning against one another alongside an Algerian flag. This photograph, however, does not simply allude to its subjects’ supposed ethnic heritage. Its simultaneous inclusion under the categories ‘Islam’ and ‘couple’ emphasises the multifaceted nature of French society: with either one or both men presumably Algerian, possibly Muslim and, given their interlocking fingers, potentially gay, the two risk being triply oppressed in France on the grounds of sexual orientation, ethnicity and religious heritage but cannot easily be compartmentalised. The photograph’s composition also questions the importance of such overarching terms. Despite the flag’s prominence, its gentle

3 ­ 4

Representing ethnicity

sagging deflects attention towards the couple. Although the clothes both wear – white vests and blue jeans – might evoke some stereotypical connotations of gay, male dress, their relaxed pose confounds attempts to position them exclusively as representative of such perceived identities. Furthermore, rather than position such aspects of identification as competing, Choquer pictures the couple at ease with their confluence. Although the scope of Fragments du futur clearly allows Choquer more space to document diversity more generally in contemporary French society, conventional family groupings still predominate in his images. Accordingly, ‘famille’ serves as one of the largest categories on his DVD-ROM and several related semantic categories are also included, such as ‘maternité’, ‘paternité’, ‘enfance’, and ‘adolescence’. As Fanon (1952: 115) argued: ‘la structure familiale et la structure nationale entretiennent des rapports étroits … En Europe et dans tous les pays dits civilisés ou civilisateurs, la famille est un morceau de nation’ (There are close connections between the structure of the family and the structure of the nation … In Europe and in every country characterized as civilized or civilizing, the family is a miniature of the nation (Fanon 1986: 141–2)). Given Choquer’s predilection for the familial, Fanon’s words resonate: many images display the typical nuclear heterosexual family. Choquer’s vision of families in France has nevertheless altered since the 1980s: ethnic diversity becomes increasingly apparent and the family as social unit is shown as subject to significant change. Choquer therefore combines his archetypal imagery with photographs of mixed-heritage families, adopted African children, and single-parent households. Other challenges to the hegemony of normative notions of family are implied through the inclusion of the categories of ‘solitude’ (featuring eight portraits of people alone) and ‘divorce’. Nevertheless, the fact the latter section merely contains one video interview suggests it proved an unphotogenic theme, despite his interviewee’s emotive testimony. Such an absence might, by default, implicitly reassert marriage’s importance: the portrait on the DVD-ROM’s front cover of a man and woman in wedding attire, however, flouts so many rules of wedding photography as a genre through its angle, composition and setting that Choquer

Changing notions of national identity

35

seems unlikely to be promoting conventional notions of marriage as a social institution. By contrast, the growing prominence of cohabitation in France is stressed by the fifteen portraits Choquer includes under ‘couple’. Whereas some there may be married, the fact that young heterosexual couples, two female couples, two transsexuals and two male couples are shown tallies with the creation of a civil partnership agreement in France, known as le Pacs (Pacte civil de solidarité), which became law on 16 November 1999. As the Introduction stated, ‘le Pacs’ enabled co-habiting gay, lesbian and heterosexual couples to receive some of the legal and monetary advantages only married heterosexual couples had hitherto enjoyed. Given Choquer’s increasing emphasis upon coupledom and the absence of any category entitled ‘mariage’, along with the DVDROM’s unconventional front-cover portrait, his photography may encourage viewers to question this institution’s future in France. Similarly the category’s specific inclusion of gay and transsexual couples challenges the heteronormativity Choquer’s photography had previously displayed. Other changes can be traced in Choquer’s trajectory from Planète France to Fragments du futur. Despite the fact that Choquer now theoretically travels solely along a specific line, Fragments du futur is less concerned with place per se. The DVDROM’s start screen may be a globe, but it is one whose inhabitants can only be accessed via a thematic word or expression, rather than by their location along the French meridian. So while this allows viewers to make their own links between images, because very few feature readily recognisable architecture or settings, many viewers would be hard pressed to pinpoint where the photographs were taken. Consequently, by circumventing geography in this way, Choquer encourages viewers to concentrate more on the idiosyncratic specificities of the domestic spaces shown rather than where they were found. Therefore, although viewers can navigate their own way through these images, they are nevertheless compelled to select from one of the categories provided to access them. The reductive effects of cataloguing the images solely according to keywords are mitigated, however, by the magnitude of the corpus of images and the

3 ­ 6

Representing ethnicity

total of 143 classificatory categories, ranging from ‘Tati’ to ‘télévision’ and ‘porcelaine’ to ‘piercing’. While these may only refer to generic architectural features (such as ‘balcon’, ‘piscine’ and ‘château’) or suggest visual motifs (‘vieillesse’; ‘métis’; ‘muscles’), the choice of lexis is not incidental: some permit viewers to learn new information such as which people are disabled (placed under ‘handicap’) and two girls’ supposed country of heritage (‘Rwanda’). Arguably then, despite Choquer’s presentation of the vast majority of his images without titles or accompanying text, word–image interaction occurs nevertheless: the categories through which they are accessed impinge, however subtly, upon reception of them. As Clive Scott (1999: 73–4) has argued: Because the photograph, at its taking, is pragmatic rather than semantic, indexical rather than iconic or symbolic, it is peculiarly vulnerable to appropriation by either title or caption. It is so vulnerable, in fact, that it seems to be entirely title-dependent, as a means of escaping its own gratuitousness.

The mediation of access to images by such a text-rich start screen arguably only further underlines this dependency. Another aspect of the DVD-ROM that merits exploration is its numerous video interviews. With topics ranging from hopes and fears to the past, present and future, these fin-de-siècle vox pops complement and contrast the accompanying photographs. Most categories feature at least one interview and some collate several together. Their length varies – some lasting a few seconds, others several minutes – but all conform to the same pattern: answering individually, interviewees are uninterrupted and no interviewer is ever glimpsed. Commanding the camera’s complete attention, neither music nor subtitles or captions are used: centred within the frame, only each interviewee’s head and neck are shown. Unlike Choquer’s photography, this is not a saturated space of bright colours but instead is one stripped bare. Against an overexposed bright white background, only each interviewee’s facial expressions are seen and the edges of these talking heads  occasionally even merge into the background. Equally, whereas Choquer’s photographs are each taken in different locations, his interviews leave the particularities of people’s homes for a

Changing notions of national identity

37

rigorously neutral space that could have been filmed anywhere. Literally nowhere, its blankness bleaches out all else. Such qualities suggest a utopia (literally ‘no place’ in Greek), which contrasts sharply with the specificities of the private spaces that Choquer photographs. Described by Bernard Pelosse, the psychotherapist who designed the interviews’ questionnaire, as ‘d’une “intranquillité”’ where interviewees seem ‘à la fois intouchables et fragiles’ (quoted in Guerrin 1997) (untranquil … both untouchable and fragile) a distinct tension results. Without reducing Choquer’s project entirely to its degree of adherence to French republican ideology, the distinctions between the space of photography and interview curiously mirror its division between public and private spheres: whereas the photographs often reflect the privacy of home, the interviews are conducted in a uniformly neutral and secular public space where visible badges of identity are obscured. Nevertheless, it is precisely in this public space that people talk intimately of their lives, divulge secrets and share innermost thoughts. Equalised in video by their surroundings and in photography by the lack of titling, Choquer’s images seemingly challenge prevailing conceptions of French citizenship: suggesting that universalism must be situated, and that the personal and the political are deeply intertwined. This interaction invites reflection on Choquer’s role as artist: especially given the DVD-ROM jacket’s wording, which proclaims that: ‘L’artiste ne vole pas ses images. Il les construit et les négocie avec les personnes qu’il a rencontrées’ (The artist does not steal his images. He constructs and negotiates them with the people he has met). This insistence upon negotiation frequently recurs in reviews of his work, where Choquer asserted that he allowed his models to choose aspects such as setting, pose, makeup, and props because he was fascinated by how each individual had already created their own distinct space (Guerrin 2002). Such comments therefore serve as a reminder that the negotiations undertaken while creating each portrait also allow viewers to read this corpus of images not just in terms of how Choquer as photographer envisages French society but also – at least p ­ artially – as instances of self-representation for those photographed. Moreover, often it seems that it is the individuality of different

3 ­ 8

Representing ethnicity

people and of the spaces they fashion and inhabit that repeatedly caught Choquer’s eye. The vision of French society this implies, where differences rather than similarities between each individual, couple, or family photographed are foregrounded, extended to Choquer’s 2007 publication, Portraits de Français. Mostly a synthesis of these two previous works, it was supplemented with transcripts of the Fragments du futur interviews and previously unpublished photographs. This collation of images is aided by the absence of dates in the key: obliging viewers unfamiliar with Choquer’s previous works to rely upon clues of fashion and technology to guess when the original photographs may have been taken. Moreover, as they are not arranged in chronological order, their sequencing creates a curious continuum, where images of people from different decades and from across metropolitan France are placed seamlessly alongside one another. As so many of the images feature homes as their setting, the unifying theme they share is a focus on the domestic. While this could potentially obliterate differences and unite these sitters as part of a homogenised national whole, Choquer’s emphasis upon their individuality thwarts this. The book’s title may frame the portraits in terms of nationality – asserting that all those pictured are French and, indeed, at home in France – but its numerical plurality chimes with Choquer’s focus upon individuals and discrete groups resident in metropolitan France, rather than any unity they may share as one nation. All are presented as equally French – ­regardless of ethnic, socio-economic and other differences – but this egalitarianism is not latent universalism. The focus upon such a variety of private spheres instead emphasises diversity and difference in contemporary metropolitan France and resists representing people within a colour-blind public sphere. The centrality of domestic spaces in Portraits de Français affirms that, for Choquer, there is no place like home but also that, given their variety and the diversity of their inhabitants, no home is quite like another. Perhaps all that unites his subjects – save their often peculiarly blank expressions – is their mutual inclusion across his oeuvre: the diversity of metropolitan Frenchness, as documented by Choquer across these three decades, ultimately resists overly neat categorisations.

Changing notions of national identity

39

Tout doucement: journeys into ethnicity and sexuality in ­Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau’s Drôle de Félix (2000) The question of ethnic diversity in metropolitan France, and of what kind of home it provides for someone whose ethnicity and sexuality differ from French republican norms, resurface in a film contemporaneous with Choquer’s late-1990s work. Compared to many majorrelease films that have focused on the contemporary experience of French people of Maghrebi heritage, the originality of Ducastel and Martineau’s Drôle de Félix is clear. Its eponymous central ­character – gay, HIV-positive and of Maghrebi heritage – still remains extremely unusual in mainstream French cinema. Furthermore, unlike many films featuring French characters of Maghrebi heritage – typically set in the banlieues – Félix’s story is not confined to one urban agglomeration: his journey to find his father begins from his home in Dieppe and only terminates in Marseille. By having Félix deliberately avoid Paris and spend much time in large cities on his journey, Ducastel and Martineau produce a less urban portrait of the Hexagone: moreover, by traversing its length, the film also provides a symbolic snapshot of metropolitan France and its residents on the cusp of the millennium. Given Félix’s difference from many people he meets – in terms of ethnicity, sexuality, as well as HIV-positive status – the film duly interrogates notions of Frenchness and examines Félix’s place in metropolitan France. With Félix shown welcomed throughout and almost universally liked, metropolitan France appears ostensibly to be a hybrid and diverse space, cementing Félix’s place firmly within it. The extent to which Félix escapes from dominant cinematic representations of French people of Maghrebi heritage, however, warrants close scrutiny as does the construction of his surrogate family through those whom he encounters. Ultimately, although the film demonstrated new possibilities for the representation of people of Maghrebi heritage in French cinema, arguably the confirmation of Félix’s citizenship does not come without cost, and the film’s underlying conformity to French republican ideology ultimately weakens the challenges it could have posed to normative discourses of Frenchness.

4 ­ 0

Representing ethnicity

The film begins in Félix’s hometown of Dieppe, where he lives with his partner Daniel. Félix, played by Sami Bouajila, is of mixed-race heritage and in his late twenties. Upon visiting his late mother’s flat, Félix comes across correspondence between her and his father, whom Félix has never seen and who left his mother before his birth. Félix resolves to find him and, believing he lives in Marseille, sets himself five days to hitchhike there. A surrogate family is formed along the way through five encounters, each of which is in turn announced on screen via the captions ‘mon petit frère’ (Jules, a seventeen-year-old in Chartres); ‘ma grand-mère’ (Mathilde, an elderly widow in Brioude); ‘mon cousin’ (a railway worker who drives him to Montélimar); ‘ma soeur’ (Isabelle, the mother of three children); and ‘mon père’ (a father in his fifties fishing in Martigues). Not everyone Félix meets joins the family – most notably the two racist thugs who attack him and another  man in Rouen – but the film mostly revolves around his interactions with his newly found surrogate relations. Ultimately, upon reaching Marseille, Félix resolves not to contact his father, is reunited with Daniel, and the film ends with them sailing away on holiday. Family therefore forms the film’s backbone: the surrogate network Félix forms sates any desire to explore his biological family further and, despite the racially motivated attacks and references to recent National Front electoral success, metropolitan France essentially resembles a happy family to which Félix definitively belongs. If Félix is mostly treated as an equal throughout his trip, however, his choice of route implies that avoiding major cities and boycotting National Front-run towns helps. Furthermore, if one looks beyond Félix’s cinematic family, all is not so well. Upon closer inspection, examples of unhappy and absent ­families abound. Consider Félix first: following his mother’s death, no other family members are mentioned except his estranged father, and his partner Daniel’s strained relationship with his father leads him to discourage Félix from finding his own. Mathilde is a lonely widow, formerly unhappy in marriage, who laments her son’s infrequent visits, and Félix’s surrogate father goes fishing to escape domestic responsibilities. Moreover, it is the family and

Changing notions of national identity

41

marital discord on the television soap Luxe, Gloire et Volupté that keeps Félix glued. The only biological family shown is Isabelle and her three children, each of whom has a different father. The virtues of the nuclear family are therefore not promoted and instead Félix invariably interacts with his surrogate relations as individuals alone. Arguably this focus upon individuals, and the centrality of a familial structure, nevertheless creates a tension in the film. On the one hand, the creation of a surrogate family for Félix through  a genetic and geographical bricolage challenges normative and ethnocentric conceptions of the family in France,  which as Pullen (2008: 54) maintains, ‘presupposes heterosexual coupling as its central foundation’ and instead empowers Félix to construct the family he chooses. Therefore, as Pratt (2004: 97) argues: ‘the pretended family …, rather than unproblematically  substituting the  normative patriarchal model, can be thought  of as reinventing  the possibilities of kinship beyond the decrees of the authoritarian paradigm’. On the other hand, it risks inadvertently reasserting the primacy of familial structures, however unconventional and blended they may seem,  at the expense of alternative configurations in metropolitan France and, by mapping the Hexagone according to  surrogate family relations, inferring that Felix’s Frenchness surreptitiously depends upon belonging to this national family. Furthermore, foregrounding each of these surrogate relations – all of whom bar one are white – as individuals means excluding their own respective family members (such as Félix’s father and the fisherman’s family) who might challenge the film’s dominant whiteness: arguably inscribing it as the norm to which Félix as Frenchman must adhere to assimilate. Further important aspects of the film’s representation of ethnicity will be discussed below shortly. The family is not, however, the only subject evoked by the directors: with Félix centre-stage, the status of HIV-positive people in  late-1990s metropolitan France is also explored. Rather than used for dramatic effect – and therefore in contrast to some of the first French films that featured characters with late-stage HIV infection (Rollet and Williams 1998) – his illness

4 ­ 2

Representing ethnicity

is presented as matter-of-fact and incidental: a subtle approach first signalled when Félix visits a medical centre. Divulged indirectly, his condition is presented without undue tension or conflict and viewers  never learn how Félix contracted the virus. Moreover, his medical condition is never shown as tragic, established instead through his humorous conversation with two fellow patients who discuss the merits of different treatments. Neither isolated nor stigmatised, Félix forms part of a supportive community: emphasised by the camera’s framing of the three patients together. The representation of Félix’s sexuality is less straightforward. As with his HIV-positive status, the film excels in portraying Félix’s sexuality as banal and unremarkable. It shows the vicissitudes of his cohabitation with Daniel; his trip with Jules to a gay club in Rouen; and Félix’s brief encounter with his surrogate ‘cousin’ in the countryside, but these scenes are neither sensationalised nor eroticised, and Félix is never defined exclusively by his sexuality. As Provencher (2008: 55) has argued, if anything Félix is the ‘good sexual citizen’ as a ‘happy-go-lucky well-assimilated gay Maghrebi-French citizen … who thrives at a distance from references to queer and ethnic differences’. While this aspect of his identity is presented as mundane, a fleeting tongue-in-cheek scene that playfully posits Felix as oblivious to the wider cultural and political context of gay sexuality in France risks incredulity. As Félix is about to embark for Marseille, he stops to buy a kite (see figure 1). When he is offered a rainbow-coloured one – which shares the colours of the rainbow flag, a global symbol for gay pride – Félix hesitates: he likes the kite’s shape but asks for one whose colours are ‘moins voyantes’ (less striking). Given that the film has already established Félix’s sexuality, and that he may prefer not to carry such a symbol as he journeys alone through a country where reports of homophobia are far from uncommon, his declining of it seems understandable. Yet Bouajila’s delivery of such an ironic line off camera and the fact that when next seen he appears – as it were – straight-faced, somewhat implausibly infers his ignorance of its significance. Amusingly, the kite-seller persuades him to purchase it anyway, insisting it will fly well in the Mistral wind.

Changing notions of national identity

43

1  Félix selects which kite to buy in Drôle de Félix (2000)

Despite this scene’s brevity, the fact that the kite is momentarily shown centre-screen in a static shot appears a clear nudge to viewers. Félix, however, seems to be none the wiser for the experience and its colours are never mentioned again. Alternatively, were the kite-seller presumed gay, their smiles might well seem complicitous; the kite’s colours needing no commentary and signalling a private joke between them. Yet rather than nailing his colours to the mast, this scene can instead be read as a subtle rejection of identity politics: Félix is not a standard-bearer for any gay “community”, not least because he appears unaware there might be one. This position, coincidentally, chimes with French republican universalist principles that assume citizens in public will leave affiliations designated “private” at home, and communitarianism – perennially characterised as “AngloSaxon” (Schnapper 2003), as the Introduction showed – must be fiercely resisted. As will become clear, this covert adherence to such metropolitan French ideological norms forms part of a wider pattern in the film. In contrast, the film’s depiction of ethnicity ostensibly diverges from this view: particularly with regard to the use of music. In many French films since the 1980s that feature Maghrebi migrants settled in France or their children, Maghrebi or Maghrebi-style music is often introduced via the home during family festivities or social gatherings and such musical genres are used to emphasise the characters’ ethnic heritage. Examples here include Malik Chibane’s Hexagone (1994) and Douce France (1995); Philippe

4 ­ 4

Representing ethnicity

Faucon’s Samia (2000); Thomas Gilou’s Raï (1995); and Coline Serreau’s Chaos (2001). While no events of this kind occur in Drôle de Félix, such music is only ever heard when Félix is either on or just off screen. Moreover, the directors appear well aware of this tradition and play upon it to suggest changes are afoot in late-1990s metropolitan France. This occurs on two particular occasions, both when Félix is behind the wheel. First, as Félix drives Jules away from Rouen he bops to the popular Algerian artist Cheb Mami and asks Jules, to whom it appears unfamiliar, for his opinion. Whereas often when such music is heard in French films it is consumed within ethnically exclusive groups, here Félix acts as cultural mediator, introducing a young white boy from provincial metropolitan France to the delights of raï: suggesting that la France profonde  may  soon  be dancing to a rather different tune. This is subsequently confirmed via an unusual audiovisual juxtaposition:  as Mami continues playing, his music accompanies a 40-second take tracking the green unremarkable landscape they pass; a visual and aural symbiosis that suggests new, more hybrid forms of ethnic and cultural identity in provincial metropolitan France. The choice of Cheb Mami here is significant. Arguably Mami’s considerable crossover appeal and success in France – his album Meli meli (1998) and its single Parisien du Nord (1998) attained gold-disc status in 2000 – make him a rather mainstream figure for the filmmakers to have chosen and Jules’ ignorance even more surprising. Perhaps counter-intuitively, it is Félix’s choice of this Algerian artist that defines him resolutely as French, rather than as someone of Maghrebi heritage with broader musical tastes. Had less familiar music been used, a more radical juxtaposition might have been created, significantly challenging the conventional use of Maghrebi music in French film. As will become clear, this forms part of a crucial pattern whereby Félix’s ethnic and cultural identity – because of but also despite his ignorance of it – appears more carefully circumscribed than celebrated. Moreover, references to ethnicity are conspicuous by their absence, the racist attack in Rouen being a rare exception. Almost all the people Félix meets pass no remark on his ethnic heritage.

Changing notions of national identity

45

References to them are therefore very subtle: only a brief glimpse of a photograph of Félix’s mother reveals that she was white and a momentary shot of his father’s name on the back of an envelope infers that he is of Maghrebi heritage. This is precisely how others perceive him, however, and how Félix fears being perceived: the thug who attacks an Algerian man in Rouen calls him Félix’s ‘confrère’ (fellow Algerian); Félix asks the driver whom he and Isabelle crash into why he labels Félix an ‘enculé’ (dickhead) and not (also) a ‘sale Arabe’ (dirty Arab); and Félix later breaks down under questioning by Isabelle, telling her that his fear of the police treating him as such stopped him from reporting what he witnessed in Rouen. Despite these indicators, Félix neither declares his ethnic heritage nor identifies himself conclusively; instead these three references to his perceived ethnicity only arise during moments of drama when Félix feels threatened. As Martineau explains: Ça nous semblait impossible que le physique arabe de Félix ne lui revienne pas à un moment comme une insulte. On sait bien la réalité du racisme de la France. Une réalité d’autant plus v­ iolente pour Félix que son identité ne s’est pas constituée à travers la culture arabe. Il a été élevé en Normandie par sa mère française et il a très peu conscience d’être arabe. C’est ce qui explique aussi que ce n’est pas si simple pour lui d’aller témoigner à la police, car, outre la peur de tomber sur d’autres racistes, il y a la difficulté d’être renvoyé à une image dégradée, très dur à assumer. (quoted in Strauss 2000) (It seemed impossible to us that Félix’s Arab physique wasn’t used against him as an insult eventually. We all know the reality of racism in France. A reality that is even more violent for Félix given that his sense of identity has not been formed via Arab culture. He was brought up in Normandy by his French mother and he has very little sense of being Arab. That’s why it’s not so simple for him to make a report to the police because, besides fearing he might meet more racists there, there’s the difficulty of being reduced to a degrading image, which is very hard to accept).

In fact, rather than interrogate the ethnic heritage of Félix’s father, the film asserts Félix’s “Normanness”. Félix mentions repeatedly that he was born and raised in Dieppe and delights in c­ onfounding

4 ­ 6

Representing ethnicity

Isabelle’s expectations. This helps establish Félix as French but, significantly, whatever Félix’s upbringing and experience, the France through which he travels is invariably white. Although the film bypasses Paris, this whiteness could easily have been suspended in the places Félix visits, not least Marseille. Therefore apart from very fleeting glimpses – the murdered Algerian in Rouen; the child (and possibly mother) Félix observes in Dieppe; the black bouncer outside the gay club in Chartres – only one other non-white actor is prominent: Maurice Bénichou, born in Algeria, who acts as Félix’s surrogate father towards the end. Akin to Félix, however, his ethnic heritage is never clarified: simply named ‘le pêcheur’ in the credits, viewers must again make their own assumptions. Would Félix have appeared quite as “French” had he found his real father? The directors do not venture here and this is precisely why Drôle de Félix stands out from many other films featuring people of Maghrebi heritage in France. Neither revolving around generational conflict nor drawing comparisons between the fate of parents and their children in France, the film allows Félix to escape from this cinematic paradigm and be neither defined nor constrained exclusively by his ethnicity. Had Félix met his real father, the film might well have been very different: metropolitan France would have appeared less white and a greater historical focus could have been provided; explaining, for instance, how his relationship with Félix’s mother began. The fact that such details are usually provided in other films arguably accentuates this historical vacuum here: mixed-race Félix appears even “whiter” and, because the only other significant French people seen are also white, more “French”. While the directors’ vision of metropolitan France asserts categorically that there is a place for Félix by establishing an alternative family for him, metaphorically it is at the expense of his own paternal biological one. A price rendered all the more telling given that the film ends in Marseille; often portrayed cinematically as the Mediterranean multi-ethnic space par excellence and a site laden with significance due to its substantial role in metropolitan France’s history of immigration (and discussed in Chapter 4). Yet here too, ethnic diversity is elided: as soon as Félix arrives there, he evades Daniel’s questions about his

Changing notions of national identity

47

father and quickly ushers him away. Marseille’s ethnic diversity, showcased so often elsewhere, is discursively and visually erased as the action cuts suddenly from their train station reunion to their ferry’s departure. This absence increases in importance considering the holidaymakers’ terminus. Although never mentioned directly – save Daniel’s sole enigmatic reference to their holiday destination as ‘là-bas’ (over there) – and unclear from the final shots, their terminus may potentially change viewers’ reading of the film. The distance and distancing expressed in the term ‘là-bas’ could for some in metropolitan France only ever mean Algeria or the Maghreb more generally, given their geographical position across the Mediterranean and the historical legacies of French colonialism. Were either their destination, the film’s ending might suggest that Félix has sufficiently dealt with his past to feel comfortable visiting the continent from which his father presumably hailed. Alternatively, it could constitute an ironic twist from the filmmakers, who first have Félix cease his search for his supposedly Maghrebi father and then would have him travel to the region as a tourist. Despite this ambiguity – allowing viewers to decipher ‘là-bas’ as they wish – for Félix finally to travel there would flout the logic of a film where his ethnic heritage remains unexplored and the search for his father is so short-lived. According to this structure, arguably, it can only be one place: Corsica, a destination confirmed by the directors during their DVD commentary, and the word used to translate ‘là-bas’ in the film’s subtitled UK DVD release. Firmly in keeping with the narrative that preceded it, the choice of Corsica for both tourists is clear. Although the prospect of the island’s independence from France has been frequently mooted, it seems set to be far from exilic for Félix: his short journey to a French-speaking territory so close to the Hexagone symbolically cements Félix’s place in the métropole. This choice is, nonetheless, striking given how often films shot in Marseille –  such as Karim Dridi’s Bye-Bye (1995), Yamina Benguigui’s Mémoires d’immigrés: l’héritage maghrébin (1998), Philippe Faucon’s Samia (2000) and Coline Serreau’s Chaos (2001) – have characterised the Mediterranean port as a gateway to the Maghreb. While the

4 ­ 8

Representing ethnicity

filmmakers are not compelled to continue this tradition – perhaps hereby purposely challenging viewers’ assumptions again – when considered alongside other films, the ending creates a curious effect: once again erasing Félix’s past, but also France’s, with the Mediterranean now somewhat symbolically void. Furthermore, while this ending may suggest Félix, forever on the move, is more diasporic than settled, the happy ending asserts that his place in France was never seriously questioned. Although Félix’s final decision not to contact his father suggests adult reasoning, he is in fact persistently linked in the film to children: seen several times with them, he also repeatedly recalls his own childhood and is connoted as childlike. Both in Dieppe and on a train with Mathilde, Félix is linked visually with children whose progenitor – like Félix’s – seems in doubt; the camera cutting each time between the child’s face and that of Félix himself, who appears to read his life into theirs (the later child even shares his name). Accompanied throughout by his brightlycoloured kite, childhood also resurfaces when Félix reminisces with his surrogate ‘cousin’ about his younger days of kite flying and he finds himself forced to act as entertainer for Isabelle’s children on the drive south. Other examples include Félix revealing to Mathilde his childhood talent for bringing out the sun by singing ‘Viens soleil’ and his singing throughout his journey of ‘Va pélérin’, a childlike hymn to the joys of pilgrimage. Even Félix’s choice of fashion – neatly buttoned-up jacket, satchel en bandoulière, sensible jeans and shoes, and neatly-cropped hair – seems schoolboyish, furthered by Bouajila’s own fresh-faced appearance. Félix’s surname – or indeed patronym – is also never revealed and viewers therefore, as with a child, remain on firstname terms with him. The filmmakers’ default palette of bright colours, meanwhile, also recalls the world of children’s television and fairytales, and Isabelle even tells Félix a children’s story when he is unable to sleep. Even if the plot is read as one where Félix metaphorically comes of age, it tallied with a significant and persistent trend in French cinema: the infantilisation of French people of Maghrebi heritage. While a comprehensible phenomenon during the early 1980s – coinciding as it did with the passing of a significant generation

Changing notions of national identity

49

through adolescence into young adulthood – it has become less so as that generation ages. Cinematically, people of Maghrebi heritage in French cinema have largely appeared tied to the teens: even in the late 1990s and early 2000s, roles for actors of Maghrebi heritage as lead protagonists or significant characters were much more likely to be as children and young teenagers. Moreover, even when older roles for characters in their late teens and early twenties were created, many could be read as infantilised too, especially in films such as Thomas Gilou’s Raï (1995), Cédric Klapisch’s Chacun cherche son chat (1996), Liria Bégéja’s Changemoi ma vie (2001), Jean-Pierre Sinapi’s Nationale 7 (2000) and Vivre me tue (2003). In demographic terms, many of the children of Maghrebi migrants who settled in France are now in or are approaching their forties: yet they remain seldom seen in French cinema. One can speculate why. Notwithstanding the commercial and critical success of figures such as Rachid Bouchareb and Abdellatif Kechiche, there are still relatively few French filmmakers of Maghrebi heritage, who might be better placed to question such representations. Equally, as Tarr (1997: 60–1) points out: ‘The reliance on French funding and French audiences means that films made by overseas or metropolitan minority filmmakers may be unable to make significant challenges to dominant French discourses.’ It may be that this infantilisation coheres better to the enduring French republican political narrative of intégration for ethnic minorities in majority French society. Its adherents would undoubtedly prefer this to the spectacle of people of Maghrebi heritage still suffering stigmatisation, prejudice and discrimination well into adulthood, which would disprove many egalitarian claims of French republican universalism and provide one explanation why many films have not veered from the ages of childhood and adolescence, where a bright future for children of Maghrebi heritage in France can always be promised and its delivery conveniently deferred. Ducastel and Martineau’s film begins with Félix cycling freely round Dieppe and ends with him sailing away from Marseille but Félix is far from the diasporic archetype. These images of movement epitomise the apparent fluidity of his identity: at times

5 ­ 0

Representing ethnicity

both aware and unaware of gay sexuality as having a wider political meaning; constructed as being of Maghrebi heritage and yet never confirmed as such; in need of a father figure and yet free to abandon him at the journey’s end, Félix is a complex, subtle character whose contradictions keep the play of identity open and prevent his from being pinned down definitively. Contrary to Félix’s original desire to retrace his roots, the film asserts that his ethnicity poses no quandary and is instead almost incidental. Perhaps this is the conclusion Félix reaches himself by the end, as any desire to contact his father finally recedes. Nevertheless, as has been argued, the film’s determination to present Félix as the boy-next-door effectively erases his paternal heritage, which may well not be French, and it is precisely Bouajila’s boyish charm and Félix’s childish character that allow the film to be seen as part of a persistent trend in French cinema whereby older generations of Maghrebi heritage in France remain largely absent. Despite these blind spots Drôle de Félix was, nevertheless, important because it signalled new possibilities for the representation of people of Maghrebi heritage in French cinema. The filmmakers’ message in this regard may have been heralded within the film’s opening credits, where Blossom Dearie’s song ‘Tout doucement’ suggests the gentle but upbeat filmmaking style that follows. The degree to which their softly-softly approach dilutes the challenges Félix’s ethnicity and sexuality could have posed to normative notions of Frenchness and French republican values, however, remains a moot point. Indeed, even if as Waldron (2009: 45) rightly argues, ‘Félix’s sexuality is depicted in close connection to his ethnicity’, in terms of narrative prominence the film ‘tends to focus on the protagonist’s sexual identity at the expense of a fuller exploration of his mixedrace ethnicity’ (Rees-Roberts 2008: 25). The final scene reflects this: beginning with an extended take of Félix and Daniel embracing and caressing one another aboard the ship sailing from Marseille yet their destination no further than Corsica as Félix accepts Daniel’s offer of a break away, but not abroad. Félix’s momentary melancholy (Waldron 2009: 50) hints that he may be mourning his decision to abandon his search, but any desire from him to embrace his Maghrebi heritage now seems dead in the water.

Changing notions of national identity

51

While the presentation of Félix’s ethnicity and sexuality as banal and unremarkable breaks with genre conventions of the road movie more widely, which traditionally have ‘privileged the exploration of alienated and inassimilable masculinities’ (Tarr with Rollet 2001: 228–9), it results in a subject peculiarly conformant with dominant French republican values, confirming Ince’s (2002: 91) argument regarding French national identity that ‘differences are tolerated as long as they fit in: the French family, like the French nation, is governed by a restrictive type of universalism that accepts difference only as the individual difference of personhood.’ Raised by a white mother and seemingly isolated from contact with others of non-white ethnic minority heritage, whiteness appears to be the norm for Félix: but by structuring the film around his paternal quest and then quickly abandoning it upon rejoining his white partner, the film’s narrative may also imply that whiteness is the only cultural norm in France; reaffirmed by the understated presentation of his decision as logical and normal. To conclude, the inclusion of the formula ‘drôle de’ in the film’s title could indicate mocking, scorn or disapproval of Félix, or even warn viewers that this might not quite be the Félix they may expect, but this term is ultimately used with affection. If viewers ever queried Félix’s place in the family, the ending dispels any uncertainty and his position in France, sealed with a kiss, remains secure – but which France is this, and would those disinclined to conform to its normative aspects also belong there? Reflecting on the film over a decade after its release, despite the subsequent series of road movies and broader travel-themed films that feature journeys made by Francophone characters of Maghrebi heritage – including Mehdi Charef’s La Fille de Keltoum (2002), Tony Gatlif’s Exils (2004) and Rabah AmeurZaïmèche’s Bled Number One (2006) – Drôle de Félix still remains highly unusual. Not just in terms of the profile of its lead character – to whom one would struggle to find a comparable figure in French cinema – but also perhaps by the nature of his journey, which rather than continuing on to the Maghreb like most road movies featuring characters of Maghrebi heritage, instead stays firmly in France. Its sheer unusualness might

5 ­ 2

Representing ethnicity

explain why the film has attracted a steady stream of academic attention in the intervening period –  including Archer (2013); Grandena (2006, 2008 and 2013); Hardwick (2011); Pratt (2004); Pratt and Provencher (2011); Provencher (2008); Pullen (2008); Schilt (2007); Swamy (2006); Tarr (2005), and Waldron (2009) – and provided an afterlife of sorts for a film that received relatively little coverage from French film critics upon its release (Rees-Roberts 2008: 105). Its enduring appeal seems testament both to the film’s polysemic qualities – facilitating a variety of readings and ­interpretations – and the intriguing way in which it engaged with contemporary French political discourses and explored how ethnic and sexual difference could be made manifest and negotiated in the Republic as the twentieth century came to a close. Furthermore, as argued above, it signalled a shift in the parameters of representation for male characters of Maghrebi heritage in French visual culture: one on which Bouajila himself has undoubtedly capitalised, given the range of parts he subsequently played throughout the 2000s, many of which similarly trouble normative assumptions about identity and belonging (Pratt and Provencher 2011: 208). While such roles have certainly shaped Bouajila’s career and attendant star image, the extent to which they are available to other actors of Maghrebi heritage seems less sure: ultimately underlining how rare such distinctive roles for actors of Maghrebi heritage remain in French cinema, and the dominant norms of heterosexual masculinity that subtend it. As the start of this chapter highlighted, and as the previous two case studies illustrate, representations of France and Frenchness remain a contested field throughout this period. The second half of this chapter will consolidate these case studies by considering the prominence of whiteness in depictions of contemporary French society within visual culture and, consequently, the question of the representativeness of such visual media, first within the realm of contemporary French television before finally returning to the world of French cinema to consider a film contemporaneous with, but ostensibly very different from, Drôle de Félix: Jeunet’s Amélie.

Changing notions of national identity

53

Do not adjust your set: ethnicity and representativeness in contemporary French television Despite the continuing global popularity of American television series, Hollywood films and transnational television formats, it is commonly assumed that, at least within Europe, a national television will in some ways reflect or represent its target audience. How French television represents the ethnic diversity of the French nation, and the ethnic diversity of staff in French television are, however, issues that only first came to the fore in France in the late 1990s. Nevertheless, as the fanfare that surrounded the debut in July 2006 of Harry Roselmack as summer stand-in for the veteran TF1 newsreader Patrick Poivre d’Avor demonstrated, the question of how representative French television is of society in France now attracts far greater scrutiny. Although not the first minority ethnic newsreader on a major French national terrestrial channel – the French journalist of Algerian heritage, Rachid Arhab, had presented France 2’s 1 p.m. news bulletins during the 1990s, and the Martinican journalist Audrey Pulvar presented France 3’s evening news bulletin during 2005–09 – Roselmack’s appointment was seen as symbolic because he became the first black presenter of the prestigious 8 p.m. news slot on one of France’s main television channels. In a quirk of timing, this came only months after the UK’s most famous black newsreader, Sir Trevor McDonald, retired after thirteen years at the helm of ITV’s News at Ten programme across the Channel. This striking confluence of events suggested significant divergence between British and French approaches towards representing ethnic diversity on television, explained primarily by their respective histories of empire and immigration and different ruling political ideologies. Notwithstanding these distinctions, the comparative tardiness with which a black newsreader in France was given such a flagship role only further highlighted how, as this section will show, until the mid-2000s the question of how ethnic diversity is represented on French television was simply not on the political agenda. Given the large number of channels that have emerged since the 1980s in France with the growth of satellite, cable and digital broadcasting, a widespread study of ethnicity on French television

5 ­ 4

Representing ethnicity

and within the French television industry is clearly beyond the scope of this chapter. This section will therefore analyse instead the key developments in this area since it first attracted notable attention in the 1990s, outlining how the representation of ethnicity in French television has been addressed by the media, within the larger French television channels themselves, and by the public authority in charge of regulating French television, the Conseil supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA). Analysis will reveal how debates have evolved since the first significant study of this area in 1991 and how, post-2000, a significant change in attitudes both within French television and the CSA led to the introduction of formal initiatives to increase ethnic diversity on French television channels. Two important CSA reports into ethnic diversity in French television from 2006 and 2008 – both of which revealed how slowly existing practices changed – will then be assessed, before attention turns finally to more recent statistics published by the CSA, which suggest that much further progress is needed in order for French television to appear more ethnically diverse. The study of French television in terms of its representation of ethnicity first received significant scholarly analysis in 1991 when Antonio Perotti published the report ‘Présence et représentation de l’immigration et des minorités ethniques à la télévision française’. As Hargreaves and Perotti (1993: 251) subsequently noted, it revealed ‘a striking mixture of high profile exposure and gaping holes, which together help to sustain popular images of ethnic minorities as an alien, and in many ways menacing, presence’. The study was based on a detailed analysis of the peak-time output of France’s then six terrestrial channels (TF1, A2, FR3, Canal Plus, La Cinq and M6), centring on programmes broadcast from 5 p.m. until midnight from 16–30 October 1991. Very wide disparities were found in the degree of prominence given to those perceived as immigrants and ethnic minorities in different types of programmes. While most visible in news and current affairs programmes, minorities were least seen in light entertainment programmes and French-made drama series, a pattern found all the more surprising by Hargreaves and Perotti (1993: 252) given that ‘immigration per se was the source of very few news items

Changing notions of national identity

55

during the period under review’ (a time deemed more likely when ethnic minorities – whether French or not – might appear on screen). For Hargreaves and Perotti (1993: 257), the most important finding to emerge from the survey was that ethnic minorities are simply not represented as part of everyday life on French television. They are seen primarily as ‘problems’ in news and current affairs programmes, where the legitimacy of their presence is often called into question, and as performers in carefully structured rituals such as music and sport. At the same time, they are largely excluded from areas of interpersonal conviviality such as game shows and drama programmes of a non-transgressive nature.

They concluded that, unless the institutional framework of French television was modified in order to take minority interests into consideration, little would change. Accordingly, little did until the founding in 1998 of Collectif Égalité. Spearheaded by the writer Calixthe Beyala and artists within the industry, notably Dieudonné and Jacques Martial, the group’s aim was to raise people’s awareness of the absence of ethnic minorities, and particularly France’s black population, on French television. Their fundamental argument was that black French citizens suffer a double discrimination within French television: both through how they are represented on screen and by the fact that few figure among television production staff. Asserting that most representations of blacks on screen –  whether in fictionbased series or in news programmes – are negative, they equally accused French channels of not adequately reflecting the ethnic diversity of French society in terms of their own staff, claiming that none of the main television channels employed a black journalist or presenter from France (Conan 2000: 57). The situation behind the camera seemed scarcely better, with reports that black artists found gaining access to production and commissioning extremely difficult, hence few French producers were black either, and independently made programmes depicting black cultures were often rejected for broadcast. Accusing French television of lagging behind its European neighbours, Beyala described

5 ­ 6

Representing ethnicity

the situation as shameful and concluded that France’s policy of integration had clearly failed in a society where, despite the rich historical presence of black French citizens, contemporary television channels were largely content to represent black experience and culture via American imports (Hartmann 1999: 3). Their pressure resulted in an initial meeting with Hervé Bourges, CSA President, on 5 October 1999, which outlined the scope for future action. While Collectif Égalité proposed the installation of a system of quotas as a temporary measure rather than a perfect solution, Bourges reminded them of the first article of the constitution, forbidding differentiation of citizens on such grounds (Conan 2000: 58). Sympathetic to their cause, though seeing quotas as leading to a ghettoisation of French society, Bourges proposed three initiatives: a detailed analysis of terrestrial television programmes; a comparative study of different European and North American legislation; and a judicial study to identify a solution that, without contravening the constitution, would help acknowledge the ethnic diversity of contemporary France. This led to the publication of ‘Présence et représentation des minorités visibles à la télévision française, une étude du CSA’ (Malonga 2000). Explicitly citing Perotti’s 1991 report as its inspiration, the CSA nevertheless took a quantitative rather than qualitative approach. Its study took place from 11–17 October 1999 and analysed all programmes broadcast from 5 p.m. until midnight on TF1, France 2, France 3, Canal Plus and M6. The study explicitly stated that (like its predecessor) the week, chosen at random, was not marked by any major event concerning immigration in the national or international news. In its methodology the CSA defined ‘minorités visibles’ as ‘les minorités ethniques d’origine non-européenne et dont l’aspect physique, différent de celui de la majorité française “blanche”, les rend visibles’ (ethnic minorities of non-European origin and whose physical appearance, differing from that of the “white” French majority, makes them visible’, original emphasis). In order to simplify their findings, the researchers grouped the visible minorities into three: ‘Noirs’, ‘Maghrébins/Arabes’ and ‘Asiatiques’ (black, Maghrebi/Arab and Asian). Duly recognising how difficult it would be to develop an effective and accurate methodology for such a study, only physical

Changing notions of national identity

57

criteria, judged in terms of ‘visibilité’ or ‘différence’, were taken into account, rather than the nationality of those observed. The CSA’s findings revealed a striking series of patterns. In studio-set talk shows, very few of those present were from a minority group: only 6 per cent featured professionals, 11 per cent guests and 6 per cent members of the audience from a visible minority. Of these, just as in 1991, the vast majority were black, followed by those deemed ‘Maghrébins/Arabes’, and then by ‘Asiatiques’. During extracts and reports shown during such programmes, however, visible minorities appeared in 39 per cent of cases. Yet even here, only 18 per cent of such programmes actually featured visible minorities speaking, leading the CSA to deduce that even when visible minorities are seen, their voices are very seldom heard. In terms of fiction-based programming, visible minorities appeared in 81 per cent of those programmes studied; however, as the CSA observed, 74 per cent of those programmes aired were foreign imports, mostly American. While admitting that TF1 and M6 showed the greatest number of visible minorities in their fiction-based programming, the study qualified this by stating that these channels also showed the greatest number of American-made programmes. Again, the majority of visible minorities shown were black, followed by ‘Asiatiques’ and then ‘Maghrébins/Arabes’; ‘visible’ in only 7 per cent of fiction-based programmes. Such results left the CSA in no doubt that there was ‘une carence de la fiction française, qui échoue à montrer la société contemporaine dans sa diversité, ou qui ne le fait que de manière très marginale, n’accordant quasiment jamais les premiers rôles aux représentants des minorités visibles’ (a shortcoming in French fiction, which fails to show the diversity of contemporary society, or only does so very marginally, almost never giving leading roles to representatives of visible minorities). More specifically they were concerned about the very few ‘Maghrébins’ who appeared, describing them as virtually absent from French fiction-based programmes, despite their clear presence within contemporary French public life. Music videos, however, were seen by the CSA as a different form of ghetto, given that visible minorities were comparatively

5 ­ 8

Representing ethnicity

over-represented there by appearing in 68 per cent of those scrutinised. Ninety-seven per cent of those visible minorities who appeared were black but almost half of the videos shown hailed from abroad. In advertisements, visible minorities appeared in 18 per cent of those studied, but again the majority of those who appeared were black, and half of the advertisements shown were from abroad. The CSA therefore concluded that: ‘A la lecture de ces chiffres, on peut indéniablement conclure que la télévision française donne une faible représentation des minorités visibles à travers ses chaînes généralistes, et que la prise de conscience à laquelle on assiste depuis quelques mois est largement justifiée’ (upon studying these figures, one must undoubtedly conclude that French television offers very little representation of visible minorities via its general-interest channels, and that the consciousness-raising of recent months is largely justified). Furthermore, it asserted that ‘une juste représentation des minorités visibles dans les médias est la seule manière, notamment pour la télévision, de jouer son rôle intégrateur, de manière crédible, c’est-à-dire en reflétant la société française telle qu’elle est’ (a fair representation of visible minorities in the media is the only way, notably for television, for it credibly to play its role of facilitating integration, in other words by reflecting French society as it is). The CSA’s early approach to this issue was nevertheless not without its problems, especially in terms of methodology. The CSA study’s quantitative emphasis obscured the issue of how different ethnicities were actually presented in programmes, how long such appearances lasted, and in what context. Equally, the results were skewed by the limited scope of the analysis: focusing solely upon larger mainstream channels ignored the many foreign and independently made programmes, series and films shown on channels such as Arte and La Cinquième and whether these challenged such findings. Furthermore, the emphasis upon peak-time programming neglected programmes directly aimed at minority groups, such as Fruits et légumes, which had often been screened at irregular times during earlier parts of the day (Helcké 2001: 29). Moreover, while the CSA may have found that prime-time television was unrepresentative of the French nation,

Changing notions of national identity

59

the question of how representative prime-time television is of the remainder of the schedule was not addressed, and given the CSA’s increasing emphasis on the growth of satellite and digital television in France, their sole focus on terrestrial channels and failure to include local channels was also striking. The report’s optimistic tone skirted over many questions of the public role of national television and at this time the CSA was content to cite the proliferation of American programmes on commercial channels as positive insofar as it ‘leur permet déjà de mieux rendre compte de la réalité du tissu social contemporain’ (allows them to recognise more readily the reality of the fabric of contemporary society). Yet as Bourdon (1995: 29) observed: ‘whatever the merits or otherwise of such programmes, European viewers of diverse origins do not see their situation reflected in them’. The report was also significantly undermined by its very terminology. Whereas the 1991 report distinguished at least in principle between those perceived as immigrants and ethnic minorities, the CSA conflated the two under the catch-all expression ‘minorités visibles’. Given its universalist and republican ethos, a move away from references to ethnicity was unsurprising; however, by couching the issue in such terms they foregrounded the physical appearance of such minorities and thereby implicitly contrasted them with the supposed invisibility of the majority. Such an approach also assumes that all whites are equal and obscures how whiteness can be differentiated within such a category. As Macé (2006a: 179) has argued more widely, ‘les Blancs ne sont pas très précieusement définis, selon par défaut: il s’agit de tous les non-non-blancs – c’est pour ainsi dire le privilège des groupes majoritaires bénéficiant des allant de soi de la normalité et d’un non-marquage occultant leur particularisme’ (Whites are not very carefully defined, unless by default: it is more a case of non-non-Whites: in other words, the privilege of majority groups who benefit from what goes without saying in  terms of normativity and non-marking that obscures their own particularism). The effectiveness of these initial CSA measures was also hampered by the unique focus upon on-screen presence. Its  president lamented the fact that minorities were doubly penalised through the way in which they were portrayed

6 ­ 0

Representing ethnicity

on screen and also via their limited access to employment behind the scenes, but his suggestion that the problem would be remedied by screening  more  original programmes by minorities seemed highly optimistic. At this stage, the idea of setting up ethnic minority training programmes in the French television industry seemed out of the question, and there seemed little scope for change internally. A major obstacle to any successful analysis of ethnic minority access to employment within the French television industry was the lack of any statistics on the issue: given the first article of the Constitution, no official study had ever been carried out. Despite this, an attempt to compile such a study was made by Jamil Ouaj from The European Institute for the Media and published in March 1999. Its findings were highly revealing. Funded by the European Commission, this study was a comparative investigation into ethnic minority access to employment within European television. Ouaj found common patterns across Europe, the most significant being that as policies towards minorities have historically tended to be based on assimilation, many television companies had never regarded catering for minority interests as part of their remit. In this respect, France is no exception. As Ouaj states: ‘In France there is no information on employment and access of “ethnic minorities” to the television industry. Television stations refuse to provide such information’ (1999: 74). France was clearly not alone in this regard, and Germany, the Netherlands and Finland also came in for criticism with the report often citing UK policy as the exception to the rule. Nonetheless Ouaj, when commenting on ongoing findings, singled out France for stinging criticism: As noble as the point of departure of the French philosophy appears to be, it proves to be removed from reality. To work on the basic principle that all are equal and to set the topic aside accordingly is to ignore the reality that there are groups of ethnic minorities such as the Maghreb community who are socially disadvantaged and have no access to the media. Alongside a sizeable population of African or Asian origin, the North Africans [sic] must overwhelmingly leave their representation in the French audiovisual media to the French majority. (Ouaj 1998: 7)

Changing notions of national identity

61

Accordingly, the report recommended that measures needed to be taken urgently to combat discrimination within the broadcasting industry: minorities needed to be encouraged specifically to seek employment within it, and appropriate training schemes established. However pressing an issue for some, and despite the CSA’s belated acknowledgement of the situation, little coverage was initially given to the question of ethnicity in French television within the media. The interview given by Beyala to Le Nouvel Observateur in October 1999 merely covered one page, and was disparagingly titled ‘Quand la télé lave trop blanc’ (Gavi 1999: 42) (When TV washes too white). In February 2000, L’Express devoted more space to the issue yet the title of Éric Conan’s article – ‘La Tentation des quotas’ (The temptation of quotas) – belied its own opinion (Conan 2000). Choosing to focus immediately upon  Collectif Égalité’s insistence on initial temporary quotas, Conan saw this as the logical extension of recent trends in France, arguing that ‘la revendication du Collectif Égalité déconcerte parce qu’elle radicalise de façon très caricaturale une tentation croissante de recours aux « discriminations positives » encouragée par l’effet parité’ (ibid.: 60) (Collectif Égalité’s demands are disconcerting because they seem very radical caricatures of a growing temptation to resort to calling for “positive discrimination” thanks to the introduction of parity legislation). Furthermore, given the limited interest that this issue then attracted, it was noticeable that the president of Intégration France, and vice-president of SOS Racisme, could both voice their opinions in the ‘Débats’ pages of Libération (Kedadouche 1999; Ramdane 2000). Like Conan, both chose to engage with the theoretical issue of quotas rather than suggest practical means that would bring about change, with Collectif Égalité again characterised as an uncritical extension of le communautarisme anglo-saxon. Initial media coverage was not exclusively negative, but in 2000 it still seemed little momentum would gather within the French press to spearhead any significant change. Indeed despite the subsequent efforts of the industry lobbying group Club Averroès – established in 1997 but considerably more prominent post-2000 – to encourage greater diversity within

6 ­ 2

Representing ethnicity

French media, and occasional features in the press, it was not until the aftermath of the riots of October and November 2005 that the French state began to take concerted action. Seeing the representativeness of French television as a contributory factor to the level of discontent among French youth, President Chirac met television channel bosses on 22 November 2005 to discuss the representation of diversity within French television. This led to the modification of the CSA’s remit as part of the wider ‘égalite des chances’ law of 31 March 2006, which finally gave it a watchdog role regarding ethnic diversity within all television and radio programming but as part of a wider responsibility to ensure that both public and privately-owned media reflected ‘la diversité de la société française’ (CSA 2006: 12) (the diversity of French society). The CSA’s annual reports would henceforth also have to detail what action had been taken in this area by both television channels and radio stations. This gesture towards greater inclusiveness within the French audiovisual sector can be seen as one response to the sense of societal breakdown and disconnect that the 2005 riots provoked and it formed part of a general preliminary attempt to address wider forms of racism and discrimination which were often cited as a determining factor behind the unrest. October 2006 then saw the CSA publish La Représentation de la diversité des origines et des cultures à la télévision et à la radio: bilan 2005: the first-ever detailed summary of its kind, which examined the implications of the new law for the CSA’s remit and presented a synthesis of reports submitted by both public and private television channels, as well as radio stations, on how their output reflected diversity in French society. Asserting that the representation of diversity is a key responsibility of French media – and particularly of television – the report signalled a step change in attitudes towards the issue within some sections of the industry and the CSA’s critical tone towards the complacent and perfunctory responses of several television channels was highly notable. In the report’s conclusion, the CSA stated that progress had been made since 1999 and particularly congratulated TF1 and France 3 for appointing journalists of Caribbean heritage to high-profile newsreading roles – but also recognised that such symbolism

Changing notions of national identity

63

would not suffice. Its criticism of some responses to this new requirement was underlined by its warning to broadcasters that adopting a global vision of diversity that obscured the specificities of diversity in French society or an overly narrow one that only showed minorities when they were ‘associées à des difficultés inhérentes à leur insertion’ (CSA 2006: 40) (linked to the difficulties they face in terms of integration) would do little to address this question and risked reinforcing prejudices. Viewing the issue in conventional French republican terms of intégration, the CSA ended by acknowledging the difficulties it perceived broadcasters as having in this domain, stating that: ‘considérant qu’une intégration réussie est une intégration qui ne se voit pas, qui ne se dit pas et qui n’a à souffir d’aucune forme de discrimination, le Conseil comprend bien évidemment la difficulté des chaînes à en témoigner sans mettre en avant des éléments disqualifiants’ (ibid.) (considering that someone’s successful integration is not seen, heard or endures any form of discrimination, the CSA well understands how difficult it is for channels to evoke this subject without foregrounding contradictory elements). Nevertheless, it urged broadcasters to adopt a more balanced and less reductive vision of the diversity of French society’s c­ onstituent origins and cultures. This landmark report represented a serious attempt by the CSA to address the issue, and its admission that diversity needs to be judged in qualitative as well as quantitative terms was significant. Yet the fact that it conceived its role as more consultative than regulatory indicated its cautious intervention in this area. Carefully couched in terms that conform to French republican universalism – therefore refuting the introduction of positive discrimination, quotas according to ethnicity or stipulating specific programming content – its report demonstrated the agility with which the CSA has had to proceed in order not to contravene it. Consequently it remained unclear how broadcasters could be reprimanded for violating these regulations, or even how such a violation could be judged. As the CSA itself acknowledged (CSA 2006: 10), gauging the representativeness of French television in terms of diversity is not made any easier by the lack of official statistics recognising French citizens according to a range

6 ­ 4

Representing ethnicity

of different criteria of identity. The 2006 law referred specifically to the representation of diversity in programming, rather than making precise requirements of the broadcasting industry generally. Thus the CSA’s focus on on screen presence in television programmes did not examine the question of how representative French television industry staff were of French society as a whole, or what effects this might have in perpetuating existing practices. In addition, although the report cited the importance of the qualitative representation of diversity on screen, it did not advocate a detailed analysis of it, instead proposing consultation with broadcasters in order to project a more realistic and representative image of French society, free from negative clichés (CSA 2006: 15). Given that it remained uncertain whether sanctions would even be meted out if broadcasters breached these guidelines, the success of this initiative depended heavily on the goodwill of broadcasters, which hitherto had not been widely in evidence. The subsequent CSA report of 2008 on this area (Macé 2008) provided an opportunity to take stock of developments within the French broadcasting industry since the new legislation and first major CSA report of 2006, almost a decade after Collectif Égalité had raised significant awareness of this issue. Its report made sobering reading: not only did it show little evolution since 1999, it also revealed that the major underlying trends remained similar to those identified by Hargreaves and Perotti in 1991, with ethnic minorities still largely shown either as problems or performers; more prominent in music programmes but often marginalised in genres involving public participation such as game shows. The relative prominence of different ethnic minorities also remained largely similar: people now described as ‘vues comme noires’ (perceived as black) formed the majority of ethnic minorities seen on screen with those ‘vues comme arabes’ (perceived as Arab) or ‘vues comme asiatiques’ (perceived as Asian) seen significantly less. Moreover, the disparity identified between the representation of ethnic diversity in US and French fiction-based programming suggested that the general perception that ethnic diversity on French television screens has increased in recent years may be due to the number of ethnic minority actors seen in foreign

Changing notions of national identity

65

imports – programmes highly unlikely to reflect the specificities of French society. Given that the CSA’s remit to monitor the representation of diversity since 2006 extends beyond ethnicity alone, the inclusion of gender statistics – a significant oversight from earlier studies – also showed that the prevailing phallocracy on screen in French television becomes more marked with regard to ethnic minorities: whereas 38 per cent of people termed ‘blancs’ (white) were women, this decreased to 32 per cent among those termed ‘non blancs’ (non-white) (Macé 2008: 9). Furthermore, one of the major findings of this report was the significant underrepresentation of women, regardless of ethnicity, on French television generally: an issue that has also gained prominence since the establishment of a Commission sur l’image des femmes dans les médias in February 2008 by Valérie Létard, the Secrétaire d’État à la solidarité, which produced its first annual report in September 2008. Having considered a range of programmes during the week of study, the report’s damning verdict was that ‘plus les programmes sont proches de la société française, moins la diversité est assurée’ (Macé 2008: 11) (the more programmes concentrate on French society, the less diversity is guaranteed) – particularly with regard to French fiction-based programmes, news items on France, programme presenters, and shows based on public participation. Moreover, the report found that ethnic minority representation had only increased by 1 per cent since 1999 in some of these major areas: an indictment of how little had changed globally on French television screens over the preceding decade, or even – given the findings of earlier reports cited previously – since the early 1990s. As only a summary of the 2008 report’s findings was released publicly – the CSA having argued that the undisclosed channel-by-channel figures would be used as a basis for its negotiations with individual broadcasters – the precise methodology employed within the report remained unclear, but even though the report differentiated between appearances in some qualitative terms such as ‘héros’, ‘rôle principal’ and ‘rôle secondaire’ (hero, leading role, supporting role), in line with previous CSA studies it remained essentially quantitative. As such, the fact that only official INSEE (Institut national de la statistique et des études

6 ­ 6

Representing ethnicity

économiques) statistics on the sex and socio-professional status of French citizens could be cited as a point of comparison (Macé 2008: 2) limited attempts to assess precisely how representative the programmes analysed were in terms of ethnic diversity in France. The compromise reached in the report by analysing appearances in terms of people deemed as being white, or non-white, nevertheless had the merit of underscoring the domination of whites on screen; similarly, the analysis of appearances in terms of the prominence of roles played highlighted the lack of major parts for ethnic minorities. These raw percentages, however, revealed nothing about the nature of these representations and whether they were stereotyped or clichéd, unconventional or “realistic”: a detailed official qualitative study that could yield such insights and draw critical attention to them, building upon some of the rare scholarly work in this area (such as Malonga 2005, 2007, and Macé 2006a, 2006b), remains to be written. Equally, with the focus remaining on programming output during the week in question, the issue of ethnic minority access to important creative and decision-making roles within French television was not addressed. Acknowledging how disappointing these results were, the CSA mounted a vigorous response. It announced the establishment of a ‘baromètre de la diversité’, part-financed by broadcasters, to be published every six months; meetings with individual channels to agree public short- and mid-term goals that demonstrated their engagement with representing diversity on screen; and, most strikingly, it raised the spectre of pursuing more vigorous and urgent judicial solutions should channels fail to demonstrate sufficient progress (Macé 2008: 2). The mere fact that it mooted such legal recourse signalled how gravely the CSA viewed the situation; whether this ever happens naturally depends upon future results, but the introduction of such regular public monitoring – later reinforced by a series of additional measures adopted in late 2009 – constituted a serious engagement and signalled the CSA’s determination to herald significant change. The findings of subsequent ‘Baromètre de la diversité’ reports (CSA 2012a, 2014a), however, suggest that major progress still remains to be made. While goodwill clearly exists within sections

Changing notions of national identity

67

of the French television industry – and CSA reports to Parliament (2012b, 2014b) have duly praised certain channels’ actions to increase diversity – the CSA’s own figures reveal the extent of the challenge ahead. In 2012, for example, its findings revealed that ethnic diversity on screen grew worse rather than better, despite such consciousness-raising initiatives: excluding the free-to-air public channel France Ô, the proportion of people perceived as non-white was measured as 12 per cent, signalling a fall of 3 per cent compared to 2011. Indeed, debates in late 2014 surrounding the status and purpose of France Ô itself indicate some of the difficulties ahead. Launched in 2005 to cater for outre-mer viewers, following the increasing attention paid thereafter to the question of ethnic diversity in French television, it was repositioned after 2010 as a broader showcase for diversity in French society as a whole. Unfortunately, confusion over its subsequent editorial line and remit, along with a notoriously eclectic choice of programming, have resulted in stubbornly low audience figures. By the autumn of 2014 these had become so alarming that President Hollande called for the channel to return to its original remit (Morio 2014). In effect, France Ô’s dilemma reveals the perils of pigeonholing channels as repositories of “diversity” and how illusory such supposed panaceas ultimately prove: instead of providing a ready training ground for ethnically diverse talent from which all French channels might benefit, it evidently neither meets the current needs of French overseas viewers nor appeals significantly to metropolitan French audiences. At the time of writing, the most recent reports (CSA 2014a, 2014b) give modest cause for enthusiasm but even if some positive developments are now more clearly in evidence, the pace of change generally remains markedly slow. Arguably this is compounded by the methodological constraints under which the CSA currently operates. As argued earlier with regard to previous reports, while quantitative survey methods have their merits, the CSA’s choice of statistical methodology remains an extremely blunt tool for monitoring this complex area. Furthermore, although the survey now also records the sex and socio-professional status of people who are heard speaking on screen, the level of detail with which ethnic diversity itself is

6 ­ 8

Representing ethnicity

classified has actually been reduced. People are now simply categorised according to whether their skin colour is perceived as white or non-white: an utterly retrograde step that now renders it impossible to make meaningful comparisons between different ethnicities. The figures provided for representation in terms of sex and socio-professional status are no longer differentiated either according to perceived ethnic heritage or skin colour, underlining the methodological limits of a survey that subdivides the people it measures into mutually exclusive categories and ignores the fact that everyone on screen belongs to several at once. In contrast, by adopting an explicitly qualitative approach, the case studies that examine popular contemporary French television series in this book’s subsequent chapters will endeavour to analyse better some of the ways in which ethnicity interacts with gender, age and social class on screen. In doing so, my aim will be to provide far greater granularity regarding the stakes of such intersectionality. To conclude, clearly awareness in France with regard to the representation of ethnicity on French television has been significantly heightened since the early 1990s, and the issue has been taken much more seriously following the 2006 law, which signalled recognition by the French State of the importance of the representation of ethnic diversity on screen and of the role this plays in the construction of a national imaginary. In addition, the CSA’s wider remit and subsequent change in tone signalled a more concerted effort to tackle this issue, and initiatives such as regular studies and submission of channel reports show that it both scrutinises closely how channels respond to new obligations and criticises those that do not meet them. Its creation of an Observatoire de la diversité audiovisuelle in March 2008 – including the Collectif Égalité member Jacques Martial – to lead this policy area further confirmed this, but the broadening of the CSA’s role to monitor diversity tout court (in itself an amorphous category and initially used in some CSA reports as shorthand for ‘ethnic diversity’) made this role even more challenging. The CSA must, in effect, negotiate a rather difficult tightrope: encouraging channels to reflect the ethnic diversity of French society but without recourse to official statistics that record it. Detailed

Changing notions of national identity

69

quantitative studies such as those previously conducted are evidently useful – highlighting the marked absences of ethnic minorities from certain programming areas – but further qualitative research into the representation of a wide range of ethnicities across a large time frame could pinpoint established practices, clichés and stereotypes that have been employed historically and those that continue to circulate. In terms of ethnic minority staff, the consciousness-­raising initiatives the CSA proposes and those already adopted by ­ some channels – such as by the France Télévisions group – may increase the diversity of staff within programme making and commissioning, but how this can be assessed formally and any representativeness effectively be gauged remain uncertain. What is clear, however, is that the CSA has recognised the link between the ethnic diversity of television staff and programming output. Without going as far as to declare French public television ‘hideously white’ (as Greg Dyke, the then BBC director-general, famously described its British equivalent in January 2001), the fact that in November 2008 its then head, Michel Boyon, openly questioned how channels can reflect ethnic diversity if few producers, commissioners or heads of programming are from an ethnic minority background served as an acknowledgement that the ethnicity of staff plays a determining role and that only concerted action within the industry could change the status quo. As official reports suggest that relatively minimal change has occurred globally over the last two decades, more determined action is still needed in order to encourage significant progress. The CSA’s recent actions indicate that this issue is now taken seriously in France and that the CSA itself will help spearhead future changes but how quickly this can be achieved within the French republican framework remains to be seen: ultimately, without official statistics on ethnic diversity in French society as a point of comparison, how can French television ever be judged as fully representative of it? Quotas are for the moment still seen as unpalatable but perhaps a further and more stringent legal imperative to represent diversity may eventually be introduced. Systematic change may otherwise take a generation or more, which may well be judged too long a wait.

7­ 0

Representing ethnicity

We need to talk about Amélie: whiteness, whitewashing and contemporary French cinema Finally for this chapter, we return to the world of film, for although momentum has slowly gathered since the late 1990s to encourage French television to become more representative of France’s ethnic diversity, a comparable widespread movement has not occurred within the French film industry. This is despite its prevailing whiteness on screen, due undoubtedly to similar factors as in television – including institutional inertia; little ethnic diversity among those in positions of power and influence; and commercial fears that ethnic diversity alienates ethnic majority audiences – but also factors specific to French film. Such whiteness could arguably be a legacy of the influence of the New Wave, an inherently white and bourgeois cinema, and a consequence of the enduring predilection in France for auteur cinema, the vast majority of whose directors are white. It also undoubtedly stems from the investment of time and money required to become established as a director or actor, which is far more likely to favour the white ethnic majority. Such a system also especially favours white men. As Dyer (1990: 2) has argued: ‘Film, more perhaps than any other art, requires money, time and confidence (to believe that it is even appropriate for one to “say” something); existing gender and ethnic relations mean that white men are going to be among the first and most frequent to have access to the medium.’ A quarter of a century later, his comments still largely hold true. This whiteness is far from total, however, due to the increasing prominence of actors of non-white minority ethnic heritage in France since the 1980s (such as Sami Bouajila, discussed previously, and Jamel Debbouze, discussed below) and the popular and critical success of several French directors of Maghrebi heritage (such as Rachid Bouchareb and Abdellatif Kechiche). Government funding also exists to encourage the representation of ethnic diversity on French cinema screens from organisations such as l’Acsé (l’Agence nationale pour la cohésion sociale et l’égalité des chances) – successor to le FASILD (Fonds d’Action et de Soutien pour l’Intégration et la Lutte contre les

Changing notions of national identity

71

Discriminations) – and the ‘Images de la diversité’ commission, established in March 2007 to provide additional funding to film and television projects that represent France’s ethnic diversity and promote equal opportunities in France. French cinema, like French television, nevertheless remains predominantly white on screen. Moreover, the absence of official statistics regarding how ethnically diverse the film industry is in France behind the camera means that there is no reason to believe that this whiteness does not extend, or is even magnified, off screen too. Given that the majority of people resident in France are also assumed to be white, this may seem neither surprising nor alarming, but the mere fact that an ‘Images de la diversité’ commission was created at all – an extension of the 2006 égalité des chances legislation – implies that the French State now believes that a wider ethnic diversity should be more prominent in film as well as television, and that its role is to lead the promotion of a greater representation of diversity within both. Véronique Cayla, as President of the Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC) – co-partner with l’Acsé in the Commission – also acknowledged the stakes of French cinema reflecting ethnic diversity within France and, furthermore, argued that it has a strong duty to do so (Cayla 2009: 5). Yet despite such initiatives and the long-standing work of organisations such as the FASILD, French cinema as an industry has not historically been seen as having such a responsibility. This tradition is not peculiar to France and reflects the continual perception of much cinema across Europe as either a form of artistic expression or a means of pure entertainment, and therefore as exempt from many of the social and didactic roles expected of public service television, whose remit in France (as demonstrated) now increasingly incorporates concerns of representativeness and embracing ethnic diversity. This made the brief furore that surrounded one of the most popular French films of the 2000s all the more intriguing. Released in April 2001, Amélie became Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s most successful film to date, attracting over eight million viewers at the French box office and becoming the highest grossing domestic film in France that year. Its vision of Paris also proved highly exportable, drawing around 30 million viewers worldwide and

7­ 2

Representing ethnicity

2  Amélie at work in Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001)

earning $100  million in box-office receipts (Vanderschelden 2007: 1). Both domestic and foreign audiences appeared charmed by what many judged a heart-warming tale set among a close-knit community of quirky characters centred around the eponymous heroine (see figure 2), who was immediately lauded in the press as an iconic French heroine for her time. Jeunet’s distinctive use of cinematography, colour and special effects also drew praise, and the lively soundtrack brought international fame for the musician Yann Tiersen. The film also garnered critical acclaim, winning a host of European awards and both the César for best director and for best film. Having captured the public’s imagination, it was indisputably the major film of 2001 in France and as Vanderschelden (2007: 1) argues: ‘In future years, anything that Jeunet may do will be compared to Amelie, because the film and its eponymous heroine have left a lasting impression in the collective memory.’ It was the film’s nostalgic, retro and romanticised depiction of Montmartre and Paris, however, that lay at the heart of a polemic that followed the publication of an article by the renowned film critic, Serge Kaganski (2001a), in Libération in May 2001. Immediately upon its release the film had gained near-­universal approval within the French press. A second wave of articles a month later then tried to explain this atypical success but, as Vanderschelden (2007: 79) noted, by questioning the film’s artistic merits some typified the ‘condescending attitude of many French critics towards a popular success’. Kaganski’s article firmly

Changing notions of national identity

73

belonged to this category and unsurprisingly conformed to his well-known disdain for mainstream entertainment films and his championing of auteurist, “arthouse” cinema. By comparison to other reviews, however, the vehemence of Kaganski’s criticism and scathing tone were distinctive, as was the outpouring it generated. Kaganski’s artlcle was, in part, a response to an earlier article in Libération by Martin-Castelnau and Bigot (2001) who had defended the film against the criticism of what they termed ‘l’élite bien-pensante’ (the right-minded elite) and praised its treatment of ‘«les gens de peu» avec tendresse et respect’ (people of few means with tenderness and respect). Incensed by this and the almost unanimous praise Amélie had garnered, Kaganski (2001a) provided a virulent critique of the film, denouncing Jeunet’s filmmaking as ‘l’anticinéma’ (anti-cinema); criticising its creation of a ‘fantasme démagogique et superficiel de population prolétaire’ (demagogic and superficial fantasy of the proletariat); and reproaching its depiction of Paris as an insular and inward-looking village, isolated spatially, socially and temporally. What most concerned Kaganski, however, was the ways in which the film represented ethnicity and social class, and especially its patent lack of diversity. Asking ‘où sont les Parisiens qui peuplent la capitale en 1997…?’ (where are the Parisians who actually live in the capital in 1997 …?), he deemed Jeunet’s Paris ‘soigneusement «nettoyé» de toute sa polysémie ethnique, sociale, sexuelle et culturelle’ (carefully ‘cleansed’ of all its ethnic, social, sexual and cultural polysemy) and argued that even when alterity is glimpsed, the Other is only ‘aimable et présentable quand il est lointain’ (ibid.) (nice and presentable when remaining at a distance). Kaganski then signed off with a spectacular coup de grâce: declaring that the film’s depiction of France and the French would make an ideal advertisement for the National Front. This rhetorical flourish aside, Kaganski’s article was remarkable precisely because it dwelt in detail on the film’s lack of ethnic diversity. Despite the substantial number of articles dedicated to the film – generating and reflecting its status as a ‘phénomène de société’ (Frodon 2002) (social phenomenon) – its remarkable

7­ 4

Representing ethnicity

whiteness had hitherto been completely ignored by journalists in the mainstream French press, providing further proof that French cinema, and perhaps especially films such as Jeunet’s, have traditionally not been seen as duty-bound to be representative of France’s ethnic diversity. As a result, the fallout from the publication of his article was notable for putting this issue (albeit briefly) on the media agenda. However, as will be shown, this only led to a selective engagement with some of the questions Kaganski raised. While there were remarkably few responses to Kaganski’s article from fellow writers, the public reaction was overwhelming and immediate. Libération described it as an ‘avalanche’ and two days later duly published two pages of bemused and angry readers’ correspondence: an indication of the controversy Kaganski’s comments had raised. The debate within the French press continued two weeks later when Kaganski (2001b) retaliated against what he judged to be Libération’s highly biased choice of letters by publishing four pages of others in Les Inrockuptibles that he deemed more representative of the public response. Many readers raised similar objections to those already published but some did praise his candour and concurred with his interpretation. Why did Kaganski’s views meet with such a remarkable outcry? Many saw his comments as indicative of certain French film critics’ contempt for popular cinema and the readers’ vigorous defence of Amélie encapsulated this gulf between them. Arguably, however, it was Kaganski’s final quip that the film could serve as National Front publicity that really riled readers: frequently condemned in the correspondence published, even his supporters deemed it excessive. Kaganski (2001b) later admitted that it was the one comment he regretted including because it raised Le Pen’s profile and distracted readers from the rest of his argument. As Vanderschelden (2007: 85) astutely noted: ‘in our [sic] society, which is often considered consensual and reluctant to enter ideological debates, for once, a controversy sparked from what, after all, was only a provocative comment made by a critic known for his bias for auteur cinema’. What was also striking was how the polemic surrounding Kaganski’s closing comment allowed many of his wider points to be elided, among both readers and reviewers. Outside France too, with the notable exception of Vincendeau

Changing notions of national identity

75

(2001a), critics mostly ignored or only briefly alluded to the film’s lack of ethnic diversity. It seems important, therefore, to assess the validity of Kaganski’s argument by analysing the film in detail. While the starkness of the whitewashing of Paris in Amélie irked Kaganski, arguably the association of the city with whiteness is part of a long tradition in French film, particularly within auteur cinema: further examples include films such as Christophe Honoré’s Dans Paris (2006) and Les Chansons d’amour (2007), and Arnaud Desplechin’s Rois et reine (2004) and Un conte de Noël (2008), where the focus primarily remains upon white and middle-class Parisians. Exceptions to this rule can naturally be cited, such as Cédric Klapisch’s Chacun cherche son chat (1996) and Paris (2008), and Claire Denis’ J’ai pas sommeil (1994), as well as many films set in or around the banlieue that feature ethnically diverse casts but, as the final chapter will show, this whiteness is striking in comparison to the positioning of Marseille as the capital’s working-class and ethnically diverse “other”. Furthermore, whereas Kaganski was the first major critic to condemn the whiteness of Amélie’s Paris, the film was instead frequently praised for its foregrounding of ‘les gens de peu’ (Belleret 2001) (people with few means): not only demonstrating critics’ blindness to the film’s whiteness but also an indication of how seldom they claimed to have seen the poor and working classes feature in contemporary French films set in Paris or elsewhere. It was, however, the disparity between the film’s version of Montmartre and Paris and their residents’ actual ethnic diversity in real life that chiefly alarmed Kaganski: an incongruity rendered more acute by the majority of the film taking place there. The fact that very few non-whites are ever glimpsed even when viewers are briefly taken elsewhere in the city – such as NotreDame cathedral, the canal Saint Martin, Pont des Arts or rue Mouffetard  – only compounded this effect. The film’s vision of Montmartre therefore becomes contiguous with the city’s other quartiers: ­positing Paris in its entirety as almost exclusively white. The film’s main French cinema poster uncannily heralded this whiteness: its restricted palette of heavily saturated colours evoked the film’s cartoon aesthetic and showed a smiling Amélie alone against a green background. The stark contrast, however,

7­ 6

Representing ethnicity

between her jet black hair, dark eyes, rich red clothes and strikingly white skin significantly accentuated the geisha-like, opaque complexion of her chest and face, giving her a strangely spectral, if not ghoulish, air. The whiteness of Amélie herself did not attract critical attention but arguably it formed part of a wider signifying chain within an ideological field that not only constructed whiteness as the norm in Jeunet’s Paris but also equated this whiteness with goodness, and ultimately Frenchness too. The film’s promotional trailers had emphasised how positively Amélie changes people’s lives around her, and with one ending by asking ‘et si elle changeait votre vie?’ (and what if she changed your life?), even encouraged viewers to ponder whether she might transform theirs. The idea of Amélie as fairytale heroine – traditionally coded as white in Western culture – performing acts of altruism to improve other people’s lives is established initially via her association with Princess Diana. A precursor to Amélie’s subsequent status as white female icon, Diana was also known for her munificence and lauded for her charity work, and it is the news of her death that sets Amélie on her quest to help others, which she begins by reuniting Bretodeau with his childhood tin box. A later scene where Amélie imagines watching a posthumous television biopic of her life further cultivates her saintly image by simultaneously projecting her as both a benevolent Princess Diana – her death similarly provokes mass displays of public grief – and a Mother Teresa-like figure who tends to the sick, poor and needy. As many of the good deeds Amélie performs are punctuated by accordion refrains, the soundtrack is also marshalled to emphasise Amélie’s selflessness. This use of an instrument so associated with Paris, however, forms part of a wider signifying chain that may seem more exclusionary than inclusive. While reasserting the characters’ and setting’s Frenchness, the retro and nostalgic connotations of such music, coupled with the whiteness of Jeunet’s Paris, risk appealing to the xenophobic fantasy of a “pre-­ immigration” Paris and France: a mythical past when both were supposedly exclusively white. Furthermore, by fusing sounds of the accordion with shots of Amélie performing such acts, the stereotypical Frenchness of the music is allied to her goodnaturedness and – given the dearth of a wider ethnic diversity on

Changing notions of national identity

77

screen – to her whiteness too: melding this virtuousness to white Frenchness and therefore potentially excluding those who fail to adhere to the nationality criteria of this pigmentocracy. Given the prominence of whiteness in the film, it is pertinent to consider the fleeting instances when this is temporarily disrupted. On the few occasions when critics have discussed the representation of non-white ethnic minorities in the film, the focus has been on Lucien, played by Jamel Debbouze. As Lucien’s ethnicity is never discussed in the film and he is not marked ethnically in the script – save his distinctly untypical first name for a man of Maghrebi heritage in France – this led Kaganski (2001a) to describe him as an ‘arabe désarabisé’ (de-Arabised Arab) and Vincendeau (2001a: 25) to deem him subject to an ‘ethnic erasure’. Indeed, the choice of an identifiably Christian name for Debbouze’s character chimes with the film’s multiple references to Catholicism. The inclusion of some of the city’s most famous Catholic landmarks – including Notre-Dame cathedral and Sacré-Coeur basilica – along with references to the ‘Hail Mary’ prayer and images of the Sacred Heart signal the important legacy of Catholicism in France. But including only references to this religion coheres with the wider exclusion of difference and risks positing Catholicism as the only faith present in Jeunet’s Paris. It might also hark back to a time when religious diversity in France – in particular the growth of Islam since decolonisation – is perceived as having been less apparent: consequently ­reinscribing a conservative ethnocentric vision of Frenchness. The privileging of Debbouze as the only main ethnic minority actor also arguably elided another cast member. Maurice Bénichou, whose role as surrogate father in Drôle de Félix was discussed earlier, is of Sephardic Jewish heritage and here played Bretodeau. Although Bretodeau, like Lucien, was also unmarked ethnically, the fact that Bénichou’s heritage was also occluded might be read as a similar “bleaching” of alterity, which prioritises whiteness at the expense of any wider ethnic difference. Alternatively, the fact that critics neither countenanced the possibility that Bretodeau might also be an ethnic minority nor acknowledged Bénichou’s heritage suggests that the spectrum of whiteness in French film is wide enough to include people of Sephardic Jewish heritage. Aspects

7­ 8

Representing ethnicity

of the relationship between Jewishness and whiteness in contemporary French visual culture will be discussed in further detail in Chapter 3, but the inclusion of references to Catholicism and the silence surrounding Bretodeau/Bénichou’s possible  Jewishness and Lucien’s potential Muslim heritage may yet again only reinforce the impression that Jeunet’s Paris is monocultural. Beyond these two characters, a wider ethnic diversity is only glimpsed on certain occasions, many of which coincidentally tally with findings from the qualitative television studies analysed earlier and therefore highlight the convergence between television and film in France. First, the trend of blacks appearing often as performers and their frequency depending on the screening of American imports rather than French programmes is evoked by the montage Amélie makes for the Glass Man, which includes clips of two black American entertainers: Arthur “Peg Leg Sam” Jackson tap dancing and the gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Second, the phenomenon of non-white ethnic minorities often appearing only briefly on screen, and usually not heard speaking, is recalled by an unusual 8-second scene as Amélie returns from her father’s via the Gare du Nord with his stolen garden gnome and hurriedly walks down the platform as three young men – who appear to be of black or mixed race heritage – follow her. This multi-ethnic trio, coupled with Jeunet’s casting of Mathieu Kassovitz as Nino, might obliquely recall scenes from La Haine (1995), which Kassovitz himself directed. As Ezra (2008: 87) notes, however, La Haine is ‘the antithesis of Amélie in its unrelenting depiction of a Paris riven by social divisions’, and whereas the multi-ethnic trio of Kassovitz’s Paris formed his main characters, the shot of Jeunet’s own ethnically diverse trio is conspicuous by its brevity. This scene also stands out because, in a film where each shot seems meticulously selected so as to convey a distinct idea and ‘milled to move into position so as to engage the subsequent shot without friction’ (Andrew 2004: 38), the brief menace evoked is jarring. Amélie’s unease at so conspicuously carrying the large garden ornament seems patent, but given the lack of non-whites in the film, her nervous glancing behind her at this particular trio – close behind her and the only others in sight – connotes fear rather than embarrassment, and therefore

Changing notions of national identity

79

constructs this group as a threat. The end of this scene arguably reinforces this: the fact their gaze follows her as she walks off screen suggests they were tracking her, and the scene’s swooping aerial master shot finishes by resting in a low-shot position that accentuates the trio’s height and therefore menace. In such a fast-paced and tightly edited film with so many shots – Andrew (2004: 41) counted ‘300 separate shots in the 25-minute prologue alone’ – this atypical moment may briefly unsettle viewers and, in the context of the film’s general lack of ethnic diversity more widely, one might wonder if this is not a subliminal return of the repressed. Contrast their ephemerality with the relative prominence of gentle Lucien, whose consensual Christian name appears to seal his conformity to Jeunet’s model of normative white Frenchness. Child-like and therefore unthreatening, his presence does not break the spell of Jeunet’s fantasy world; but given their vaguely intimidating air, this trio might. On this unique occasion where another encounter between Amélie and Paris’s wider ethnic diversity could have occurred, it seems symptomatic of the film that no words are exchanged and the opportunity is missed: moreover, given her pace, Amélie appears to be accelerating away from it. While the CNC now actively acknowledges that the French cinema industry has a duty to embrace the ethnic diversity of France more fully, the question of which films and whether all genres should do so remains unclear. In the critical and public reaction within the press to Amélie, Jeunet’s defenders stressed that his film was above all a fantasy rather than a faithful depiction of contemporary Paris and should therefore not be judged as if its approach were explicitly realistic. Furthermore, they added, a filmmaker’s poetic licence should never be constrained. The clue is therefore in the title: this is a mythical and fantastic tale, and it is Amélie’s alone, not an entire nation’s. Accordingly, from the digitally enhanced streets and CGI special effects to the incorporation of scenes from Amélie’s imagination, the film contains many hallmarks of fantasy and reviewers frequently described it as a fairytale. Furthermore, although the film was set in a precise period, beginning after the prologue on 29 August 1997 and ending on 28 September 1997, its spatio-temporal markers are

8 ­ 0

Representing ethnicity

unreliable, and its retro styling and atmosphere – facilitated by the golden glow and blending of sepia and saturated tones of many scenes – blur time. With a soundtrack of accordions, waltz and foxtrot rhythms, and classic 1930s songs, this pastiche of the Paris of poetic realism and post-war humanist photographers also generated nostalgia for this world, which many described as timeless. Amélie’s unspecified “timelessness”, however, is a time when Paris is almost exclusively white – and therefore risks resembling this mythical time of “pre-immigration” France – a vision so frightening that it inspired Kaganski’s National Front comments. The film may stem from Jeunet’s imagination and be his personal fantasy – revealing that the world in which he personally imagines himself is almost exclusively white – but the collapsing of eras and genres and use of slick effects and cinematography created a seductive vision of Paris which coincidentally airbrushed contemporary ethnic diversity from it. As Ezra (2008: 87) points out, however, ‘the Paris in the film is, to a large extent, Amélie’s vision of Paris, which is shown through her eyes’. Although the whiteness of Amélie’s experience of Paris might partially be explained by the fact that she is white herself along with almost all her acquaintances, the moments when viewers are released from her immediate world are seldom used to allude to a wider ethnic diversity beyond her field of vision. It therefore seems safe to equate Amélie’s vision of Paris with Jeunet’s. While many would defend Jeunet’s poetic licence as a director, it was arguably disingenuous of him and his defenders not to acknowledge the ramifications of such a vision of Paris. This is especially given how quickly the film was championed as a source of national pride to counter the perennial soul-searching provoked by the popularity of American cinema in France. In a film so replete with French cultural references – Larcher (2001: 112) argued that it is ‘difficile d’imaginer un film plus français’ (difficult to imagine a more French film) – Amélie was unsurprisingly seen at home and abroad as epitomising Frenchness. As a means of defence against Kaganski’s criticism, many maintained that this Frenchness is “idealised”. Following this logic, regardless of the genre of the film – and whether it has a responsibility to reflect the contemporary ethnic diversity of the city in which it is

Changing notions of national identity

81

set – a Paris largely devoid of ethnic diversity is, by default, their ideal. Judging by his comments, Jeunet shares this too: although dismissive towards criticism of the film for it being so divorced from reality, he himself admitted that ‘ce qui m’amusait …, c’était de retrouver, d’imaginer, de réinventer un Paris idéal’ (quoted in Ostria 2001) (what I enjoyed …, was to find again, imagine, reinvent an ideal Paris). This short-lived and highly unusual case demonstrated that the on-screen representativeness of cinema in terms of ethnicity is not seen as a pressing issue in France, and despite the recent limited role for the CNC it has not become one. The comments made by readers in Libération and Les Inrockuptibles were instructive in this regard: the recurrence of the word ‘quotas’ demonstrated a steadfast refusal that cinema has a responsibility to be representative of wider society, and the belief that any deliberate attempt to increase ethnic diversity in French cinema would be over-prescriptive and therefore unwelcome. Cinema is seen largely either in auteurist terms as an artistic expression that transcends such concerns or, in the case of popular cinema, as ephemeral entertainment judged not serious enough to be accountable in this domain. The implicit assumption is that ethnic diversity on screen is either assured through numbers alone – France being the largest European film producer – or by individual success and the goodwill of industry power brokers; the recent critical and commercial successes for ethnic minority directors and actors sufficing as proof that the French film industry embraces ethnic diversity. The polemic surrounding Amélie therefore formed little more than a momentary flashpoint at the start of the 2000s but the fact that it arose at all revealed as much about French sensitivities as it did about the chasm between some film critics and cinemagoers in France. As Sotinel (2001) remarked, a series of other major French successes from that year – including Thomas Gilou’s La Vérité si je mens! 2 (2001), which will be discussed in Chapter 3 – could have sparked similar polemics regarding their subject matter but failed to instigate debate, which made the anomaly of Amélie all the more intriguing. The film’s major French box-office success implied that viewers liked, and also approved of, Jeunet’s

8 ­ 2

Representing ethnicity

vision of France: a point underlined by the size and vehemence of the reaction against Kaganski’s comments. It seems many viewers in France had too much invested in the film, whether emotionally or symbolically, and more widely in cinema as a medium to tolerate such criticism. By knowingly incorporating trademark signifiers of Frenchness and generating affection for elements of yesteryear, the film’s deeply consensual and ethnocentric portrait of Amélie and her mythical Montmartre ultimately offered a nostalgic and reassuring image of France on the cusp of the twenty-first century. By also anchoring this in the contemporary era and erasing the evident ethnic diversity of Paris today, however, it simultaneously re-imagined twentieth-century Paris – pre- and post-World War Two – as overwhelmingly white. The public reaction to the Kaganski polemic and his fellow critics’ relative silence betrayed a wider resistance to criticise French cinema in terms of its representativeness and even to acknowledge ethnicity as a criterion of identity. This blindspot, coupled with Jeunet’s peculiar vision of Paris and viewers’ fierce defence of it, only further confirmed the whiteness of their shared cultural imaginary. In conclusion, this chapter began by emphasising that, with regard to how ethnicity is represented in relation to national identity in France, the period since the 1980s has been one of significant change across French visual culture. The case studies considered in this chapter are testament to this, and it is clear that, as in Luc Choquer’s photography, the ethnic diversity of contemporary French society has become more apparent during this era across a range of different visual media. What remains striking, however, is the continuing dominance of whiteness as cultural and ethnic norm, and the degree to which republican universalism remains the main political ideology that underpins engagement with ethnic diversity. In the case of the films considered, Frenchness and whiteness arguably became synonymous, which resulted in the whitewashing of ethnic minority characters. Meanwhile in television, the slow pace of change suggested that adherence to republican universalist principles at an institutional level has directly hindered rather than facilitated the representation of ethnic diversity in

Changing notions of national identity

83

France. Indeed, the largely defensive reactions raised by the issue of how representative television and cinema are of ethnic diversity in contemporary France were telling, and illustrated the tensions that continue to surround this area. Even if ethnic diversity has visibly increased across these visual media since the 1980s, clearly the question of representativeness more generally will remain a thorny and contentious problem with which the Republic must grapple in future years. In order to probe further the parameters of ethnicity in contemporary French visual culture, the following chapter changes focus to consider how the largest and, arguably, most symbolically important ethnic minority group has been represented in recent years: people of Algerian heritage.

Representing people of ­Algerian heritage

2 Shaping spaces: representing people of ­Algerian heritage

French colonial and postcolonial relations with the countries of the Maghreb have been long and troubled. Post-1945, significant numbers of Moroccans, Tunisians and Algerians migrated to France and eventually settled there definitively: they and their families now constitute a significant proportion of France’s ethnic minority population. Aside from being numerically the greatest, arguably the symbolically most important and prominent component of this population are people of Algerian heritage. The profound consequences and legacy of the Algerian War (1954–62) and the difficulties that France generally has had in coming to terms with the troubled histories and memories of that period are obvious reasons why the ethnicities of people of Algerian heritage often seem more visible than those of other Maghrebi heritages. In recognition of their importance, this chapter will duly focus on this group to probe how people of Algerian heritage have been represented in a diverse variety of media across contemporary French visual culture. While the profound ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity that characterises Algerian society and diaspora – with its rich Arab, Berber, Jewish and Muslim heritages – might ostensibly preclude consideration of people of Algerian heritage together here in such terms, arguably it is their shared colonial and postcolonial specificities of experience as people of Algerian heritage that unite them and facilitate this analysis. Such experience is predictably stratified according to the era and location in question and, accordingly, the works analysed in this chapter remain sensitive

Representing people of ­Algerian heritage

85

to the contingencies of subjectivity and crucial contrasts between different generations represented. Given the historically fractious nature of Franco-Algerian relations, this is particularly important and, although commonalities clearly exist between distinct groups with very different links to Algeria, the diversity of people who share an Algerian heritage is duly acknowledged. Critical attention in this area is not new. Recent decades have seen cinematic representations of people of Algerian heritage –  and of Maghrebi heritage more widely –  attract particular attention, examples of which include Tarr (2005), Durmelat and Swamy (2011), and Higbee (2013). Comparatively, far less attention has been paid to how people of Algerian heritage have been represented in other areas of contemporary French visual culture. This chapter therefore seeks to build on existing studies on cinema by considering a range of case studies taken from different media, comparing and contrasting how people of Algerian heritage have been portrayed. It also purposely seeks to remain particularly attentive to how gender and ethnicity interact in this area by focusing on works that have probed the role of women among Algerian diasporas and people of Algerian heritage more generally. As such it also aims to counteract the implicit focus on men and masculinity characteristic of many cinematic representations of people of Algerian heritage, which largely remains the case given how few women of Maghrebi heritage have become prominent actors or directors in France. The chapter begins by considering a selection of three works by the renowned French artist of Algerian heritage Zineb Sedira, who has been creating multimedia art since the 1990s and has exhibited throughout the world. Born in Paris in 1963 to Algerian parents, she moved to the UK in the 1980s where she began studying fine art at Central Saint Martins in London. A key early focus in her work was navigating the terrain between her French and Algerian identities: family, autobiography, language and women all figure prominently and she has investigated these across many different media including film, photography, video and installations. We then turn to consider an important trilogy of books written by a leading French writer of Algerian heritage, Leïla Sebbar, which

8 ­ 6

Representing ethnicity

weave together an immersive collection of images and text in her exploration of the public and private links that continue to bind France and Algeria together. Her books Mes Algéries en France (2004), Journal de mes Algéries en France (2005) and Voyages en Algéries autour de ma chambre (2008) constitute Sebbar’s most sustained engagement to date with visual culture and her highly personal but also wide-ranging exploration of the legacy of French colonial history makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the specificities of links between both countries. Finally attention turns to a very popular téléfilm franchise by the French film director of Algerian heritage, Yamina Benguigui. Her Aïcha series – Aïcha (2009), Aïcha 2: Job à tout prix (2010), Aïcha 3: La Grande Débrouille (2011) and Aïcha 4: Vacances infernales (2012) – met with considerable success among French viewers but has yet to attract significant scholarly attention. This section will therefore probe how Benguigui chose to represent its eponymous heroine –  a young woman of Algerian heritage in present-day Paris – along with her wider circle of family and friends at a time when, as the previous chapter showed, French television was being actively encouraged to embrace France’s ethnic diversity better on screen. By analysing these works created by these three prominent French women of Algerian heritage, this chapter considers how each one has negotiated the field of contemporary French visual culture to shape a space for the expression of her own sense of Algerian heritage alongside those of others. As the following pages will show, they especially foreground the important intersections between gender and ethnicity that have structured their experience and, in doing so, crucially inform our understanding of the legacies of history and memory in this highly symbolic area. Changing views: Zineb Sedira’s From The Series Self-­ Portraits, Self-Portrait or the Virgin Mary (2000), Silent Sight (2000) and Mother, Father and I (2003) Zineb Sedira’s artistic oeuvre comprises a variety of different media. This is reflected in the choice of three works analysed here, each of which engages with questions of testimony and

Representing people of ­Algerian heritage

87

performance while investigating the experience of Algerians and of people of Algerian heritage in France. The first work to be discussed – From The Series Self-Portraits, Self-Portrait or the Virgin Mary (2000) – probes the politics of veiling and challenges Western representations and preconceptions. The second work  – Mother, Father and I (2003) – intertwines history and memory through testimony as Sedira explores the lives of her parents during the Algerian War and their subsequent migration to France. Finally the third work – Silent Sight (2000) – simultaneously revisits and re-enacts Sedira’s childhood memories of arriving in Algeria, whereupon her mother, contrary to her practice in France, would veil herself. Comments pertaining to how these works have been displayed within gallery spaces relate specifically to their inclusion in Sedira’s first major UK solo exhibition, held at Cornerhouse in Manchester during 10 January–22 February 2004. From the Series Self-Portraits, Self-Portrait or the Virgin Mary (2000) consists of a triptych of photographs where Sedira is pictured alone veiled from head to toe in a white garment and set against a white background. She appears to pose dutifully before the camera but the images – at least to a Western eye – may seem at first more about self-effacement than self-portraiture. Sedira’s gaze never meets that of the camera; indeed, she is never photographed face-on. Instead, the most viewers see of her veiled figure is her back: turned completely away from the camera in the central photograph, slightly further towards the viewer in the left-hand one, and in profile in the one on the right. Therefore it is only in the right-hand photograph of the triptych that Sedira’s face can be glimpsed – yet there only her eyes are visible as the rest of her face is also covered by the fabric. The starkness of the images is deceptive. Within such a seemingly simple series of photographs lies a complex interweaving of meanings. Sedira’s long-standing engagement with representations of women in art and the media and attempts to disrupt the patriarchal gaze may encourage her portraits to be read as exercises in subversion. With her face barely discernible and the form of her body largely obscured, any obvious objectification of the female body appears safely out of reach.

8 ­ 8

Representing ethnicity

This arguably invites viewers to reflect upon the garment she wears. It is a type of veil, but as El Guindi (1999: 7) has stated, the English term ‘veil’ (and by extension, the French term ‘voile’) fails to convey the complexities of Arab dress and culture: the single convenient Western term ‘veil’ … is indiscriminate, monolithic and ambiguous. The absence of a single, monolithic term in the language(s) of the people who at present most visibly practice ‘veiling’ suggests a significance to this diversity that cannot be captured in one term. By subsuming and transcending such multivocality and complexity we lose the nuanced differences in meaning and associated cultural behaviours.

All the more reason to specify the kind of veil Sedira wears. It is a haik: a large piece of fabric that is wrapped around the body, leaving only one’s hands, feet and eyes visible. Consequently, any discussion of veiling with reference to this work (and to Silent Sight shortly too) is not intended to elide other practices of veiling; discussion of such dress will focus on the haik Sedira wears. Nevertheless, as will become clear, the use of such imagery by Sedira clearly also acts as a metaphor for Western perceptions of veiling as a whole. While veiling generally is the focal point of the piece, Sedira’s choice of veil is not incidental. Her wearing of a white haik immediately associates her with Algerian custom – white is a colour traditionally worn by Algerian women and the haik is a traditional form of Algerian dress – so far from universal or neutral, her veil is in fact marked in terms of ethnicity and gender. This aligns her specifically with the country from which her parents hail: perhaps here – as she does in Silent Sight too, discussed below – Sedira adopts dress periodically worn by her mother or by other female relatives when in Algeria. Whether she is quite dressing up or not, an element of performance is certainly at work. Neither documentary, nor traditional portraiture, Sedira teases the viewer by offering not one but three self-portraits – none of which fulfils traditional Western expectations of the genre. As already indicated, not only is she never shown face-on, relatively little of her physical appearance is disclosed despite the portraits’ full length. Photography would therefore seem a fitting medium for

Representing people of ­Algerian heritage

89

such a work given how, as Clarke (1992: 3) has argued, photography ‘consistently offers the promise of the individual through a system of representation which at once hides and distorts the subject before the lens’. The supposed veracity of photography brings viewers no closer to discerning any further details about her. Nonetheless, while Sedira appears to disclose rather little, by displaying herself in this way she in fact makes important points about the politics of veiling and its cultural heritage. As its title suggests, Sedira does not intend this to be solely selfportraiture; appearing as – or impersonating – the Virgin Mary emphasises the common cultural heritage of both Christianity and Islam, often characterised as polar opposites. As Sedira herself has stated, this type of veil – today connoted as Muslim – was precisely what Mary would have worn as a woman of her time (El Guindi 1999: 13; 150–1); a factor Christian iconographers have seldom embraced. Sedira’s skill lies in marrying the two religions. By keeping her (veiled) face away from view, the left and central photographs of the triptych strongly resemble standard representations of the Virgin Mary in Western art; positing an ovular figure, meek and demure, with slightly rounded shoulders and whose veil flows gracefully from head to toe. Only the right photograph subtly allows viewers to see her face covered and therefore infers a hidden history of veiling. Sedira’s images also deviate from tradition in another way: in Western art, the Virgin Mary is usually depicted face-on to viewers because her identity must not be in doubt. Here Sedira is deliberately turned away. As such, the photographs can be regarded as a feminist reinterpretation of traditional representations of the Virgin Mary. Furthermore, since it is Sedira who is dressed up as her, it clearly also becomes a comment on the figure of women within art in general. Both virgin and mother, Mary incarnates two key ways in which women historically have been depicted. Such knowingness and irony adds a touch of humour to the triptych, as Sedira parodies the idea of Mary as a modest woman beholden to a higher being, bestowing upon her an agency she is seldom ascribed. An aporia lies nonetheless within this holy alliance between Christianity and Islam: Mary’s Jewish heritage remains obscured. No mention is made of Mary’s actual ethnicity, which disrupts

9 ­ 0

Representing ethnicity

Sedira’s symbiosis between Islam and Christianity and complicates her investigation of the cultural history of veiling. Such a blind spot evokes the supplementary logic described by Derrida in De la grammatologie (1967). Here the privileging of a shared history between Christianity and Islam is undone by the uncovering of the overlooked history of Jewish veiling. As poor relation, Jewishness is the marginalised term that secretly supplements the piece: both an added extra – supplied incidentally – and the pivotal aspect that helps complete it. As Derrida (1967: 208) argued: ‘Qu’il s’ajoute ou qu’il se substitue, le supplément est extérieur, hors de la positivité à laquelle il se surajoute, étranger à ce qui, pour être lui remplacé, doit être autre que lui’ (whether it adds or substitutes itself, the supplement is exterior, outside of the positivity to which it is super-added, alien to that which, in order to be replaced by it, must be other than it) (Derrida 1997: 145, original emphases). This aporia noted, returning to the cultural specificity of veiling today, the triptych can also be viewed as a retort to the manner in which, historically, Westerners have photographed Algerian women. The fact that three photographs of the same woman are placed alongside each other, offering a profile from the left, centre and right, mimics the disciplinary function of anthropological photography and, in the context of Algeria, evokes the work of Marc Garanger, whose Femmes algériennes 1960 (1982) contains some of the thousands of photographs he took on military service of Algerian women forced to unveil while photographed for their obligatory ID cards. A series of visually stunning and troubling images were the result, with several women angrily returning the gaze to which they were compelled to submit. Alternatively, by gesturing towards the anthropological gaze, Sedira subverts it. The inclusion of a shot in profile – where only the area around the eyes can be seen – and a central photograph – where instead of conventionally facing the camera head-on, she turns her back to it – frustrates the perennial desire for photography to make everything visible. By positioning herself in such a manner she effectively impels viewers to dwell upon the veil itself as well as the woman who wears it. The prominence given to the fabric that envelops her and its carefully lit contours also strongly connotes the haptic and the tactile, providing a reminder that

Representing people of ­Algerian heritage

91

photographs ‘must be understood as corpothetic, and sensory, as bearers of stories, and of meanings, in which sight, sound and touch merge’ (Edwards 2009: 45). Sedira’s choice of a completely white background also suggests a certain invisibility as the folds of her veil merge into the surrounding whiteness, and such a quality evokes the ‘secret art of invisibleness’ that Bhabha (1994: 47) detected in certain migrant poetry, where migrants describe the experience of often being looked at but seldom seen. The postcolonial texts he considered constantly question the space of representation and challenge the conveniently neat boundaries of Otherness traditionally erected. In doing so, they disrupt the illusion of ‘the stability of the ego, expressed in the equivalence between image and identity’ (ibid.: 46–7) and show how ‘the familiar space of the Other (in the process of identification) develops a graphic historical and cultural specificity in the splitting of the postcolonial or migrant subject’ (ibid.: 47). For Bhabha, the postcolonial subject exemplifies a powerful ambivalence and in-betweenness through which ‘the migrant woman can subvert the perverse satisfaction of the racist, masculinist gaze that disavowed her presence, by presenting it with an anxious absence, a counter-gaze that turns the discriminatory look, which denies her cultural and sexual difference, back on itself’ (ibid.). Unlike in Silent Sight (to be discussed shortly) no gaze is returned here, but by photographing herself fully veiled in triplicate, Sedira arguably deflects it. By embodying this invisibility, she presents an anxious absence of her own. Moreover, as Shilton (2013: 120) notes: ‘the theme of absence is central to many of Sedira’s works, evoking visually the erasure of Algeria and its diaspora from French national memory and identity, as well as the “in-between” space sometimes felt to be occupied by French people of immigrant descent.’ This play between presence and absence – assertion and selfeffacement – is mirrored in the work’s title. In a manner akin to deconstruction, the word “or” renders linguistically the image’s visual différance: the never-ending deferral of meaning that Mary’s hybridity as a religious and cultural icon posits. Suddenly at once both Muslim and Christian, holy and profane, two cultures and traditions are fused in the same space but coexist in

9 ­ 2

Representing ethnicity

tension with their differences unresolved. The work’s inherent playfulness, coupled with the hybridity it champions, ensures that its meaning cannot be definitively fixed. Such a state of flux is further suggested by the self-portraits’ setting. The haik Sedira wears may be Algerian custom, but the blanket whiteness that envelopes her figure cannot be placed: potentially in Algeria, France, the UK – or elsewhere. She inhabits a non-space, perhaps even a utopia, that is both everywhere and nowhere at once. Similarly, Sedira herself cannot be positioned personally: at once Muslim (and Christian), Algerian (and French – or Franco-Algerian). In doing so, she exemplifies – and parodies – how portraiture and particularly the photographic portrait are always culturally coded, for as Clarke (1992: 3) maintains: the portrait’s meaning exists within wider codes of meaning: of space, of posture, of dress, of marks, of social distinction. In short, the portrait’s meaning exists within a world of significance which has, in turn, already framed and fixed the individual. The photograph thus reflects the terms by which the culture itself confers status and meaning on the subject, while the subject as image hovers problematically between exterior and interior ­identities.

Sedira knows this all too well; her veiled figure – both humble and humorous – plays on such uses of portraiture as she herself hovers in the triptych. The photographs’ nondescript setting also has the potential to place both herself and the Virgin Mary in a peculiarly Muslim space. As El Guindi (1999: 77–8) elaborates, quoting Sciama (1993): A distinctive quality of the Islamic construction of space is how it turns a public area into a private space, without the entry of a stranger. It enables ordinary Muslims temporarily to convert any worldly place (street, shop, aircraft aisle) into a sacred space set apart, simply by marking it and occupying it in a ritually pure state facing Makka … It also enables women and men to enjoy privacy and be in public.

While it is unclear whether Sedira – or the Virgin – is deep in prayer, the fact that she/they face three different directions and that the images have a distinctly meditative air mean they could well evoke

Representing people of ­Algerian heritage

93

the religious. Indeed, the veil itself – in Islam just as Christianity ­– signifies sanctity. The triptych could therefore be read as a challenge to the Western (and particularly French republican) binary drawn between public and private space and an illustration of how Islamic culture can allow the two to remain coterminous. In many ways a simple statement of affirmation – the piece was conceived as a reaction by Sedira against the demonisation of the veil in sections of the French and British press as a symbol of  oppression  – Sedira’s triptych deftly weaves together aspects of gender, culture and religion to encourage viewers to consider the veil otherwise. Significantly, the way Sedira mimics the processes of anthropology and knowingly refracts the viewer’s gaze bestows an important degree of agency upon the veiled woman – an agency that many French commentators still struggle to ­attribute to women who veil. While elements of performance and autobiography are found throughout much of Sedira’s oeuvre, other works have focused explicitly on testimony: in Mother, Father and I (2003) Sedira shares the camera with her parents. By videoing her parents talking about their experiences during the Algerian War, she herself acts as mediator between them and those outside their family, revealing the extent to which private “stories” are also very public histories; ones that until the 1990s France largely did not want to hear. On one wall of the installation space hang two screens placed close together. Projected onto them are two videos Sedira made with her parents at their home in Paris. She interviewed them individually during two separate sittings, enquiring about their lives in Algeria during the war, their migration to Paris and how they feel about living away from Algeria. Their stories are harrowing and compelling. Viewers witness them relive one of the most traumatic periods of their lives: when they moved from the pain of war in Algeria to the pain of life in France, where both were met with routine racism and discrimination. Although filmed separately alone sitting at the same table, the arrangement of both screens alongside one another reunites them. While the left screen shows Sedira’s father seated to the left of the kitchen table, the right screen shows her mother seated to its right;

9 ­ 4

Representing ethnicity

and the empty table alongside them stretches off camera – giving the impression that it meets in the middle. Filming each parent separately may have been shrewd: one suspects that alone they tell their daughter details they otherwise would not. Moreover, analysis and comparison of their individual narratives reveals just how gendered their experiences of history have been. While at certain moments during the video pieces of their testimonies do overlap and intertwine, at several points it is the contrast between their experiences during specific moments of their lives that is most striking. This is demonstrated during the sections where they simultaneously recount their wartime experiences. Here, as Sedira’s father talks of the dangerous missions he joined as part of the resistance movement, her mother tells the story of the women left behind: left at the mercy of French army rape squads roaming around towns and villages. She recalls one terrifying incident when she only narrowly avoided being raped by covering her face with ashes and pinching Farida, her baby daughter, so she began crying. Shortly afterwards the differences between their experiences become manifest yet again: as her father recounts his departure for work in France – and how he vomited from seasickness on the boat to Marseille – her mother remembers how their relatives were tortured under police ­interrogation by having soap forced down their throats. The power of such testimony is heightened by the medium through which Sedira conveys it. Using video in such a domestic space evokes home movies and much of the piece’s force derives from the fact that her parents recount their troubled life history openly to viewers from the privacy of their own home. The revelations that their testimony brings also break the decades of silence within these walls, which had previously surrounded these subjects in their own family (Sotiriadi 2004: 5). It also confirms Bhabha’s (1994: 9) assertion that: The recesses of the domestic space become sites for history’s most intricate invasions. In that displacement, the borders between home and world become confused; and, uncannily, the private and the public become part of each other, forcing upon us a vision that is as divided as it is disorientating.

Representing people of ­Algerian heritage

95

As here, it is in the home that the ‘unhomeliness … of extraterritorial and cross-cultural initiations’ (Bhabha 1994: 9) makes its presence felt. The quality of the video also adds a further sense of authenticity: the occasionally unclear sound and natural lighting lend rawness to the footage, despite the multiple fades between each segment. Other features also suggest the documentary: for instance, the Arabic in which her parents speak is subtitled at the bottom of each screen and the camera remains unobtrusive and static, giving both parents space. This, nevertheless, is not a work that could ever be mistaken for being objective: opposite them is a third screen simultaneously playing Sedira’s own response to the interviews; filmed while she watched the videos of her parents she had made. Given the importance of self-reflexivity in Sedira’s work, it is worth considering her response. Mute throughout, there is not the interaction or bilingual exchange found elsewhere in her oeuvre such as when she interviews her mother in Retelling Histories (2003) or converses with both her mother and daughter in Mother Tongue (2002). Here rendered silent, the installation posits her as the quiet and obedient child before her parents: an effect duly emphasised by placing both parents alongside each other. Outnumbered by them and positioned directly opposite, within the installation she figuratively has nowhere to hide. Moreover, Sedira’s facial expressions throughout suggest that she is shocked by what she hears and is left shaken by her parents’ stories. Often pale and withdrawn, Sedira skilfully restages her reaction upon hearing these stories for the very first time. In fact, it is precisely this restaging of her reaction that detaches the installation from the realm of the supposedly pure and unmediated objectivity traditionally attributed to documentary. Although apparently not mimicking a reaction to her parents’ testimonies, it remains unclear how familiar she had become with them by the time she filmed herself. If she appears to smile and cry in synch with them, this must mean that she watches the edited version of the two testimonies, throwing into doubt the immediacy of her reaction, since not only did she hear them speak when first filming, she also edited the final videos she watched (McGonagle and Sedira 2006: 620). When questioned on the matter, Sedira made

9 ­ 6

Representing ethnicity

no claim for authenticity in this regard and openly admitted that the footage of herself was not shot simultaneously. Knowledge of this does, however, mediate her response. In contrast to the uncertain temporality of her reaction, the temporality of her parents’ testimonies appears much more clearcut. This is despite the fact that, equally, Sedira directly intervenes between the filming of her parents’ interviews and their viewership. Although present in the room when filming them originally, for the purposes of the installation, Sedira erases herself from them totally by editing out her questions to them and only allowing their voices to be heard. The fact that Sedira films them telling these stories for the very first time is clearly more significant. Given her dedication on the videos’ opening credits (‘to my parents, who told me these stories for the first time’), Sedira accentuates their importance too and it is this sense of the unrehearsed and unscripted that lends the footage added ontological weight. Rather than record stilted pieces recounting often-told tales from the past, the viewer’s knowledge that her parents are sharing family secrets and experiences never before spoken arguably creates a powerful mediating effect. The breadth of emotions her parents display and their visible discomfort builds a sense of monumentality to the words they utter. Viewers watch them narrate defining moments of their lives with remarkable candour and openness and the breaking of their silence seems cathartic. Nevertheless, by the nature of the installation’s arrangement, more than three people are involved. The position of viewers before these private revelations should also be considered. Despite the large screens and the fact that they surround viewers within this space, the inclusion of two benches in the centre between the screens openly invites visitors to sit down before them; two screens show Sedira’s parents directly in front of the benches and a third screen shows Sedira behind. Once seated, viewers too become part of this triangle as, by sitting with their backs to Sedira but face-on to her parents, they adopt the position of Sedira herself. The fact that viewers are invited to sit down means that the distance between them and the screens showing her parents grows. Visitors are obliged to look up to Sedira’s parents in order

Representing people of ­Algerian heritage

97

to watch them and, as the parents loom above, arguably become spatially infantilised by the installation. In spite of this, it is not an authoritarian relationship in which visitors are placed: although large, the screens do not dominate or overawe. Moreover, Sedira facilitates the comprehension of their narratives to viewers unfamiliar with the dialect they speak. On screen the Arabic is subtitled into English and on either side of both benches speakers are placed at ear level; the left bench in front of her father emitting his speech; the one on the right her mother’s. So while viewers can attempt to watch both – or even all three – of the screens at the same time, they can choose whose speech they want to hear. Essentially, then, this is a familial space which welcomes visitors, inviting them to sit down, to contemplate and understand what her parents say; but arguably visitors must sit down in order to do so. To stand in the middle of these large screens in the centre of the installation is a distinctly different experience. Since both videos of her parents are played at the same volume, their individual speech often merges into each other’s, which, coupled with Sedira’s father’s occasional lapses into French, results in a babble of indiscernible speech and languages regardless of viewers’ linguistic competencies. Mother, Father and I implies that the lives and experiences of those Algerian migrants who left for France around the time of the Algerian War should be recorded and remembered and that it is their children – many born and brought up in France – who will act as mediators between the people of both nations; at last allowing their parents to speak. Here the personal is inevitably political; and it is precisely because the first generation of migrants still has no prominent voice in the public sphere of daily life in France that it is in such an innocuous, domestic setting that the past is reclaimed. This echoes Bhabha’s (1994: 13) concept of the ‘in-betweenness’ of the diasporic subject where (here with reference to literature): Private and public, past and present, the psyche and the social develop an interstitial intimacy. It is an intimacy that questions binary divisions through which such spheres of social experience are often spatially opposed. These spheres of life are linked through

9 ­ 8

Representing ethnicity

an ‘in-between’ temporality that takes the measure of dwelling at home, while producing an image of the world of history. This is the moment of aesthetic distance that provides the narrative with a double edge, which like the coloured South African subject represents a hybridity, a difference ‘within’, a subject that inhabits the rim of an ‘in-between’ reality. And the inscription of this borderline existence inhabits a stillness of time and a strangeness of framing that creates the discursive ‘image’ at the crossroads of history and literature, bridging the home and the world.

The intimacy of the private space provides the forum for the expression of public, historical events; it is through this very different kind of home movie that hidden histories of Algerian and Franco-Algerian experience are finally revealed. The final work by Sedira to be discussed is her Silent Sight (2000) where, unlike From the Series Self-Portraits, Self-Portrait or the Virgin Mary (2000), Sedira returns the gaze: inviting viewers to bear her stare throughout the entirety of her 12-minute 16mm film. Reversing the cinematic convention of placing a thin black strip at the top and bottom of the screen, Sedira replaces them with two white ones. Between them a pair of eyes, shot in black and white, fills the whole screen. As the spoken narrative eventually makes clear, the woman whose eyes are filmed is Sedira herself as she recounts her memories of childhood when accompanying her mother from France to Algiers. Sedira evokes her thoughts and feelings as, upon landing at the Algerian airport, she watched her mother veil herself. These white bands across the screen therefore stand in for the veil her mother would wear, which itself was white: again adhering to Algerian custom and unlike the black chador that, Sedira has claimed, the Western media prefer to show (McGonagle and Sedira 2006: 624). Watching the film is an uncomfortable experience. Although (at least in the exhibition in question) not shown on a screen of cinematic proportions, the projection size of her eyes makes them startling; surely immediately unsettling any viewer’s gaze. With one’s eyes overwhelmed by the huge pupils staring out towards the viewer and the screen’s relative proximity within the gallery space, it becomes physically difficult to watch. Granted no relief

Representing people of ­Algerian heritage

99

from these captivating eyes – no shots away, cuts or obvious editing during the piece – an unrelenting tension automatically builds between the viewer and the screen. Viewers surely feel the weight of her gaze, and the sensations that viewing this work can produce recalls Marks’s arguments with regard to haptic cinema, where ‘the eyes themselves function like organs of touch’ (2000: 162) and vision itself constitutes a multisensory and bodily experience. The film not only allows Sedira to bestow a belated agency upon her mother’s gaze. It is ostensibly a very personal account of her relationship between herself as a child and her mother’s veiling. Through the monologue and music that accompany the grainy black and white images, Sedira conjures up a series of complex feelings and emotions as viewers watch and hear her articulate how she felt as she watched her mother put on her veil. The film starts as if a dreamlike sequence: the screen opens with the only shot it will show, a large pair of eyes. Yet at the beginning these eyes remain closed and seem so peaceful that Sedira might be sleeping. To the discordant strains of a bowed piano and flute, the grainy 16mm film conjures up the aura of a memory: fuzzy and distant, yet clear and penetrating. This look at the past is neither joyful nor nostalgic. The overwhelming sentiment Sedira evokes is anxiety. In her monologue she remembers how, once her mother would put on her veil, she feared no longer being able to recognise her: with her mother’s face suddenly as if disfigured, the process of identification and recognition between them was interrupted. Feeling a great fear of confusing someone else with her mother, Sedira’s anxiety turns into mistrust, even asking herself whether she no longer loved her any more as a result. The emotion in Sedira’s eyes during such segments is in keeping with the narrative: Sedira suddenly resembles the child she remembers, both scared at the thought of losing her mother and seemingly at a loss to comprehend what surrounds her. Her remembrance of this experience recalls strong and powerful emotions. Although Sedira visually recreates the spectacle of the veil her mother would wear, it is striking how she refers to it verbally. Despite the fact that the whole monologue centres on its wearing, the word ‘veil’ itself is never uttered. Instead, Sedira only

1­ 00

Representing ethnicity

refers to the garment as ‘it’ (stating, for example, that ‘she would change into it, she would become it’). It remains unclear whether this is because, as a child, she did not know what to call it or because she dared not speak its name. The strange impersonality of this ‘it’ – referred to as if a foreign body or object – heightens the sense of estrangement and disorientation Sedira evokes visually and aurally, as one sees it dominate her thoughts and unsettle her relationship with her mother: potentially suggesting she feels alienated by its symbolism. It would, nevertheless, be misleading to assert that Sedira views this process as an entirely negative experience. On the contrary, during certain parts of the monologue, she stresses how happy and at ease her mother felt wearing it; counteracting critics who see its wearing as solely synonymous with subjugation. Furthermore, Sedira speaks of the veil as having ‘protected’ her and asserts its centrality in both their daily lives: ‘it was part of the home, part of her home, part of my home’. Despite this defence of veiling – and Sedira’s own comments that she wanted to make a film that celebrated its wearing – one can read against Sedira and detect a note of ambiguity in her feelings by the film’s end. With almost a sense of resignation, the film’s monologue ends with her flatly stating: ‘I just accepted it’, which, quickly followed by a fade-out, heralds the end. Her choice not to elaborate further consequently ends in enigma: her acceptance could either have been willing or not. Nevertheless, during the film Sedira acknowledges the contingency of her childhood experience and asserts that she can only comprehend now what was happening then. Surmising what her mother would say in response to her questions, she suggests: ‘Perhaps her only answer would be that I would understand later.’ The significance of this point in the film is accentuated by a sudden pause in the accompanying music and Sedira’s sudden turning of her gaze towards the centre of the camera. Staring right back at viewers, she stresses the importance of hindsight to this experience and, by doing so, suggests that it is at this precise moment in time, during the time of the film itself, that she gains this knowledge – a knowledge so important that the accompanying music must cease in order for its full significance to be realised.

Representing people of ­Algerian heritage

101

This raises the question of the ontological and epistemological status of the film. For this is not merely a look back at the past but its very recreation. A tripling, in fact, takes place here: Sedira at once her mother (because she visually recreates the veil she would wear), herself as a child (because her expression and eyes mirror the worries she describes having felt) and herself now re-enacting those childhood memories. The lines between performance and autobiography become blurred: when the viewer sees Sedira look scared, it is unclear whether this is how she feels now reflecting upon it as an adult, as her mother then, or as a child witnessing her mother’s transformation. Sedira’s staging of this memory makes it impossible to distinguish between them and it seems that it is only through making this film – by re-membering the past – that she can understand her feelings and emotions of the time. Perhaps this is why the pregnant pause comes at its precise moment: it is by making this film now, with the benefit of hindsight, that she understands. Or that it is only by dressing up and performing as her mother that this insight is gained. This confluence of characters becomes a vivid evocation of the thought of Minh-ha (1989: 94), who has criticised the concept of a fully present subjectivity, instead arguing that subjectivity should be conceived more as multiple presences: ‘I’ is, … not a unified subject, a fixed identity, or that solid mass covered with layers of superficialities one has gradually to peel off before one can see its true face. ‘I’ is, itself, infinite layers. Its complexity can hardly be conveyed through such typographic conventions as I, i, or I/i. Thus, I/i am compelled by the will to say/unsay, to resort to the entire gamut of personal pronouns to stay near this fleeting and static essence of Not-I. Whether I accept it or not, the natures of I, i, you, s/he, We, we, they, and wo/man constantly overlap. They all display a necessary ambivalence, for the line dividing I and Not-I, is and them, or him and her is not (cannot) always (be) as clear as we would like it to be. Despite our desperate, eternal attempt to separate, contain, and mend, ­categories always leak. (original emphases)

Sedira’s film is certainly replete with such multiple presences. Ultimately, it suggests that she acknowledges that the haik connects her with her mother, then and now, and that her mother’s

1­ 02

Representing ethnicity

experience is inextricably fused with her own. In doing so, it similarly challenges conventional binaries between self and Other. France as palimpsest: Leïla Sebbar’s Mes Algéries en France (2004), Journal de mes Algéries en France (2005) and ­Voyages en Algéries autour de ma chambre (2008) We now turn to consider an important trilogy of books by the leading French writer of Algerian heritage, Leïla Sebbar. Although best known for her works of literary fiction, the status and importance of images have always remained a running theme throughout her oeuvre, and she has frequently collaborated with photographers and illustrators by providing accompanying texts to their work. Moreover, as Stafford (2010: 127) notes – and chiming with the aspects of Sedira’s practice analysed previously – ‘Sebbar’s work is fundamentally concerned with the visual, aiming to deconstruct voyeurism, subverting the gaze and looking specifically at how this affects women, especially women of non-French extraction.’ The release in the 2000s of this series of three books – Mes Algéries en France (2004), Journal de mes Algéries en France (2005) and Voyages en Algéries autour de ma chambre (2008) – was particularly significant, however, because it heralded Sebbar’s most sustained and lengthy engagement with images and the ways in which visual culture informs our understanding of FrancoAlgerian links. As will become clear, across these three richly illustrated works, Sebbar probes the diverse connections that continue to join France and Algeria together in the present-day era via the very personal and idiosyncratic journey she undertakes though the shared history of both countries and of her own childhood in Algeria and adult life in France. The distinctive approach adopted by Sebbar is heralded by the first book’s front cover, where a series of images emanating from a variety of different media and eras are placed together around its edges. All cropped so as to create portraits of a range of figures, all of whom are linked in some way to both France and Algeria, the diversity of sources from which they hail is indicative of the wide inspiration taken by Sebbar in compiling her volume, and of the

Representing people of ­Algerian heritage

103

extent to which she clearly sees the lives and experiences of both public and private figures as profoundly imbricated in her vision of Franco-Algerian history and memory. Readers therefore find not only images of figures such as the former French footballer Zinedine Zidane and Algerian anti-colonial leader Abd el-Kader, but also photographs taken of Sebbar as a child and of her father in his youth, and the tessellation of these fourteen portraits suggests the book comprises a mosaic of elements  which together form a greater whole. In addition, the range of colours shown and mixture of original media reproduced – including a variety of genres across painting, photography and bande dessinée –  arguably create a playful air. This sense of the ludic, which has been a hallmark of much of Sebbar’s wider oeuvre, is further connoted by the rectangular loop they form together, which recalls a board game’s squares. Whereas the centrality of the book’s title upon the front cover and the fact that its first word is the possessive determiner ‘Mes’ reaffirm the personal nature of this exploration of Franco-Algerian links, the strange grammar of ‘Algéries’ reflects the plurality of approaches and understandings that Sebbar traces inside. In addition, the subtitle ‘Carnet de voyages’ automatically suggests the notebook style that follows and the evident importance of the theme of travel. As the following sections will show, via her imbrication of a diverse range of images and many d ­ ifferent voices, Sebbar ultimately presents France and Algeria as inextricably linked by both the colonial era and the many postcolonial ties they share, with metropolitan France positioned as a palimpsest indelibly marked by its associations with Algeria. As the privileging of different people’s faces upon the front cover indicates, a major emphasis in the book – and across the trilogy as a whole – is on human experience and the ways in which colonial and postcolonial Franco-Algerian links can be illuminated by exploring people’s lives, memories and testimonies. The opening section, ‘Portrait de famille. Les écoles’, duly heralds this by immersing readers in the different worlds inhabited by a young man and woman on different sides of the Mediterranean. Although not stated explicitly per se, the section’s title and inclusion in it of photographs of her childhood and pictures of her father in his role as teacher in 1930s’ Algeria clearly infer that

1­ 04

Representing ethnicity

these protagonists are Sebbar’s French mother and Algerian father, whom readers follow as they meet for the first time at an evening dance in France. This account of their subsequent life together in French Algeria is undoubtedly facilitated by the use of free indirect speech and an omniscient narrator: both recurrent aspects of Sebbar’s wider oeuvre and ones that afford readers many insights into the wide cast of characters often featured in works across it. The implication that the thoughts and feelings of the man and woman described are those of her younger parents – and ones presumably partially if not wholly reimagined by Sebbar – is in keeping with the book’s clear autobiographical focus and introduces a blurring of boundaries between the fictive and non-fictive also found elsewhere in Sebbar’s writing. As such, it recalls Lejeune’s (1998: 21) argument that ‘l’autobiographie n’est qu’une fiction produite dans des conditions particulières’ (autobiography is but a fiction produced in particular conditions): an impression strengthened by the resemblance in tone and format of such passages to Sebbar’s earlier works of fiction and the presence of the same distinctive writing style. The inclusion in a later section of the book of an earlier voice from Sebbar’s oeuvre – and perhaps her most famous –  further augments this aspect. The section ‘Shérazade à Julien’ (2004: 73–5) features a letter from the character Shérazade, the lead protagonist from the trilogy of books (1982, 1985, 1991) which helped establish Sebbar’s renown at a time when literature that interrogated the experience of French people of Maghrebi heritage was growing and attracting increasing interest from critics and readers. A distinctive aspect of that trilogy was the way in which Sebbar wove together different strands of Franco-Algerian history and included within her narrative a diverse multiplicity of voices. In Mes Algéries en France (2004), Sebbar once again positions herself as a conduit for a wide variety of different perspectives and experiences and, by explicitly incorporating stories from a range of people, weaves a broad and complex portrait of Franco-Algerian relations. Such an approach is not without links with other Francophone writers of Algerian heritage who have also incorporated a range of historical voices into an autobiographical – or autobiographically

Representing people of ­Algerian heritage

105

inspired – narrative. A key example here is Djebar’s L’Amour, la fantasia (1985), which shares some resemblances with Sebbar’s Mes Algéries en France, especially with regard to how historical elements and references are used to help generate many voices in the text and complicate any conventional notion of either identity generally or of the identity of an author of an apparently autobiographical text. As such, Harrison’s analysis of Djebar (1985) equally resonates here, which argued that the self that Djebar expresses or writes exists only in dialectic with history. History, so to speak, writes itself into and constitutes the self. The ‘voice’ embodied in the text is correspondingly composite and fluctuating, to a degree that distances it from any cohesive sense of self or identity, the latter emerging as a kind of fiction … Reading and writing (of fiction, history, or for that matter theory) become part of the process through which identity or the sense of self is constantly sought and ‘found’ (2003: 132, original emphasis).

Several sections found throughout Sebbar’s trilogy also illustrate this process well. A key example can be found in Mes Algéries en France (2004: 30–4) when Sebbar discusses her father’s teacher training and career in Algeria. Here Sebbar skilfully imbricates wider historical details into her family’s personal narrative, which stresses the clear symbiosis in her book between micro and macro levels of history, and her emphasis upon the importance of lived experience for understanding Franco-Algerian links. This is strengthened by her striking use of images in this section. The insertion of a diverse range of images (ibid.: 34–41), including portraits of her father as a young trainee teacher in 1932 and with schoolchildren at his first posting in El-Bordj in 1935, as part of a sequence that includes contemporaneous postcards showing school scenes in Algeria and children’s textbooks used in class, help weave his life and career into the wider continuum created by this collation of images. The final text and images of this section (ibid.: 42–5) confirm this continuum as a key way in which Sebbar views – and envisions – links between France and Algeria across both the colonial and postcolonial era. There Sebbar verbally and visually brings these two spaces and times into dialogue by including photographs of school

1­ 06

Representing ethnicity

buildings in France whose colonial-era architecture automatically recall the images seen earlier of similar schools in French Algeria. These rhizomatic links created between images taken in different places and eras further strengthen the sense of ‘transcoloniality’ (Thomas 2007: 81) that frequently permeates this book and the wider trilogy. The sequencing of images and sections elsewhere in Mes Algéries en France also reinforce this sense of a transcolonial continuum across her montage of images and text: a prominent example includes the photographs and accompanying texts that feature the aforementioned footballer Zinedine Zidane (Sebbar 2004: 109); the schoolteacher Maurice Audin infamously arrested and disappeared during the Algerian War (ibid.: 110); and celebrated ethnologist Germaine Tillion (ibid.: 112–14) across a very short span of pages. In her accompanying preface, Perrot (2004: 9) argues that in Mes Algéries en France ‘l’image compte autant que les mots’ (images count as much as words), and accordingly, as Sebbar’s trilogy progresses, it is noticeable how increasingly prominent images become. Striking too is how often these images – a­ longside the text that accompanies them – connote the tactile and feature objects, such as postcards (ibid.: 101), orange wrappers (227) and various ephemera on the desk where Sebbar writes (189). Aside from reminding readers of the importance of materiality in visual culture more widely – as also seen earlier in aspects of Sedira’s work – it additionally underlines the multisensory nature of Sebbar’s evocation of Franco-Algerian links. Furthermore, the emotions that viewing images can provoke are also foregrounded by Sebbar in her recounting of an exchange with the filmmaker Agnès Varda. After apparently seeing Sebbar cry upon contemplating a photograph showing a group of Algerian women dressed in white haiks seated together beside a cemetery grave and Sebbar stating that ‘Je sais que je ne mourrai pas avec ces femmes’ (2004: 100) (I know that I will not die with these women), Varda asserted that Sebbar would have preferred to have had ‘une mère arabe’ (an Arab mother). This idea, however, was rejected by Sebbar who stressed her happiness that her mother is French, speaks French and comes from France. Sebbar subsequently concludes that:

Representing people of ­Algerian heritage

107

Je pense que mes larmes disaient la séparation irrémédiable d’avec la mère, les soeurs, les femmes du peuple de mon père, les Algériennes que j’appelle « mes soeurs étrangères », je les voudrais soeurs de sang, de terre et de langue mais je reste étrangère, sans la gloire d’être l’Étrangère (2004: 100–2) (I think that my tears expressed my irreparable separation from the mother, sisters and women of my father’s people, the Algerian women I call “my foreign sisters”. I would like to be their sisters through blood, land and language but I remain foreign from them, without the glory of being the Foreign Woman).

Sebbar’s statement here ostensibly corroborates Roy’s (2009: 285) argument that ‘there is no single Other identity visible in Sebbar’s texts. Alterity is both multiple and a transforming force, rather than a static identity.’ While Sebbar herself may undoubtedly well agree, here her musing on her own personal sense of identification seems more melancholic than positive. As Derrida (1996: 27) argued when reflecting on the cultural and historical meaning of Franco-Maghrebi identities, despite the opportunities that hyphenated identities may afford, Le silence de ce trait d’union ne pacifie ou n’apaise rien, aucun tourment, aucune torture. Il ne fera jamais taire leur mémoire. Il pourrait même aggraver la terreur, les lésions et les blessures. Un trait d’union ne suffit jamais à couvrir les protestations, les cris de colère ou de souffrance, le bruit des armes, des avions et des bombes. (The silence of that hyphen does not pacify or appease anything, not a single torment, not a single torture. It will never silence their memory. It could even worsen the terror, the lesions, and the wounds. A hyphen is never enough to conceal protests, cries of anger or suffering, the noise of weapons, airplanes, and bombs) (Derrida 1998: 11)

Indeed, the tone adopted across the trilogy is at times far from celebratory in its examination of such links and shared history, and subjects such as the use of torture during the Algerian War, the fate of the harkis (Algerian soldiers who served in the French army) following decolonisation and social status of chibanis (retired male Maghrebi migrants) in contemporary France all feature prominently. With regard to the latter, here Sebbar’s

1­ 08

Representing ethnicity

l­iterary style and approach arguably provide an effective means with which to verbalise some of the experiences of such men, whose presence remains fleeting at best across contemporary French visual culture more widely. The sadness expressed here on their behalf by Sebbar and the generally mournful air are mirrored in the series of images of gravestones and cemeteries found within this section (2004: 191) and later towards the book’s end in the section ‘Le Champ des morts’ (ibid.: 206–17). The prominence with which political concerns are raised  – whether from the Algerian War or during the postcolonial era  –  and the links made by Sebbar between these two periods of history also recall other characterisations of the specificities of Franco-Algerian relations. These includes works such as Silverstein (2004), which emphasised the transnational nature of cultural and political affiliations between people in both countries, and the important role played by different diasporas in mediating our understanding of how different groups linked to both countries today identify and situate themselves. Balibar (1998), meanwhile, pursued further the idea of postcolonial France and Algeria as one transnational space by terming it ‘l’ensemble franco-­algérien’ (ibid.: 81), bound together inextricably by the many connections shared between both populations through patterns of migration and diaspora. Furthermore, rather than see the two spaces as separated by borders, Balibar instead posited this transnational space itself as a ‘frontière-monde’ (ibid.), a border zone of sorts that rather than separates instead facilitates contact and exchange. Although the vision of this border zone certainly champions the chances and opportunities that encounters across it can provide, the very real obstacles that block movement between the two nation-states for many people remain a blind spot within Balibar’s vision. The subsequent instalment of Sebbar’s trilogy, Journal de mes Algéries en France (2005), contained a series of diary entries covering the period of its predecessor’s writing, from March 2004– January 2005. It once again brought together text and image in order to explore diverse aspects of the colonial and postcolonial links between France and Algeria; the recurrent references to the many different people encountered by Sebbar during this period

Representing people of ­Algerian heritage

109

and to their shared conversations further the impression that her trilogy acts as a channel for a myriad of voices and experiences. Moreover, as Place-Verghnes (2011: 110) notes – and as the earlier quotation above that made reference to her ‘soeurs algériennes’ might suggest –  ‘for Sebbar … autobiography is a collective endeavour’. A striking example of this occurs in Sebbar’s recounting of a series of conversations she had with a reader (2005: 25), whom she first encounters in a Paris bookshop and it later transpires is the brother of one of her sister’s friends. Claiming to have grown up in the same quartier as Sebbar in French Algeria and to have known her father well, he also tells her that he has read her book Je ne parle pas la langue de mon père (2003). Sebbar (2005: 25) then recounts how he later reprises their conversation: A minuit, il téléphone chez moi. Il me tutoie: « Ton père je l’aimais, j’étais comme son fils. Toi tu pouvais apprendre l’arabe dans la rue avec les enfants du quartier, tu ne voulais pas. J’étais dans le bus, tu ne me voyais pas, tu ne me regardais jamais. Tu nous as oubliés. Tu as oublié le pays et nous, les Algériens… » Il téléphone à nouveau le lendemain matin: « Vous êtes une fille de mon quartier. J’ai lu vos livres. Le Clos Salembier, c’est pas ce que vous dites, mais vous êtes la fille de Mohamed, vous êtes la fille de mon quartier, je vous aime bien. Bonne journée. » (At midnight, he phones me at home. He uses a familiar (tu) tone: ‘I loved your father, I was like his son. You, you could have learned Arabic in the street with the local kids but you didn’t want to. I was on the bus but you couldn’t see me, you never looked at me. You have forgotten us. You have forgotten Algeria and us, the Algerians…’ He phones again the next morning: ‘You’re a local girl. I’ve read your books. Le Clos Salembier isn’t how you say it is, but you are Mohamed’s daughter, you’re a local girl, I do love you. Have a good day.’)

Even if the way in which these encounters are relayed by Sebbar subtly stresses this man’s unconventional if not potentially sinister behaviour – telephoning her late at night at home and then again the next morning – the inclusion of this dissenting voice is surely not accidental and briefly reminds readers that, although

1­ 10

Representing ethnicity

the trilogy naturally foregrounds Sebbar’s own memories and interpretations, they may well not be shared by all. Her incorporation of this exchange also emphasises the contingency of experience generally and how consequently a plurality of opinions may well exist, further valorised by the frequency with which the book directly transcribes the voices of others. The book’s diary format also provides a convenient way for Sebbar to weave references to a range of current affairs and contemporary events in France into her wider narrative. Readers therefore discover entries that cite reports of attacks on French military graves of Muslim soldiers (Sebbar 2005: 49–50), exhibitions held to commemorate colonial soldiers in the French army (ibid.: 51), as well as different aspects of Franco-Algerian relations evoked on television news (77), radio (84), and in the press (91). Such references serve to emphasise the timeliness of Sebbar’s investigation into the traces of Algeria in France, and of the legacies of colonial conflict for both countries. Once again, Sebbar’s work provides a conduit for such aspects and encourages readers to contemplate their significance while the continued engagement with both micro and macro levels of history stresses the complexity of Franco-Algerian links, especially with regard to their human aspects. Time and again, readers learn how profoundly people’s lives have been touched by historical events and how much the legacy of such events can endure decades later. As established above, the inclusion of fictional characters and imagined episodes in Mes Algéries en France complicated commonsensical notions of autobiography and disrupted attempts neatly to equate Sebbar throughout with the apparent subject of the focalisation deployed. In doing so, it recalled Sebbar’s observation that ‘la fiction, c’est la suture qui masque la blessure, l’écart, entre les deux rives’ (Huston and Sebbar 1986: 147) (fiction is the suture that masks the wound, the gap, between two shores). Nevertheless, the comparative lack of such fictional elements in Journal de mes Algéries en France lends weight to Vassallo’s (2012: 114) argument that the trilogy signals an increasing ability for Sebbar to come to terms with her and her family’s past and interrogate her own sense of self via more explicitly autobiographical writing rather than chiefly via the

Representing people of ­Algerian heritage

111

characters found in her earlier fiction. It is certainly noticeable that, as the trilogy progresses, the prominence of fiction generally diminishes, allowing an even greater range of non-fictional voices to be incorporated. This arguably reaches its climax in the third instalment of Sebbar’s trilogy, Voyages en Algéries autour de ma chambre (2008). Despite its distinctive title and cover – showing part of an image reproduced inside and presumably taken inside said room (ibid.: 9) – it quickly becomes clear that readers will not solely be confined to an exploration of the books, images and ephemera shown there in Sebbar’s home. Instead, they serve as inspiration for a further wide-ranging exploration of multiple notions of Algeria, which once again provides a striking channel for a variety of different voices and experiences. Accordingly, whereas its predecessor significantly focused attention on Sebbar’s personal life and sense of identity via the broad use of a journal format, the even larger scope of this third instalment of the trilogy –  in spite of Sebbar describing it herself as ‘une sorte d’archéologie de mes fictions’ (10) (a sort of archaeology of my fictional works) – allows further space to be carved for the first-person testimonies of others: the extensive entries for words such as ‘colon’ (62–74), ‘instituteur-institutrice’ (104–12) and ‘Parmentier’ (139–44) providing three cases in point. Moreover, although freely admitting that the range of entries included within the book’s ‘abécédaire’ format is arbitrary and based upon her own highly personal choice (11), this idiosyncratic exploration of links between France and Algeria is frequently complemented by the inclusion of a series of entries from a variety of figures, well-known or not, in some way connected to both countries and their shared history. The fact that many such contributions are mainly reproduced in handwritten form, signed and dated by their authors, once again emphasises the materiality of the many objects frequently catalogued across this trilogy, as well as stressing a sense of the tactile so present in the recurrent evocation of memories and experiences in multisensory terms. Appropriately enough, given its importance in Sebbar’s life and wider oeuvre, her birthplace, Aflou, inspires the first entry to feature such handwritten contributions (2008: 15–23) and

1­ 12

Representing ethnicity

provides an illustrative example of the methodological approach taken elsewhere in the book. There readers see Sebbar bring together within her own prose a diverse range of different constituent groups linked to the town and area – including pieds-noirs, harkis and French army conscripts – along with colonial-era postcards, vernacular photography and portraits of schoolchildren and wartime life in the classroom. The inclusion of two handwritten entries by other contributors further supplements the polyphony of experiences transcribed, naturally including those of Sebbar. Furthermore, her comment that ‘dire “Aflou”, c’est dire chaque fois une histoire singulière qui n’est pas la mienne, mais je suis là absente’ (ibid.: 16) (saying the word ‘Aflou’ always evokes a particular history that is not mine, but although absent I remain there) creates an intriguing image itself that in many ways epitomises this third instalment of her trilogy as a whole by acknowledging her temporal distance from the period evoked, the plurality of perspectives foregrounded throughout her book, and her persistent authorial presence – and that of her own personal experience –  even when histories other than her own are recounted. As Jones (2010: 47) noted, Sebbar’s emphasis on ‘interwoven links between France and Algeria is reinforced by the abundance of references to sewing, embroidery and weaving in Mes Algéries en France’. In both the second and third volumes of her trilogy, this emphasis remains and duly recalls Lionnet’s characterisation of Sebbar’s earlier Shérazade trilogy as one where ‘Sebbar weaves her own tapestry using an esthetics of bricolage that carries over into her style of writing’ (1992–93: 115; original emphasis). As the preceding analysis has shown, however, the tapestry woven across the trilogy by Sebbar is not one that seeks to occlude the tensions which still characterise many aspects of Franco-Algerian relations, or the pain and sorrow that the legacies of conflict have brought. If proof were needed of how raw emotions remain regarding this area, the experiences of the artist Christine Peyret during 2012 are certainly instructive. Peyret, like Sebbar, has also engaged with the idea of weaving links between Algeria and France in her own practice and has similarly mixed media and also emphasised the importance of materiality in informing understanding

Representing people of ­Algerian heritage

113

and perception of this shared history and memory. Rather than imbricate text and image across literary genres, however, Peyret (2012) has instead embroidered a series of large-scale recreations of wartime photographs taken in French Algeria, and the experience she had when it came to exhibiting these works in France during the fiftieth anniversary of the Algerian War’s end illustrates the continuing tensions and discord that Sebbar’s trilogy probes. While one town only selected works by Peyret that featured peaceful children for display, another chose to omit any that featured the French tricolour (Nimis and Peyret 2012). Meanwhile, a major exhibition scheduled for the autumn of 2012 which would have shown the entire series of works together was cancelled by unnamed local authorities due to their apparent fear of the hostility it might provoke in a region where many residents are of pied-noir heritage. Writing in the mid-1990s, Donadey (1996) argued that parallels could be drawn between the Vichy Syndrome identified by Rousso (1987) and the ways in which memories of the Algerian War then continued to be repressed and denied in French society. Rousso’s model charted the progression from amnesia to obsession with regard to the status of histories and memories of the Second World War in France following the end of Occupation and comprised four phases: the first phase, one of interrupted mourning (1944–54); the second (1954–71), one of repression (forgetting and amnesia), with a replay due to the Algerian war; the third, from 1971 to 1974, a short phase of the return of the repressed and shattering of established myths about the war; and finally, the last phase (in which we are still engaged), one of obsession. (Donadey 1996: 217–18)

With regard to the Algerian War, Donadey (1996: 218) argued that thirty years after the end of the conflict, France remained firmly in the second phase of its ‘Algeria syndrome’, concurring with Macey’s (1998: 162) argument that ‘national memories are always selective, and France’s memory of the Algerian war, selective indeed’. Moving forward over a decade to the 2000s and beyond, as Sebbar’s trilogy and Peyret’s experience would suggest, it would

1­ 14

Representing ethnicity

seem that – notwithstanding the series of events held and works released to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the Algerian War’s end in 2012 – French society has entered the third, if perhaps not quite the fourth, phase of its ‘Algeria syndrome’. Sebbar’s trilogy certainly can be seen as part of a wider trend of recent works across contemporary French visual culture that seek to uncover memories and experiences of the conflict and interrogate its many legacies for both countries. However, to return to the importance of weaving in Sebbar’s oeuvre, perhaps the metaphor to cite here is not that of the tapestry but rather the palimpsest. As Silverman (2013: 4–5) argues, the figure of the palimpsest captures ‘the superimposition and productive interaction of different inscriptions and the spatialization of time central to the work of memory’ and ‘gives us a way of perceiving history in a non-linear way and memory as a hybrid and dynamic process across individuals and communities’. The acute focus of Sebbar’s trilogy means that very little interweaving of histories and memories beyond those linked to the specificities of the Franco-Algerian relationship takes place, and this work does not explore the imbrications between colonialism and events such as the Second World War and the Holocaust  as probed notably by Rothberg (2009) and Silverman (2013). Sebbar’s clear sensitivity to the complexity of this area and the way in which she enables the voices of a broad spectrum of people to be heard nevertheless recall aspects of the ‘multidirectional memory’ and ‘palimpsestic memory’ traced in Rothberg’s (2009) and Silverman’s (2013) studies respectively. Parallels might be drawn here too with a work by another artist, albeit one operating in an earlier (although far from unrelated) context. Reproduced on the cover of a 1956 edition of the journal Les Lèvres nues, the Belgian surrealist Marcel Mariën’s ‘La Dernière Carte’ shows the familiar outline of metropolitan France, inside of whose contours many major towns and cities are marked. The occlusion of land lying south of mainland France’s Mediterranean shoreline focuses attention upon the shape of the land-mass shown and, with hindsight, may now seem prescient with regard to how post-decolonisation, notions of national identity were quickly reshaped as the idea of France as l’Hexagone gained widespread currency (Weber 1986) and those in power

Representing people of ­Algerian heritage

115

‘slammed shut the door’ on France’s imperial history (Ross 1995: 9). What is most striking, however, is the absence of French names alongside the places demarcated and their replacement by ones found instead in French Algeria. Such a simple substitution proves remarkably effective in confirming, as Shepard (2006: 269) has argued, that ‘what we know as France has Algeria written all over it’. As such, it can be viewed as a forerunner of Sebbar’s trilogy half a century later, whose palimpsestic aspects echo Mariën’s own distinctive use of France’s geography. The ludic title of Mariën’s work – allowing viewers to interpret ‘carte’ as both map and (playing) card – also chimes with the playfulness seen in Sebbar’s own imbrication of text and image, however, Sebbar’s interrogation of the ever-present links between both countries would suggest that the sense of finality implied in Mariën’s title as the Algerian War raged is not shared by Sebbar. Instead, it is the transcolonial that characterises her vision of Franco-Algerian links, a vision where it is only by engaging with colonial history and the legacies of French imperialism that contemporary realities can be understood and addressed. It therefore epitomises Gilroy’s (2004: 2) wider argument that: the political conflicts which characterize multicultural societies can take on a very different aspect if they are understood to exist firmly in a context supplied by imperial and colonial history. Though that history remains marginal and largely unacknowledged, surfacing only in the service of nostalgia and melancholia, it represents a store of unlikely connections and complex interpretative resources. The imperial and colonial past continues to shape political life in the overdeveloped-but-no-longer-imperial countries.

Sebbar’s trilogy – by refusing repeatedly to indulge in nostalgia and look back at the past uncritically –  provides precisely the kind of connections and resources Gilroy champions. By shaping a space for a polyphony of voices, testimonies and experiences to be heard, it vividly demonstrates how colonial history has indelibly etched both metropolitan France and French society and how deeply imbricated postcolonial Algeria and France remain. The extent to which Sebbar’s idiosyncratic exploration of these links might prove palliative or even cathartic for her personally,

1­ 16

Representing ethnicity

however, remains a moot point. As she reminds readers so evocatively in Journal de mes Algéries en France: ‘le voyage en France, autour de la Méditerranée, jamais plus loin, la mer blanche ma ligne de démarcation, c’est ainsi, c’est ma maladie’ (Sebbar 2005: 112) (travelling in France, around the Mediterranean, but never further, the white sea my demarcation line: that’s how it is, that’s my illness). Balancing act: life in and beyond the banlieue in Yamina Benguigui’s Aïcha (2009–12) television film franchise Finally, we now turn to the work of another prominent FrancoAlgerian figure in France who also has explored the legacy of colonial and postcolonial links between France and Algeria, and especially the experiences of Algerian – and, more broadly, Maghrebi  – diasporas in metropolitan France. One of the very few female French film directors of Algerian heritage, Yamina Benguigui has become an increasingly prominent figure in French society since the release of her initial documentary work in the 1990s: a status acknowledged by her appointment to the French government in 2012, where she served as Ministre déléguée à la Francophonie from June 2012 to March 2014. It was undoubtedly the screening on television and in cinemas of her three-part documentary film Mémoires d’immigrés: l’héritage maghrébin (1998) that first brought her to the wider French public’s attention. Through its detailed examination of aspects of the history of Maghrebi immigration in France, and its foregrounding of the voices and testimonies of different generations, it broke new ground and was widely celebrated for its unflinching portrait of the hardships and sacrifices many people experienced following migration from the Maghreb or growing up as French citizens of Maghrebi heritage. Critics noted, however, that her portrait of Maghrebi diasporas in French society left out elements less likely to promote consensus (Durmelat 2000: 175) and that, in Guénif-Souilamas’ words (2007: 89), ‘alimente la vulgate intégrationniste dont la réalisatrice légitime la normativité, grâce à son image de miraculée de l’intégration, superposée à ceux dont elle livre la parole pour la première fois’ (supports the integrationist

Representing people of ­Algerian heritage

117

orthodoxy whose normativity the director legitimates, thanks to her image as a miraculous integration success story, superimposed on those whom she lets speak for the first time). Inspired by the experiences of Maghrebi women who migrated to France in the 1970s to settle there with their children and reunite with their husbands or male partners already based there for work, Benguigui’s first fictional feature-length film, Inch’Allah Dimanche, was subsequently released in 2001 and similarly emphasised the gendered nature of migration and the difficulties faced by Maghrebi women migrants. While academic criticism of Benguigui’s oeuvre has largely focused on the above two works, this section will instead examine a more recent series of four téléfilms directed by her which, despite their popularity among viewers, have yet to attract significant critical attention. First screened on French television in 2009, the first instalment of the series, Aïcha introduced viewers to the eponymous heroine, Aïcha Bouamazza, a 25-year-old French woman of Algerian heritage who lives with her parents in a cité in the Parisian banlieue and followed her attempts to navigate a path between gaining greater independence from her family while also respecting her parents’ sensibilities. A major hit for the channel France 2, it attracted over five million viewers and was followed in 2010 by Aïcha 2: Job à tout prix, which followed further trials and tribulations in Aïcha’s life as she endeavoured to succeed in a new career. A third and fourth instalment would follow – Aïcha 3: La Grande Débrouille (2011) and Aïcha 4: Vacances infernales (2012) – and although unable to match the success of the original téléfilm, the franchise’s subsequent instalments have each attracted audiences of around three million or better when first shown. As the previous chapter established, contemporary French television has historically struggled to represent France’s ethnic diversity across all sectors of programming, particularly with regard to incorporating characters of Maghrebi heritage in fiction-based programmes. The Aïcha franchise, which benefited from government funding to encourage greater representativeness on French television screens, in contrast received praise from the CNC’s ‘Images de la diversité’ commission as a successful example of

1­ 18

Representing ethnicity

how such an initiative has quickly borne fruit (Michelin 2009: 7). How then does such a popular series, championed for its embrace of ethnic diversity, depict the lives of people of Algerian heritage in contemporary France? Aïcha begins in a setting that certainly will be familiar to viewers of French films that centre around people of Maghrebi heritage: a family wedding. Often incorporating traditional music and dance, such settings serve to reinforce the ethnicity and cultural practices of people of Maghrebi heritage for viewers, and provide suitably colourful scenes of celebration. While the revelry seen here is in keeping with such representations in cinema, Benguigui departs from convention by immediately qualifying the joy seen among dancing guests via a pointed shot of a distinctly unsmiling bride, who looks uncomfortable in the gilded throne from which she gazes towards the dance-floor. These scenes of merriment are also contrasted by the comments of Aïcha herself, who explains to viewers that ‘pour sortir de notre cité, le seul passeport honorable pour nos parents, c’est le mariage. Nous essayons toutes à y échapper. Pourtant c’est ce qui a choisi Nadia, mon amie d’enfance. Enfin, si on peut parler de choix’ (in order to leave our estate, the only honourable way out according to our parents is marriage. We all try to escape it. But this is what Nadia, my childhood friend, has chosen. Well, if you can call it a choice). Her comments, reinforced by the images seen on screen, immediately introduce the themes of freedom and constraint for women of Algerian heritage in France – chiming once again with many French films that feature women of Maghrebi heritage more widely – and female agency duly becomes a key narrative thread throughout the franchise. Furthermore, the fact that it is Aïcha’s own voice that is heard here and that she provides such trenchant analysis immediately accentuates her own agency to viewers and suggests that she will not follow Nadia’s path: quickly confirmed at the end of her opening voiceover, where she declares that she will escape tomorrow night with her friend Lisa, adding somewhat melodramatically, ‘je fais le plus long voyage de ma vie. Je vais de l’autre côté du périph’: en France’ (I’m going on the longest journey of my life. I’m going to the other side of the ring road: to France). The subsequent establishing shot of Paris both

Representing people of ­Algerian heritage

119

contradicts and reinforces her comments. The sense of division between central Paris and the banlieue is connoted by showing the périphérique ring road that separates them in the foreground and iconic landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and Sacré-Coeur towards the horizon ahead. The clear proximity of these two spaces, however, suggests that the difficulty of such a journey for her is less due to geographical distance or socio-economic barriers per se but more to the cultural symbolism and psychological implications of finally moving out of her family’s home to live elsewhere. Accordingly, the pointed description of central Paris as ‘France’ automatically infers that the cité and banlieue where she and her family reside definitely do not belong to it. Aïcha’s initial attempt to depart is soon thwarted by the crisis in her family created by her cousin Farida’s attempted suicide  –  seemingly provoked by her despair at having become pregnant while unmarried – but the letter that Aïcha began penning to her parents to explain her reasons for leaving notably describes life for her in the cité as suffocating and prison-like. A series of early scenes reinforces this by highlighting the surveillance and scrutiny to which young women of Maghrebi heritage are regularly subjected: whether via comments about dress and appearance from elders or misogyny from male peers. The use of close camerawork when showing family members together in small domestic spaces also heightens a sense of claustrophobia. Such early elements of visual style and setting along with the theme of the agency of young women of Algerian heritage in contemporary France strongly recall a cinematic precursor to the Aïcha franchise: Philippe Faucon’s Samia (2000). Faucon’s film  –  co-written by Soraya Nini, on whose autobiographically inspired novel (1993) the script was based –  also ­emphasised similar societal pressures experienced by young women of Maghrebi heritage in France and especially with regard to the control of female sexuality and women’s bodies. A further connection between Benguigui’s Aïcha and Faucon’s Samia is the inclusion of a scene where an Algerian matriarch accompanies her daughter to the doctor’s so that her virginity can be confirmed medically –  but, tellingly, the contrasting ways in which this episode is handled by both directors signals

1­ 20

Representing ethnicity

a wider divergence in terms of approach. By showing in detail a young girl being examined and her evident discomfort, Faucon emphasised the invasiveness of the procedure and clearly posited it as a violation of privacy: moreover, viewers were encouraged to support the brave defiance of the film’s eponymous heroine, who refuses her mother’s wishes and duly avoids being subjected to the same procedure as her sister. Benguigui instead plays the situation more for laughs, so rather than show viewers aspects of the same physical examination, the camera remains outside with  the waiting family while Aïcha’s cousin Nedjma is examined. Equally, when the camera then does follow Aïcha into the doctor’s office, no examination takes place because – clearly sympathetic to Aïcha’s predicament – the doctor agrees to convince her mother that Aïcha actually has no hymen due to being born on a Friday during a full moon. The choice by Benguigui to resolve this plot development in such a humorous way is emblematic of her confidence in engaging with such issues regarding families of Maghrebi heritage in France – but also in sending them up. In doing so, however, she arguably treads rather a fine line, which is emblematic of Aïcha more widely, as even when the subject of some scenes is ostensibly serious, the use of lighthearted humour reveals a certain playfulness towards viewers: evoking, but also subtly challenging, cultural stereotypes of Algerian diasporas in France. The rather odd feel this can consequently create –  accentuated by the relative brevity of many scenes and sequences common to téléfilms generally – is redolent of the tightrope walked by Benguigui as she emphasises some of the cultural pressures clearly experienced by women of Algerian heritage in France but simultaneously risks reinforcing well-worn stereotypes that position family life for women among Maghrebi diasporas as largely repressive and retrograde. The increasing elements of farce woven into the téléfilm’s narrative as it proceeds, however, might nevertheless lessen this risk, and the high jinks later reach a crescendo in a sequence that begins when a neighbour returns home to discover her son Mustapha dressed as a woman while dancing to music. After viewers learn that he has consequently been physically attacked by his brothers

Representing people of ­Algerian heritage

121

and told he must abandon his studies and emigrate to Algeria, it leads Aïcha and her brother Fouad to convince both families that he was, in fact, practising for a role as a princess in a Japanese play. The humour for viewers then increases further when Aïcha suddenly announces that Mustapha had secretly married Farida the previous year and that he is actually the father of her unborn child. The inclusion of such humour and far-fetched plot lines evokes the format of some telenovelas and, fittingly enough, a final twist is provided at the hospital when the nurse who brings in Farida’s new-born baby –  much to the consternation of the assembled family groups – presents her with a child who is black. As these plot developments would suggest, the tone of Aïcha is far from the gritty realism and miserabilism seen in many films throughout the 1980s and 1990s which featured French people of Maghrebi heritage. Moreover, the first instalment of the franchise ends on an upbeat note by showing Aïcha on the cusp of a new career and determined to succeed (see figure 3), which chimes with its underlying theme of female empowerment and independence. The sequel to Aïcha –  Aïcha 2: Job à tout prix (2010) – continued in this vein by following Aïcha’s struggles in the world of work, ultimately triumphing at the end despite the many obstacles placed in her path. But perhaps the most striking evolution

3  Aïcha begins her new role in Aïcha (2009)

1­ 22

Representing ethnicity

in the franchise was the sudden acknowledgement of debates in France regarding veiling practices associated with Muslim women. Viewers expecting to see a serious exploration of this issue, however, would be disappointed. Rather than incorporating the voices of a range of Muslim women from different generations who veil and engaging with their reasons for doing so, the téléfilm notably skirted over such elements and instead evoked the issue via a group of new converts to Islam whom Nedjma encounters. Their inability to pronounce words in Arabic and master certain gestures encourages viewers to laugh at them: as do many of the reasons they each offer to explain why they converted to Islam, some of which suggest a lack of understanding if not sincerity on their part. While this clearly is in keeping with the franchise’s humour and light-hearted tone, these women ultimately function as figures of ridicule: confirmed when one woman, who complains about having been denied access to a local swimming pool because she wore a ‘burkini’, inspires Nedjma to organise a  local march to campaign against the ‘dictature de la mixité’ (­dictatorship of non-segregation) in French society. Furthermore, although presented by Nedjma as a cause that will empower local young Muslim women, viewers had already learned that her primary motivation was actually to gain revenge on her former lover Mehdi by hijacking the agenda of his local community ­association and destabilising it from within. The belittling of these women and of the merits of their cause is also compounded by the vehement reaction of the older generation of Maghrebi women to Nedjma’s planned march, which they immediately denounce as retrograde and anti-feminist when it becomes clear that the main participants will be women who veil. Nedjma then provokes their ire further by describing the event as ‘une marche de femmes respectables’ (a march of respectable women), which the older women – who do not veil – interpret as a personal affront and which leads them to stress that the Koran does not state that Muslim women are obliged to veil. This dovetails with the wider plot line of this second téléfilm: Aïcha’s attempts to organise an event showcasing new hair beauty products aimed at ethnic minority women in France. This succeeds

Representing people of ­Algerian heritage

123

thanks to the help of her Aunt Biyouna, whose hair salon provides the setting for many scenes, conveniently both serving as a contrast and making it clear to viewers that veiling has no place among the main community of characters on which the franchise focuses. Appropriately enough, by the end of the téléfilm it appears that Nedjma has quietly dropped her original cause and instead, when meeting the local mayor, advocates solutions to a series of broader local issues that would improve community life: a decision that then facilitates her rapprochement with her wider family. Via its use of comedy to address Muslim veiling practices in France, and wry look at life in the Parisian banlieue generally, Benguigui’s téléfilm here recalls another cinematic precursor that interrogated the contemporary experience of French people of Maghrebi heritage: Malik Chibane’s Douce France (1995). The ultimate message of that film too appeared to a rejection of veiling, but via the formidable character of Farida – a highly educated French woman of Algerian heritage who vehemently and eloquently defended her right to wear a headscarf – Chibane explored some of the complexities surrounding veiling in contemporary France, the place of Islam in a secular Republic, and the everyday discrimination faced by such women in French society. Benguigui’s téléfilm, in contrast, largely ignores such realities and instead only evokes them via Nedjma’s support for the recent Muslim converts’ cause, which is constructed as patently ridiculous and uniformly rejected by Nedjma’s family and friends. Given the franchise’s overall tone, it was perhaps predictable that the issue of veiling should receive such short shrift. It remains noticeable, however, that while the franchise celebrates and venerates some aspects of Muslim religious and cultural practices, veiling is certainly not one of them and all the main female characters of Maghrebi heritage are strongly antiveiling. Ultimately the marked absence of any serious and sustained engagement with the reasons why some women do choose to veil only strengthens this position further and makes it clear to viewers that veiling certainly does not cohere with the franchise’s vision of empowerment for women of Algerian heritage in ­contemporary French society.

1­ 24

Representing ethnicity

Moving forward to the third téléfilm of the franchise, Aïcha 3: La Grande Débrouille (2011), here Benguigui’s focus on cité life broadens to encompass greater ethnic diversity among the main cast of characters. The local campaign spearheaded by Nedjma to fix the broken lifts in their tower block – itself a metaphor for the lack of social mobility in the cité (Kealhofer 2013: 192) – brings together a range of residents, including Maurice, a retired white man who speaks Creole and the black French Caribbean actress Firmine Richard in the role of Ginette. Biyouna’s search for her Romanian former lover Ionesco – whom she agrees to contact in the hope that he can help secure the replacement parts needed for the lifts – also sees her briefly visit a Roma camp elsewhere in the banlieue. The main narrative thread of the third instalment, however, is Aïcha’s growing relationship with Patrick, a young, white, middle-class Frenchman who lives in central Paris. The subject of their relationship remains a delicate one throughout and Aïcha’s need to conceal her relationship with him from her family and her consequent discretion in public is striking. The clear inference is that she does not wish to upset her parents’ feelings by divulging her relationship with him to them, and she therefore is generally careful to observe the social codes they expect. It is only after Aïcha finally confides in her mother that she feels able to discuss it at home with female relatives – but certainly not her father, whose disapproval she fears. The great anger he shows when finally learning of her relationship nevertheless seems to dissipate somewhat by the end of the third téléfilm when he publicly thanks Patrick for his help in securing engineers to fix their tower block’s broken lifts. Nevertheless, out of a sense of respect for her father’s wishes and sensibilities, even in the fourth instalment of the franchise – Aïcha 4: Vacances infernales (2012) – Aïcha still feels unable to confide completely in her family regarding her relationship with him: hence her secret plan to holiday alone with Patrick in Spain while her parents and family travel to Arcachon. Her plan is scuppered, however, when her family insists on her joining them – prompting Patrick to travel there too to confront her father finally and announce that he and Aïcha will move in together after the summer.

Representing people of ­Algerian heritage

125

As mentioned in the previous chapter, a key trend throughout the 2000s in French cinema has been the number of road movies and broader travel-themed films that feature journeys made by characters of Maghrebi heritage. As we saw, Drôle de Félix notably deviated from the trend of seeing such characters venture to the Maghreb by showing Félix remain within France and the fourth téléfilm in Benguigui’s franchise chimes with Ducastel and Martineau’s film by also spurning a journey to Algeria. It is explained at the start that, due to the unrest across the Maghreb following the series of events that became known as the Arab Spring, Aïcha’s family has decided instead to holiday that summer in Arcachon rather than Algeria. Although the téléfilm clearly establishes that biannual visits for the family to Algeria are the norm, by remaining in metropolitan France – and not showing the family in Algeria  –  it subtly reasserts the Frenchness of the Bouamazzas, and of Aïcha herself too. As in the franchise’s third instalment – where Patrick’s mother and aunt donned headscarves prior to meeting Aïcha and her family because they assumed that all women of Algerian heritage veil – the interaction of Aïcha’s family with white French people from beyond the banlieue in the fourth instalment provides further opportunities to use humour to explore cultural differences or misunderstandings. The main source of the latter is the owner of the gîte where they stay, who assumes that they are all from Algeria, not Paris, makes a series of assumptions about their nature and behaviour because they are of Maghrebi heritage and live in a cité, and responds with great hostility when catching Fouad kissing her daughter, asking Fouad if he thinks he is in ‘Bab el-Oued’ and telling her daughter her that she did not bring her up to go out with a ‘beur de passage’ (a man of Maghrebi heritage passing through). Her racism and xenophobia towards the family are contrasted by the character of Alfred, a local man who strikes up conversation with Aïcha’s father and confides in him that he refused to serve in the French army during the Algerian War, which Aïcha’s father heartily approves. This episode is emblematic of the consensus and sense of harmony found throughout the franchise, where references to wider historical divisions and sources of contemporary conflict – such as the discovery in the

1­ 26

Representing ethnicity

4  Patrick and Aïcha celebrate after her father blesses their relationship in Aïcha 4: Vacances infernales (2012)

first téléfilm that Aïcha’s would-be fiancé Abdel is the son of a harki, which immediately leads Aïcha’s father to call off their marriage – are only evoked briefly and then quickly forgotten. Given this, the téléfilm’s end predictably sees the cast of characters ultimately put aside their differences and, crucially, it appears that Aïcha’s father has finally given his blessing to her ­relationship with Patrick (see figure 4). The third and fourth instalments of Benguigui’s franchise also particularly stress the difficulty Aïcha faces juggling different aspects of life –  but the end of the fourth téléfilm provides the neat resolution and happy end expected by showing her succeed in rekindling her relationship with Patrick while remaining as close as ever to her family. It therefore ends on an upbeat note as Khaled’s popular song ‘Aïcha’ is predictably played and it seems that Aïcha will now finally be able to continue her relationship with Patrick openly without the fear of being ostracised by her father or other members of her family. In addition, the final acceptance by Aïcha’s father of his daughter’s relationship with Patrick also coheres with the franchise’s wider championing of ethnic diversity in and beyond the Parisian banlieue and its challenging of traditions and conventions that would impede cross-ethnic and cross-faith relationships. Nevertheless, the fact

Representing people of ­Algerian heritage

127

that his change of view only occurs in the fourth téléfilm – and in its final scene – is indicative both of Aïcha’s deference to her father and care not to upset older generations of her family. It also epitomises generally Benguigui’s balancing act here, as her franchise endeavours to portray Aïcha as someone who wants to maintain her family ties and respect the sensibilities of her parents’ generation but also live an independent life away from her family’s home. A decade before the first téléfilm from the Aïcha franchise was screened, Guénif-Souilamas argued with regard to the status of women of Maghrebi heritage in France that: ‘Les femmes dans l’immigration subissent a priori moins le marquage ethnique que les hommes. Elles apparaissent moins que ces derniers « de nature » à troubler l’ordre public. Elles sont perçues comme actrices d’un processus d’intégration tranquille’ (2000: 87, original emphasis) (Immigrant women are in principle less subject to ethnic marking than men. In contrast to the latter, they appear “by nature” to trouble public order less. They are perceived as actors in a process of quiet integration). Given the emphasis in Benguigui’s franchise on consensus, this may well explain why she chose to pivot her franchise of téléfilms around a female, rather than male character. Moreover, throughout the franchise, it is the female characters who help initiate the crucial change in opinion of Aïcha’s father towards Patrick celebrated at the end of the fourth téléfilm, as he finally accepts her relationship with a non-Muslim man. In her discussion of cinema – but in comments that are equally valid for the téléfilm – Tarr (2005: 87) argued that ‘films which centre on realistic representations of young French women of Maghrebi descent need to situate themselves in relation to Republican discourses on assimilation as the route to integration, and to orientalist discourses, islamophobia and anti-Arab racism, the products of centuries of French colonialism.’ Furthermore, such women ‘are normally constructed by the French media (in relation to issues such as the foulard affair and reports on sequestrations in Algeria and female runaways) as victims of Islamic fundamentalists or traditional Maghrebi culture rather than as agents of personal and social change’ (ibid.: 87–8). Despite its often humorous and essentially consensual tone, arguably Benguigui’s téléfilm franchise does

1­ 28

Representing ethnicity

meet the criteria listed above in terms of the elements of realism it includes; however, importantly it also signals an evolution in such norms and understandings by foregrounding its eponymous heroine’s independence and autonomy –  asserting her freedom to choose a career and relationship – despite the close affective ties she shares with her family. Furthermore, perhaps the most important aspect of the entire franchise is precisely its repeated emphasis upon Aïcha’s agency, which could well be interpreted as a response to dominant representations of such women in France throughout the 1980s, 1990s and beyond. Crucially, it is this agency that allows her to balance the demands of different areas of her life and – in contradistinction to earlier feature-length films where women who sought greater independence and the right to have a relationship with a non-Muslim man were ostracised from their families – viewers do not see her forced to choose between her family and her relationship with Patrick. In conclusion, this chapter has considered a range of works from across contemporary French visual culture by three prominent figures who have explored many facets of Franco-Algerian links and also represented Algerian diasporas in France in diverse ways. Despite their manifest differences in approach and choice of media, a number of common themes and threads nevertheless unite them. The focus on women and women’s lives in connection to both countries and societies remained paramount throughout and notably emphasised the extent to which history and memory can be profoundly gendered experiences. The importance of gender in terms of space and agency also recurred across these different works and it is striking how all three case studies comprised women of Algerian heritage demarcating and shaping new spaces within contemporary French visual culture in order to make their voices heard and offer complex insights into such experiences. The frequent foregrounding of first-person voices and of the autobiographical as tools to valorise such perspectives here is undoubtedly not a coincidence and, as we will see, is also deployed in the first case study of the following chapter, which shifts focus to consider another highly prominent and significant minority group represented across contemporary French visual culture: France’s Jewish population.

3 From the past to the present: parameters of Jewish identity

As the Introduction established, there are many reasons why the representation of Jewishness in contemporary French visual culture merits consideration. First, France has the largest Jewish population in Europe – approximately 600,000 people – and third largest in the world: this number is exceeded only in the United States and Israel (Winock 2004: 352; de Lange 2000: 4). Equally there is a long history of Jewish settlement within France; it takes pride in being the first European nation to grant citizenship to its Jewish inhabitants, following the Revolution (de Lange 2000: 21). France has also welcomed Jewish migrants over many years, absorbing around 40,000 Jews from the Russian empire before the First World War and over 100,000 Jews from Germany and Eastern Europe during the 1930s (Hargreaves 1995: 10). France’s Jewish population today is – like that of many other countries – therefore diverse and is divided into the two main ethnic groupings resident throughout Europe: Ashkenazim (those who hail from German and Eastern European Jewry) and Sephardim (originally from Spain, Portugal and the Maghreb). France’s relationship with its Jewish population has also been highly troubled: no more so than during the Occupation of the Second World War, when French authorities introduced antiSemitic policies that led to the deportation and extermination of as many as 80,000 Jews from France (Winock 2004: 242). It was with shock and revulsion, then, that commentators greeted growing anti-Semitism in France throughout the 1980s and 1990s,

1­ 30

Representing ethnicity

with attacks on Jews and synagogues, the desecration of Jewish cemeteries and daubing of graffiti on tombstones (Friedlander 1995). The situation by 1990 was seen as so concerning that, after swastikas were drawn on thirty-four graves in a Jewish cemetery in Carpentras in May that year (and one corpse was exhumed and impaled), all five French national terrestrial television channels simultaneously screened Alain Resnais’ landmark film on the Holocaust, Nuit et brouillard (1956) in an attempt to stem the tide of anti-Semitism (Fysh and Wolfreys 2003: 68). The 1990s saw France begin to come to terms more profoundly with its role in the wartime period. In 1993, on the anniversary of la rafle du Vél’ d’Hiv – when during 16–17 July 1942 Paris police rounded up over 13,000 Jews and then held them in a cycling stadium for several days before eventual deportation to concentration camps – François Mitterrand established 16 July as a day of commemoration of Jewish and racist persecution by the Vichy regime. Upon succeeding him as President, Jacques Chirac went one step further: the French State finally accepted responsibility for the deportation of thousands of Jews during the Occupation, which Mitterrand had pointedly refused to do (Winock 2004: 241). In 1997, French church leaders also recognised their role by publishing a ‘déclaration de repentance’ apologising for their silence on Vichy’s anti-Semitic practices during the war and the French government established a commission under the stewardship of Jean Mattéoli to investigate the despoilment of French Jews during 1940–44. The commission presented its report to the Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in 2000 (ibid.: 350). Since the 1990s many plaques commemorating the lives of Jewish deportees from France have been unveiled and Chirac opened the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris on 27 January 2005. Anti-Semitism in France nonetheless continues and throughout the 2000s reports of it increased. The furore caused in July 2004 over l’affaire du RER-D, when a woman travelling with her child on a Parisian suburban train reported being attacked by a group who cut off her hair and drew swastikas on her, showed just how sensitive the climate has been in France, with press and politicians all too readily believing that a group described as “Maghrébins” (Maghrebis) would attack a young mother and

Parameters of Jewish identity

131

child for being Jewish (Gentleman 2004: 11). It was later revealed, however, that the incident never took place (Smolar 2004) and it would be explored in cinema in André Téchiné’s La Fille du RER (2009). Alongside prominent media reports of anti-Semitism in France, comments from politicians also heightened the perception that France’s Jewish population had increasingly become a specific target for attacks. For example, earlier in 2004, the Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy declared that France had become an anti-Semitic state under the Jospin government, and on the sixtysecond anniversary of la rafle du Vél’ d’Hiv the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon caused controversy when he urged French Jews, given the rise in anti-Semitic attacks, to emigrate to Israel as quickly as possible (Jakubyszyn 2004: 3). In 2006, the kidnapping, torture and murder of the Parisian teenager Ilan Halimi – singled out by his attackers because he was Jewish –  further shocked French society and led to a period of soul-searching about the enduring presence of anti-Semitism in the Republic; as did Mohamed Merah’s killing spree in March 2012, which included his shooting dead at close range of three schoolchildren and an adult outside a Jewish school in Toulouse. Finally, the sustained polemic throughout late 2013 and early 2014 surrounding the comedian and actor Dieudonné – ­previously fined several times by the French courts for making anti-Semitic remarks and derogatory comments about the Holocaust – provoked further debate as his show Le Mur was denounced by reviewers as blatantly antiSemitic and local authorities in provincial cities subsequently banned planned performances. Given the above events and the wider climate of recent decades, a number of works across French visual culture have engaged with rising reports of contemporary anti-Semitism. Examples from cinema include Karin Albou’s La Petite Jérusalem (2005), Philippe Faucon’s Dans la vie (2008) and Téchiné’s aforementioned film. Representations of anti-Semitic acts, however, are far more common in works set during the Occupation era, which remains a recurrent feature of contemporary French visual culture and an important arena in which many representations of Jewishness appear. This chapter will therefore acknowledge how this key aspect of how Jewishness has been represented in recent

1­ 32

Representing ethnicity

decades by studying in close detail a range of works set both during the Second World War and also in the contemporary era. We start by considering a very personal exploration of Jewishness in 1980s France: the Magnum photographer Patrick Zachmann’s 1987 book, Enquête d’identité: un Juif à la recherche de sa mémoire. Noting himself how few photographers in France have taken up such a theme (Zachmann 1987: 73), his images span from 1977 to 1986. Zachmann – an avowed atheist, but of Jewish heritage – seeks to explore the meaning of Jewishness and what it means to be a Jew in late twentieth-century France. Although aware that his grandparents had died at Auschwitz, Zachmann knew little else before starting his project; neither brought up as a Jew nor growing up in a Jewish environment. His book – given its title – therefore begins from an eminent paradox: how can one document a memory that one has never had? The subsequent section turns to film to probe further how the memory and history of Jewish experience in France during the Occupation –  a recurrent theme of contemporary French cinema – has been represented. It takes as its focal point la rafle du Vél’  d’Hiv, which began on 16 July 1942 and culminated in over 13,000 Jews in Paris being rounded up by French police and detained in the Vél’ d’Hiv cycling stadium in central Paris. After being housed there for several days in deplorable conditions, they were transported to French camps in the Loiret region before ultimately being deported to concentration camps in Eastern Europe. The scale of this operation by local French police  and their complicity in facilitating the extermination of so many French citizens have ensured that these events have attracted particular attention when this wartime era is remembered. Very few films, however, had ever attempted to represent these historical events on screen, which made the release in 2010 of two films that centred upon it – Roselyne Bosch’s La Rafle and Gilles PaquetBrenner’s Elle s’appelait Sarah – all the more distinctive. Analysis will consider how each film engages differently with those events and their contemporary legacy for viewers. The focus of the final section then remains on cinema but changes tone to address one of the most popular film franchises of recent decades that concentrates explicitly on contemporary

Parameters of Jewish identity

133

French Jewish experience: Thomas Gilou’s La Vérité si je mens! (1997), La Vérité si je mens! 2 (2001) and La Vérité si je mens! 3 (2012). A surprise box-office hit in 1997, the franchise’s first film clearly appealed to many due to its distinctive brand of comedy and unsurprisingly led to a sequel La Vérité si je mens! 2 in 2001. Both films centred around the character Eddie Vuibert, a Gentile mistaken for a Jew in the Sentier – historically the main Jewish quartier in Paris – and who then has to endeavour to keep up the pretence in order to maintain his position. The main character with whom viewers are invited to identify, Eddie serves as the audience’s gateway into this Jewish community, the bridging link between the presumed “outsiders” watching and the “insiders” portrayed on screen. As two of the most successful French films ever to have focused explicitly on the subject of Jewishness, their popularity merits consideration and the latest instalment of the franchise La Vérité si je mens! 3 (2012) will also briefly be analysed to consider how its vision of Jewishness in France coheres with that of its predecessors. Photographing Jewishness: Patrick Zachmann’s Enquête d’identité: un Juif à la recherche de sa mémoire (1987) The starting point for a career that has mainly focused on ethnicities and cultural identities across the world –  celebrated in the major 2009 retrospective exhibition ‘Ma proche banlieue – Patrick Zachmann. Photographies 1980–2007’ held at the Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration in Paris –  Patrick Zachmann’s second book, Enquête d’identité: un Juif à la recherche de sa mémoire (1987) documents his journey to discover the meaning and significance of Jewishness in late 1970s to mid-1980s France. Investigating its social, political and religious dimensions, Zachmann’s chapters are structured t­hematically; addressing aspects of Judaism; the legacy of the Holocaust; Jewish social gatherings; anti-Semitism; the Jewish diaspora in Paris; and Zachmann’s own family. Jewishness, therefore, has no one single meaning in Zachmann’s book and his images attest that it is an identity as much cultural as it is religious or ethnic. This will be considered in due course; however, as the book’s title ­indicates,

1­ 34

Representing ethnicity

it is in fact the autobiographical aspects of Zachmann’s work that drive his narrative. It is through his image-making that he endeavours to learn more about an aspect of his identity – his family’s Jewishness – of which he, hitherto, was hardly conscious. Given this focus, Zachmann’s decision not to include a prominent photograph of himself may seem odd. The only photograph that actually reveals his appearance is reproduced twice: once on the book’s inner cover and again on its final page (Zachmann 1987: 109). Its inclusion in both these sections might at first seem incidental; more decorative than decisive, the image is a small, unassuming self-portrait taken in a car wing mirror. Its diminutive size – significantly smaller than the full-page and double-page photographs that make up the majority of the book’s images – is deceptive, for its import is greater than its appearance suggests. First, since the book’s accompanying narrative both starts and ends with Zachmann explicitly questioning his own sense of identity, such self-portraiture effectively functions as a signifier for the book itself. The photograph shows Zachmann unaccompanied but his solitude seems far from happy. Gloom pervades this grainy black-and-white picture; the sky is overcast, dark clouds hover above and little landscape can be discerned. Whether the car is travelling forward or has stopped, the horizon ahead is blocked literally and metaphorically: literally because, within the frame of the picture, the car’s wing mirror obscures the view ahead; metaphorically because it is Zachmann’s image that fills the mirror. Even before he has begun, the early inclusion of this image suggests that Zachmann, symbolically, has already reached a dead end. Seeing his sense of self as a stumbling block he must always surmount, Zachmann describes throughout the book how persistent doubts about his family heritage and identity had plagued him previously and, tellingly, it is this image that both opens and closes his journey of self-discovery. Such circularity is not entirely self-defeating: as will become clear, by conducting this study Zachmann learns as much about his own identity as he does about Jewishness, and the text that accompanies this final image happily announces the birth of his son. Such a joyful occasion, nevertheless, also brings sadness: the book’s final lines betray Zachmann’s continued ambivalence

Parameters of Jewish identity

135

towards Judaism and uneasy sense of his own Jewishness despite his – often successful – attempts to identify with the Jewish people he meets and photographs. Upon realising how alien to him Jewish religious tradition still feels, he finally resolves not to proceed with his son’s circumcision, stating that: ‘Ça me fait peur de me lancer dans cette cérémonie, et ça me fait tout aussi peur de rompre avec la tradition. Pourtant, elle m’est étrangère. Je rappelle aujourd’hui et j’annule le rendez-vous’ (Zachmann 1987: 109) (The idea of throwing myself into this ceremony scares me; just as breaking with tradition does too. But this tradition is alien to me. I call back today and cancel the appointment). As Zachmann’s photographs testify, Jewishness cannot simply be equated with Judaism: having had a secular upbringing, Zachmann’s own – albeit limited – sense of Jewishness is primarily cultural. Nevertheless, his decision to renege upon his son’s circumcision – and to close his book’s quest with these words – ends his journey abruptly: despite his attempts to square his own sense of self with his (hitherto largely hidden) cultural heritage, some aspects remain ultimately irreconcilable. His oscillation between fear of conformity and fear of flouting it, coupled with the starkness and brevity of the penultimate sentence (‘Pourtant, elle m’est étrangère’), evoke sadness and resignation rather than courage of conviction. Just as he seems caught between a desire to belong and a fear of remaining a perpetual outsider, the stillness of the photograph sees him suspended in animation, eternally en route but with his route ahead blocked, and no blind field beyond the frame of the photograph suggesting a space for other ­possibilities or resolutions. The book’s front cover, however, confuses matters. There readers encounter the image of a young boy seemingly surrounded by elders. Since it adorns the front cover and is placed between Zachmann’s name and the book’s title – Enquête d’identité: un Juif à la recherche de sa mémoire – readers might initially assume that the boy is young Zachmann himself or, at the very least, that he symbolises the author and Juif of the title. As the photograph shows the boy with a look of uncertainty on his face, and perhaps apprehension in his eyes, it suggests that a poignant moment of childhood has been captured – certainly when placed above

1­ 36

Representing ethnicity

such an evocative title. Apparently universal in its scope – its signifier of childhood vulnerability presumably designed to be legible globally – few cultural markers uniquely associated with Jewishness can be gleaned from the image. While the indistinct figure of a man, to the left of the photograph’s immediate foreground, may potentially sport the beard and dark hat often associated with Orthodox Jewish men, only a cap covers the young boy’s head – hardly a practice exclusive to young male Jews. Why was such a photograph chosen to adorn the book’s cover? When it is reproduced inside, its title reads ‘Soirée à l’occasion du trente troisième [sic] anniversaire de l’état d’Israël. Salle Gaveau, Paris, Mars 1981’ (Zachmann 1987: 22–3) – suddenly allowing readers to associate the boy’s youth with that of the Israeli State. The date confirms that the boy cannot be Zachmann – the photographer’s secular upbringing making his attendance at such an event unlikely anyway – but perhaps the image can be read alternatively as the vulnerable child Zachmann feels himself to have been and, perhaps, still to be: the inclusion of the text found alongside the image in the book, which recounts how both his young cousin and he – at the age of thirteen – suffered anti-Semitic abuse, further strengthens this idea. In Zachmann’s words: ‘Ma première identité, je l’ai acquise ainsi, en négatif ’ (ibid.: 22) (This was how I acquired my primary sense of identity, negatively). Plagued by a sense of absence in his life and largely ignorant of his Jewish heritage, Zachmann chooses to explore Jewishness first through the lives and customs of others rather than through those of family members whose Jewishness his parents always elided. It is only in the sixth and final chapter of his book that images of his family are first included; only as he reaches the end of his project can he finally reflect upon his own family and comprehend their – and, by extension, his – Jewishness, revealing that: ‘Après avoir photographié des Juifs de toutes sortes, pendant des années, je suis enfin capable de reconnaître dans ma propre famille des Juifs comme d’autres Juifs, et pourtant si proches de moi’ (ibid.: 93) (After photographing many different Jews, for many years, I’m finally able to see Jews in my own family as like other Jews, and yet they remain so close to me). Nonetheless, having grown up without such a sense of

Parameters of Jewish identity

137

cultural identity – only termed Jewish in the insults of others (ibid.: 22) – his choice of image for the book’s front cover could amount to an attempt to imagine himself as the “Jewish” boy he never was and that, perhaps retrospectively, he wishes he had been. Similarly, one could also read the indistinct man in the foreground of the photograph, symbolically, as the Jewish father figure Zachmann never knew. His desire for such an experience is made explicit when he reflects upon exactly why he was first so attracted to ­photographing Jewish balls and dances. He states that: ‘Moi, je jouais seulement à retrouver cette adolescence juive que je n’avais pas eue’ (Zachmann 1987: 45) (I was only playing at rediscovering the Jewish adolescence I never had). Here Zachmann’s image-­making might begin to exemplify what Marianne Hirsch (1997: 22) has termed “postmemory”, which she defines as: distinguished from memory by generational distance and from history by deep personal connection. Postmemory is a powerful and very particular form of memory precisely because its connection to its object or source is mediated not through recollection but through an imaginative investment and creation. This is not to say that memory itself is unmediated, but that it is more directly connected to the past. Postmemory characterizes the experience of those who grow up dominated by narratives that preceded their birth, whose own belated stories are evacuated by the stories of the previous generation shaped by traumatic events that can be neither understood nor recreated.

Since it appears that Zachmann’s early life was less ‘dominated by narratives’ and more overwhelmed by their absence, it is clear that Hirsch’s notion cannot be grafted perfectly onto Zachmann’s case. Furthermore, as a term originally conceived to describe the experiences of the children of Holocaust survivors, it is important to nuance the specificities of Zachmann’s situation. Since it was his grandparents who were killed at Auschwitz and his parents who escaped being sent there, Zachmann is a further generation removed from those who had any direct experience of concentration camps and hence from quite the kind of ‘traumatic event’ that Hirsch evokes. Equally, my use of the term here also aims to incorporate Zachmann’s profound feelings of loss from having

1­ 38

Representing ethnicity

grown up with no personal sense of Jewish identity – evidently more a source of ongoing anguish than singular event. Therefore, I use it here to apply to both these aspects of his life and not exclusively with reference to his – heavily mediated – connections to the Holocaust; although as Zachmann points out (1987: 27), it was precisely the trauma of this very event that led his parents never to discuss it and to raise Zachmann in silence over the issue. So although not the dominant factor behind Zachmann’s quest, arguably the Holocaust is still indirectly, via his parents, one of several reasons why he feels so bereft. The irretrievability of such a memory – and more generally, of a memory of being Jewish – is echoed in the book by the nearabsence of any family photographs from the past. Although the book’s focus upon people and events such as weddings and celebrations may make it resemble a family album, all of the original photographs are Zachmann’s: none date from his childhood or from before his birth. Furthermore, while in the final chapter he does take portraits of his mother, cousins and aunts, it is only when he visits his father’s sister – an escapee from the detainee camp at Drancy – that Zachmann chances for the first time upon two photographs of his grandparents, both of whom were killed at Auschwitz (1987: 94). For this very reason, the photograph that is subsequently taken stands out: one of only two occasions where Zachmann allows the intercession of images from the past. In it his Aunt Louisette stands solemnly before the camera, holding in one hand a ­portrait of his grandfather and in the other, one of his grandmother. Given the significance of their discovery for his search – earlier, upon recounting his first trip to Israel, Zachmann (1987: 28) had stated that: ‘Je compris … que je n’étais pas venu seulement pour photographier des rescapés mais pour rechercher l’image de mes grands-parents disparus’ (I understood … that I hadn’t come just to photograph survivors but to find the image of my dead grandparents) – it may seem surprising that Zachmann chooses to relegate his image of their portraits to the side of the page rather than print it full-spread. This is especially so since his reaction upon seeing them is so haunting, declaring that: ‘C’est en faisant le portrait de ma tante Louisette, la soeur de mon père, rescapée

Parameters of Jewish identity

139

du camp de transit de Drancy, que je découvre pour la première fois le visage de mes grands-parents morts à Auschwitz. Ils me regardent’ (ibid.: 94) (It was while making the portrait of my aunt Louisette, my father’s sister, a survivor from the Drancy transit camp, that I for the first time saw the face of my grandparents who died at Auschwitz. They’re watching me). However, just as the immutability of the photograph gives the viewer little insight into his grandparents’ thoughts, so Zachmann tells the reader little else too and he does not elaborate further on the weight of their gazes. The only other inclusion of a photograph from the past provides one of the most moving images in the book (Zachmann 1987: 34–5), which Zachmann affords a double-page spread. It shows a concentration-camp survivor in close-up, holding two photographs showing groups of men and women posing solemnly in the striped uniforms worn by many concentration-camp inmates. Part of a group of portraits titled ‘Portraits de rescapés de camps de concentration, Jérusalem, Juin 1981’ (ibid.: 30–9) no additional information is given: readers are not told what relation the elderly man bears to those pictured or whether he even numbers among them. Although both share a similar mise en scène, Zachmann’s portrait of his aunt differs markedly. In contrast to the survivor photographed in Jerusalem, Zachmann’s Aunt Louisette stands much further away from the camera: literally backed into a corner, even her space above is encroached by the leaves of an overhanging plant. Appearing ill at ease and perhaps unhappy about the photograph being taken, she may hold the photographs up, but she does so with little purpose: one picture frame is held crookedly and the photograph inside has conspicuously slipped. The cumulative effect is one of awkwardness: Louisette appears r­eticent before her nephew’s camera, reluctant to pose or perform. Technically, the image does not rank among Zachmann’s best; perhaps, given his aunt’s mood, taken hurriedly and explaining why glares of light appear on the pane of his grandfather’s portrait frame, his aunt’s glasses and the plant leaves above her. If, despite the subject matter of his book, artistic merit takes precedence over personal significance, this may

1­ 40

Representing ethnicity

explain why Zachmann chose not to enlarge this image further. This, nevertheless, cannot fully explain the contrasting ways in which he photographs these two people. Whereas his aunt and the two portraits of his grandparents that she holds are not distant within the frame, their distance from Zachmann’s lens is significantly greater in comparison with the proximity he shares with the concentration-camp survivor. Somewhat paradoxically given the autobiographical thrust of Zachmann’s project, when it comes to representing the past of his own family a barrier operates: Zachmann first photographs his aunt in a rather offhand way, then reproduces the image in the book’s smallest size, and finally places it opposite an image that visually overwhelms it – a full-page portrait of his joyful cousin Véronique on her wedding day (Zachmann 1987: 95). As the latter portrait reveals, elsewhere Zachmann readily photographs other family members in close-up; no more so than in the final double-page portrait of the book (ibid.: 106–7) which shows his wife Florence lying in hospital holding their newborn son Théo, photographed so closely that their two forms almost completely fill the image. Zachmann’s image of his aunt is the only one in the final chapter, which focuses exclusively on his family, which is reproduced in this way: all the others are significantly larger, almost full-page or double-page in size. This image is, therefore, not only relegated upon its page but also diminished within the chapter itself. Zachmann’s reasons for marginalising his aunt’s image remain unclear. Zachmann may have found it easier to photograph strangers; indeed the photograph, previously discussed, of a Holocaust survivor in Jerusalem forms part of a whole chapter that documents the first-ever global gathering of such survivors in 1981. Furthermore, in taking his aunt’s picture, Zachmann not only addresses the legacy of the Holocaust but also directly confronts his Jewish heritage: a dual task that may have proved doubly ­traumatic. As a photographer he may remain at a ­respectful distance, but despite this discretion such space also signals psychological distance from them too. Moreover, by photographing people holding photographs, Zachmann stages a mise-en-abîme that symbolises the inaccessibility of this photographic past. This  is

Parameters of Jewish identity

141

fitting given how photography is a key medium for the work of postmemory, for as Hirsch (1997: 23) describes: Photographs in their endearing ‘umbilical’ connection to life are precisely the medium connecting first- and second-generation remembrance, memory and postmemory. They are the leftovers, the fragmentary sources and building blocks, shot through with holes, of the work of postmemory. They affirm the past’s existence and, in their flat two-dimensionality, they signal its unbridgeable distance.

It seems no coincidence, therefore, that Zachmann does choose to end his book by focusing on his family – only as he reaches the end of his project can he return to them and recognise their Jewishness in light of his journey. Moreover, in addition to this final chapter, Zachmann’s entire book – in keeping with other photography books that focus on Jewishness such as Images de la mémoire juive (Anon. 2000) and Kochan and Kochan’s The Jewish Family Album: Yesterday’s World in Old Photographs (1975) – could be read as a kind of Jewish “family album”, assembled by the photographer. Yet notwithstanding the two mises-en-abîme discussed, Zachmann’s images are rigorously contemporary, taken between 1977 and 1986, and include no family snapshots of his earlier past. It is only in the accompanying text that more about Zachmann’s family history is mentioned – for instance revealing his ­discovery that his great-grandfather was a rabbi (Zachmann 1987: 94). Essentially, it is the faces of the living that interest him: what it meant to be Jewish at the time he photographed rather than what it had signified in the past. Several aspects nevertheless suggest parallels with the family album. First, the content of the images themselves: Zachmann’s focus remains resolutely on people throughout his work and, as tradition demands, almost all acknowledge his camera directly. Many of the photographs also depict family events, such as parties, marriages and religious celebrations and, as stated earlier, photographs of Zachmann’s own family make up the whole of the final chapter. The layout of some sections also mirrors that of many family albums: particularly in the fifth chapter where, on three occasions, four photographs  – whose

1­ 42

Representing ethnicity

dimensions approximate the standard 7×5-inch format – are neatly arranged alongside each other across two pages (Zachmann 1987: 76–7; 80–1; 86–7). The inclusion underneath of each person’s first name and surname, along with their location and the year the picture was taken, personalises proceedings and cements the idea that those pictured – all members of the Jewish diaspora in Paris – are linked together. The fact that the title of each image also reveals each person’s occupation verges on taxonomy, but also stresses the diversity of this diaspora, and by dedicating the whole of his fifth chapter to them, Zachmann implicitly posits them as a community too. Perhaps the “Jewish” family album Zachmann previously never had, such ‘imaginative investment and creation’ epitomises the work of postmemory (Hirsch 1997: 22). In a particularly evocative passage of his book, Zachmann (1987: 94) himself reveals as much: J’ai photographié mes souvenirs, en quelque sorte, des souvenirs oubliés de ma mémoire familiale, tout ce que j’ignorais ou que j’avais effacé. Je me suis laissé attirer par des scènes, des regards, des visages, et je me suis constitué une mémoire, moi qui suis pratiquement amnésique: une mémoire en planches-contact que je garde dans mes tiroirs comme un journal intime (I photographed my memories, in a way, forgotten family memories, everything that I didn’t know or that I had erased. I let myself be attracted by scenes, looks and faces, and I constructed my own memory, even as someone who is practically an amnesiac: a memory composed of contact sheets that I keep in my drawers like a private journal).

The relationship between memory and photography is evidently fraught with complexity. In a related context, Scott (1999: 31) has maintained that ‘many family snappers and touristic photographers would argue that the photographs they take, far from being substitutes for experience, are aides-mémoire, that photographs are not themselves memories but triggers of memory’ (original emphasis). Scott’s comments are partially a response to critics of photography, such as Sontag (2002: 165), who have asserted that, increasingly, one can only remember the past through

Parameters of Jewish identity

143

­ hotographs and cannot think beyond them; therefore they are p now ‘not so much an instrument of memory as an invention of it or replacement’. Perhaps here, conversely, Sontag’s words ring all too true: Zachmann’s photographs do effectively become a replacement of memory – but for one that he, in his words, either erased or never had. Turning now to examine this memory in more detail, how does Zachmann represent Jewishness in France more generally? His first two chapters perhaps take predictable subjects. The first focuses on Judaism and contains both conventional imagery, such as a Jewish wedding and circumcision (Zachmann 1987: 17–18), and perhaps less usual sights, such as the inauguration of a Sefer torah (Torah scroll) in a Parisian synagogue (ibid.: 14–15) and a kapparot ceremony (ibid.: 17), when a white fowl is slaughtered – its meat or its value in money given to the poor – on the eve of Yom Kippur (de Lange 2000: 105). The fact that Judaism is the theme of the book’s very first chapter must signal its prominence in Zachmann’s conception of Jewishness in France and all these photographs are notable for his proximity to those pictured, suggesting intimacy and affection. Another essential element of Zachmann’s vision is remembrance of the Holocaust: the subject of his second chapter, devoted to portraits of concentration-camp survivors gathered in Israel. Although the nationality of those photographed there is not revealed, Zachmann’s inclusion of this assignment suggests he could not have considered completing his study without it. A chapter on Jewish social gatherings – such as private balls and dances organised by the Union Sépharadite de France – follows and, like the fifth chapter, which documents the Jewish diaspora in Paris, establishes that Zachmann envisages Jews as very much a community within Paris; the very different occupations he records them performing a testament to the clear differences in social class and wealth among the city’s Jewish population. Images of anti-Semitic attacks in the fourth chapter highlight the threats Jews, regardless of circumstance, faced in late 1970s and early 1980s France. Photographs show the May 1978 terrorist attack at Orly airport against the Israeli airline El Al (Zachmann 1987: 65), a protest march following the 3 October 1980 bombing

1­ 44

Representing ethnicity

of a synagogue on rue Copernic in Paris (ibid.: 63), and the desecration in Paris of seventy Jewish graves in April 1981 (68–9). Zachmann also includes some Jewish responses too – such as the formation of young militant Zionist groups (66–7) and a photograph of Jews attending a self-defence training session run by the anti-racist group LICRA (60–1), indicating that he is not content just to show images of Jews as either victims or passively accepting such abuse. Finally, as discussed, family forms an integral part of this memory, with portraits of his wife, child and relatives along with images of a family bar mitzvah, wedding and funeral. This memory is also in black-and-white. Typically characterised as a ‘probing, dispassionate, tonal/modal language’, black-and-white photography can signify differently according to context but it is often regarded as timeless (Scott 1999: 70). Zachmann’s focus upon people and individuals means one could classify his  photography as humanist too, but the titling of the photographs partially negates any sense of generalisation here. Many include the names of those photographed, their location and are dated, meaning that his images are often clearly situated rather than necessarily positioned solely as emblematic of a wider universal and timeless experience. Nevertheless, the fact that Zachmann’s photographs almost cover an entire decade (1977–86) risks a certain synchrony. Perhaps nostalgia too: although Zachmann might struggle to feel nostalgic towards a past he never actually had, he certainly can romanticise the one he imagines now. Aside from any collapsing of time, the neutrality of black-and-white also helps link these very different people together – some undoubtedly from different countries and having different ethnicities – as Jews and accentuates the idea that this is a “Jewish” family album, where they, and, increasingly, Zachmann, all share something in common. The photojournalistic feel of Zachmann’s fourth chapter temporarily disrupts this effect but his images of Jewish responses to antiSemitic attacks and his accompanying text describing hostility in France towards Jews after the June 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon suggest a defiant reaction that binds French Jews together and reinforces the cohesiveness Zachmann’s images create.

Parameters of Jewish identity

145

As Scott (1999: 29) has noted: Photography, because of the presentness of its referent, can only be history, it cannot represent it; or, put the other way round, it can represent the anachronistic, but cannot be anachronistic… If painting has the power to make the past present to us, photography may only do the reverse.

In this sense, Zachmann’s book cannot be a work of memory, which magically looks back into his unrecorded past – as Scott says, the past itself cannot be photographed retrospectively – but perhaps the passage of time, gradually making the images more and more anachronistic, helps it become one. As Kuhn (2002: 155) has argued, memory is, in itself, never just a primary process: The past is unavoidably rewritten, revised, through memory. And memory is partial: things get forgotten, misremembered, repressed. Memory, in any case, is always already secondary revision: even the memories we run and rerun inside our heads are residues of psychical processes, often unconscious ones; and their (re)telling – putting subjective memory-images into some communicable form – always involves ordering and organising them in one way or another.

Enquête d’identité: un Juif à la recherche de sa mémoire is an indirect acknowledgement of this: unable to remember a past he never had, Zachmann re-members it – assembling a past for himself, or perhaps fabricating one: made but, in some ways, also made-up. As his book draws to a close, Zachmann seems to realise, ultimately, that his initial quest to define Jewishness (1987: 73) was futile, stating that: ‘Je me disais qu’en fait, l’identité juive ne pouvait pas être cernée, peut-être parce qu’elle est faite de traditions et de métissages millénaires’ (ibid.) (I told myself that, in fact, Jewish identity cannot be defined, perhaps because it comprises traditions and ethnic diversity that stretch back millennia). His photographs reflect this realisation. Although some of the aspects on which he focuses might seem obvious or conventional, the fact that Zachmann investigates several different themes means that Jewishness in France cannot be summarised neatly or situated definitively. The book closes with Zachmann realising

1­ 46

Representing ethnicity

that he too is unable to situate himself fully in relation to it, but an earlier passage indicates that he has reached a certain accommodation with his identity nonetheless, stating that: ‘Je suis Juif français, et tant pis pour les contradictions que ça comporte. C’est ça la force de la diaspora: naviguer tant bien que mal entre deux cultures qui s’enrichissent mutuellement’ (ibid.: 64) (I am a French Jew, and never mind the contradictions that this implies. That’s the strength of diaspora: navigating as best you can between two mutually enriching cultures). Representing la rafle du Vél’ d’Hiv: La Rafle (2010) and Elle s’appelait Sarah (2010) We now turn to cinema to analyse two films that have also engaged with the memory and legacies of the Second World War in France. As Hewitt (2008) and Banaji (2012) have shown, the Occupation and Vichy France have provided a continual source of inspiration for French filmmakers throughout recent decades. Films set during the Occupation era also remain a key means by which France’s Jewish population is represented in contemporary French visual culture. Notably few, however, have focused at length on a key moment of the war, mentioned earlier, that continues to attract particular attention: la rafle du Vél’ d’Hiv. This made the release of two films in 2010 that centred on it all the more distinctive. Set during the wartime period, Roselyn Bosch’s historical melodrama La Rafle adopted a conventional linear approach in its exploration of the events leading up to and following the rounding up of Jews in Paris. In contrast Gilles Paquet-Brenner’s Elle s’appelait Sarah criss-crossed between present-day Paris and the wartime era as viewers see an American journalist’s research into la rafle du Vél’ d’Hiv become an increasingly personal quest that reveals secrets about the past of her husband’s family. Both also clearly resonated with French audiences: released in March 2010, La Rafle proved to be one of the most popular films of that year, attracting over 2.8 million viewers. Elle s’appelait Sarah hit French cinema screens in October and, although unable to match the popularity of Bosch’s film, achieved the very respectable figure of over 800,000 viewers. How did these

Parameters of Jewish identity

147

films represent the Jewish characters shown and this now notorious period of French history? From the very beginning of Bosch’s film, its historical credentials are asserted: an insert states that the film is based on real events and the opening sequence immediately propels viewers back to the Occupation era by showing Hitler visiting iconic Parisian monuments and landmarks, such as the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe. Moreover, a distinctive aspect of the film is its imbrication of three distinct domains: Hitler and Nazis in Germany discussing their plans to exterminate Jews; figures in Vichy France such as Pétain, Laval and Bousquet as they coordinate the rounding up of Jews; and the experience of the Jewish families detained initially in the Vél’ d’Hiv and then housed temporarily in a camp in Beaune-la-Rolande in the Loiret region before being deported to concentration camps in Poland. The film’s ambitious scope here and emphasis upon historical veracity epitomise its clear didactic tone, which is repeatedly emphasised by the explanatory dialogue that characters across all three domains so regularly utter. Given these pedagogical aspects, it was perhaps not surprising that they were traded on during the film’s accompanying promotional campaign, which comprised free preview screenings in twenty-seven cinemas across France especially for history teachers, and reportedly attracted a total audience of 5000 people (Bommelaer 2010). An educational document for teachers to accompany the film was also sent to 11,000 secondary schools (Péron 2010) and in several major cinema chains the cost of a ticket was capped at €4 for any students seeing the film as part of a school trip (ibid.). The prominence of children in the cast and the film’s emphasis on childhood wartime experience may also have appealed to younger viewers and such a focus was predictable given how often evocations of la rafle du Vél’ d’Hiv more widely have centred on children. Indeed, this is surely one of the most distinctive aspects of how this moment of French history has been represented and remembered: a point borne out once again in 2012 by the series of exhibitions held in Paris to coincide with its seventieth anniversary, which included ‘Au coeur de la génocide – les

1­ 48

Representing ethnicity

enfants dans la Shoah, 1933–45’ at the Mémorial de la Shoah and ‘C’étaient des enfants. Déportation et sauvetage des enfants juifs à Paris’ at the Hôtel de Ville. Given the unprecedented scale of the round-up – during which over a third of all Jewish children deported from France were detained (Gensburger 2012: 8) – and the fact that this was the first time that Jewish children under the age of sixteen were explicitly targeted by the authorities, such an emphasis is understandable. Moreover, the French police’s zeal in rounding up Jews in France regardless of age is perennially cited as an index of the inhumanity and barbarity of the Vichy regime, and the fact that its embrace of anti-Semitism led to a total of over 11,000 children from France being sent to concentration camps has been described as ‘la page la plus douloureuse des persécutions subies par les Juifs de France’ (Klarsfeld 2005:  10) (the most painful page of persecutions suffered by France’s Jews). Furthermore, the fact that not a single child deported from France following la rafle du Vél’ d’Hiv returned alive (Lévy and Tillard 2010: 235) undoubtedly also explains why these events remain so infamous. Following the aforementioned opening sequence, La Rafle immediately heralds its focus on children by pointedly showing a German soldier’s joy at filming by a merry-go-round beneath the Sacré-Coeur suddenly subside when his camera alights upon a young Jewish boy. Their wordless confrontation seems a metaphor for the gulf that separates them and their lack of communication immediately establishes the degree to which they clearly inhabit very different worlds in central Paris. Nevertheless, despite the film’s repeated stress on the anti-Semitism of this period – emphasised especially in many scenes by the prominence of the yellow stars worn by Jewish characters – the vision of life presented before the events of la rafle du Vél’ d’Hiv might seem somewhat idealised at best. Set in the Montmartre area of Paris, such scenes focus on life in a Jewish community there via a group of families whom viewers will subsequently see rounded up and deported. The wartime Paris in which they reside, however, with its conspicuously clean streets has the sheen of the studio set, and the sight of a remarkably well provisioned bakery there during such a period of economic hardship surely

Parameters of Jewish identity

149

stretches credibility. Furthermore, despite the emphasis upon the film’s historical authenticity by the director and promotional campaign –  most notably via their championing of the involvement of the famous activist Serge Klarsfeld – historians such as Wieviorka (2010) and Jackson (2010) have pointed out several inaccuracies, some of which are clearly not without consequence with regard to the resultant portrait of Occupied France and French society. Perhaps the most glaring example is the film’s inference that the camp seen later where the Jewish detainees are interned before being deported was situated in the countryside far away from the town of Beaune-la-Rolonde itself. In reality, however, it was ‘in very close proximity to the local village – such that those in the camp could hear the bells of the local church and the villagers were well aware of the Jews almost in their midst’ (Jackson 2010). Rather than merely a solitary oversight, this aspect is in fact redolent of a wider trend in the film regarding how French society generally is represented. For, whereas the complicity of key historical Vichy figures in the rounding up and deportation of Jews in France is clearly established, it is striking how often the film repeatedly foregrounds in contrast several acts of kindness, sympathy and solidarity towards Jews by others. Viewers therefore see a plumber working in the Vél’ d’Hiv provide a pass that enables a young Jewish girl to escape by pretending to be his wife; firemen contravene police orders by providing water to detainees; and attempts by neighbours to hide and protect Jewish children from being taken away by police. However grounded in reality such acts are, their recurrence and prominence on screen ultimately risk reinstating the myth of résistancialisme – the claim that most French people during the Occupation resisted Nazi rule –  that cinema itself had initially helped debunk via Marcel Ophul’s landmark documentary film, Le Chagrin et la Pitié (1971). Bosch’s ­portrait of wartime French society consequently recalls the ‘disturbing and even dangerous desire to return to the comforting myths of the postwar years’ identified by Greene (1995:  284) in films such as Truffaut’s Le Dernier Métro (1980); Louis Malle’s Au revoir les enfants (1987); and Claude Chabrol’s Une affaire de femmes (1988).

1­ 50

Representing ethnicity

The prominence in the film of Annette Monod, a white French Protestant woman played by Mélanie Laurent, is therefore not a coincidence. Following her first entrance into the Vél’ d’Hiv to work there as a nurse, she quickly becomes the film’s main character and moral conscience, and clearly the character with whom viewers are encouraged most to identify. They subsequently see her take an increasingly strident stance on what she witnesses: leading her to eat only the same food as detainees in the Loiret camp to prove to the authorities that the detainees’ daily rations are insufficient. She repeatedly writes to the local prefect to request additional help and, because no reply is forthcoming, eventually confronts him in person. Like many other French authority figures, however, the prefect only appears briefly on screen and Annette’s sudden fainting in front of him both conveniently prevents any prolonged verbal discussion between them ensuing and simultaneously stresses her self-sacrifice. Her importance to the narrative is reaffirmed at the end of the film when a flash-forward to central Paris in July 1945 shows her working in the Hôtel Lutétia as part of a welcome centre for returnees from concentration camps. Moreover, it is there that viewers see her miraculously reunited with Jo and Nono: two of the children whose destinies the film follows most closely (see figure 5). This conclusion, along with the notable elision in the  main narrative of the fate that befell the others unable to escape deportation, provides the kind of happy end and neat resolution that this subject matter might ordinarily exclude, even if

5  Annette is reunited with Jo at the Hôtel Lutétia in La Rafle (2010)

Parameters of Jewish identity

151

the character of Jo was based on Joseph Weissman, one of the rare survivors. Furthermore, its incongruity is then immediately heightened as the film closes by an insert that informs viewers that only twentyfive adults out of those rounded up and detained during la rafle du Vél’ d’Hiv survived and that none of the 4,051 children deported ever returned. The children’s reunion with Annette –  undoubtedly included so that that film concludes in a life-affirming if not heartwarming way – therefore strikes a peculiarly odd note given the gravity and scale of the events the film attempted to depict. Moreover, the fact that the film’s final insert then states that while ‘Vichy et les Allemands’ (Vichy and the Germans) had hoped to round up 24,000 people, ‘des parisiens [sic] courageux contribuèrent à cacher 10000 juifs, hommes, femmes et enfants……’ (courageous Parisians helped hide 10,000 Jews, men, women and children…) seems telling. While clearly many Parisians and French people generally did help conceal many Jews and therefore saved them from such round-ups, to end on such a note chimes with the résistancialisme detected earlier and ultimately provides a conspicuously comforting narrative for contemporary viewers. The need to provide such a palliative ending becomes all the more important given the degree to which the film attempts to play on the emotions of viewers as it builds to its climax. In the unlikely event that they are unsure how to respond towards such events on screen – or, more accurately, how the director expects them to – the use of music towards the end of the film undoubtedly helps. From the moment when the youngest children are separated from their parents before the latter are deported, extradiegetic music – already a mainstay of the film –  becomes particularly prominent, often replacing dialogue and drowning out much ambient sound. Viewers familiar with films and television programmes documenting this period of history will recognise the use of violins here to connote sadness and tragedy: its presence is so predictable that it further reinforces the film’s clinical feel overall, where such elements frequently signpost to viewers how (and when) they should respond. This question of the reception of the film – and of how it was designed to be perceived by viewers –  itself became the centre

1­ 52

Representing ethnicity

of a controversy in the media later that year when the film was released on DVD. Clearly stung by the decidedly mixed critical response La Rafle had received when on cinema release, Bosch went on the offensive in an interview given to the monthly magazine Les Années laser, where she was quoted as declaring that: On pleure pendant La Rafle parce que … on ne peut que pleurer. Sauf si on est un enfant gâté de l’époque, sauf si on se délecte du cynisme au cinéma, sauf si on considère que les émotions humaines sont une abomination ou une faiblesse. C’est du reste ce que pensait Hitler: que les émotions sont de la sensiblerie. Il est intéressant de voir que ces pisse-froid rejoignent Hitler en esprit, non? En tout cas, s’il y a une guerre, je n’aimerais pas être dans la même tranchée que ceux qui trouvent qu’il y a “trop” d’émotion dans La Rafle. (quoted in Morain 2010) (We cry when watching La Rafle because … we can’t but cry. Unless you’re a spoilt child of today, unless you revel in being cynical about cinema, unless you think that human emotions are an abomination or weakness. What’s more, it’s like what Hitler thought: that emotions are just sentimentality. It’s interesting to see these wet blankets concur with Hitler’s thinking, isn’t it? In any case, if there’s a war, I wouldn’t like to be on the same side as those who think there’s “too much” emotion in La Rafle)

When cited online by the Les Inrockuptibles website in an article condemning such comments, Bosch subsequently denied ever having made them and suggested she would bring legal action against it for claiming that she had and for misrepresenting her words (Klein 2010). Yet it was these very words – and the original published interview itself – that were cited in a later legal judgment issued by the Paris appeal court in April 2013 in a bizarre epilogue to this initial controversy. Having taken umbrage at a posting on the film review blog selenie.fr that criticised the director’s published comments, Bosch demanded that the company hosting the blog remove the post on the grounds that it constituted illicit content and therefore contravened French legislation (namely la loi du 21 juin 2004) on digital material. After the Paris Tribunal de grande instance rejected her request, her subsequent appeal was also rejected by the Paris appeal court and she was ordered to pay the defendant’s costs and €3000 towards court

Parameters of Jewish identity

153

expenses. In the summing up of its verdict, the appeal court not only asserted that the anonymous blogger’s comments did not constitute an attack on the director, on her work or on her reputation, but also that it did not exceed the limits of free expression and fair criticism. Furthermore, it reminded Bosch that her own original words – that those viewers unmoved by her film recalled the ideology of Hitler – themselves constituted a provocative comment: the inference being that a similar charge could have been brought against Bosch herself. Their spectacular reductiveness aside, Bosch’s original comments clearly were also informed by the wider status of popular cinema and its critical reception in France and served as a reaction to the disdain with which some French critics perennially greet popular films. Her decision to close down further criticism by bringing the case above and appealing its rejection, however, were deplored by many as an attack on freedom of expression. The question of the stakes of representing such periods of French history in the contemporary era – and the ethics of doing so – had already attracted heightened attention in the years preceding La Rafle’s release due to a series of controversial proposals mooted by President Sarkozy. These included his announcement in February 2008 for plans for each school child in France to be twinned symbolically with the memory of a child killed during the Holocaust, and a year earlier the proposed annual reading in French lycées of the last letter written by Guy Môquet, the 17-year-old French communist militant executed in 1941 and historically seen as a symbol of the French Resistance. Although greeted by some as important contributions to France’s ongoing devoir de mémoire, for others such initiatives reeked of political opportunism by Sarkozy, whose proposals were seen by critics as tantamount to a political instrumentalisation of history. The release of La Rafle and the controversy Bosch’s comments and actions subsequently provoked therefore resonated with this wider climate where the question of how the events of the Occupation, such as la rafle du Vél’ d’Hiv, can and should be remembered has been recurrently posed. Moving forward to the commemoration on 22 July 2012 of the seventieth anniversary of la rafle du Vél’ d’Hiv, the polemic provoked by President

1­ 54

Representing ethnicity

Hollande’s speech served as a reminder once again how controversial the history and memory of this event, and of the Occupation more widely, remains in France. After Hollande declared that ‘Nous devons la vérité sur ce qui s’est passé il y a 70 ans. La vérité, c’est que le crime fut commis en France, par la France … Pas un soldat allemand, pas un seul, ne fut mobilisé pour l’ensemble de cette opération’ (quoted in Wieder 2012) (We must have the truth about what happened seventy years ago. The truth is that this crime was committed in France and by France … No German soldier, not a single one, was mobilised for this entire operation) a series of figures on the right of French politics criticised the speech for what they perceived as Hollande’s failure to distinguish between the French Republic and Vichy State (Anon. 2012). Clearly, in spite of Chirac’s acknowledgement of the role played by the French State in la rafle du Vél’ d’Hiv – famously in his own speech during the commemoration of the fifty-third anniversary on 16 July 1995 he declared that by facilitating la rafle du Vél’ d’Hiv, ‘la France … accomplissait l’irréparable’ (France committed an irreparable act) – and the series of subsequent initiatives that have recognised its role during the Occupation, consensus across the political spectrum regarding its complicity in such events remains far from complete. We now turn to a film released in the wake of La Rafle that coincidentally also took la rafle du Vél’ d’Hiv as its subject but – by shuttling back and forth between the wartime era and events in present-day Paris –  allowed greater reflection on the legacy of this event in France and its consequences. Based on the novel Sarah’s Key (2007) by Tatiana de Rosnay, it starred the British actress Kristin Scott-Thomas in the lead role as Julia Jarmond, an American journalist living in Paris who uncovers a host of wartime secrets in the past of her French husband’s family while researching an article to mark the sixtieth anniversary of la rafle du Vél’ d’Hiv (see figure 6). The device of having an American journalist research the events of that period for an article – and piece together a puzzle from her family-in-law’s past – is arguably more effective in creating tension and suspense than La Rafle, where viewers aware of la rafle du Vél’ d’Hiv would already know the fate that awaited almost all of those

Parameters of Jewish identity

155

6  Julia uncovering family secrets and Sarah’s past in Elle s’appelait Sarah (2010)

rounded up and deported to concentration camps. The fact that in an early scene the two colleagues to whom she explains  the details and significance of the event happen to be foreign too also spares French viewers the potentially uncomfortable sight of any French characters on screen admitting their obliviousness to the event. Given the findings of a survey conducted as the seventieth anniversary of la rafle du Vél’ d’Hiv’ approached, however, such ignorance would not be so implausible. It found that 42 per cent of respondents had not heard of the event and that this figure increased markedly among younger groups: 57  per cent for 25–34-year-olds, 60 per cent for 18–24-year-olds, and 67 per cent for 15–17-year-olds (Le Bars 2012). Although Paquet-Brenner’s film similarly adopts conventions of melodrama, in contrast it begins more in the mode of the suspense thriller by showing a 10-year-old girl, Sarah Starzynski, lock the cupboard in which she hides her 4-year-old brother Michel from police when they come to round up the family at their home on 16 July 1942. Subsequent scenes show Sarah, her mother and others escorted by police to the Vél’ d’Hiv, where they are interned for several days before being transported to Beaune-la-Rolonde. As various attempts by Sarah for her brother to be rescued each fail, tension mounts as to whether Michel will survive as each day passes, and it is only later in the film after Sarah escapes the camp and is helped by a couple to return to Paris that Michel’s fate is confirmed. Via a series of flash-forwards

1­ 56

Representing ethnicity

to present-day Paris, viewers soon realise that the family apartment that the American journalist Julia and her French husband plan to renovate and move into is the very same one from which Sarah and her family were ejected in 1942. When Julia becomes aware of this link, the film begins to pivot around the fate of Sarah in later life when Julia’s research leads her back to New York as she endeavours to find out what happened to the young girl after she emigrated from France to the US. Like Bosch’s film, Elle s’appelait Sarah does not shy away either from the challenge of representing events inside the Vél’ d’Hiv itself. The sequences set there also attempt to convey the distress of detainees and deplorable conditions experienced: evoked especially when young Sarah is shown witnessing the apparent suicide of a woman who falls to her death and elsewhere what seems to be a sex act performed partially under cover yet still in public view. In comparison to La Rafle, however, markedly fewer scenes take place there and it also appears for a shorter time on screen before attention shifts to the departure of detainees to Beaune-la-Rolande. While the brevity of time spent inside the Vél’ d’Hiv might be explained by the film’s repeated switching between the past and the present – meaning less time comparatively can be spent showing past events – it seems redolent of the divergent approach taken by Paquet-Brenner with regard to depicting such incidents and the wartime period generally. More modest in scope, Elle s’appelait Sarah is not freighted with the same pedagogical burden as La Rafle and consequently is able to evoke such historical episodes vividly but without attempting to provide a comprehensive or definitive portrait, which often seems to be the underlying premise of La Rafle. This contrast in style and approach between the two films is confirmed in later scenes of Elle s’appelait Sarah after the detainees have been transported to Beaune-la-Rolonde. There once again we see a depiction of the moment when the youngest children and adult women were separated permanently from one another – including Sarah from her mother – but even if once again these events are afforded less screen time than in La Rafle, arguably Paquet-Brenner’s use of editing and camerawork is far more effective in connoting a sense of panic and terror. His

Parameters of Jewish identity

157

combination of short takes and fast editing, along with the recurrent use of handheld cameras, creates a more visceral sense of disorientation, which is accentuated by the frequency of mid-level shots that relegate actors’ faces off-screen. Later, however, while the children reside alone at the camps, viewers witness a series of acts of kindness towards the children from local people, which may recall aspects of La Rafle. These include women passing apples to children through the barbed wire fence surrounding the camp; the lifting up of the barbed wire by the policeman Jacques to allow Sarah and another girl to escape; and the shelter and care given to the two girls by the aforementioned local couple who later travel with Sarah to Paris to find her brother Michel. Nevertheless, in comparison to Bosch’s film, these acts seem more isolated and random than systematic, thereby permitting PaquetBrenner to avoid the risk of creating a similarly résistancialiste portrait of Occupied France. Perhaps the most striking coincidence between the two films is their focus upon children rounded up in la rafle du Vél’ d’Hiv but who manage to escape the fate that befell so many others. Yet here once again important differences can be traced. Whereas the miraculous reunion of Jo and Nono with Annette at the end of La Rafle provided a somewhat implausible resolution, viewers of Elle s’appelait Sarah are spared the sight of Julia finally tracking down and meeting the adult Sarah. Instead, it eventually becomes clear that Sarah died in 1966, the inference being that she committed suicide. This belated revelation ends the series of flashbacks seen throughout the film that showed glimpses of Sarah’s new life in the US and are narrated via voiceovers from her husband. Moreover, the importance of the contextual information his narration provides is accentuated by Sarah’s complete silence in these scenes. This notable aporia epitomises the mystery that surrounds Sarah’s life as Julia tries to piece together her past. It also gestures powerfully towards a wider sense that the film in no way endeavours to convey the totality of events or all aspects of the lives of such characters. Her silence ultimately becomes symptomatic of the film’s comparative modesty and Paquet-Brenner’s greater acknowledgement of the limits of representation of such events and of their legacy. This sensitivity means that some of the

1­ 58

Representing ethnicity

risks inherent in trying to recreate such events and their aftermath graphically on screen are avoided. The fact that Sarah hides her childhood from her new family in the US, however, and that viewers never see or hear her justify or reflect on this, consequently means that no engagement with Sarah’s Jewishness as an adult occurs. Ultimately the film concentrates instead on establishing parallels between Sarah (as child and adult) and Julia as individuals: a connection that comes full circle in the film’s concluding sequence when viewers discover in a flash-forward two years later that Julia chose to name her new daughter Sarah. This final revelation may seem a rather neat end to such a multilayered historical narrative – and a somewhat predictable conclusion to the personal devoir de mémoire viewers see Julia explore – but ultimately it is in keeping with the private journey undertaken by Julia during the film’s events, and establishes one final emotive connection between the two women that the film repeatedly so carefully links. For two films that foregrounded la rafle du Vél’ d’Hiv and its consequences to be released in the same calendar year was clearly a notable coincidence and any film set during this wartime period automatically raises questions regarding the ethics of representation and how cinema can or should evoke the horrors of such events. Given the near-complete lack of visual traces generally of la rafle du Vél’ d’Hiv, however, coupled with the fact that the Vél d’Hiv itself was destroyed in 1959, arguably the stakes here for both directors were particularly high. Moreover, the fact that the image often cited (Taieb 2012: 15) as the only one to have survived of these events in Paris was not taken inside the Vél’ d’Hiv but outside – showing a fleet of buses parked outside commandeered by French police to transport detainees, as reproduced on the covers of Lévy and Tillard (2010) and Vincenot (2012) – might also have posed further challenges for the filmmakers and heightened attention from critics and viewers. This is all the more so given that, aside from its evocation in Michel Mitrani’s Les Guichets du Louvre (1974) and Joseph Losey’s Monsieur Klein (1976), French cinema had previously largely avoided the subject. The prominent promotional campaign orchestrated for La Rafle’s release in France (Wieviorka 2010) evidently sought to

Parameters of Jewish identity

159

capitalise on the event’s relative invisibility in French visual culture  and the clear pedagogical aims that subtended Bosch’s film allowed it to be presented as an important contribution to the wider devoir de mémoire regarding the Occupation with which French society has notably been grappling since the 1990s. Its popularity at the French box office suggested that it strongly resonated with audiences; however, the portrait it presents of Occupied France seems to belong more to a time before the myth of résistancialisme was debunked and the miraculous return of the two boys at the end – however grounded in reality – ­crowbars a feel-good end into a film that might otherwise have closed more sombrely. Moreover, while the subsequent insert before the credits states how many deportees perished and therefore reminds viewers that these boys constitute a marked exception to this rule, by focusing on them reuniting with Annette the film’s final scenes arguably obscure the wider plight of others so that it can still close on an uplifting note. Indeed, Bosch’s controversial comments regarding how viewers should respond to the film confirmed the degree to which events on screen were deliberately designed to yield an emotional response from viewers: one that undoubtedly would have differed had Bosch’s focus on the ultimate fate of those deported from France been more sustained. As previously noted, the escape of children from the Beaunela-Rolande camp also formed a key aspect of the plot of Elle s’appelait Sarah but there the use of flashbacks and of elements of the thriller and mystery genres allowed a more complex portrait of the legacy and consequences of la rafle du Vél’ d’Hiv to emerge. Moreover, the fate of Sarah –  and the realisation that Julia will never be able to meet her –  contrasts sharply with the ending of La Rafle and is indicative of Paquet-Brenner’s divergent approach. The fact that both films, despite their many differences, prioritise the experience and fate of children during the war so much is nonetheless unmistakable and –  given the prominence of children more widely in films set in Occupied France and both films’ commercial success – strongly suggests that this will continue to remain a key means by which French cinema will evoke both this period and Jewishness during it on screen.

1­ 60

Representing ethnicity

Playing for laughs: Thomas Gilou’s La Vérité si je mens! ­trilogy (1997, 2001 and 2012) For the final section of this chapter, we now turn our attention to a series of films that concentrate exclusively on contemporary France and have become the most famous film franchise to focus explicitly on contemporary Jewish experience in France: Thomas Gilou’s La Vérité si je mens! trilogy (1997, 2001 and 2012). A surprise hit of 1997, Thomas Gilou’s La Vérité si je mens! was a major blockbuster in France; it managed to attract a million cinemagoers in its opening fortnight despite the stiff competition it faced in its second week of release from Luc Besson’s eagerlyawaited Le Cinquième Élément (1997) (Blumenfeld 1997: 29). Easily Gilou’s most successful film so far, the film went on to become one of the most popular films in France that year, attracting over 4.8 million viewers (Grassin 2001: 52–3). Clearly, the film resonated with French audiences and it is intriguing to ponder why a film with an explicit focus upon a minority culture became such a blockbuster. French audiences’ penchant for popular comedies is well established (Harris 2000: 217). Critics cited the film’s humour, ensemble cast and dialogue as significant factors behind its success (Anon. 1997; Coppermann 1997). The film also benefited from a particularly effective marketing campaign, which allowed it to tour the provinces first before general release: preview screenings in a dozen towns and cities attracted 15,000 viewers. The film was also widely promoted on French television. Moreover, the subject of Jewishness is not unfamiliar in French cinema and several other films since the 1980s have also explored contemporary Jewish experience in France: examples including Martine Dugowson’s Mina Tannenbaum (1994); Ariel Zeïtoun’s XXL (1997); Jean-Jacques Zilbermann’s L’Homme est une femme comme les autres (1998); Renaud Cohen’s Quand on sera grand (2001); Pascale Bailly’s Dieu est grand, je suis toute petite (2001) and Roschdy Zem’s Mauvaise foi (2006). Nevertheless, given its success – and that of two follow-up films – how this franchise represents Jewishness in contemporary France merits consideration. A brief synopsis of the first film will be given first before analysing the characteristics of the Jewish

Parameters of Jewish identity

161

community the film creates. This will lead to a discussion of stereotyping in the film and the significance of the film’s ending for its meaning as a whole. The film’s sequel – La Vérité si je mens! 2 (2001) – will then be addressed, assessing how Gilou’s representation of Jews and Jewishness in France alters four years later before finally the latest instalment of the franchise – La Vérité si je mens! 3 (2012) – is briefly considered. The device Gilou uses in La Vérité si je mens! in order to introduce viewers to the film’s Jewish community is not a new one: as in his previous works, entry is gained via an outsider who manages to penetrate the community in question, here the Gentile Eddie Vuibert. This is not a narrative device peculiar to Gilou and is not uncommon in other French films that focus on Jewishness, which have also created comedy from Jews trying to pass as Gentiles, and Gentiles trying to pass as Jews: Gérard Oury’s Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob (1973) and Lévy et Goliath (1987) provide two examples. The film begins with Eddie Vuibert, unemployed and down on his luck, literally stumbling into the Sentier, a Jewish quartier in Paris. There he is given a job by a textile merchant, Victor Benzakem. Benzakem, like all the others Eddie meets, assumes he is Jewish: a pretence Eddie keeps up in order to safeguard his position. He quickly develops a talent for business and eventually leaves to set up his own company with friends, which eventually becomes successful. After it finally becomes clear that Eddie is not in fact Jewish, he is rejected by his Jewish fiancée Sandra but the film ends with them reunited a year later to the delight of their friends. The film represents Jewishness in a number of ways. First and foremost, the film’s Jewish characters are shown to be a close-knit community. Victor Benzakem’s act of benevolence towards the destitute Eddie is the first of a series of actions that asserts that the characters, despite disagreements and rivalries, function as a group. Numerous examples abound: Patrick frequently has to loan money to his imploring cousin, Serge; Dov clears Eddie’s debt when a business deal turns awry; and Dov later helps Eddie secure financing from Patrick when setting up his own company. This spirit of togetherness is such that even when Eddie and his former boss become rivals, they both make gestures that indicate

1­ 62

Representing ethnicity

their mutual respect for one another: Benzakem warns Eddie that his former buyer, Maurice, had attempted to pass off one of Eddie’s designs as his own; Eddie ensures that Victor’s banker does not foreclose his rival’s account. An early scene in a nightclub, where Dov introduces Eddie to many of this community’s constituent members, serves as another convenient device to present other characters to viewers but also simultaneously reasserts that this is a community where everyone knows one another. As this group is so tight-knit, it seems scarcely surprising that they become so preoccupied with establishing the heritage of any newcomers: hence the constant quizzing Eddie faces about his own background. Witness the scene at Dov’s mother’s house during Sabbath: there Eddie clumsily regurgitates Rafi’s reasoning when he questioned him about Eddie’s name and family. Ultimately, however, any doubts are smoothed over: although Dov’s family appear unconvinced, Dov’s mother brings the matter to a close by insisting that if Eddie says he is Jewish then his word will do. This community seems, therefore, more based on consensus than conflict. This community is not just fraternal but linguistic too: Jewish expressions recur throughout the script, from the customary ‘mazel tov’ during celebrations to the rabbi’s religious terminology, which Eddie pointedly fails to understand. The words ‘pathos’ and ‘goy’ – both synonyms for ‘Gentile’ – are the ones heard most frequently, revealing the group’s preoccupation with ethnic heritage and endogamy. Moreover, there are warnings throughout to Eddie that this Jewish community can be less than tolerant towards outsiders. After Eddie learns the term pathos he asks Dov how many non-Jews live in the Sentier: Dov replies, somewhat sinisterly, that they would last no longer than two months there, but fails to elaborate why. He does say that he knows an Armenian man who lives in the locality – whom, coincidentally, everyone also assumes is Jewish. He then adds that, after all, ‘ce n’est pas marqué sur son front qu’il est goy’ (it’s not written on his forehead that he is a Gentile): an acknowledgement in the film that Jewishness is not in fact necessarily or immediately visible. This might explain why Eddie is interrogated so often about his heritage: if Jewishness were readily identifiable, no questions

Parameters of Jewish identity

163

would need to be asked. As will become clear, this preoccupation also ties in with this group’s insistence upon endogamy. Given the film’s plot, another characteristic of this community is its focus on business. Set in the textile industry of Le Sentier, several of the film’s main storylines revolve around business deals and Serge and Patrick frequently discuss money matters, at times appearing solely motivated by it. Le business (or le bizness) is a buzzword of the film: from Serge pitching the idea of ‘Parfum Patrick Bruel’ to friends to when Eddie tries to convince Dov of the need to set up their own firm, it remains a watchword throughout and is incarnated by the rivalry between Eddie and Benzakem. Such an emphasis means the film automatically risks courting certain stereotypes about Jews, to be discussed further shortly. This world of business is also one run by men and the film’s main action centres upon them. Women are only seen in the context of their relationships with men, appear to have little else to preoccupy their lives and are not well-rounded characters. Although more prominent towards the end of the film – as Eddie and Sandra prepare for marriage and Dov is reunited with Karine – women are often merely objects of the male, heterosexual gaze: from the dancing women on television at Dov’s house during Sabbath to the scantily clad Karine and Muriel who join Dov in Patrick’s swimming pool. It is noticeable that Yvan and Patrick appear to have a penchant for tall, attractive Scandinavian women: Yvan flirts with a supposedly Swedish woman in a bar and Patrick announces that he plans to marry Effi, a Norwegian woman. Furthermore, the latter at one point turns – i­nexplicably – into a nymphomaniac and is shown leaping on Patrick’s cousin Serge, whose resistance, predictably, is short-lived. The only strong female characters in the film appear to be those of an older generation: Dov’s and Sandra’s mothers are more powerful figures but conform to the stereotype of the interfering and inquisitive Jewish mother, interrogating Eddie on his family background and marital availability; they only appear briefly. Time is still made though for Dov to make a joke at their expense during Sabbath, which all – except Eddie – find hilarious and which nods to the tradition of such jokes in Jewish comedy.

1­ 64

Representing ethnicity

Another major feature of the film is its references to Judaism. This is heralded at the start when Victor finds a Magen David (or Star of David) on the floor beside Eddie, which Victor presumes is his and which then serves as Eddie’s gateway into the Jewish community. The film specifically establishes its characters as religious: before handing Eddie the Magen David, Victor kisses it and tells him: ‘la perd plus: c’est péché’ (don’t lose it again, that’s a sin), and the following scene humorously shows its distraught former owner frantically searching the pavement. Equally, Eddie’s mistake in turning up to work on Saturday serves as a pretext to show the Sentier’s observance of the Sabbath as a day of rest. Religious customs are glimpsed throughout the film: no more so than when Dov invites Eddie to share the Sabbath with his mother and family (see figure 7). The subsequent scene effectively functions as an introduction to Jewish religious practice on that day and shows Eddie unwittingly breaking many of its rules: such as drinking all the ceremonial wine the family should share and talking when he is supposed to remain silent. Comedy results too when Robert, Dov’s Orthodox brother-in-law, initiates Eddie into their strict observance of the Sabbath as his son contradicts him by switching on their television. Instead of reprimanding him, Robert is instantly transfixed by the sight of two women gyrating on screen (mentioned earlier) and declares that

7  Eddie celebrates Sabbath with Dov’s family in La Vérité si je mens! (1997)

Parameters of Jewish identity

165

since it has already been switched on, it need not be turned off. Further customs are flouted while Eddie and Sandra prepare for marriage: during their visit to a synagogue, Eddie repeatedly calls their rabbi ‘mon père’ (Father), and tries to brush over religious protocol – even offering a financial incentive to the rabbi in order to smooth the process along. Unsurprisingly, the rabbi is h ­ orrified and Sandra leaves distraught. Jokes aside, perhaps the strongest aspect of Judaism present in the film is its characters’ recurrent insistence on endogamy: part of the reason why Eddie’s heritage becomes such an issue. Many groups within Judaism – and particularly Orthodox ones – have traditionally discouraged exogamy, although attitudes are changing within certain communities (de Lange 2000: 113–14). Here this tradition remains firmly in place: Sandra’s mother tells Eddie they only ask that he never marry a ‘pathos’; Dov’s sister pities Eddie after deducing that, given his surname, his father could not have been Jewish; and before he embarks upon marriage with Sandra, Dov seeks reassurance from Eddie that he really is a Jew. The disbelief of Serge – the film’s clown – when Patrick insists that he does intend to marry the non-Jew, Effi, proves this point forcefully. Yet when it becomes clear that Eddie is not in fact a Jew an exception is suddenly made to this rule. Significantly, it is the older generation that first seem prepared to relent, with Benzakem telling his wife and friends that Sandra will marry whomever she wants and that such a marriage is not uncommon. Endogamy is clearly negotiable within this Jewish community and, just as Eddie appeared to convince Patrick that his fiancée need not convert to Judaism, the message of the film becomes that love conquers all: after a year apart, Sandra and Eddie are finally reconciled, with her, appropriately enough, reciting to him the words he once told her: that nothing is stronger than love. The final shots reaffirm this: to the cheers of watching friends, the two kiss and walk away hand-in-hand before embracing by the Eiffel Tower; this iconic symbol of Paris – a city often connoted as romantic – effectively blessing their union. With such a fairytale ending, the film asserts that this Jewish community can tolerate difference and accept non-Jews within it, and the location suggests a wider resonance: people, whoever and wherever they are,

1­ 66

Representing ethnicity

can overcome their differences and should accept each other in spite of them. This is how Aïssa Djabri, one of the film’s producers, would have it, stating that: ‘La raison d’être du film est un phénomène d’intégration’ (quoted in Blumenfeld 1997: 29) (the film’s raison d’être is a phenomenon of integration). Such an ending in fact goes against the grain of the film; the first and only time that this near self-contained community is identified within a larger national space. Excepting Eddie and Effi, no other main characters are identified as non-Jews. There is almost no interaction outside this community and the focus remains steadfastly within it. Gilou did, however, deliberately cast actors of differing ethnic heritage in order to increase the diversity of this Jewish community, which although largely connoted as Sephardic contains glimpses of Ashkenazi Jews (Baudin 1997: 31). Such a reading goes against other comments by Aïssa Djabri who, given the film’s focus on Jewishness, initially feared that it might appear too particularist but then decided that the film instead ‘met en lumière une culture particulière qui devient du coup une culture générale’ (quoted in Blumenfeld 1997:  29) (sheds light on a specific culture that then becomes a more general culture). This mirrors the thoughts of the director Gilou, who insisted: ‘Pas besoin de bien connaître cette micro-société pour être sensible au film. Le plus important, c’est l’humanité des personnages et l’intérêt de l’histoire. L’universalité vient ensuite d’elle-même’ (quoted in Théate 1997) (There’s no need to know this micro-society well in order to appreciate the film. What’s most important is the humanity of the characters and the interest of the story. Its universal quality then follows naturally). In spite of this insistence, the opening scenes provide an omen of this community’s relative lack of porosity. When Eddie stumbles into the courtyard outside Benzakem’s company, he passes below a sign that reveals its name to viewers: ‘American Dream’. France’s ambivalent relationship with the US aside, this name is all the more ironic, given that, arguably, the community in the film resembles an example of the communitarianism often branded in France as “American” or “Anglo-Saxon” and routinely lambasted in French politics and media.

Parameters of Jewish identity

167

As should be clear, in many ways the film incorporates a number of stereotypes about Jews. During an interview, however, the film’s scriptwriters, Michel Munz and Gérard Bitton, seemed attentive to Jewish sensibilities, stating that the members of the general Jewish community they consulted were ‘sceptique[s] au départ. Parler de sexe et d’argent chez les juifs, ne plus aborder l’Holocauste, c’était trois tabous inacceptables. Pourtant, elle [sic] a marché et permis le succès du film’ (quoted in Anon. 2001a) (sceptical initially. To talk about sex or money in relation to Jews and no longer broach the Holocaust were three unacceptable taboos. Nevertheless, the approach worked and allowed the film to be a success). If these are taboos then they certainly flouted them: much of the plot and dialogue revolve around business and money and there are certainly several references to sex. Equally – unlike the other works previously considered in this chapter – no reference is made to the Holocaust, just as almost no reference is made to time before events on screen: this is a film unashamedly set in the here and now and that feels no need to allude to the past. Its stereotypes include the Jewish mother as matriarch and matchmaker, while the decision to base the film in the Sentier also verges on caricature: several other films have also set their action there, connoting the area as the centre of Jewish experience in France. This has the effect of grounding the group territorially, despite their excursions elsewhere. While it appears that the filmmakers received help and support when filming in the Sentier area of Paris – many inhabitants played extras in the film and lent their homes and business premises for filming (Théate 1997) – one may wonder how Jewish groups and people responded to the film. Especially given that the film’s producers explicitly targeted Jewish viewers in France via its promotional campaign: the film’s production company Vertigo Productions organised previews for the Jewish weekly newspaper Tribune juive, the Jewish women’s organisation Wizo (the Women’s International Zionist Organisation) and campaigns with the Jewish radio stations Radio-J and Radio-Chalom (Blumenfeld 1997: 29). The director and scriptwriters reported that the film had received a favourable response from most Jewish viewers but not all: it appears that one critic on the newspaper

1­ 68

Representing ethnicity

Tribune juive was particularly angered by the film; a fact which, nevertheless, did not prevent the newspaper’s editors from helping promote it (Waintrop 1997; Anon. 1997). Yet there is a twist in the tale: the actor who plays Eddie, the goy pretending to be a Jew, is in fact Jewish. Describing himself in a 1986 interview as ‘juif, né de parents juifs au sein d’une famille italo-marocaine’ (Hammer 1986: 82) (Jewish, born to Jewish parents within an Italian-Moroccan family), Richard Anconina has played a variety of characters throughout his career: from young Catholic in Claude Lelouch’s Partir revenir (1985) to a young man of Maghrebi heritage in Claude Berri’s Tchao Pantin (1983). He also memorably played an Orthodox Jew in Gérard Oury’s Lévy et Goliath (1987) – an intriguing precursor to La Vérité si je mens!, where his character, Moïse Lévy, must remove all signs of his religious belief in order to escape from the criminal gang pursuing him. A certain irony results, therefore, from the fact that here Anconina plays the only non-Jew character but is in fact himself of Jewish heritage (Théate 1997). Taking into account the ethnicity of actors runs the risk of (overly) judging their performance according to whether they share the same heritage or belief as the characters they play. Although it might seem more “authentic” for an actor of Jewish heritage to play a Jewish character, of course non-Jewish actors might just as ably play such roles: to argue otherwise would equal essentialism and leads to the pigeonholing many actors strive to escape. In a film where one of the main structuring motifs revolves around Eddie’s dissimulation of his non-Jewish heritage from his friends and colleagues, the knowledge that Anconina himself is Jewish does alter Eddie’s alterity. No longer such an outsider from the outset, knowing viewers will have to suspend their disbelief twice; once that an outsider can successfully pass himself off as Jewish and again that Anconina is a non-Jew forced to pretend he is Jewish. This could have the reverse effect from the one the director intended: the fact that the main non-Jew is played by a Jewish actor may lessen any sense of interaction between Jews and those outside their community, reinforcing the idea that its doors largely remain closed. Such a reading, however, assumes that Anconina’s ethnicity is prior knowledge

Parameters of Jewish identity

169

to the spectator: speculation that may well not be true – the film was seen as Anconina’s comeback after success in the 1980s, meaning that younger audiences might have been less familiar with him and assumed that Anconina is goy too. This aspect of the film aroused little attention in the press; neither did the ethnicity of  any of Anconina’s fellow actors who played Jews. Consider for instance the actor who plays Serge, José Garcia, a non-Jew born in Paris but whose parents hail from Galicia (Baudin 2001: 30). As Garcia’s presence indicates, an actor of non-Jewish heritage could have played Eddie and no doubt met with similar success: but given Anconina’s own ethnicity and film career, his presence in this role raises the importance of authenticity in the representation of ethnicity and adds a small but significant aspect to the film overlooked by most critics. After the success of La Vérité si je mens!, it seemed inevitable that Gilou would make a sequel: La Vérité si je mens! 2 was duly released four years later in 2001. Despite a few minor changes – most notably Gad Elmaleh replacing Vincent Elbaz as Dov – the main cast remained the same; the budget, however, more than tripled, increasing from 25 to 82 million francs (Grassin 2001: 52–3). The film’s financiers clearly hoped it would emulate the success of its predecessor and their investment was duly rewarded when over 7.7 million filmgoers watched the sequel. Many elements of the original film were retained: Gilou’s humorous focus on the trials and tribulations of the now familiar group of Jewish friends remained but his formula had slightly, but significantly, changed. Although ostensibly still centred on Eddie, this time the film’s fellow characters had larger parts to play. With the Jewishness of Eddie – or lack of it – seemingly no longer an issue, the sequel’s narrative instead revolves around a business deal of Eddie’s that turns sour and derives much of its comedy from Serge, rather than Eddie, having to keep up a pretence. With the Sentier now in apparent economic decline due to bad debtors and increased competition from abroad, Eddie becomes convinced that they need to target new customers in order to compete with the foreign rivals who now undercut their prices. Eddie decides to approach Euro Discount, a major ­hypermarket chain, and secures a large order from its senior buyer Denis

1­ 70

Representing ethnicity

Vierhouten. Upon completing the order, Vierhouten deliberately refuses to pay; claiming that Eddie’s merchandise is undersized. This effectively bankrupts Eddie’s company, allowing Vierhouten to copy Eddie’s design and market it as his own. With Patrick’s help, Eddie eventually gains revenge over the hypermarket chain by extracting millions of francs from Vierhouten. Like its predecessor, the film emphasises a strong sense of community throughout and the group remain as fraternal as ever: indicated at the start by Eddie, Yvan and Dov’s joint efforts to tackle a bad debtor and reinforced by Patrick’s continuing generosity towards Serge, whose debts he clears. Still very much a team, their mutual efforts are ultimately rewarded when they succeed in duping Euro Discount and more than recoup their losses. The film even ends with the five main friends – Eddie, Serge, Patrick, Dov and Yvan – alone, celebrating on the beach together after Serge’s wedding to Chochana (see figure 8). Nonetheless, their success does not disguise the fact that this is, again, more a community of men than of men and women and that those women who do appear are represented in just as – if not more – problematic ways as in the first film. Gilou’s rather unsubtle representation of women is signalled at the start by Patrick’s deployment of a young, attractive woman to lure Serge

8  Eddie and friends celebrate Serge’s wedding to Chochana in La Vérité si je mens! 2 (2001)

Parameters of Jewish identity

171

to the surprise birthday party he has thrown for him. Although the decoy proves a good actress and the joke is on Serge – his rampant lust leads him to stumble naked into a room of waiting guests – her body serves, predictably, as little more than bait even if Serge is made to look ridiculous. A shot of her exposed legs as she gets out of the car at Patrick’s house makes this point clear. The film’s main female stars fare little better, with several gratuitous shots of Karine and Chochana in various states of undress; at one point Karine is even shown pole dancing in a nightclub in order to entice Yvan. Generally in the background, and mostly given two-dimensional roles, women only appear as mothers, devoted wives  – or especially in Karine’s case – seductresses. Little wonder that one critic described the film’s representation of Jewish women as stereotypical, appearing as ‘chaudes, capricieuses et hystériques’ (Konopnicki 2001) (randy, capricious and hysterical). The philandering Dov and Patrick treat them as little else and conversation between the five main male characters revolves repeatedly around previous and future sexual conquests. Like women, religion is also largely sidelined in the sequel: although some scenes contain references to Judaism, its importance within the narrative is greatly diminished. The wedding ­celebrations of Chochana’s cousin are briefly glimpsed; Chochana’s parents invite Serge and his parents to their house for Sabbath; Eddie declares the news that Sandra is to give birth to a son as a ‘signe de Dieu’ (sign from God); and a closing scene in a synagogue shows Serge and Chochana getting married. The previous film’s preoccupation with Eddie’s Jewishness has evaporated by the sequel and no reference is made to it. Eddie appears at ease uttering Jewish expressions like his friends and similarly wears a skullcap at Serge’s wedding; he appears to have been completely accepted by those around him – as the ending of the original film suggested – but the question of whether Eddie has actually ­converted to Judaism remains elided. In place of religion, the worship of money holds sway: signifiers of wealth recur throughout the film, from Patrick’s convertible Rolls-Royce, to the large houses and elite locations the friends frequent. Ostentation rather than discretion is de rigueur and is symbolised by Yvan and Eddie’s transformation of the lyrics to

1­ 72

Representing ethnicity

the song Ma bohème by Charles Aznavour into ‘Ma BM’: a French expression for a BMW car. Even more than ever, Gilou risks reproducing stereotypical representations of Jews: none more so than the common myth that dictates that they are motivated by money and obsessed with business. Moreover, the main storyline revolves once again around financial deals. In the words of the Le Monde critic, Samuel Blumenfeld (2001: 32): Dans La Vérité si je mens! 2, les juifs pieds-noirs fument le cigare, roulent dans des décapotables, portent des chemises aux couleurs criardes et sont des champions de golf. Ils parlent fort, blaguent en permanence, soudoient le rabbin, possèdent une plage à SaintTropez baptisée Benhamou Beach, et finissent par gagner des fortunes. Leur opulence devient le ciment de leur identité. Un autre cliché, auquel il est permis de ne pas rire. (In La Vérité si je mens 2, the pied-noir [Sephardic] Jews smoke cigars, drive convertibles, wear garishly coloured shirts and are champions at golf. They talk loudly, are always joking, bribe rabbis, own a beach at St Tropez christened Benhamou Beach, and end up winning a fortune. Their opulence becomes the cornerstone of their identity: another cliché, which you don’t have to laugh at)

Such criticism is all too true and I would not wish to counter it: on many levels the film’s depiction of Jewishness remains facile and cliché-ridden. Nevertheless, what is intriguing is how this group of characters, in the sequel, come to symbolise the French nation at large. Events in the film tapped into contemporary French discourses on anti-globalisation and criticism of multinational companies, both of which allow this group of friends to remain Jewish but also to become national heroes. Whereas the opening credits of the original film situated very clearly where the action was to take place – showing a series of objects evoking the Sentier and its textile industry – the second film starts rather differently. It begins with a parody of the famous opening credits of James Bond films, replete with dancing women and dramatic theme tune. It even has Patrick pose as 007: suggesting that he and his friends now rival Anglophone superheroes. This transformation augurs changes in the sequel itself: as the plot makes clear, the characters have now outgrown the

Parameters of Jewish identity

173

Sentier and subsequently are no longer so tied to Paris; returning to Deauville but now also visiting St Tropez, Tunisia and even Los Angeles. It is their battle with the multinational hypermarket chain Euro Discount – described as the second biggest retailer of its kind in Europe – that ultimately helps associate the group as both Jewish and French. The etymology of their rivals’ names undoubtedly helps: the word euro conjures up the threat of European homogeneity, discount a lack of quality, and the surname of its senior buyer, Vierhouten, sounds decidedly non-Gallic. It is clear that Euro Discount’s practices in the film allow it to demonise big business and it is no coincidence that the European giant with which they are about to merge is called Kommercia – a nearhomonym for commerce. Indeed the power relations between Eddie’s company and the multinational are spelled out explicitly to viewers by Vierhouten, who gleefully tells Eddie and Yvan that, ‘la différence entre vous et moi, c’est pour moi votre collection, ce n’est qu’une affaire. Mais pour vous … c’est peut-être la dernière’ (the difference between us is that, for me, your collection is just a business deal. But for you, it’s perhaps the last one). When Eddie subsequently delivers his order he falls into Euro Discount’s trap: Vierhouten claims that Eddie’s products are undersized and tells him: ‘On n’est pas dans le Sentier ici: il y a des règles à respecter’ (We’re not in the Sentier here: there are rules you have to respect). Vierhouten implies that the quality of Eddie’s products does not meet Euro Discount’s standards but in fact it is the standards of the Sentier that come to symbolise those of the French nation at large. Forced to bring expensive legal proceedings against Euro Discount, Eddie is literally forced out onto the streets, setting up a market stall in order to raise funds for their court case. The diminutiveness of their enterprise reinforces the disparity between them and the hypermarket chain. Furthermore, the odds are stacked against them: Eddie’s bank is in league with Vierhouten and the expert called to rule on the case in court is a Euro Discount employee. Through their ingenuity, they outfox the wily Vierhouten with an elaborate ruse, luring him into a deal with Patrick that involves a tour round a Tunisian factory that will supposedly manufacture

1­ 74

Representing ethnicity

Vierhouten’s goods – but which the viewer can see is really a derelict shell. By getting Vierhouten to sign a contract for an order whose measurements were in millimetres, not centimetres, Eddie and friends manage to extract 65 million francs from the retail company. The victory of the small Frenchman over the large foreign multinational is complete. Such David versus Goliath symbolism did not escape critics and was highlighted in several reviews (Deymard 2001: 59; Konopnicki 2001; Mury 2001: 45). The film was even linked to the perennial opposition posited between French and Hollywood films: its success, following the release of French blockbusters such as Le Placard (2001) and Le Pacte des loups (2001), seen as a rare victory for French national cinema (connoted as David) against America (inevitably Goliath) (Lalanne 2001: 36). The scriptwriters themselves affirmed this and even linked the characters to the French national hero Astérix, claiming that the group have become Gallic heroes: the Sentier’s battle with a multinational firm paralleling the relationship between Astérix’s village and the Roman Empire (Attali 2001). They undoubtedly have a vested interest in suggesting as such, but what is significant is that the film permits the successful transition of Eddie and his friends from the streets of the Sentier to further afield. The group’s struggle against a European hypermarket chain symbolised contemporary French attitudes towards the dominance of large multinational companies and the characters’ Jewishness – ever-present even if Judaism is less so – does not prevent them from symbolically spearheading this national struggle. No longer confined to Paris, this Jewish community becomes a national ­signifier for French business, which takes on Europe and wins. 2012 saw the third instalment of Gilou’s franchise but even before the film hit cinema screens in France it was briefly the subject of a polemic when it was revealed that the film’s distributor had only invited journalists and critics deemed likely to write positively about the film to preview screenings (Lepron 2012). The controversy this aroused drew attention to the wider use of such practices within the French film industry, which were criticised as an attack on the media’s freedom of expression. In spite of the distributor’s efforts, the film generally received a lukewarm

Parameters of Jewish identity

175

critical response. Tellingly, it was also the least successful film of the franchise at the French box office; however its total of 4.6 million viewers was only marginally lower than the number the original film achieved, and as the second most popular French film of that year still assured it fourth place overall in 2012’s overall standings. So despite its failure to match the success of La Vérité si je mens! 2, clearly the antics of Eddie and his friends still appealed to French audiences. This was undoubtedly facilitated by the film’s adherence to the successful formula of its predecessors. Here again a series of visual and verbal jokes were deployed throughout and attention duly centred once again upon Eddie and his friends. This time, however, rather than pitted against a large foreign multinational company, the group use globalisation to their advantage to secure a major business deal in Shanghai and in the process gain revenge on Simon, an unscrupulous rival who had worked with a corrupt customs official to try to acquire Eddie’s business at a cut-down price. Their elaborate swindling of him and its reveal at the end of the film also recalled La Vérité si je mens! 2 and this plot twist ensured, once again, that Eddie and friends snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Like its predecessors, La Vérité si je mens! 3 is replete with many similar references to Jewishness and much of the criticism levelled at them regarding the stereotyping of Jewish experience in France could be applied here too. The film’s general celebration of Jewishness and the relentless positivity of its characters are nonetheless unmistakable – as is the franchise’s continued lack of reference to contemporary anti-Semitism or the Holocaust. This absence recalls the scriptwriters’ claims (quoted in Anon. 2001a) that by not mentioning the Holocaust the first film broke a taboo for Jewish viewers and naturally contrasted with the number of contemporary French films set during the Occupation – as seen earlier – that automatically incorporate reference to it. The fantastical nature of La Vérité si je mens! 3 perhaps precluded such an engagement – and such an omission may no longer be considered so taboo – but the notable absence of any reference either to antiSemitism, despite the rise in reports of it during the decade separating the second and third films, emphasised the selectiveness of

1­ 76

Representing ethnicity

its vision of contemporary French Jewish experience. This aspect is undoubtedly one that neither Gilou nor the scriptwriters would deny and they have never claimed that the franchise is fully representative. Moreover, the third film’s near-exclusive focus on Eddie, friends and immediate family means it would be hard to mistake this affluent Parisian micro-community as a portrait of French Jewishness more widely. The second film in the franchise had already positioned the group symbolically as French national heroes and the box-office success of La Vérité si je mens! 3 confirmed French viewers’ continuing affection for the main characters. Now all familiar faces, the characters’ Jewishness is taken as read and rather than problematising Jewish experience the film instead champions their religious and cultural identity even further, notably via the repeated use of humour, catchphrases and family celebrations. Notwithstanding its problematic aspects as outlined above, for a French film franchise to mark the ethnic, religious and cultural identities of a minority group so clearly and celebrate them so vigorously is striking and forms a notable contrast to another popular franchise, the series of four Taxi films, to be discussed in Chapter 4. As it will show, signifiers of Maghrebiness there are conspicuously erased among the inhabitants of Marseille: here, however, many cultural and linguistic aspects repeatedly affirm the Sephardic heritage of the Jewish characters featured. Would Gilou’s franchise have been as successful had these characters of Maghrebi heritage been Muslim rather than Jewish? While certainly several French popular comedies have featured both main non-Jewish characters of Maghrebi heritage and actors who share such an ethnicity, it remains to be seen whether a similar French franchise that explicitly celebrates the identity of characters of Maghrebi heritage as French Muslims can gain quite the same popularity. In conclusion, any comparison between such a range of different works is inevitably difficult: whereas Zachmann’s book traces a highly personal exploration of contemporary identity, Bosch and Paquet-Brenner’s films each tackle a painful period of French history. Meanwhile, Gilou’s present-day trilogy is played for laughs. These case studies are therefore testament to the diversity

Parameters of Jewish identity

177

that characterises representations of Jewishness in contemporary French visual culture. Engagement with the history, memory and legacy of the Holocaust nevertheless remains particularly prominent and continues to be a key arena in which Jewishness appears. Conversely, the phenomenal popularity of Gilou’s La Vérité si je mens! trilogy established categorically that films concentrating on Jewish characters in contemporary France can also yield substantial commercial success. The extent to which this depended upon the three films being popular comedies and making no reference whatsoever to either the Holocaust or contemporary anti-Semitism remains a moot point, however, and suggests that such success was ultimately facilitated by the unchallenging and – albeit problematic – essentially consensual portrait of ­contemporary French Jewishness that the trilogy provides.

4 A multi-ethnic metropolis: representations of Marseille

If proof were needed of Marseille’s historical significance and importance within France, one need only recall the French national anthem. It was the presence of so many Revolutionaries from the southern city among those marching from the Rhine to Paris in 1792 that led to their ‘Chant de guerre de l‘armée du Rhin’ being renamed ‘La Marseillaise’, immortalised in Jean Renoir’s 1938 film of the same name. The oldest city in France – in 1999 it celebrated its 2600th year of existence – Marseille is also  its second largest city in terms of population, with over 800,000 inhabitants. The city has many other reasons for arresting one’s gaze. In Vincendeau’s (2001b: 60) words, ‘as colourful harbour, gateway to North Africa and ethnic melting pot, the city is, after Paris, France’s most spectacular visual and cultural setting’ and accordingly it has been cited, after Paris, as the location where most filming currently takes place in France. There are important cultural reasons within France itself why Marseille merits particular attention. Widely judged to be the de facto capital of southern France, Marseille is often seen as a rival capital city to Paris and the two have often been linked symbolically across a range of films: from Jean-Luc Godard’s New Wave classic A bout de souffle (1960), where Michel steals a car in Marseille in order to drive up to Paris, to Gérard Krawczyk’s popular blockbuster Taxi 2 (1999)  –  discussed later in this chapter –  where Daniel, a Marseillais taxi driver, parachutes above the Eiffel Tower with

Representations of Marseille

179

vehicle in tow. Other films set solely in Marseille also habitually make reference to the capital: underscoring Paris’s importance within France more generally but also emphasising that Marseille’s identity and status often function in opposition to those of Paris. Indeed, in contrast to cooler northern climes, the city and surrounding region have often been constructed as a Latin hotbed with Marseille seen as meeting point between southern French, Spanish and Italian people: epitomised in Jean Renoir’s Toni (1935) and more recently in Robert Guédiguian’s Rouge midi (1985) and Stéphane Giusti’s Bella ciao (2001). Following the arrival and settlement of people from across southern Europe during the early twentieth century, later periods witnessed significant patterns of immigration from other continents: most notably Maghrebi workers and their families throughout the 1950s and 1960s and a substantial number of migrants from the Comoros in the 1980s – all trends reflected in works discussed in this chapter. In the absence of official comprehensive statistics, numbers vary regarding how many different ethnic groups reside in the city but the fact that estimates range between several dozen and over one hundred underscores the ethnic diversity of Marseille’s population. It scarcely seems surprising, therefore, that Marseille continues to be portrayed as a Mediterranean melting-pot within France. It is often constructed as a uniquely hybrid and harmonious space too (Weill 2003: 6) and a common cliché allied to this image is the recurrent anecdote that, whenever asked where their affiliations lie, the city’s dwellers reply: ‘A Marseille, on est d’abord marseillais’ (Croissandeau 2001: 14) (In Marseille, we’re Marseillais first). Or even, to cite the lyrics of ‘Mars Contre-Attaque’ (1993) by the rap group IAM, one of the city’s most famous contemporary exports: ‘Ici on est marseillais bien avant d’être français’ (Here we are Marseillais well before we’re French). Far from existing in relation to Paris, and seemingly merely as a fragment of the nation at large, Marseille has its own specific identity which, for many of its inhabitants, supersedes French nationality. Moreover, Marseille has often been constructed across French culture as a highly specific space with a law unto itself: hence its

1­ 80

Representing ethnicity

recurrent representation as a city synonymous with crime and misdemeanours. The polars of Jean-Claude Izzo provide emblematic examples here: particularly his trilogy of books – Total Khéops (1995), Chourmo (1996) and Solea (1998) – that centre on the Marseillais policeman Fabio Montale; incarnated by Alain Delon in a TF1 television series and adapted for cinema by Alain Bévérini in his film Total Khéops (2002). Furthermore, there is a long tradition in French film more widely of representing the city as a space of delinquency and criminality (Armogathe and Echinard 1995: 92–5 and 150), and the adaptations of Izzo’s books hark back to John Frankenheimer’s French Connection 2 (1975), with Marseille portrayed as a city controlled by warring Italian Mafia and Maghrebi criminal gangs and now also under siege politically due to the electoral success of the National Front in southern France, with fear of crime and intolerance towards migrants settled in the city fuelling racism among its white French inhabitants. Furthermore, the city’s ethnic diversity has often been emphasised across contemporary French visual culture, where such tensions have also been explored. The mixed-race marriage that posits Marseille as a place of multi-ethnic union towards the end of Karim Dridi’s Bye-Bye (1995) provides a case in point but, as Higbee (2001a: 57) points out, when far-right sympathisers hijack proceedings ‘the wedding reception’s function as a site of multiethnic tolerance rapidly degenerates into one of racial conflict’: an important warning to the viewer that one can no longer rely on such stereotypes. This bodes ominously for the city and such themes resurface in Robert Guédiguian’s film La Ville est tranquille (2001), to be discussed shortly. Beyond cinema, here too it is multicultural Marseille that prevails: the photographer Pierre Ciot’s Nés à Marseille (2001) catalogued two thousand Marseille residents and created a mosaic of faces of diverse ethnic heritage. The surreptitious street photography of Beat Streuli in his Marseille (1999) similarly presented an ethnically diverse picture, and Ulmer and Mangeot’s Casa Marseille Inch’Allah (2004) tracked four young Moroccan men from Casablanca to Marseille, highlighting the difficulties faced by undocumented migrants on their journey to France and then within French society itself.

Representations of Marseille

181

By considering a range of different works from across contemporary visual culture, this chapter will explore in detail how this important city – and the ethnicities of its inhabitants – has been represented since the 1980s. First, the book Marseille/Marseilles by photographer Yves Jeanmougin will be considered: published in 1992, his images span the whole of the 1980s and in many ways espouse a vision of the city congruent with the ethnic diversity outlined above. It is followed by analysis of a film by the city’s most famous contemporary director, Robert Guédiguian. His La Ville est tranquille (2001) depicts Marseille on the eve of the millennium but shows it on the brink of social meltdown – light years away from the harmonious hybridity for which it is often famed. Attention then turns to the phenomenally popular Taxi film franchise (1998, 2000, 2003 and 2007), which simultaneously trades on the city’s renowned ethnic diversity and reputation for criminality, before finally considering the first season of Plus belle la vie, the remarkably popular France 3 feuilleton launched in 2004 and set solely in the city. Analysis will duly assess the extent to which these works both conform with –  and deviate from – ­traditional visions of this Mediterranean metropolis. A vision of communitarianism: Yves Jeanmougin’s Marseille/ Marseilles (1992) Yves Jeanmougin’s Marseille/Marseilles (1992) constructs the city as, above all, a multicultural space. In the words of one of the writers – noticeably all of wide and varied ethnic heritage – who contribute accompanying texts: ‘la ville qui a inventé la Marseillaise, l’hymne national, est un conglomérat de nations’ (de Lope 1992: 61) (the city that invented the Marseillaise, the national anthem, is a conglomerate of nations). The image that adorns the book’s front cover reinforces this: a small black-andwhite photograph, showing two young women, one black and one white, seated together holding each other’s hands. At first glance the two, given their expression and demeanour, appear an appropriate choice: their different skin colours together signify the ethnic diversity for which Marseille is famed; their proximity and touching of each other’s hands the supposed harmony of h ­ ybridity

1­ 82

Representing ethnicity

in this Mediterranean city. The way they hold hands, however, complicates such clichés. Recalling a Barthesian punctum (Barthes 1980: 47–9) – classically the small detail of a photograph that “pricks” a particular viewer, disrupting the more academic interest, or studium, of an image – their hands invite attention. While their arms may interlock, the posture of their hands indicates awkwardness. Rather than clasped tight, only the fingers of the black woman’s hand are actually held by the white woman, while the white woman’s other hand appears to hover nervously alongside it. Although this may be explained away by the conventions of studio portraiture – where the hands might have been carefully placed into position – such conspicuous composition contradicts the image’s studium of multicultural, youthful and harmonious Marseille. The body language of the black woman reaffirms this. With her left wrist limp, she impassively lets her fingers be held by her white fellow sitter; while her right hand discreetly forms a clenched fist. The ambiguity that can be detected in this opening image suggests therefore that – in contrast to the cross-ethnic harmony it might promote at first glance – all is not so well in la cité phocéenne. Given this choice of image for the book’s front cover, it might be expected that it will be emblematic of the photographs that follow. Somewhat surprisingly, therefore, it soon becomes evident that different ethnicities are seldom photographed together. The first of these few occasions occurs in the initial image found inside Jeanmougin (1992: 7): a small untitled photograph, which shows a man and woman – perhaps while arguing – staring at one another in a domestic setting. Their respective ethnic heritages appear to differ: whereas she may be of Maghrebi heritage, he or his family may originate from sub-Saharan Africa. As will become clear, this is in fact the only image that shows people of visibly different ethnicities within a domestic setting alongside one another while apparently not posing for the camera. Although it enjoys a prominent position symbolically as the very first photograph inside the book, its diminutive size and omission from the key effectively marginalise the realism and candour it presents. The three other notable occasions where different ethnicities appear simultaneously within the same photograph are

Representations of Marseille

183

remarkably similar: all feature white couples and groups of white people passing black bystanders. ‘Procession du 15 août, quartier du Panier’ (Jeanmougin 1992: 79) (15 August Procession, Le Panier district) delivers what it designates: an image of a group of men – ­incidentally, all white – holding aloft an unspecified object as a group of bystanders behind watch them pass by. One of the three onlookers, however, is particularly striking: alongside two women, and to the right of these men, stands a noticeably tall black man watching the action. His comparative height already remarkable, the smartness of his attire also distinguishes him from the more casually dressed white men in the procession, all of whom are shorter. The composition of the photograph makes his presence appear far from coincidental. Unlike the others, his body is almost completely visible: by chance the two men in the foreground, positioned either side of him, are sufficiently distanced from one another to permit almost all his body to be seen. Therefore despite his role as onlooker, he becomes noticeably prominent. The confluence of these factors accentuates his height and physical presence; as the only black man in the photograph, his skin colour is highlighted too – so much so that viewers might begin to wonder whether the p ­ rocession is really the subject of the photograph at all. A similar effect occurs elsewhere: a large photograph (Jeanmougin: 98) shows two girls walking with their heads turned away from the camera and wearing hats that hide their faces. Behind them, in the centre of the image, a man facing the camera stands in a doorway they pass. The photograph’s title: ‘Quartier du Panier, fête des enfants’ (Le Panier district, children’s festival) does not reveal their ethnicities but the man’s dark skin and physiognomy indicate that he may be of African heritage, while little can be inferred from the appearance of the young girls. No interaction between these ethnicities occurs: the girls rush across the camera’s field of vision, and the man stands back from the road, just inside an entrance. He appears to stare after them but they either fail to notice him or choose not to return his gaze. The page opposite (Jeanmougin 1992: 99) shows a similar image, though this time the participants are closer in age: all approximately in their late teens or early twenties. Entitled ‘Quartier du Panier, procession de Saint-Léon et de Saint-Roch’ (Le Panier district, St

1­ 84

Representing ethnicity

Léon and St Roch procession), it shows two white women, dressed in traditional costume, passing in procession by a group of three black men standing on the side of the street. Behind the men stand two black women, looking off to the left, perhaps at the procession that these two white women might lead. While different ethnicities may cohabit within this photograph, the different planes of vision within the image suggest segregation, whether mutually imposed or not. Although only two members of the procession are shown, since no one is shown leading them, they could be interpreted as its figureheads. Both are white and perhaps of Italian heritage: the name of an Italian town just across the French border – Ventimiglia – can be glimpsed upon the standard one holds. In contrast, the group of three black men and two black women stand by the roadside. Spatially the two groups appear very close, but the direction of their respective gazes differs markedly. As Lutz and Collins (2003: 358) state: ‘There is perhaps no more significant gaze in the photograph than that of its subject. How and where the photographed subject looks shapes the differences in the message a photograph can give about intercultural relations.’ Furthermore, ‘the mutuality or non-mutuality of the gaze of the two parties can also tell us who has the right and/or need to look at whom’ (ibid.: 362). To use Lutz and Collins’ term, there is a noticeable intersection of gazes in this photograph, but significantly, none of them meet. The two white women in the procession face ahead of them: the eyes of the standard-bearer downcast while her fellow participant looks straight ahead; neither acknowledges the bystanders to their left. The two black women, standing behind the group of men, appear engaged by events as both are turned towards the procession that presumably follows. The three black men all look elsewhere: one appears to stare impassively in the direction of the procession but not at it; another’s head is tilted downwards towards the paper or ­handkerchief he holds; the third is turned away and looks downwards too, his face hidden behind the two baguettes he carries as if deliberately raised to obscure his face. Perhaps Jeanmougin’s lens was too intrusive here; the subjects’ postures and expressions not proof that they are oblivious to his

Representations of Marseille

185

presence but instead direct responses to it. Read in this manner, the averted gaze of the standard-bearer appears calculated; the woman alongside her responds by smiling nervously and looking ahead and the various postures of the three black men and their gazes away from the camera seem deliberate. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that once again the meeting of different ethnicities in Jeanmougin’s photography is a non-event: in fact, so few such occasions take place that the book ends up contradicting the perennial image of Marseille as a hybrid space of multi-ethnic harmony. In an echo of Delahaye’s metro photography (1999) these photographs might suggest ethnic interaction but they do not show it. These are chance moments, brief encounters rather than sustained engagements, where people of different ethnicities only ever cross paths in the street. The fact that they are also taken during festival periods – Mardi Gras (Jeanmougin 1992: 10), the ‘fête des enfants’ (ibid.: 98), a procession (99) – or in studio settings (11 and 13) suggests such occurrences are exceptional. This reinforces the idea that these ethnicities are mutually exclusive in this vision of Marseille, only brought together by the photo shoot or carnival period. Their interaction is extra-ordinary, not everyday, and in contrast to what the book’s front cover may suggest, Marseille is no melting-pot: it is divided along distinctly ethnic lines. Given the frequency with which images of religions and religious practices appear throughout the book, one might expect them to afford more occasions to show different ethnic groups in Marseille as unified. Jewish, Catholic and Muslim believers are all pictured within its pages: all three religions whose followers are found among very different ethnic groups. However, here too ethnic diversity is noticeable by its absence: while perhaps less easy to discern with regard to Catholicism (the graininess of Jeanmougin’s use of black-and-white coupled with the fact that all its followers shown are white-skinned means one can at best approximately describe them as “European”), it is notable how no Muslims of Maghrebi heritage – a prominent ethnic and religious minority group in Marseille and France – are ever shown alongside those of sub-Saharan heritage. So, although religion is certainly an important structuring motif throughout the book,

1­ 86

Representing ethnicity

Jeanmougin’s photographs certainly do not present it as a unifying one. While this might help avoid the risk of homogenising different ethnic groups according to their religion, it also infers that they mutually exclude one another. There is, therefore, little sense of the cross-ethnic harmony for which Marseille is historically famed. Instead of conjuring up the cosmopolitan, this instead constructs communitarianism, which, as outlined in the Introduction, is seen as synonymous with ghettoisation by French republican ideology and is consequently anathema to it. Jeanmougin’s images appear to conform to the contradictory idea of Marseille – a city often described as divided into over one hundred quartiers –  as both segregated space and also a place where people of different ethnic heritages meet. As should now be clear, such encounters in fact seldom occur within these photographs and even when they do viewers might question what, if any, exchange has taken place. Despite such evidence to the contrary, people of different ethnic heritage do actually meet among the pages of Marseille/Marseilles. They do so in a very striking way: throughout the book, the layout frequently and explicitly juxtaposes images of different ethnicities. In a manner reminiscent of the start screen of Choquer’s Fragments du futur (2001) (discussed in Chapter 1) where images are classified according to the visual motifs they share, the presentation of Jeanmougin’s photography obeys a similar logic. Photographs showing the holding of hands (Jeanmougin 1992: 10–11), dancing (ibid.: 84–5), eating and cooking (86–7) are therefore united on double-page spreads. Images of families (36–7) and, presumably, of sons in front of their fathers (82–3) also coincide. Furthermore, not only are the daily routines and familial structures of different ethnicities seen as comparable; their religions and religious celebrations are too. The most remarkable aspect of the book’s layout is its juxtaposition of different ethnic groups performing similar religious rituals. Therefore a section devoted to wedding scenes (Jeanmougin 1992: 38–45) shows photographs of Jewish, Roma and Algerian marriages alongside one another; the circumcisions of a Jewish and Algerian boy are placed on the same page (ibid.: 48), as is the reading of Jewish

Representations of Marseille

187

and Muslim scripture (18). In perhaps the most explicit example, two large portraits opposite one another compare the slaughtering of animals according to religious custom: one Kosher, the other Halal (26–7). Although this approach might be designed to relativise differences between religions in Marseille by establishing parallels between their practices, it also has the effect of reinforcing the received impression that this is a segregated society, not just on ethnic grounds but also on religious ones. Presenting the images according to the presence of similar visual motifs within them seems the only way that different ethnicities can congregate in the same space. Such segregation is confirmed by how the people pictured in Jeanmougin’s photography are categorised. As Scott (1999: 62) has stated, the title of a photograph: is itself a lens, which determines, or tries to regulate, the spectator’s psychological distance from the image, the uses to which the image is put, the generical implications that cluster round it. What the image depicts is what we see it depict; the title does not identify so much as create certain kinds of optical awareness. In the photograph everything is already there, but in no particular order and without intentionality. The title asks the photograph to have intention, to pull itself into a concerted shape, a design.

While no titles or captions appear alongside the images in the main body of the book, a key is provided at the back (Jeanmougin 1992: 107–11). Clearly careful to differentiate between ethnic groups, many of Jeanmougin’s photographs state explicitly some aspects of the ethnicity of those pictured; however, such specificities are obscured by the homogeneity of the labels affixed, such as ‘Famille gitane’ (Gypsy family), ‘Cérémonie juive’ (Jewish ceremony), ‘Mosquée comorienne’ (Comorian mosque), and ‘Restaurant vietnamien’ (Vietnamese restaurant). To paraphrase Sontag (2003: 79), failing to name people means that one risks reducing them to representative instances of their ethnicities, rather than depicting them as individuals. Furthermore, Jeanmougin not only neglects to name those captured before his lens, he also bestows upon them generic labels such as ‘comorien’, ‘algérien’, and ‘mauritanien’ (Comorian, Algerian and Mauritanian).

1­ 88

Representing ethnicity

In contrast the ethnicities of those who appear to belong to the white majority in France do not merit such ethnic appellation. This has important effects: not only does it reinforce the idea that Marseille is multicultural (by dint of the sheer number of different ethnicities who cohabit in the city) it also – because of this singularity – might suggest that Marseille is not French. As the book is named after the city and the key often states where within Marseille certain photographs were taken, readers may presume that those pictured are either French nationals or residents in France. Yet Marseille itself is never actually associated as French within the book and France itself, save via the reference quoted earlier to the French national anthem (de Lope 1992: 61), is never mentioned. Divorced from the national sphere, Marseille is therefore presented as a profoundly separate – even separatist – space that, while the specificities of its infamous ethnic and cultural hybridity are ostensibly celebrated, is isolated and segregated from the rest of France. Alongside the overarching construction of Marseille as ethnic melting-pot, four recurrent trends can be traced within the photographs themselves. First, with no apparent middle or upper classes shown, the city appears predominantly working class, with occupations such as dock worker (Jeanmougin 1992: 65–9), fisherman (ibid.: 32) and shoemaker (64) shown. Second, as previously mentioned, Marseille is drawn along geographical lines: the titles ensuring that some photographs are spatially specifiable. Therefore the Vieux Port, L’Estaque, the quartiers nord and Le Panier are all cited, reinforcing the idea of the city being divided into neighbourhoods whose lines are seldom breached. Another common trend is gender division: whereas men are seen mostly in the workplace or leading religious congregations, women are often confined to the domestic sphere and especially the kitchen. In addition, Jeanmougin’s tendency to depict women – ­particularly brides – at times of celebrations showcases religious and cultural customs but also risks exoticising ethnic and ­religious minority dress. The final aspect found throughout these images is religion. Given the fact that Marseille has a large Muslim population and is overlooked by two Catholic churches – Notre-Dame de la

Representations of Marseille

189

Garde and the Cathédrale de la Major – religion inevitably has had its part to play in the formation of the city’s cultural psyche. Nonetheless, the sheer insistence upon religious rituals and practice within Jeanmougin’s images is distinctive and seems to suggest that those who hail from or reside by the Mediterranean are automatically religious; in stark contrast to the abstract citizens of the secular and centralist French Republic. Labelled with such generic titles, these images also have, at times, an aura of the anthropological: rites and practices to be studied; religious dress and celebrations to be catalogued. The importance attached to religion, coupled with the linking of different ethnicities through similar practices, harks back to one of the largest and most successful exhibitions in the history of photography: the famous 1955 The Family of Man ­exhibition, held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Described by its curator, Edward Steichen, as ‘a mirror of the universal elements and emotions in the everydayness of life – as a mirror of the essential oneness of mankind throughout the world’, it was created ‘in a passionate spirit of devoted love and faith in man’ and brought together 503 photographs taken around the world by both professional and amateur photographers (Anon. 1986: 3). The accompanying book presented a picture of a world united despite differences; differences in fact elided by the arrangement  of these images, which placed photographs together that share certain themes, such as weddings (ibid.: 14–17); mothers and children (18–33); family portraits (56–9); eating (90–3); drinking (110–13); death (140–3) and religion (158–61): a structuring effect strongly echoed in Jeanmougin’s Marseille/ Marseilles. Despite their very different cultural contexts, there are many reasons why a comparison between the two books is appropriate. Both feature exclusively black-and-white photography and Jeanmougin can also be considered as an exponent of humanist photography, if humanism is defined as ‘a belief in the commonality of humankind’s experience and aspirations: a commonality that transcends cultural, economic, geographic, social, and ideological differences’ (Perivolaris 2003: 149), which The Family of Man itself so clearly epitomises. Both also play upon the timeless

1­ 90

Representing ethnicity

aura of black-and-white photography, but as Tagg (1982: 134) has argued, timelessness is a trap: We must reject the idea of timeless models and, indeed, the question ‘What is realism?’ for its implications that ‘realism’ is a thing and, moreover, one thing, rather than a practical mode of material transformation which is constituted at a particular historical moment and is subject to definite historical transformations. (­original emphases)

It was precisely the original exhibition’s collapsing together of images from different historical moments that attracted criticism and such ahistoricism is present in Jeanmougin’s work too: no dates are given in the titles and only one date – ‘juin 1982’, a reference to that year’s World Cup football tournament (1992: 74) – is visible within the images themselves. The introductory text by Anne-Marie Lapillonne (Jeanmougin 1992: 6), however, states that the photographs included were taken between 1981 and 1990. While this situates the photographs within a specific period of time, a certain synchrony results between the images, creating the impression – as in the world created in The Family of Man – that Marseille too is timeless and eternal. As already stated, both also share strong similarities with regard to their layout of images: even if seldom shown together within the same photograph, different ethnicities are repeatedly placed alongside each other on the page. This encourages the idea that there is equivalence between those pictured – an abstract universal citizenry – and homogenises their differences to create the idea of Humanity. Nevertheless, as Hirsch (1997: 56) has noted, this humanity in The Family of Man is less inclusive than it seems: The primary unit of interaction in Steichen’s family is the couple: heterosexual courting or married couples, two children playing, two women talking, two men working together. ‘We two form a multitude’ is the recurring phrase that runs over several pages depicting a diverse series of couples. But we must consider that the many couples, enacting this friendship and marriage fantasy throughout the album, are all, with the exception of one image of two young boys, heterosexual and of the same race or ethnicity: no chances are taken in this familial solution to global strife.

Representations of Marseille

191

The Family of Man, however, differs from Marseille/Marseilles in the way in which it includes quotes, proverbs and Old Testament verses amidst its images – Barthes described the exhibition as ‘le règne des vérités gnomiques, la jonction des âges de l’humanité, au degré le plus neutre de leur identité, là ou l’évidence du truisme n’a plus de valeur qu’au sein d’un langage purement “poétique”’ (1957: 162–3) (the reign of gnomic truths, the meeting of all the ages of humanity at the most neutral point of their nature, the point where the obviousness of the truism has no longer any value except in the realm of a purely ‘poetic’ language) (Barthes 2000: 101) – and cites alongside each photograph the country where it was taken, its maker and, occasionally, the photographic agency to which they belong. Jeanmougin on the other hand has no such direct text–image interaction; his book does have a literary section in the middle, which conjures up the series of references commonly evoked when Marseille is discussed: such as the role of Gyptis and Protis in founding the city, its maritime heritage, the Mediterranean and the diverse ethnic heritages of its inhabitants. This metanarrative duly reveals the project’s literary pretensions and arguably establishes a division between those photographed and the book’s implied readership. All these factors combine to create an effect not dissimilar to that identified by Hirsch (1997: 58) in The Family of Man, where the assertion of nature over culture – designed to permit greater identification between viewer and viewed – is subsumed into a process that undoubtedly reassured some viewers that their supposed superiority and position were not about to be challenged: The exhibit and the album shape an ultimately reassuring dissimilarity even within their overriding universalizing frame, assuring the implied European and the European-American viewer that their humanism is, in Étienne Balibar’s terms, a ‘humanism of differences’ and not a ‘humanism of identity’ or of absolute civic equality.

A very similar effect is essentially at work in Jeanmougin’s book too, where the celebration of Marseille’s ethnic diversity is carefully contained: never contextualised or situated within France as a whole, its alterity is asserted at the expense of any national

1­ 92

Representing ethnicity

affiliation. By contrast, a notably different picture emerges in the next film to be discussed, where it becomes clear that, while specifically situated in Marseille, events in the city by 2000 have clear ramifications for the nation and are now representative of wider changes within France. Times of change: Marseille at the millennium in Robert G ­ uédiguian’s La Ville est tranquille (2001) The director Robert Guédiguian first came to national prominence within France in 1997 with the release of his film Marius et Jeannette. Originally produced for the television channel Arte, it was released nationwide in French cinemas after winning the Prix Gervais in the 1997 Cannes film festival’s ‘Un certain regard’ section. The film went on to win several other awards, most notably a Best Actress César in 1998 for Ariane Ascaride (for her role as Jeannette in the film). Critical acclaim was matched by public approval: by the end of 1998 it had attracted over 2.5 million viewers in France (Powrie 2001: 133). Marius et Jeannette was in fact Guédiguian’s seventh film in a career that now spans over three decades, beginning with Dernier été in 1981. Despite such a lengthy wait for national recognition, Guédiguian’s style is instantly recognisable. Up until 2005 – when his film focusing on the former French president François Mitterrand, Le Promeneur du champ de Mars, was released – all his films were set in or around Marseille (and most specifically the small fishing town of L’Estaque, to the west of the city, where Guédiguian was born). These small-budget films were shot on location and mostly centre on close community life. They also predominantly feature working-class characters played by the same troupe of actors, especially Ariane Ascaride, Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Gérard Meylan. Generally light-hearted – but not always so – his films have adopted a mixture of comedy and drama in their depiction of small-town life in and around the Marseillais periphery, and have been summarised as ‘sentimentally social-realist regional films’ whose themes ‘revolve around a post-1968 nostalgia for revolutionary action, generational

Representations of Marseille

193

conflict, and resisting communities, paradigmatically the communities of L’Estaque’ (Anon. 2001b: 165). Appropriately enough, Guédiguian chose to term three of his films each as ‘un conte de L’Estaque’ – L’Argent fait le bonheur (1992), Marius et Jeannette (1997) and A l’attaque! (2000) – thereby explicitly constructing them as fables. Following his third, and it would appear final, such tale, Guédiguian changed approach. La Ville est tranquille (2001) united a disparate group of characters in and around the immediate urban space of Marseille: Fiona, a drug-addled woman who turns to prostitution, her distraught mother Michèle and unemployed father Claude; Paul, a former dockworker turned taxi driver; Gérard, a bar owner and assassin; Yves, a left-wing intellectual lamenting change in the city and his wife Viviane, a disillusioned music teacher; and Abder, a recently-released prisoner with whom Viviane has an affair. The film notably shunned the area of L’Estaque that the director had become famous for filming. Although still set in the south, and featuring the same troupe of actors, the mood and cinematography of the film are in sharp contrast with many of Guédiguian’s early works and certainly differ from his most famous. The film marked a significant shift in Guédiguian’s cinema and these changes have been mirrored in his films that followed 2000, where his traditional – and near-exclusive – focus upon working-class communities in and around Marseille shifted more towards melodrama, with greater consideration of mid-life emotional crises and problems. This change was confirmed by Guédiguian himself, who upon the release of the film declared that, with this film, he had ‘bouclé quelque chose, comme si, en dix films, j’avais raconté ce qu’étaient ma culture et ma formation politique, dans un endroit spécifié, et qu’après, on entrait dans une nouvelle période’ (quoted in Higuinen and Joyard 2002: 83) (completed something, as if, in ten films, I had spoken about my culture and political background, in a precise location, and that, afterwards, a new period began). La Ville est tranquille is clearly a crucial film in Guédiguian’s oeuvre. As will become clear, its representation of Marseille and its inhabitants on the eve of the millennium is equally important and it is evident throughout that this is a society on the edge.

1­ 94

Representing ethnicity

As Abder pointedly remarks from Viviane’s balcony, Marseille is ‘magnifique’ (magnificent) when, like her, one is middle class and lives in a desirable location: in reality, however, ‘le monde va mal’ (the world is in trouble). The city’s economic and social decline is highlighted from the very start of the film. One of the first scenes  shows industrial unrest at the docks, where striking workers campaign against redundancies. Viewers discover that Claude, Michèle’s husband, has remained unemployed for three years. Equally, by the end of the film Paul, the former dock worker, faces an uncertain future: jobless once again after his taxi driver licence is rescinded. Whereas Marseille’s traditional shipping industries appear to be in terminal decline, other sectors of business are thriving. Conforming to the stereotype of the southern city as den of iniquity, Fiona’s drug dependency is a major theme throughout the film, reducing her to a child – as the cross-cutting between her and baby Améline makes clear – who must beg her mother to meet her needs. Fiona had turned to prostitution to fund her habit but her mother Michèle soon resorts to it too: resolving to pay for the drugs her daughter craves, she begins a series of encounters with Paul, all terminated by an exchange of money (see figure 9). As Vincendeau (2001b: 60) has commented: ‘Guédiguian seems unable to imagine solutions to economic privation that do not

9  Paul and Michèle in La Ville est tranquille (2001)

Representations of Marseille

195

involve women selling sex.’ Furthermore, the film’s representation of women more generally is at times highly problematic. Several scenes subject their near-naked bodies to an objectifying, male, heterosexual gaze and focus both on Michèle and Améline Fronville in various states of undress before and after sex. The fact that the red light district Paul frequents is also shown repeatedly means that the majority of women in the film are indeed selling sex and often appear little more than commodities for consumption. Traditional structures of society erode before viewers: all relationships are breaking down, regardless of social background, whether it be the middle-class couple Yves and Viviane or the working-class Michèle and Claude. People are generally at a loss in premillennial Marseille: the left-wing architect Yves grapples  philosophically with social and economic change; Paul’s parents bicker as they face retirement together; and Claude begins regularly drinking heavily during afternoons at home. Growing support for far-right groups also signals the political threat Marseille now faces, symbolised by Claude’s attendance at a local party meeting and his help affixing party posters with friends in the local area. Accordingly, Marseille is also presented as a city where discrimination and racism seem everyday. Claude’s bank clerk friend and fellow far-right activist jokes nonchalantly about allowing ten ‘Français’ (French people) at work to pass in front of the patiently waiting ‘doudou africaine’ (African woman) whose size he mocks. Although racism – conveniently – is largely the preserve of far-right supporters, Abder, the young black man fresh out of prison, asserts that the French judicial system also employs discriminatory practices. He recounts to friends how the judge, during his sentencing, informed him that ‘ça se fait pas chez nous’ (we don’t do that here), thereby questioning Abder’s citizenship and positioning him explicitly outside French society. Furthermore, the film’s dystopian and near-apocalyptic mood is sealed by the deaths of three of its characters: the murder of Abder by a far-right supporter; the fatal overdose Michèle administers to Fiona; and Gérard’s suicide. With the city as its unique focus, the film offers a distinctive portrait of Marseille on the eve of the millennium. Guédiguian’s

1­ 96

Representing ethnicity

unusually detached approach and interlinking of many different lives also infer that this is not just representative of Marseille but of France at large. Here the regional becomes not simply an alternative to the national but a representative instance of it; affirmed by Guédiguian himself, who revealed that: ‘La première idée? Le titre. Faire le portrait d’une ville, d’une société, de la France d’aujourd’hui’ (quoted in Mérigeau 2001: 52) (the first idea? The title. To make a portrait of a city, of a society, of today’s France). Despite this, the film is still unmistakably anchored in the southern city, punctuated with numerous shots of the cityscape and references to many specific features – whether industrial, meteorological, historical, geographical or political – that resolutely mark its characters and décor as Marseillais. The universal is grounded in the particular: the film may have national import but, in typical Guédiguian style, this can only be mediated through Marseille. Marseille’s cityscape is therefore omnipresent throughout  La Ville est tranquille, conforming with Guédiguian’s previous practice of carefully situating his films within specific spaces – ­typically the small coastal town of L’Estaque. Marius et Jeannette (1997) and A l’attaque! (2000) were composed of many shots that theatrically framed the action within and against the town’s architecture: typified by the numerous scenes featuring its railway bridge, first incarnated in French visual culture in paintings such as Paul Cézanne’s ‘La Mer à l’Estaque’ (1882–85) and Georges Braque’s ‘Le Viaduc à l’Estaque’ (1908). In contrast to the bright, warm Mediterranean colours found in Guédiguian’s previous films and in others set in Marseille – such as Bertrand Blier’s Un, deux, trois, soleil (1993) and Alain Bévérini’s Total Khéops (2002) – La Ville est tranquille differs sharply by the recurrence of the colour blue within the film. Many scenes are shot at dawn and dusk, and the clear skies seen above Marseille necessarily dictate that blue often dominates proceedings, but its overwhelming omnipresence throughout strongly suggests that a blue filter was used to press home the point. However artificially enhanced, this is not the joyful blue of Mediterranean coastlines that attracted so many painters and filmmakers to L’Estaque, Marseille and southern France more generally because of its lighting consistency (Hayward 1993: 36).

Representations of Marseille

197

Here the light is heavy and weighs down upon the city, its luminosity terminally impregnated with gloom. The twentieth century’s close certainly signals a time of significant change for the city. The ability of its famous industries to adapt to new economic circumstances is questioned in the film by Yves, who pronounces loftily that: cette ville est une ville d’ouvriers depuis des siècles …. Faire de cette ville une ville de tourisme, de pointe, de recherches avancées … ça donnerait pas de travail aux gens qui ont été ruinés par l’abandon de ce port … Ils n’ont pas été formés non plus pour ces nouvelles activités. Comment arrêter l’Europe, la mondialisation? Et ça, le peuple il ne peut pas le comprendre et la droite entretient cette incompréhension. (this city has been a city of workers for centuries … Making this city into a city of tourism, high-tech, of advanced research … that won’t give any work to the people who have been left ruined by the abandoning of this port … They haven’t been trained either for these new roles. How can Europe and globalisation be stopped? That’s something that the people can’t understand and the right fuels this incomprehension.)

His comments are qualified by the sight of a ferry which, midway through this pronouncement, suddenly appears behind him and disrupts his verbal flow. Framed so that its massive size fills the screen, he and Améline are dwarfed by the vessel. It therefore visually counteracts Yves’s verbal grandiloquence and perhaps indicates that Marseille, despite his predictions, might already be adapting. One more flash from Marseille’s past is found in another scene towards the end of the film but this harbours less hope for the city’s economic future. As Gérard travels towards the city centre, before committing suicide, the camera dwells upon the famous ‘Marseille Europort’ mural he drives by. Marseille’s history and pride in being a major European port is symbolised by the size of the image, which covers the side of a high-rise building, but the way the camera mournfully focuses upon it makes the history it celebrates feel increasingly distant: Marseille’s future now seems far from assured and future p ­ rospects ­distinctly bleak.

1­ 98

Representing ethnicity

This is certainly the case when Guédiguian’s representation of southern French society in La Ville est tranquille is compared with those in his previous films. Whereas they always centred on tightly knit communities, here people are disparate: while the action may take place in France’s second city, the focus is on people not as part of a totality but as individuals, and as individuals they are seldom seen in larger groups. Very few crowd scenes are shown and groups of people only ever form briefly: at the politician’s two rooftop parties, round the young Georgian boy’s keyboard and in brief flashbacks from the past. This is far removed from Marcel Pagnol’s iconic vision of Marseille celebrated in the cinematic trilogy Marius (1931), Fanny (1932) and César (1936), where, although progressively focusing on the inner psychology of characters, a much greater sense of community was constructed among the stock characters. Encounters here – like those found between different ethnicities in Jeanmougin’s photography – are by chance: epitomised by the way Guédiguian skilfully links strangers together. Therefore viewers see Paul happen to drive Yves and Viviane home once in his taxi; Viviane stop to ask Michèle for directions; and Claude help deliver a piano to the young Georgian musician seen playing throughout the film. The conclusion is that people, in premillennial Marseille, are only brought together in certain circumstances, if at all, and that their unity is in no way assured. This is Marseille atomised. It seems no coincidence, therefore, that it is in the soulless, nondescript, modern space of the out-of-town shopping centre that many of the film’s fleeting encounters occur: pointedly reversing Guédiguian’s penchant for specifically situating characters within outdoor spaces and especially in ones recognisable as L’Estaque or Marseille. It is there that one sees Michèle and Fiona argue over lunch and be served by Abder; Viviane surprise Abder at work one afternoon; and Améline lead a discussion with friends as Gérard, mysteriously, is silently handed a photograph by a stranger. Guédiguian could not be further from the tightly knit communities he constructed elsewhere. The life and death of the character of Gérard symbolise just how much Marseille has declined in Guédiguian’s cinematic vision of the city. Two of the three brief flashbacks used in the

Representations of Marseille

199

film to represent him and Michèle in their youth are actually taken from Guédiguian’s first film Dernier été (1981), a film that marked the beginning of the director’s concentration on L’Estaque and Marseille and with which La Ville est tranquille has several parallels. In contrast to the gloomy mood of premillennial Marseille, the scenes inserted from the past tell of happier times: the busy bar full of blue-collar workers from the early 1980s contrasts sharply with the silent empty one that greets Michèle when she visits Gérard’s for the first time. Again, just before the film’s end, another scene is inserted when Gérard reflects back on his teenage romance with Michèle; this time showing Dernier été’s Pierre and Josiane (the two characters played by Ascaride and Meylan) walking hand-in-hand by the sea and embracing one another. Shortly after this, however, Gérard commits suicide in present-day Marseille. Dernier été has further similarities with La Ville est tranquille than these brief flashbacks might imply: it too was a rather melancholic film that charted the decline of a particular society. Guédiguian somewhat idealised the small group of friends he followed in it, particularly the figure of Pierre (played by Meylan), the itinerant worker who comes and goes as he pleases. In a manner akin to La Ville est tranquille, masculinity was in crisis there too and, symbolically, Pierre is finally punished by the forces of law and order when he is killed at the end. An air of twilight pervades the whole film, marking the end of a period in L’Estaque, as the film’s title infers. In the words of Pierre: ‘la ville est morte et nous aussi’ (the city is dead and we are too). The juxtaposition of Pierre and Gérard in La Ville est tranquille and the insertion of scenes from Dernier été therefore mean that viewers are not just witnessing Gérard’s goodbye at the end of the film: it is also, as the earlier quotation from Guédiguian affirmed, the culmination of a 20-year period of his filmmaking. Furthermore, as Gérard’s death indicates, Guédiguian promises no happy end to this period. Whereas in previous films Guédiguian’s characters always lived in small communities and tended to resolve most differences between them by the film’s end – therefore suggesting solidarity and resistance; for instance, to global capitalism in Marius et Jeannette (1997) or to the racism

2 ­ 00

Representing ethnicity

of a police officer in A la place du coeur (1998) – here only the faintest glimmer of hope lies with Michèle and Paul as they return inside together with baby Améline after Fiona’s body has been taken away. Whether the ending itself suggests hope or not is a moot point. If the young boy’s piano playing manages to unite far-right supporters, migrants settled in the city, different generations and ethnicities, the film does not end happily: traditionally Guédiguian often ensures that problems are resolved and that his characters’ futures are assured but here the conclusion is less definitive. The young Georgian’s piano playing appears to unite a certain cross-section of Marseillais society but its union appears momentary and fragile: the fade to white at the film’s end, which suggests a near-apocalyptic air, underlines its tentativeness and may infer that they will only remain united until the end of the song he plays. With regard to the film’s depiction of ethnicity, again significant differences can be found between La Ville est tranquille and Guédiguian’s previous films. From Jean Renoir’s Toni (1935) onwards, Italian diasporas have long been associated with Marseille and south-east France more widely and Guédiguian has chosen to foreground them in several of his films, from the story of three generations of an Italian family spanning the twentieth century in Rouge midi (1985) to the battling Moliterno family in A l’attaque! (2000). This focus is suspended here: no one in the film is connoted as Italian and the ethnic heritage of the characters is almost never mentioned. The only exception is when the teenager Momo raps about his pride in being Comorian in front of Abder. Instead – and in keeping with Guédiguian’s previous films – all the characters are connoted as Marseillais. Nevertheless, whereas previously Guédiguian’s almost exclusive focus on working-class experience in Marseille and L’Estaque insisted on the solidarity of social class, here it is breaking down: sympathy for the striking dock workers seems non-existent, with the newly redundant Paul himself telling Michèle that solidarity belonged to their parents’ generation, a sentiment echoed by his father Jean. Jean and his former Resistance comrade René both hark back to an earlier time when, René maintains, ‘il [n’]y avait plus de frontières entre

Representations of Marseille

201

les gens’ (there were no more borders between people), but René himself reneges on an agreement with Paul not to tell Jean how severe his son’s debts have become: in Guédiguian’s vision of the city, even the older generation has given up hope. The only memory of such solidarity – and of Guédiguian’s previous trademark utopianism – is the comic singing by Paul to Michèle of the revolutionary socialist hymn ‘The Internationale’ in English, French, German and Italian to cheer her up, later reprised by his father Jean as he softly sings its words while washing up; its lyrics no longer aims to which he aspires but distant forgotten dreams. In its stead, the piano playing of the young Georgian boy Sarkis recurs throughout the film: he plays regularly in public in order to raise funds to purchase a piano. His presence suggests increasing immigration to the city from Eastern Europe and the establishing shots used when he plays show him overlooking the city’s Vieux Port area; an overt reference to the city’s long tradition of accommodating such migrants. Analysis of the use of raï in the film confirms this. Its strains are first heard in one of the early scenes, where viewers see a rooftop party in full swing and are introduced to the characters Yves, Viviane and Améline Fronville. Raï plays quietly in the background as the action focuses on the invitees, all apparently white and middle-class. As proof of the banalisation of raï within France, viewers could be forgiven for thinking it serves as little more than cinematic muzak, its inclusion here merely indicating its popularity and acceptance within the French mainstream and white majority. Its presence grows in importance when it later becomes clear that the party’s host was the far-right politician whom Gérard assassinates: a novel counterpoint to the xenophobia the film’s far-right party activists preach. The closing shot of this rooftop scene suggests that the symbolism of such music is not neglected. As the music plays on, the camera switches from the guests to the landscape it overlooks: none other than the Vieux Port which, as discussed earlier, is often used to connote Marseille’s history of immigration. The use of raï here – itself a mixture of traditional Algerian music and European pop – therefore subtly points to Marseille’s ethnic and cultural hybridity.

2 ­ 02

Representing ethnicity

The city’s ethnic diversity is similarly celebrated the second time raï is used. The same refrain strikes up one evening as Abder gets into a car with friends to go to the beach. The scene cuts to them diving naked into the sea at night, the camera noticeably focusing on their black and brown bodies as they swim and splash one another amidst the waves. In a reminder of the Caribbean poet Derek Walcott’s (1996) notion that ‘the sea is history’, this scene poetically celebrates Marseille’s diverse ethnic heritage and the port’s significant role in France’s history of immigration; the vitality and energy of the young multi-ethnic crowd fused with a raï soundtrack. Later, as they arrive home, the same song spills from their car stereo just as, in the foreground, far-right political activists paste posters to the wall proclaiming ‘Préférence Nationale’ and ‘Immigration Invasion’. As the teenagers spit upon their posters, the distant sounds of raï serve to challenge the far-right’s vision of hexagonal hegemony. The role played by the sea and water in the film merits further exploration and recalls comments made by the director Claire Denis who, when discussing her own experience of filming in Marseille, argued that the Mediterranean can be seen symbolically as a kind of amniotic fluid, which helps link a film’s characters together (Bouquet 1995: 37). From the aforementioned skinny dipping scene to the Dernier été flashback where Pierre and Josiane canoodle on the shore, the sea appears throughout Guédiguian’s film but the idea of it functioning as an amniotic fluid is particularly apposite given the prominence of children and birth within the narrative. One of Denis’ own films set in Marseille, Nénette et Boni (1997), explored precisely this idea through the experience of the pregnant Nénette. From the fatherless baby Améline, conceived through Fiona’s prostitution, to her infantilised, comatose mother dragged into the bathroom by Michèle and showered until she returns to consciousness, such examples abound in the film. Abortion, however, recurs throughout too: among a group of peers, Améline Fronville pontificates on her reasons for adopting an anti-abortion stance and proudly declares herself a ‘survivante’ (survivor) for having been born despite her parents’ wish to terminate her mother’s pregnancy. Towards the end Gérard also reveals that he and Michèle had

Representations of Marseille

203

themselves decided to abort their child when they were fourteen and adds, enigmatically, that an anti-abortion rally he had witnessed a few days earlier appears to have triggered his assassination of the far-right politician. Denis’ idea of Marseille as womb is clearly endangered. The scene of Abder and friends swimming in the sea would seem to provide an antidote to such pessimism. As they swim between two boats moored in the harbour, the word ‘Marseille’ is clearly visible on the left one’s side and in the distance an illuminated coastline seems to signify the city too: definitively linking this multi-ethnic group to the Marseillais metropolis. In a film characterised by its melancholic blue and bleak naturally lit interiors, the swimmers are noticeably illuminated despite the night’s darkness – visually energising them and emphasising their vitality. This, coupled with their nudity, means they epitomise Denis’ analogy: these teenagers symbolise the ethnic diversity of Marseille’s youth; their joy and exuberance a notable contrast from the troubled images of childhood recurrent elsewhere in this amniotic space. Nonetheless, it quickly becomes apparent that their joy will be short-lived. In the immediately preceding scene, when Abder’s friends suggested he accompany them to Figuières, he told them to avoid it because access to the sea has been blocked by ‘des fachos’ (Fascists). They therefore travel to Corbières instead but the fact that such man-made barriers have been installed between earth and water evidently has negative implications for Marseille as amniotic space. Furthermore, this sequence is followed immediately by the murder of Abder by one of the men from the group seen earlier affixing far-right political posters that depicted France as a hexagon with images of Marseille inside: an apt metaphor for their vision of France as a self-contained space, impervious to the outside. Aversion to the disruption of internal and external borders can also be witnessed in the figures of Michèle and Gérard: the latter tells Paul that Michèle’s abortion was so traumatic that it led to their separation because the sight of so much blood repulsed him. The event scarred the two for life and furthers the impression that this society in Guédiguian’s Marseille is psychologically damaged and disorientated. Given this climate, viewers can arguably interpret the overdose Michèle

2 ­ 04

Representing ethnicity

gives Fiona as another kind of abortion, where she terminates the life of a child for a second time. The film, nevertheless, ends with a glimmer of hope that a better future lies ahead: Paul and Michèle remain together with Fiona’s baby and people spontaneously unite round the new piano Sarkis plays. Denis’ vision of Marseille as amniotic space, however, seems perilously close to termination itself. Events in the film can consequently be read in terms of Kristeva’s notion of ‘abjection’, elaborated in her Pouvoirs de l’horreur: essai sur l’abjection (1980). For Kristeva, l’abjection est en somme l’autre côté des codes religieux, moraux, idéologiques, sur lesquels reposent le sommeil des individus et les accalmies des sociétés. Ces codes en sont la purification et le refoulement. Mais le retour de leur refoulé constitue notre « apocalypse  », en quoi nous n’échappons pas aux convulsions dramatiques des crises religieuses (1980: 246–7) (‘For abjection, when all is said and done, is the other facet of religious, moral, and ideological codes on which rest the sleep of individuals and the breathing spells of societies. Such codes are abjection’s purification and repression. But the return of their repressed make up our “apocalypse”, and that is why we cannot escape the dramatic convulsions of religious crises’) (Kristeva 1982: 209).

Much of La Ville est tranquille appears to epitomise such a p ­ sychical crisis. Despite the film’s depiction of Marseille as ethnically diverse, in a manner reminiscent of Jeanmougin’s Marseille/Marseilles, little interaction is actually shown between different ethnic groups. With Abder and Sarkis as the most prominent ethnic minorities in the film, exceptions revolve around the encounters they make, but many of these are brief and few words are exchanged. All the more reason, therefore, to focus on the one sustained relationship throughout the film that does cross ethnic lines: Abder’s friendship with Viviane. This begins tentatively when Abder visits her at work, where she teaches music to autistic students. Through their subsequent conversation the viewer discovers that they first met when she was a music teacher at his prison and that he shares her passion for the subject. Viviane then pays him a surprise visit

Representations of Marseille

205

at work and they are later seen together in her home, where they move closer to one another as they discuss their opinions on Marseille and music. The last shot of the scene shows them lying together naked upon the floor. Although this final silent take lasts a matter of seconds, its symbolism is clear. Not only cross-ethnic, but cross-social class and cross-generation, Abder and Viviane’s all too brief union provides a moment of respite from Guédiguian’s vision of premillennial Marseille as polarised on social class and ethnic grounds and is a significant, if brief, riposte to the blatant fear of ethnic difference expressed by party members during a far-right meeting. Since Abder – the film’s moral compass – is ultimately killed by one such activist, the relationship between them does not develop and there seems little hope for Marseille’s future. The brief scene where Viviane visits Abder’s home as they hold his wake shows their two worlds now as distant as ever: uneasy as she approaches and unacknowledged by mourners, she seems to intrude upon a foreign space and her presence, as a white middleclass Frenchwoman, does not appear welcome. Guédiguian’s Marseille, clearly, is a society on edge: witness the argument Fiona provokes with her mother when she accuses her of being racist for not being attracted to Abder. However flippant Fiona is, the fact that these comments are made at all suggests that ethnicity is a fervent source of tension within the city seen on screen. Moreover, as the growth in National Front support, the reference to racism within the judiciary and Abder’s untimely death indicate, the mythologisation of Marseille as multicultural melting-pot here seems increasingly irrelevant. As previously ­mentioned, it seems rather convenient that nearly all the examples of racism in the film emanate from far-right followers and clichéd in the extreme that the film’s main black character dies at the hands of one. Yet to condemn the film here would mean overlooking an important historical precedent: the killing of another young man of Comorian heritage, Ibrahim Ali, on 24 February 1995 in a northern quartier of Marseille – crucially by National Front supporters who were sticking up party posters. Although never made explicit in the film and seemingly ignored by critics within the press, the film’s narrative undoubtedly refers

2 ­ 06

Representing ethnicity

to the event and knowledge of it automatically alters its reading: the shock of Abder’s sudden and brutal death is therefore compounded by the realisation that his murder is neither an exaggerated omen for the future nor pure figment of Guédiguian’s imagination but an indictment of a crime that has already occurred. Its inclusion in a film set five years later provides a pessimistic assessment of how little has changed in the city. Furthermore, given Abder’s symbolic role in the film, the fact that he is killed by its end takes on even greater significance. Upon his very first few scenes, it is clear that Abder is a reformed character: released from prison he tells Viviane how, unlike him, his friends have not changed and, true to form, he later chastises Momo for funding his DJ-ing through petty crime and mocks his narrow-minded solutions for curing the ills of society. Abder endeavours to help him to see the error of his ways and preaches tolerance and understanding. The suspicion that he functions partly as Guédiguian’s mouthpiece appears confirmed later when he lectures to middle-class Viviane on the perils of social class positioning and she concurs with him that it obscures people’s perception of society. Even the end of the camera’s panoramic sweep across the cityscape from Viviane’s city-centre balcony shows Abder symbolically positioned directly beneath the distant NotreDame de la Garde cathedral as the sounds of church bells ring: Abder here seems the embodiment of the city and as upstanding as the city’s most famous religious landmark. Therefore, because he acts as symbolic watchman of the city and is the only character who manages to transgress social class segregations, Abder’s death is all the more foreboding for Marseille’s future. Despite earlier precedents –  such as the end of Dernier été (1981) and the film Dieu vomit les tièdes (1991) – La Ville est tranquille stands out as Guédiguian’s bleakest film to date. Marseille, on the eve of the millennium, is pictured here as teetering on apocalypse. Life in the fast lane: navigating Marseille in the Taxi f­ ranchise (1998–2007) Although perhaps the director most closely associated with Marseille, Guédiguian is far from the only contemporary filmmaker

Representations of Marseille

207

to set his work in the city, and as La Ville est tranquille signalled the end of a major phase in his filmmaking, a very different Marseillebased cinematic franchise was establishing itself. As outlined in the introduction, Marseille has long been associated in popular culture – and particularly in cinema – as a space of criminality. A steady stream of films since 2000 – including Comme un aimant (2000), Le Transporteur (2002), L’Outremangeur (2003), Gomez et Tavarès (2003), Gomez vs Tavarès (2007), Khamsa (2008), Lady Jane (2008), MR 73 (2008), Le Transporteur 3 (2008), L’Immortel (2010) and Mains armées (2012) – has only confirmed this trend. It comes as little surprise therefore that the most successful film franchise set in the city – the four Luc Besson-produced and scripted Taxi action comedies: Taxi (Gérard Pirès, 1998); Taxi 2 (Gérard Krawczyk, 2000); Taxi 3 (Gérard Krawczyk, 2003); and Taxi 4 (Gérard Krawczyk, 2007) – revolves around crime. Collectively attracting a total of over 27.5 million viewers at the French box office, these four films also constitute one of the most successful French franchises in French cinema history. The remarkable success of the franchise strongly suggested that it resonated widely with viewers in France and, to judge by critics’ comments on cinema audiences, particularly with young men (Konopnicki 2000). The films’ action comedy genre – whose fanbase is traditionally perceived as male – helps explain this, and the first instalment was summarised pithily by one reviewer as ‘un polar marseillais avec des voitures qui roulent vite, des filles en jupes, des flingues qui vont par deux, du rap à texte et du rire pas drôle’ (Burdeau 1998: 114) (a Marseille thriller with fast cars, girls in skirts, guns that come in twos, lyric-driven rap and unfunny jokes). Although never likely to gain critical acclaim, Taxi proved to be the surprise summer hit of 1998, capturing the French public’s imagination during the French national men’s football team’s World Cup-winning run on home soil and leading some to see parallels between the film’s hero – played by a French actor of Algerian heritage, Samy Nacéri – and the French team captain Zinedine Zidane (Sotinel 2000). The ethnicity of the film’s titular taxi driver played by Nacéri, Daniel Morales, will be analysed shortly, but Nacéri’s laidback and humorous performance certainly played a key part in the film’s appeal, as

2 ­ 08

Representing ethnicity

did his wisecracking and tchatche (banter) with the bumbling white policeman he assists, Émilien Coutant-Kerbalec, played by Frédéric Diefenthal. Although not the first French action comedy of its kind, Taxi’s combination of young fast-paced dialogue, slapstick and spectacular car stunts was seen as relatively novel and this, coupled with its setting in a sunny coastal city, meant it had many of the ingredients for a summer box-office hit. The plot, which saw Daniel and the local police pit their wits against a German bankrobbing gang, also provided the recipe for the three subsequent films, each of which pivoted around attempts to thwart foreign criminals in the city, and encouraged viewers to root for Daniel and Émilien. Moreover, the fact that most of the leading actors were relatively unknown prior to Taxi’s release was cited as a key factor in its success: far from a star vehicle, this was a film where Daniel’s taxi had equal billing. Although the third and fourth instalments failed to emulate the remarkable box-office success of Taxi 2, which attracted over 10 million viewers in France, the franchise’s longevity indicated its popularity and, with accompanying spin-off computer games and CD soundtracks, continuing profitability. Given that the dominant discourses surrounding Marseille – as outlined earlier – position it as both metropolitan French exemplar of multi-ethnic melting-pot and also racially segregated ghetto, how has such a successful film franchise portrayed Marseille and which vision of the city does it embrace? Furthermore, given the casting of Samy Nacéri as the taxi driver – a role that has made him one of the most famous French actors of Maghrebi heritage – what role does ethnicity play within it? Although the films’ titles might imply that the car is the star (and Daniel’s heavily modified Peugeot undoubtedly plays a pivotal role throughout the franchise) linguistically they can also denote its driver. As will become clear, however, despite the attention that Daniel’s leading role and initial prominence in the franchise shone on Nacéri, enigma remained around the actual ethnicity of his character. While Daniel’s Hispanic-sounding name and former job as pizza deliveryman might connote Mediterranean Europe, the fact that Nacéri plays him means Daniel could also be seen by

Representations of Marseille

209

many French viewers as being of Maghrebi heritage. Accordingly, despite Daniel’s incongruous name, this is what numerous reviewers assumed in spite of Daniel’s silence on his family’s ethnic heritage and the fact that it is never evoked directly by others. Furthermore, any Maghrebi heritage of Nacéri’s character is not explicitly connoted either: never shown as part of a wider Maghrebi diaspora, Daniel does not identify himself as such. His ethnic difference with regard to the other characters, most of whom are white, is therefore not emphasised as important and seems more incidental: conforming to the theoretical colourblind equality French republican universalist ideology promises French citizens and that Daniel’s centrality within the franchise ostensibly affirms. The parallels with Jamel Debbouze’s character Lucien in Amélie seem clear, and similarly this decision not to explore or valorise Daniel’s perceived Maghrebi heritage could be judged as both a missed opportunity and emblematic of the ethnic erasure for which Jeunet was criticised. Nevertheless, whereas Lucien’s character became part of a wider controversy surrounding Jeunet’s vision of Paris in Amélie, the depiction of Daniel in the Taxi franchise failed to provoke general comment. The reason why may lie in the divergence between the films’ different styles and settings: even if all were judged popular and populist, the Taxi franchise has not been interpreted as a comment on Frenchness in the way that Amélie was by many, inferring that critics did not therefore judge the stakes to be as high here, whether because of the franchise’s genre or because its main location lies far from Paris. Moreover, making Marseille the setting for the franchise might explain why few reviewers dwelled in detail on the fact that Daniel appears to be of Maghrebi heritage. Despite his lack of local accent, Daniel’s perceived ethnicity was seen as representative of the southern city’s ethnic diversity and cohered readily to the recurrent vision of Marseille as multi-ethnic melting-pot: consequently, the Parisian links of Marseille’s adopted son (explained in Taxi when viewers learn that he, like Émilien, grew up outside Paris in Asnières) were overlooked. Nacéri’s starring role in the franchise would therefore corroborate Higbee’s (2001b: 230) argument that, unlike in other films

2 ­ 10

Representing ethnicity

10  Daniel wearing French national colours in Taxi 2 (2000)

set elsewhere in France, Marseille’s ‘symbolic and historic status as miscegenated space allows for a greater acceptance of hybridity – hence the reason why the Maghrebi-French subject is more fully integrated in films such as Taxi’. The question of Daniel’s “integration” merits further reflection. Even if he is shown as a full member of the French “team” – wearing an Olympique de Marseille football shirt in Taxi and Zidane’s number 10 French national football shirt in Taxi 2 (see figure 10) – arguably the pattern seen in the first chapter regarding roles played by Debbouze and Bouajila recurs here. The casting of Nacéri seemingly symbolises France’s, and here especially Marseille’s, ethnic diversity but, as will become clear, the character he plays appears to be a rare exception to a vision of Marseille where whiteness is the unspoken ethnic and cultural norm. As Daniel’s potential Maghrebi heritage must primarily be inferred visually from Nacéri’s appearance, the rare moments when allusions are made verbally to the character’s ethnic heritage – or what others perceive it to be – and to his own sense of identity warrant scrutiny. This is especially given the fact that the only time direct references to the Maghreb are made is when French colonial history is evoked. These occur primarily via scenes with General Bertineau, the father of Daniel’s girlfriend Lily, a decorated French army war veteran whose ruthlessness and belligerence is first established in Taxi 2 when recounting his exploits in Algeria in 1959 as a machine-gun-wielding ambulance man. Memories of the conflict – remembered in the French

Representations of Marseille

211

popular imagination as one where Algerian fighters mutilated many French soldiers with knives (Macey 1998) – subconsciously resurface later when Bertineau awakes suddenly and anxiously asks: ‘qu’est-ce qui se passe? On égorge quelqu’un?’ (what’s happening? Is someone’s throat being slit?). While these fleeting references to the Maghreb underline the legacy of the Algerian War in metropolitan France, the prioritising of the experience of a white French army general during the conflict makes the contrasting silence surrounding Daniel’s own possible links with the Maghreb even starker. Consequently, it is hardly surprising that no direct reference is made either to any religious faith Daniel may practise or religious heritage he shares. There may, nevertheless, be an argument for seeing Daniel as, like Debbouze’s character Lucien in Amélie, seemingly “Christianised” via a number of puzzling scenes and comments, including when shown enjoying a ham sandwich in Taxi and describing Sunday reverentially as ‘le jour du Seigneur’ (the Lord’s day) to Bertineau in Taxi 4. As with Lucien, Daniel’s perceived ethnicity does not oblige him to observe any particular faith and he may well be Christian: such comments by him, however, arguably heighten the enigma of his identity but tellingly also appear to rule out the idea that he is Muslim, whether practising or not. The curious scene in Taxi where Daniel apologises to Lily by draping himself in a bedsheet in a manner reminiscent of a haik (a traditional Algerian form of veiling, as discussed in Chapter 2) therefore merely serves as a subliminal reference to Maghrebi cultural practices. The striking sight of such a masculine-coded character wearing a veil typically worn by women aside, its incongruity is only heightened given the wider aporia that Daniel’s ethnicity constitutes. References to French colonial history –  accompanied by a throwback to its attendant ethno-racial stereotyping – r­ esurface elsewhere in Taxi 2 via Gibert, the white chief of the local police squad. He subsequently serves as the main outlet of racist and xenophobic comments in the franchise, several of which are directed at Daniel himself. His mistrust towards Daniel becomes particularly patent through his heavily loaded choice of lexis when Daniel chauffeurs him along with Bertineau and a government

2 ­ 12

Representing ethnicity

minister. As Bertineau praises Daniel’s courtesy and politeness, Gibert suddenly interjects to counter his enthusiasm: ‘ooh là, mais méfiez-vous quand même avec ces zouaves: c’est poli par devant et c’est par derrière qu’on vous entube. C’est comme au souk ça: un grand sourire et hop! Ils vous tirent la caisse. Mais pas d’inquiétude: je l’ai à l’oeil le lascar’ (ooh, watch out there with those Zouaves: they’re polite to your face but then dupe you behind your back. It’s like at the souk: a big smile and then, all of a sudden, your money’s gone. But don’t worry, I’ve got my eye on the rascal). While the expression faire le zouave can mean ‘to act foolishly’, Gibert’s dismissive reference to Daniel as he sits alongside war veteran Bertineau suggests the military meaning of the term. It denotes the French army infantry body of Algerian recruits originally established in 1830 in Kabylia (from whence, coincidentally, Nacéri’s own father originates) and therefore positions Daniel as colonial servant to Gibert’s white master and certainly not as a metropolitan French citizen who is his equal. Furthermore, the lazy association between zouaves and souks suggests that while Gibert sees Daniel as being at his service – militarily and commercially – Daniel’s supposed ‘sly civility’ (Bhabha 1994) as Maghrebi Other means he is not to be trusted; hence Gibert’s warning to Bertineau and reassurance that he will maintain a watchful eye over the ‘lascar’. The latter word itself also has colonial overtones: today used to mean ‘rascal’ (and also ‘hacker’), it originally designated an East Asian sailor working on colonial European ships. Even if most viewers may well be oblivious to its etymology, its use here conveniently conforms to the power relations Gibert’s comments establish and, although the scene is predictably played for laughs, Gibert’s fellow passengers’ blank expressions suggest they are rather nonplussed by his outburst. Their silence suggests bemusement but also leaves his comments unchallenged, which risks condoning Gibert’s logic, however ridiculous he is designed to appear. Gibert’s buffoonery may well mean that viewers laugh at rather than with him here but this sequence is striking precisely because it provides the sole acknowledgement of what viewers – because of his appearance – may perceive Daniel’s ethnic heritage to be. For

Representations of Marseille

213

his perceived Maghrebi heritage to be coded so clearly in colonial terms via Gibert’s automatic suspicion of Daniel’s motives and trustworthiness may seem to jar with visions of Marseille as a city whose ethnic diversity and hybridity are so celebrated. It soon becomes clear, however, that Gibert’s reductive stereotyping is merely emblematic of its wider prevalence throughout the franchise: for, despite his role as chief beauf (boor), Gibert is certainly not the only character guilty of casual racism. Daniel himself fails to be immune to it either, explaining in Taxi to Émilien that Korean taxi drivers evade prosecution for sharing a licence despite alternating shifts in the same car because: ‘essayez de trouver la différence entre un Coréen et un Coréen’ (try to tell the difference between two Koreans). Apart from evoking the well-established Western stereotype of seeing people from East Asia as supposedly indistinct from one another, this also epitomises the franchise’s hallmark of using national, ethnic and racial stereotypes as a convenient shorthand: a staple device of popular comedies, which facilitates the speed of delivery – as long as the target audience recognises the stereotype and finds the humour amusing. Moreover, alongside the copious use of pejorative terms such as ‘schleuhs’ (Krauts) and ‘rosbifs’ (Brits), East Asians prove to be a particular target: a phenomenon for which Taxi 2 constitutes the nadir. There the derogatory term ‘Niac’ – translated in the English subtitles as ‘Nip’ – is used repeatedly by several of the French characters not only to refer to visiting Japanese state dignitaries and the yakuza gang aiming to sabotage a Franco-Japanese trade deal but also as the codeword to switch off the engine of a voicecontrolled police car: designed to generate humour every time passengers inadvertently stop the car by saying it. In contrast to a French government minister’s pointed reprimanding of Gibert in Taxi for using the term ‘Schleuh’, here the use of ‘Niac’ and its variants is never questioned. Tellingly, on the one occasion when the meaning of the term is queried – by a member of the visiting Japanese delegation to Daniel – he avoids answering and instead tells Gibert there has been a translation problem. This allows the joke – clearly at the Japanese’s expense – to continue, but its humour is another matter. To use the word as a running joke, repeat it so frequently, and never challenge

2 ­ 14

Representing ethnicity

its use not only condones it but also arguably endorses it as an acceptable term. Whereas such vocabulary in the films comes to be expected from Gibert, the fact that several other French characters utter the word only adds insult to injury. As action comedies that showcase the speed of Daniel’s taxi, any prolonged engagement with Daniel’s actual ethnic heritage may have seemed an unwelcome detour that risked sidetracking viewers and not injecting the requisite pace to advance the action between stunts and set pieces. Instead the emphasis remains squarely upon teamwork among these Marseille residents and French unity: despite the common device of placing two opposite characters together in order to produce tension and comedy (streetwise petrolhead Daniel versus hapless driver Émilien), the plot and dialogue across the franchise stress their shared interests and similarities rather than diversity or differences. This dovetails neatly with another hallmark of all four films: the association of Daniel and the local police force as French in contradistinction to the respective threats posed by foreign nationals in each film (in turn, the aforementioned German bank-robbing gang; Japanese yakuza; a Sino-Suisse femme fatale and henchmen; and finally a group of Belgian criminals). The use of this classic binary device of “us” versus “them” to appeal to the patriotic sentiments of domestic viewers might have been compromised if the films dwelled in detail upon what “us” might actually mean – and certainly if the shorthand identification that “us” conveniently provides proved more complicated than at first glance. The phenomenal success of the film franchise at the French box office might well be explained precisely by the adoption of such binaries – and by Nacéri’s role remaining apparently unmarked. Would the films have been so successful had any Maghrebi heritage of Nacéri’s role been explicitly affirmed? If the comments of the director Jacques Audiard are to be believed, perhaps not. Discussing his film Un prophète (2009), where Tahar Rahim played the lead role of Malik – a character whose Maghrebi heritage is clearly denoted – Audiard argued that, in contrast to the popular acclaim (the white actor) Vincent Cassel received in France for his portrayal of Mesrine in Jean-François Richet’s Mesrine: l’instinct de mort (2008) and Mesrine: l’ennemi public n°1

Representations of Marseille

215

(2008), some audiences are reluctant to root for a hero marked as Maghrebi or Arab: People have difficulty swallowing the fact that Malik is a survivor – but I think that’s because he’s an Arab character. They’re not used to seeing Arabs come out on top and they don’t like it, not in France, anyway. Oh, it’s fine for them to cheer for Mesrine … because he’s played by an actor everyone thinks is cool. But Tahar, they don’t know him, he’s an Arab and, sad to say, this is still a problem. Good. I hope it pisses them off. That’s the point. (Solomons 2009: 23)

While counter-examples can be cited to disprove Audiard’s argument, such as Jamel Debbouze in the role of Egyptian architect Numérobis in Astérix et Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre (2002) (albeit not playing a character of Maghrebi heritage), Debbouze – unlike Rahim – had achieved fame prior to that role and also starred in Amélie the previous year, undoubtedly further facilitating identification with him among audiences in France, and perhaps proving Audiard’s point that audience reactions may well depend on how familiar viewers are with the actors seen on screen. Taxi certainly propelled Nacéri into mainstream public consciousness in France and the franchise has served as his springboard into stardom. All four films encourage viewers to identify with Daniel as he helps foil the plots of foreign criminals and, as Nacéri’s fame and notoriety – due to multiple arrests and criminal convictions – have grown, his star image may well have impinged upon how viewers see his role in later instalments of the franchise. In spite of this, however, the role of Daniel Morales remained unmarked throughout, suggesting obvious parallels with a film released the year following Taxi 4, which became the most popular domestic film of all time in France: Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis (2008). Its leads Dany Boon and Kad Merad, both known for their work in comedy, have Algerian fathers and French mothers but their similar ethnic heritage is never alluded to in the film. While some may champion their ability not to be pigeonholed, such an elision suggested that acknowledgement of it may have jarred with the film’s interrogation of northern and

2 ­ 16

Representing ethnicity

southern French stereotypes and thereby complicated its own vision of French national and regional identities. Nacéri’s ability to play a seemingly unmarked role in the Taxi franchise could also be celebrated for signalling a resistance to the ethnic absolutism (Gilroy 1993) that pigeonholes many ethnic minority actors. The curiously white appearance of Marseillais society in the franchise, however, reinforces the impression that while Nacéri’s character may seem unmarked ethnically, his integration ultimately depends upon assimilating to the dominant norm of whiteness shown: itself facilitated both by the conspicuous absence of any siblings or parents of Maghrebi heritage that Daniel may have and the fact that his girlfriend Lily, played by Marion Cotillard, is white. This is duly confirmed in later instalments of the franchise when characters played by black actors suddenly become more visible on screen but appear noticeably less integrated. An early sequence in Taxi 3 signalled this change. It focuses on Alain, a black colleague of Émilien who hitherto had remained largely in the background, played by Édouard Montoute who following Taxi 2 had starred as Nexusis in Astérix et Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre (2002). Alain’s sudden prominence in the script coincided with a noticeable increase in the number of non-whites seen and heard henceforth on screen in the franchise. Yet unlike the perpetual silence that surrounds Daniel’s ethnicity and his visible difference from the (mostly) white cast, here Alain’s Caribbean affiliations are immediately emphasised through stereotypical signifiers of Jamaicanness (see figure 11): hence the car he drives

11  Alain driving to work in Taxi 3 (2003)

Representations of Marseille

217

is bedecked with objects bearing the colours of the Jamaican national flag; he sings along to Bob Marley and the Wailers’ song ‘I Shot the Sheriff’; and his office walls are adorned with Bob Marley posters. Alain may simply be a reggae fan, but his penchant for marijuana – revealed when a colleague offers him some of their latest seizure – also evokes Rastafarian stereotypes. Such clichés are taken one step further in Taxi 4 when another black policeman, played by Johnson Douyard, is introduced: not only shown in a Bob Marley t-shirt and Jamaican national colours but conveniently called Marley. The association of blackness with drug consumption established via Alain in Taxi 3 is also reinforced by showing Marley smoking a joint twice: first with Daniel and then with Marvin, a fellow black colleague played by Paul Bebga. The use of steel drums when these black characters are on screen further accentuates their Caribbeanness and, although both Émilien and Daniel are seen smoking marijuana elsewhere in the franchise, the insinuation remains that their supposedly relaxed pace of life and drug habits sidetrack them from the cases in hand: narcotic-induced lethargy as a cultural, if not ethno-racial, trait. Music similarly functions as ethnic signifier elsewhere in the franchise, such as when archetypal Japanese and Chinese music is used when the respective baddies are on screen in Taxi 2 and Taxi 3, and a speeded-up version of the Belgian singer Jacques Brel’s ‘Ne me quitte pas’ is used to torture Le Belge’s brother in Taxi 4. More widely, rap music – a key cultural export from Marseille in recent decades – features heavily on the four soundtracks and serves as signifier for the city. Given that many Marseillais rap artists are also from ethnic minorities, this tellingly doubles as a way to create the aura of ethnic diversity within the franchise without writing significant on-screen roles for non-white actors. Alain is also at the centre of a brief but rather telling scene later in Taxi 3 that constitutes a rare allusion to race relations beyond the police force and more widely within Marseille. Ordered by Gibert to requisition a passing vehicle, Alain is run down by the car he tries to stop, prompting Émilien to remark: ‘un flic black à Marseille, il y avait une chance sur mille pour qu’il s’arrête’ (for a black cop in Marseille, there was only a one in a thousand chance he would stop), to which Gibert responds: ‘Ben oui mais

2 ­ 18

Representing ethnicity

enfin, quand même il aurait pu au moins ralentir’ (Well yes but, even so, he could at least have slowed down). The scene ends with Alain dusting himself down, reassuring them: ‘Ça va, ça va… J’ai l’habitude’ (It’s ok… I’m used to it). Given how seldom ethnicity or the skin colour of French characters are acknowledged in the franchise – and certainly with regard to Daniel – this brief scene seems striking enough, but it also suggests a contradiction to the franchise’s general colour blindness. The probability of a car stopping instead for a white police officer (or one of Maghrebi heritage) is not clarified, but the suggestion that such a differentiation is so regularly made between French citizens on grounds of skin colour – and that this is normal – deviates from the mythologisation of Marseille as harmonious multi-ethnic melting-pot where ethnic differences are subsumed by a local egalitarian identity. Furthermore, the precise reason why almost no one would stop for a black police officer in Marseille, and what this might insinuate, remains unclear: as does the question of whether most drivers in Marseille, regardless of their ethnicity and skin colour, would react the same way. Even though Alain’s amount of screen time and dialogue increases substantially in the latter two films, the fact that his character is scarcely developed beyond these scenes suggests this sudden focus on a non-white member of the police force is largely tokenistic. While the number of speaking roles and screen time for black actors increases further in Taxi 4, the fact that they always play minor characters parallels trends identified within contemporary French television in Chapter 1 and suggests a common pattern of marginalisation. Nevertheless, even if Alain’s role as incompetent policeman makes him the butt of several jokes, the humour generated via such comments on his skin colour and ethnicity contrasts sharply with the silence shrouding those of Daniel. Whereas Daniel’s potential Maghrebiness can be effaced, Alain’s blackness clearly cannot pass without comment  – and must be repeatedly marked. This effacement of Maghrebiness seems emblematic of wider trends within contemporary French society. In a case of art mirroring life, the elision of Daniel’s ethnicity in the franchise is not without parallels to Nacéri himself, who apparently changed

Representations of Marseille

219

his own name from ‘Saïd’ to ‘Samy’ to further his acting career, presumably because he believed ‘Saïd’ would not play as well in French film (de Virieu: 2000). While within the entertainment world there is a long history of performers adopting stage names – of which the aforementioned actor and comedian Dany Boon, born Dany Hamidou, is another example – there is evidence that this may be a broader phenomenon among French people of Maghrebi heritage. In an attempt to circumvent discrimination in the workplace and French society at large, some have chosen to give their children more archetypal American-sounding names, rather than Maghrebi ones (Anon. 2001c: 10). The cases of 9-yearold Islam Alaouchiche – turned down by casting agents for the children’s TV channel Gulli after being told that his name has too many negative connotations for viewers (Duwat 2008) – and the everyday racism endured by the Le Monde journaliste Mustapha Kessous that has led him to avoid using his first name out of habit (Kessous 2009) make such a choice all the more understandable. Within French cinema, thanks to the success of Taxi, Nacéri arguably became its first male French film star of Maghrebi heritage at the end of the 1990s and has been followed by the rise to prominence of several French male actors of Maghrebi heritage. An important precursor to their success was the career of the actress Isabelle Adjani: crowned France’s first French star of Maghrebi heritage (Austin 2003: 101) in the 1980s and whose popularity in France endures, as the success of her 2009 film La Journée de la jupe demonstrated. The lengthy gap between Adjani and Nacéri achieving stardom in French cinema is, however, striking and lends credence to the view that, in terms of gender, Maghrebi-heritage masculinity has historically been perceived as more threatening within French cinema and has therefore limited opportunities for male actors of Maghrebi heritage, especially before 2000. Although Jamel Debbouze’s stardom has now eclipsed that of Nacéri, and fellow French actors of Maghrebi heritage have achieved significant fame, it may not be purely coincidental that both Nacéri and Adjani are mixed race, have blue eyes, and paler complexions than other actors of Maghrebi heritage. Such compliance with certain key tropes of whiteness may well have facilitated their careers: Adjani herself only acknowledged

2 ­ 20

Representing ethnicity

publicly her Maghrebi heritage in the mid-1980s, over a decade after her debut film role (Austin 2003: 101). Before concluding, in a franchise where the emphasis is so much on men and machines, the role of female characters is predictably marginalised but its representation of women nevertheless deserves scrutiny. As argued above, the franchise’s adherence to the action genre, largely male cast, and the centrality of the duo Émilien and Daniel clearly suggest that the films’ target demographic is young men. Consequently, the films’ predictably patriarchal depictions of women mean that even if Petra – seemingly the token woman on the police force and proto-“Bond girl” – plays a leading role, women are largely shown only in relation to men and generally marginalised in terms of screen time. Furthermore, the implicit suggestion that both Lily and Petra frequently seem to verge on nymphomania merely panders to male heterosexual adolescent fantasy, and is indicative of the films’ wider disregard for female experience. The camerawork often used when women are on screen – low-level shots of bare legs, shots of men ogling women – form part of the films’ unreconstructed sexual politics and recurrent objectification of female bodies, which not even Petra’s formidable agency can undermine. Consequently, in a franchise so dependent upon cars, the fact that women are almost never shown behind the wheel speaks volumes about the hierarchy between genders: as Daniel’s increasing pimping of his taxi from film to film demonstrates, the cars driven are boys’ toys and men in this franchise are firmly in the driving seat. Moreover, Émilien’s success in getting his driving licence after his twentyseventh driving test avoids prolonging the symbolic emasculation his continued non-driving might risk. In terms of the representation of women’s ethnicity, however, it is worth noting that while Sino-Swiss Qiu is the most prominent non-white woman in the franchise, other non-white women are almost never seen and certainly remain unheard. As the silence surrounding Daniel’s ethnic heritage suggests, and the largely tokenistic character of Alain affirms, the franchise’s filmmakers clearly felt little obligation for it to be representative of Marseille as a city and French society more widely. It is striking, however, that while some non-white men do feature, women

Representations of Marseille

221

seem exclusively white in Marseille and, by extension, across metropolitan France as a whole. To conclude, as mentioned earlier, when Taxi was released in 1998, parallels were drawn between the character of Daniel Morales and Zinedine Zidane. While in the film franchise Nacéri’s football-loving character also acts as French figurehead and national hero, the similarities stop there. In contrast to the complexities of Zidane’s sense of ethnic identification – reportedly having described himself as ‘first, a Kabyle from La Castellane, then an Algerian from Marseille, and then a Frenchman’ (Hussey 2004: 23) – Nacéri’s character Daniel ultimately acts as cipher: his Mediterranean-sounding name and visible Maghrebi heritage combining to signify the ethnic diversity and multiple heritages for which Marseille is famed. The pervasive whiteness of the city on screen, however, along with Daniel’s assimilation to this norm, creates a strange parallel with aspects of Jeunet’s Amélie and is at odds with the dominant representational paradigm that envisions the city as an ethnically diverse space. The franchise may trade on many associations of the city in the French popular imaginary but tellingly it remains unrepresentative of Marseillais society. While viewers might not expect an action comedy to provide a trenchant analysis of ethnic relations in the city, the whiteness of this vision arguably facilitates the ethno-racial stereotyping so prevalent across the franchise: a device that might not so easily generate humour if the main French characters were more ethnically diverse and marked as such throughout. Instead, the eventual evacuation of regional specificities to emphasise the team’s Frenchness trumps such considerations and Marseille ultimately becomes – like Daniel’s gleaming taxi – more remarkable for its whiteness. ‘Le parfait feuilleton de service public’: Marseille on the small screen in Plus belle la vie To close this chapter, we now return to the small screen to consider an important series set in Marseille which, despite only beginning in 2004, has subsequently become the most successful French feuilleton of its kind in the history of French t­elevision.

2 ­ 22

Representing ethnicity

Shown every weeknight after the early evening news broadcast on state television channel France 3, Plus belle la vie  – despite a shaky start and initial relatively low viewing figures (Milot 2009)  – has now grown so much in popularity that, as seen previously with regard to the Taxi franchise and Amélie, it has ascended to the rank of ‘phénomène de société’ (Nataf 2008) (social phenomenon) within France. Such unprecedented success is all the more stunning given its scheduling: screened during French television’s daily grande messe, its main competitors for evening audience share are TF1’s and France 2’s 8 p.m. national news broadcasts. Despite this, it regularly attracts over five million viewers and on 17 November 2008 achieved its highest viewing figures to date when over 6.8 million viewers tuned in (Davies 2008: 43). Earlier that year, Plus belle la vie’s first-ever live episode was broadcast on 11 July to mark its reaching the milestone of one thousand episodes: an achievement no previous French television series, whether continuing drama or not, had ever accomplished. Few other French television series can rival its commercial reach either, and the series has spawned a legion of spin-off products, ranging from magazines, books and tie-in novels to apps, computer games, and a range of DVD box sets. Furthermore, demand is so high that a dedicated shop in Marseille selling Plus belle la vie-branded merchandise has drawn thousands of fans to the city since its opening in 2008 (Erlanger 2009). Such brand development for a series of its kind is simply unheard of within French television and is as much a measure of the programme’s hold on the French popular imagination as its creators’ canny ability to coin in on its success. Its virtual presence online only confirms this: several unofficial websites are regularly maintained by fans, and alongside France 3’s website and one run by the series’ producers Telfrance, the dedicated space created within the virtual world Second Life – entitled, appropriately enough, Plus belle la life – allows viewers to inhabit Le Mistral, the fictional quartier of the city where the series is set, via avatars online. Furthermore, although its annual budget at the time totalled €27 million, Plus belle la vie brought in €43 million to France 3 before adverts after 8 p.m. were abolished on French state television channels

Representations of Marseille

223

in 2009:  17 per cent of the channel’s entire annual advertising revenue (Boccara 2009). Prior to the programme’s launch, however, French programme makers seemed unable to find a successful formula for a French daily feuilleton that might attract the number of viewers achieved by soap operas in other countries. Although imported US soap operas such as Dallas and Dynasty were popular in the 1980s and 1990s in France and series such as Days of our Lives have been screened for many years on main terrestrial channels there, French television had no homegrown equivalent to the UK’s Coronation Street or Eastenders, and attempts to emulate their success had proven ill-fated. The popular acclaim that Plus belle la vie has received is therefore remarkable – but why has the series met with such success? Crucially its broadcaster France 3, a public channel, allowed the series time to establish itself, to build up its fanbase and for the production team to refine its approach. In contrast, private channels such as TF1 and M6, which had launched rival shows in response, proved less patient and both cancelled their initial competing series within their first year (Milot 2009). Several key elements inherent to Plus belle la vie’s format have also helped too. The sociologist Michel Maffesoli (quoted in Nataf 2008) has argued that its focus on the everyday lives of characters particularly resonates with viewers and that they can also identify more readily with them because each represents an archetypal figure: leading him to draw allusions between the series and Balzac’s La Comédie humaine. Moreover its ‘jeu d’intrigues transgénérationnel’ (Kerviel and Larrochelle 2009) (playful use of cross-­generational plots) has also been cited as a key reason for its appeal: facilitated by its large cast, which in its first season ranged in age from elderly matriarch Rachel to the young teenager Nathan. Its recurrent use of dramatic storylines, especially revolving around crime, also helped secure additional viewers and played upon the city’s aforementioned reputation for criminality. Their inclusion was far from accidental: the policier remains one of the most popular genres on French television, and some of the longest running television series in France have been police dramas, such as TF1’s Navarro (which ran from 1989–2007) and

2 ­ 24

Representing ethnicity

Julie Lescaut (first aired in 1992 and whose final twenty-second season ended in 2014). Following Plus belle la vie’s first season, its co-producer Pascal Tomasini duly confirmed that, to attract more viewers, ‘from episode 80, we threw away the screenplays and started again, more popular and with more crime’ (quoted in Erlanger 2009). Consequently viewers saw several characters killed off during the first season, as well as the hunt for a local serial killer. How fortunate, then, that one of Le Mistral’s local residents, Léo Castelli, happens to be a police officer. All the more so given that, until the arrival of his sidekick Nicolas in episode 148, viewers might be forgiven for thinking that Marseille is solely patrolled by him. Unlike the world inhabited by his fictional confrères in the Taxi franchise, however, here urban life is far grimier and given the prominence of crime in Plus belle la vie’s first season Léo quickly becomes a prominent character. Reassuringly for viewers – whether Marseille residents themselves or not – almost all crimes are eventually solved and, as the symbolic logic of serial fiction drama often demands, criminals ultimately get their just deserts. Hence ruthless Eva is poisoned fatally as she opens the hidden chest whose secrets she coveted; swindler Manuel is found beaten dead in the street; and the serial killer Dr Livia appears to jump to his death into the sea. Other aspects of the series also played upon different elements associated with the city. In terms of décor, setting and visual style, Plus belle la vie’s first season recalled some of the most popular films of Robert Guédiguian. The preponderance of Mediterranean colour schemes, recurrence of characters talking through windows and doors next to inner courtyards, and use of close and intimate camerawork were particularly reminiscent of Marius and Jeannette (1997). Given the success of Guédiguian’s film – the first in his oeuvre to achieve significant widespread acclaim – the programme makers’ choice to echo it cannot have been accidental and it similarly helped create a feeling of cosy familiarity on screen. Furthermore, despite its resolutely modern setting, the presence of so many clearly defined and recognisable characters among Plus belle la vie’s cast also meant that the series was not completely divorced either from the vision of Marseille

Representations of Marseille

225

offered by Pagnol’s novels and their film adaptations. Many such elements of the fictional quartier of Le Mistral were clearly based in part on a mythologised version of central Marseille: consequently the fact that the city’s dedicated Plus belle la vie shop, selling branded merchandise, is found in Le Panier –  the citycentre quartier whose architecture it mimics – has only further confused visitors disappointed to learn that Le Mistral does not actually exist in real life. A key difference from Pagnol’s vision of the city, however, is the wider spectrum of social class that the series offers: few characters in Plus belle la vie might be perceived as working class per se, and with its trendy clothes shop, lively local bar and cheery modern grocery it arguably reflects more the boboïsation of such quartiers in some French cities, even if bobo and bourge (both disparaging names for bourgeois individuals) serve as terms of abuse throughout the first season. As the series began its second decade on screen, its popularity showed little sign of abating: its twelfth season began in October 2015 during which its three-thousandth episode will be broadcast. Discussion here, however, will concentrate solely on its first season of 260 episodes, which ran from 30 August 2004 until 2 September 2005 (see figure 12). Even if the series has evolved since then, its first season certainly set the tone for future episodes by establishing the formula that has ensured the considerable

12  Opening credits to the first episode of Plus belle la vie (2004)

2 ­ 26

Representing ethnicity

success it continues to enjoy: most notably with regard to its representation of ethnicity. At a time when, as discussed in Chapter 1, French television seemed to struggle generally to reflect the ethnic diversity of contemporary French society on screen, Plus belle la vie markedly bucked the trend by explicitly boasting an ethnically diverse cast. So much so that it led the president of the ‘Images de la diversité’ commission, Alexandre Michelin, to single it out for specific praise and celebrate it as ‘le rendez-vous préféré des Français’ (Michelin 2009: 7) (France’s favourite programme). How therefore does it represent Marseille and the ethnicities of its inhabitants? Even from its early episodes, it quickly becomes apparent why the series has attracted such acclaim. In stark contrast to the wider status quo found across French television, here diversity tout court is conspicuous by its presence rather than its absence. Not just in ethnic terms either: the cast boasts an array of characters who differ in terms of age and gender, and the arrival of the local bar-owner Roland Marci’s long-lost son Thomas – who subsequently becomes a key character – prompted the breaking of new ground on French television: the first kiss he shares with the young police officer Nicolas in episode 156 was, according to the Plus belle la vie co-producer Pascal Tomasini (quoted in Erlanger 2009) also the first one seen between two gay characters on French television. How credible that particular claim might be is debatable but the novelty of such a scene in a programme of this kind was clearly patent. In terms of ethnicity, the diversity seen on screen is particularly striking. Indeed, from the outset, many of the characters are clearly coded in terms of their ethnicity as the cast is introduced to viewers and later expanded. Hence Roland Marci refers several times to his family’s Italian heritage, his partner Mirta Torres asserts her Spanish roots, and the Jewishness of the elderly matriarch Rachel is repeatedly signalled via extra-diegetic music and her references to religious festivals. Perhaps the group of characters whose ethnicity is most highlighted, however, are those of Maghrebi heritage: contrasting markedly with the silence surrounding Nacéri’s character discussed previously in the Taxi franchise. In Plus belle la vie, the ethnicity and cultural identity

Representations of Marseille

227

of these characters form part of several plot developments that emphasise their status in contemporary France and highlight the challenges people of Maghrebi heritage can face. Viewers therefore, for example, see the local law student Malik suffer discrimination when seeking a work placement, follow the plight of Aïcha, who fled her husband in Algeria and is sans papiers, and witness Malik’s 17-year-old sister Samia defy their parents by refusing to emigrate to Algeria, where an arranged marriage may prove her fate. The respective predicaments of all three formed some of the first season’s many main narrative threads and – even if somewhat predictable storylines for characters of Maghrebi heritage given their widespread recurrence across contemporary French visual culture – helped furnish scriptwriters with some of the requisite drama to keep feuilleton viewers hooked. These aspects of Plus belle la vie’s first season made the comparatively brief appearance of another character of Maghrebi heritage, Driss, all the more intriguing. A young local working-class man, he quickly joins a campaign against proposals by private developers to demolish many parts of Le Mistral to construct new buildings. His fervour impresses local residents and especially Ninon, the young white middle-class student originally from Paris who recently moved to the area with her father Vincent. Driss and Ninon subsequently begin dating and their cross-­ ethnic and cross-social class union forms part of Plus belle la vie’s wider vision of Le Mistral and Marseille more broadly as a space of conviviality. It therefore chimed with Paul Gilroy’s championing of that term itself as a productive prism through which contemporary societal relations can be viewed. Defining conviviality as ‘the processes of cohabitation and interaction that have made multiculture an ordinary feature of social life … in postcolonial cities’ (2004: xi), for Gilroy the term is also attractive because ‘the radical openness that brings conviviality alive makes a nonsense of closed, fixed, and reified identity and turns attention toward the always-unpredictable mechanisms of identification’ (ibid.). Certainly, the number of such cross-ethnic relationships forged during the first season alone is notable and clearly facilitates the programme makers’ emphasis upon the everyday ordinariness of multi-ethnic life in Le Mistral. The relative brevity of several

2 ­ 28

Representing ethnicity

such relationships, however, is also striking and Driss and Ninon remain together for little more than a month before Driss suddenly departs from the series. Ultimately the idea that the young couple could sustain a long-term relationship or have a viable future together seemed beyond the scriptwriters’ imagination: here less due to their differing ethnicities, which seldom attract discussion, and more to the gulf in social class that separates them and is repeatedly emphasised by Driss. Furthermore, the fact that viewers only glimpse the small HLM family home where he and eight relatives have lived during the sole time Ninon visits (in episode 128) forms part of a broader trend in Plus belle la vie’s first season where the topography traversed beyond the centre of Le Mistral is closely circumscribed. Therefore while on-location scenes are shot across and beyond the main city centre, other areas of Marseille escape the camera’s gaze: the most striking omission arguably being the quartiers nord, from which Malik originally hails. The invisibility of this large and underprivileged area of Marseille, where approximately a third of the city’s inhabitants reside, does not seem coincidental. Often portrayed in the French media as a space of social tensions and delinquency, the foremost reference to it in the first season occurs when Phil, who previously had served two years in prison for his role in selling counterfeit identity documents, visits his childhood friend Malik and persuades Aïcha that he can provide the documents necessary for her to remain in France. His subsequent death after being fatally wounded (presumably by a criminal associate) played once again upon the area’s reputation, and Plus belle la vie’s producers may have concluded that scenes shot there could prove a turn-off, despite their dramatic potential: undoubtedly an inconceivable option given the series’ need to increase viewers following its disappointing start. Moreover, having characters spend extended time there might risk qualifying the generally harmonious vision of life seen in Le Mistral. It might also incite those less familiar with Marseille – even if feuilleton viewers regularly and readily suspend their disbelief – to ponder quite how representative events on screen actually are of life in the wider city. In keeping with equivalent series in other countries, Plus belle la vie’s first season clearly presented a consensual vision of

Representations of Marseille

229

contemporary society, where the characters form a close community. The few and fleeting instances of racism and discrimination seen in Le Mistral itself – and the fact that the authors of such acts appear to emanate from elsewhere – reinforced both the crossethnic conviviality that reigns there and the fact that ethnicity itself never becomes a source of tension. Given the public funding the series received and the acknowledgement in each episode’s credits of support from le FASILD (Fonds d’Action et de Soutien pour l’Intégration et la Lutte contre les Discriminations)  –  the predecessor to l’Acsé (l’Agence nationale pour la cohésion sociale et l’égalité des chances) – the foregrounding of cross-ethnic harmony in this way by the series should not be surprising. Nevertheless, although admirable, the general colour blindness of Le Mistral’s residents might well at times stretch credibility: an aspect that makes the virulent reaction of Astrid Frémont, the rich white wife of local solicitor Charles, to the news of her daughter Céline’s relationship with Malik all the more unusual. The only recurring character from the main cast who clearly demonstrates racist attitudes –  but whose wealth and social standing mean that she coincidentally does not live in Le Mistral – her hostility to Malik as Céline’s partner never completely diminishes and, tellingly, her character is subsequently written out of the series early in its second season. Before her departure, however, Astrid’s family provided another key plot line that heightened drama: the discovery that her father Jules actively collaborated during the Second World War and seized for himself a looted painting from Rachel’s family. This news heralds the start of one of the first season’s most improbable plots, which ends with the death of Eva as she hunted for the sole cure to her rare terminal condition, supposedly discovered by a sixteenth-century Jewish alchemist but then hidden in a booby-trapped chest whose whereabouts were indicated in a manuscript given for safety to Rachel’s father before his arrest. Notwithstanding the preposterous nature of this storyline, it served to highlight a link established earlier in the series between Rachel and Roland: namely that, for two years during the Occupation, Roland’s father helped Rachel hide alone in secret in Le Mistral after her parents and sister were rounded up by local

2 ­ 30

Representing ethnicity

police and deported to a concentration camp. By highlighting this traumatic event from Rachel’s childhood – incidentally one of very few events mentioned that significantly predates the contemporary era seen on screen – the series championed historical cross-ethnic solidarity between the quartier’s residents and its continuation as a tradition there in the present day. The fact that the collaborator Jules happened to be the father of Astrid, the sole recurring character to demonstrate clear hostility to another on the grounds of ethnicity, also conveniently positioned older generations of the Tailleroche family as the unique aberration to the conviviality that reigns in Le Mistral: accentuated by the shock with which Astrid’s daughter Juliette greets the news about her grandfather and how vigorously she and her sister Céline ­repeatedly disassociate themselves from their mother’s racism. In many ways the first season of Plus belle la vie conformed readily to existing conventions regarding how the city of Marseille is perennially pictured: through its focus on the fictional Le Mistral quartier, Marseille is presented as a multi-ethnic space whose diversity is in many ways as ubiquitous as it is unremarkable. The general cohesion that reigns in the society shown on screen and feel-good ambience of the programme allow viewers to interpret its name as a statement of fact – that life is more beautiful in Marseille – thereby espousing aspects of the postcolonial conviviality advocated by Gilroy (2004). Such elements of the series, along with its clear pedagogical bent – explicitly foregrounded by the complementary series of dossiers on different subjects found on its official France 3 website that complemented key first season storylines, such as Rudy’s drug taking, teenage Johanna’s pregnancy, and homophobia in society –  led one critic to declare the series as ‘le parfait feuilleton de service public’ (Zarachowicz 2006: 64) (the perfect public service soap opera). Moreover, the notably secular space of Le Mistral – where, in contrast to other areas of private life, only fleeting references are made to religion despite the frequent establishing shots showing the Notre-Dame de la Garde Catholic basilica – coupled with its residents’ general colour blindness, cohered readily with many ideological tenets of French republican universalism, for which at times the first season of the series might well have seemed an advertisement.

Representations of Marseille

231

Why choose Marseille as the setting for such a series? As the introduction to this chapter established, the population of the city is readily connoted as being ethnically diverse and, predictably enough, when France 3 invited proposals from television companies for its new feuilleton, but stipulated that it should be set in the provinces and foreground the diversity of French society, almost every proposal submitted was set in Marseille (Morini-Bosc 2007). France 3’s insistence that it be representative of French society indicated how aware the public channel was that such a series needed to reflect its potential audience and duly anticipated, as Chapter 1 showed, the far greater scrutiny this area would attract in future years. The fact that the under-representation of ethnic diversity remained a key cause for concern for the CSA several years after the feuilleton’s launch, however, and how often it has been cited as the main exception to the rule among French fiction-based programmes only further highlight how trailblazing Plus belle la vie has been and the extent to which it has led the way. Furthermore, the popularity of the series allied with its numerous tie-in commercial marketing campaigns ultimately confounded claims regularly made before its launch that showing greater diversity on screen would alienate many viewers. As Plus belle la vie’s second decade on French television continues, its remarkable success and continuing widespread appeal – despite some of its problematic aspects identified above –  give some cause for optimism that certain sectors of French television are both able and willing to embrace the challenge of ensuring programmes better reflect the ethnic diversity of the French viewing public. In conclusion, the corpus of images considered across this chapter encompasses several decades and together presents a complex mosaic of life in Marseille. Perhaps their most significant aspect is how each of these case studies, although clearly anchored in the city, represents Marseille in contrasting ways. Jeanmougin’s images classify different ethnicities separately and it is primarily only the arrangement of images within his book itself that brings people of different heritages together. In Guédiguian’s film cross-ethnic relations in millennial Marseille were more patent but the prospect of future harmony threatened

2 ­ 32

Representing ethnicity

by the atomisation of society and growth of racist ideologies. In contrast, the popular comedy genre adopted by the Taxi franchise conspicuously erased the ethnicity of its lead character and presented a curiously white vision of the city, which coincidentally chimed with the franchise’s emphasis on the Frenchness of its local police force, which was always pitted against foreign criminals and spearheaded the safeguarding of national interests. The first season of Plus belle la vie, however, was anchored much more clearly in the contemporary realities of life in Marseille and the programme makers’ deliberate decision to showcase the city’s famed ethnic diversity broke new ground in French television. In spite of such differences between these approaches, each one pivoted to an important extent on the ethnicities – whether real or imagined – of Marseille’s inhabitants and demonstrated how its specificities provide a distinctive means to explore different visions of French society more widely and ethnic cohesion within it. Ultimately – and perhaps quite unlike any other city in metropolitan France – it is this plasticity of Marseille within collective popular imaginaries that permits such a variety of representations: allowing the city to be framed simultaneously as both a beacon of multi-ethnic diversity and communitarianist nightmare.

Conclusion

Work on this project began in the 2000s and, throughout the intervening years, the topicality and importance of how ethnicity  –  and particularly ethnic difference –  is represented in France has only increased. Looking back, it was the evident gap between the equality for French citizens theoretically enshrined in the French Constitution and the patent practical inequalities that characterise contemporary French society that first intrigued me about this area. Moreover, as my research evolved, it quickly became apparent that it was within the domain of visual culture that artists, filmmakers, photographers and others have sought especially to explore some of the paradoxes and challenges such a situation presents, where a dominant political philosophy actively impedes the recognition of difference, and effectively marginalises the ­importance of aspects of identification deemed contrary to it. Nevertheless, as this book developed, I was hesitant to read every case study analysed necessarily in such terms. While France’s immediate future holds little prospect of a rival doctrine unseating French republican universalism from its position as state-sanctioned doxa, I feared that scrutinising all the works analysed in this book via such a prism could prove overly deterministic: reading them primarily in terms of the extent to which they embraced or rejected its ideological tenets seemed a potentially rather blunt tool that risked not doing justice to the works themselves, either in terms of their own specific politics, poetics or, indeed, aesthetics.

2 ­ 34

Representing ethnicity

As my thinking progressed, however, it became clearer that to underplay the doxic force of French republican universalism within the field of contemporary French visual culture would be an error: even if some works might not be read as direct engagements with it, to insinuate that stepping completely outside this ideological framework for practitioners in France was a conceivable option seemed naive at best. Of course, the work of Foucault and others has demonstrated how, no matter how totalising a dominant political philosophy may seem, spaces of resistance can materialise to probe the epistemological limits of the discourses that buttress normative orthodoxies. As the previous chapters have shown, clearly many works that pose difficult questions for adherents of French republican universalism have been created within France during this period, accordingly demonstrating the eclectic nature of contemporary French visual culture more widely. Perhaps the latter point explains why no wide-ranging survey of this kind has previously been published. How could any book possibly encompass the entirety of such an area, given the many different ethnicities within French society and the breadth of media and works that contemporary French visual culture comprises? Conducting the research for this book has certainly presented many challenges, and the choice to prioritise an approach that considers this field via a series of detailed case studies automatically meant that many works and media could not be included. The decision to persevere with such a framework nevertheless seemed important not least for acknowledging the ways in which still and moving images incessantly interact within contemporary French society. Rather than view distinct media in isolation from one another, analysing an array of media together proved a more apposite way to identify how dominant representational paradigms of ethnicity have been woven into the warp and weft that constitute contemporary French visual culture as a whole. The variety of works considered in the previous chapters are testament to the fundamental diversity of this field and throughout serve as an important reminder that, if to use the term ‘visual culture’ may risk implying homogenisation or facile relationality between the media it comprises, it remains an important heuristic

Conclusion

235

tool for trying to show how the representation of different ethnicities has converged across such media. As Said (1979: 332) argued, ‘each age and society re-creates its “Others”’. The preceding chapters have demonstrated especially some of the ways in which over the last three decades the alterity of different ethnicities across contemporary French visual culture has been created and circumscribed. As we have seen, this has frequently been aided by the elision between whiteness and Frenchness across visual culture and, although clearly in sectors such as television and cinema ethnic diversity has become more visible on screen since the 1980s, much evidence suggests that the implicit positing of whiteness as the only ethno-cultural norm has stubbornly remained in place. This has undoubtedly been facilitated by the degree to which French republican universalism continues to inform and influence engagement with ethnicity and ethnic diversity in France. This is certainly the case in the televisual sector, where the question of representativeness on French screens and within the wider television industry itself remains far from resolved, and the defensiveness and hostility with which initial demands for greater ethnic diversity there were met recalled Žižek’s (1989: 49) argument that ‘an ideology really succeeds when even the facts which at first sight contradict it start to function as arguments in its favour’. Nevertheless, the range of case studies this book has considered reveals the diverse and contrasting means by which different practitioners in France generally have grappled with the questions that representing ethnicity can raise. In doing so, they provide troubling visions in a number of ways: problematically, for instance, via the use of many negative stereotypes, but also productively, by challenging such reductive notions. The breadth and scope of contemporary French visual culture, however, necessarily precludes any facile characterisation of this field according to overly neat binary oppositions: instead, it is undoubtedly wiser to view this area more in terms of a continuum, and the variety of case studies considered here has comprised works that could be situated at many different points along such a spectrum. Despite the contrasting works and approaches analysed across this book, the continuities and connections previous chapters

2 ­ 36

Representing ethnicity

have traced across and between different media reinforce the value of viewing contemporary French visual culture as such a continuum. Hopefully, they also highlight the merits of adopting a comparative approach by analysing different media together. As French society, like so many others, continues to become increasingly “visual” – and the attendant boundaries between different media blur and merge – arguably it is only by analysing distinct works in terms of their relationship with the wider field of visual culture that their greater significance and import can be traced. Moreover, given the peculiar challenges that visualising ethnicity in France crucially poses within such a matrix, how practitioners creatively negotiate the false choice that French republican universalism offers between colour blindness and communautarisme promises to be fascinating.

References

Andrew, Dudley. 2004. ‘Amélie, or Le Fabuleux Destin de Cinéma Français’, Film Quarterly, 57(3), 34–46 Anon. 1986. The Family of Man (New York: Museum of Modern Art) ——1997. ‘“La Vérité si je mens”: un million d’entrées, purée’, Libération, 14 May, p. 4 —— 2000. Images de la mémoire juive (Paris: Liana Levi) —— 2001a. ‘Le Retour du scénario’, France Soir, 8 February —— 2001b. ‘Robert Guédiguian’, in Lucy Mazdon (ed.), France on Film: Reflections on Popular French Cinema (London: Wallflower), pp. 164–5 —— 2001c. ‘Où vont les beurs?’, Le Nouvel Observateur, 1 November, pp. 4–10 —— 2012. ‘Rafle du Vél’ d’Hiv: Bruno Le Maire critique François Hollande à son tour’, Le Monde, 24 July Archer, Neil. 2013. The French Road Movie: Space, Mobility, Identity (Oxford: Berghahn) Armogathe, Daniel, and Pierre Echinard. 1995. Marseille port du 7e art (Marseille: Jeanne Laffitte, 1995) Attali, Danielle. 2001. ‘Le Sentier toujours lumineux’, Le Journal du Dimanche, 4 February Austin, Guy. 2003. Stars in Modern French Film (London: Arnold) Balibar, Étienne. 1998. Droit de cité (La Tour d’Aigues: L’Aube) Balladur, Édouard. 2005. La Fin de l’illusion jacobine (Paris: Fayard) Banaji, Ferzina. 2012. France, Film, and the Holocaust: From le génocide to la shoah (New York: Palgrave Macmillan) Barthes, Roland. 1957. Mythologies (Paris: Seuil) —— 1980. La Chambre claire: note sur la photographie (Paris: Gallimard)

2 ­ 38

Representing References ethnicity

——  2000. Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (London: Vintage Books) Baudin, Brigitte. 1997. ‘“La Vérité si je mens!”: le bonheur est dans le Sentier’, Le Figaro, 30 April, p. 31 —— 2001. ‘José Garcia, marathonien du rire’, Le Figaro, 7 February, p. 30 Belleret, Robert. 2001. ‘L’édifiante histoire du fabuleux succès d’Amélie Poulain’, Le Monde, 9 May Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture (London: Routledge) Blanchard, Pascal, Nicolas Bancel, and Sandrine Lemaire (eds). 2006. La Fracture coloniale: la société française au prisme de l’héritage colonial (Paris: La Découverte) Blatt, David. 1997. ‘Immigrant Politics in a Republican Nation’, in Alec G. Hargreaves and Mark McKinney (eds), Post-Colonial Cultures in France (London: Routledge), pp. 40–55 Blumenfeld, Samuel. 1997. ‘Le Sentier de la gloire: “La Vérité si je mens!” a fêté son million d’entrées’, Le Monde, 14 May, p. 29 —— 2001. ‘Un Sentier balisé de poncifs’, Le Monde, 7 February, p. 32 Bommelaer, Claire. 2010. ‘L’Éducation nationale, partenaire et prescripteur du film’, Le Figaro, 10 March Bouquet, Stéphane. 1995. ‘Marseille: les lois de l’attraction’, Cahiers du cinéma, October, 34–41 Bourdon, Jérôme. 1995. ‘Foreigners on Prime Time or is Television Xenophobic?’, in Claire Frachon and Marion Vargaftig (eds), European Television: Immigrants and Ethnic Minorities (London: John Libbey & Company Ltd), pp. 22–34 Brilliant, Richard. 1991. Portraiture (London: Reaktion) Burdeau, Emmanuel. 1998. ‘Taxi’, Cahiers du cinéma, May, 113–14 Cayla, Véronique. 2009. ‘La diversité, ça marche!’, in Images de la diversité: Nouveaux projets, July, pp. 4–5, www.cnc.fr/CNC_GALLERY_ CONTENT/DOCUMENTS/publications/dossiers_et_bilan/diver​si​te​/ ​CNC_diversite_2009.pdf [accessed 24 July 2009] Charnay, Amélie. 2003. ‘Les Acteurs les mieux payés’, www.allocine.fr/ article/fichearticle_gen_carticle=18354502.html, 20 May [accessed 6 October 2016] Choquer, Luc. 1989. Planète France (Paris: Contrejour) —— 2001. Fragments du futur (Paris: Trans Photographic Press) [on DVD-ROM] —— 2007. Portraits de Français (Paris: La Martinière) Ciot, Pierre. 2001. Nés à Marseille (Marseille: Parenthèses) Clarke, Graham. 1992. ‘Introduction’, in Graham Clarke (ed.), The Portrait in Photography, (London: Reaktion), pp. 1–5

References

239

Cole, Alistair. 2005. French Politics and Society, 2nd edn (Harlow: Prentice Hall Europe) Conan, Éric. 2000. ‘La tentation des quotas’, L’Express, 24 February, pp. 56–60 Coppermann, Annie. 1997. ‘Comédie au Sentier’, Les Échos, 3 May Croissandeau, Matthieu. 2001. ‘Marseille: quand le match est fini…’, Le Nouvel Observateur, 8 February, pp. 14–15 CSA. 2006. La Représentation de la diversité des origines et des cultures à la télévision et à la radio: bilan 2005 —— 2012a. Baromètre de la diversité, Vague 2012 du 3 au 16 septembre 2012 —— 2012b. Représentation de la diversité de la société française à la télévision et à la radio. Rapport au Parlement, October —— 2014a. Baromètre de la diversité, Vague 2013 —— 2014b. Représentation de la diversité de la société française à la télévision et à la radio. Rapport au Parlement, April Dauphin, Sandrine, and Jocelyne Praud. 2002. ‘Introduction: Debating and Implementing Gender Parity in French Politics’, Modern & Contemporary France, 10, 5–11 Davies, Lizzy. 2008. ‘French Fall for the Cult of the Soap’, Observer, 23 November, p. 43 Delahaye, Luc. 1999. L’Autre (London: Phaidon) de Lange, Nicholas. 2000. An Introduction to Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) de Lope, Manuel. 1992. ‘Mare Nostrum’, in Yves Jeanmougin, Marseille/ Marseilles (Marseille: Parenthèses), p. 61 de Rosnay, Tatiana. 2007. Sarah’s Key (New York: St Martin’s Press) Derrida, Jacques. 1967. De la grammatologie (Paris: Minuit) —— 1996. Le Monolinguisme de l’autre (Paris: Galilée) —— 1997. Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press) —— 1998. Monolingualism of the Other; or, The Prosthesis of Origin, trans. Patrick Mensah (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press) de Virieu, Hélène. 2000. ‘Un héros très discret’, France Soir, 21 April Deymard, Christine. 2001. ‘“La Vérité si je mens, 2” Le Sentier de la gloire’, Le Nouvel Observateur, 1 February, p. 59 Djebar, Assia. 1985. L’Amour, la fantasia (Paris: Albin Michel) Donadey, Anne. 1996. ‘“Une Certaine Idée de la France”: The Algeria Syndrome and Struggles over “French” Identity’, in Steven Ungar and Tom Conley (eds), Identity Papers: Contested Nationhood in TwentiethCentury France (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), pp. 215–32

2 ­ 40

Representing References ethnicity

Durmelat, Sylvie. 2000. ‘Transmission and Mourning in  Mémoires d’immigrés: l’héritage maghrébin: Yamina Benguigui  as  “Memory Entrepreneuse”’, in Jane Freedman and Carrie Tarr (eds), Women, Immigration and Identities in France (Oxford: Berg), pp. 171–88 Durmelat, Sylvie, and Vinay Swamy (eds). 2011. Screening Integration: Recasting Maghrebi Immigration in Contemporary France (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press) Duwat, Mélanie. 2008. ‘Islam, 9 ans, recalé d’un jeu télé pour enfants à cause de son prénom’, Le Monde, 16 April Dyer, Richard. 1990. Now You See It: Studies on Lesbian and Gay Film (London: Routledge) —— 1993. The Matter of Images: Essays on Representation (London: Routledge) —— 1997. White (London: Routledge) Edwards, Elizabeth. 2009. ‘Thinking Photography beyond the Visual?’, in J.J. Long, Andrea Noble and Edward Welch (eds), Photography: Theoretical Snapshots (London: Routledge), pp. 31–48 El Guindi, Fadwa. 1999. Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance (Oxford: Berg) Erlanger, Steven. 2009. ‘Melting Pot of Melodrama Enthralls French Nightly’, New York Times, 3 March Ezra, Elizabeth. 2008. Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press) Ezra, Elizabeth, and Sue Harris (eds). 2000. France in Focus: Film and National Identity (Oxford: Berg) Fanon, Frantz. 1952. Peau noire, masques blancs (Paris: Gallimard) —— 1986. Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (London: Pluto Press) Fenton, Steve. 2003. Ethnicity (Cambridge: Polity) Foucault, Michel. 1969. L’Archéologie du savoir (Paris: Gallimard) —— 2002. Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (London: Routledge) Freedman, Jane, and Carrie Tarr. 2000. ‘Introduction’, in Jane Freedman and Carrie Tarr (eds),Women, Immigration and Identities in France (Oxford: Berg), pp. 1–10 Friedlander, Judith. 1995. ‘Anti-Semitism in France, 1978–1992: Questions and Debates’, in Lawrence D. Kritzman (ed.), Auschwitz and After: Race, Culture, and “the Jewish Question” in France (London: Routledge), pp. 63–80 Frodon, Jean-Michel. 2002. ‘Une chevauchée fantastique sans pareil’, Le Monde, 1 January

References

241

Fysh, Peter, and Jim Wolfreys. 2003. The Politics of Racism in France, 2nd edn (London: Palgrave Macmillan) Garanger, Marc. 1982. Femmes algériennes 1960 (Paris: Contrejour) Gavi, Philippe. 1999. ‘Quand la télé lave trop blanc’, Le Nouvel Observateur, 14–20 October, p. 42 Gensburger, Sarah (ed.). 2012. C’étaient des enfants. Déportation et sauvetage des enfants juifs à Paris (Paris: ESFP) Gentleman, Amelia. 2004. ‘Swastikas Drawn on Woman in Paris Attack’, Guardian, 12 July, p. 11 Gilroy, Paul. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (London: Verso) —— 2004. After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? (London: Routledge) Goude, Jean-Paul. 1982. Jungle Fever (London: Quartet) Grandena, Florian. 2006. ‘L’Homosexuel en dehors de l’homosexualité: Expressions de l’identité gay dans les films d’Olivier Ducastel et Jacques Martineau’, Contemporary French Civilization, 30(2), 63–86 —— 2008. ‘Du glissement de l’homosexualité’, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, 12(1), 99–106 —— 2013. ‘The Constant Tourist: Passing Intimacy and Touristic Nomadism’, in Michael Gott and Thibaut Schilt (eds), Open Roads, Closed Borders: The Contemporary French-Language Road Movie (Bristol: Intellect, 2013), pp. 39–54 Grassin, Sophie. 2001. ‘La Vérité sur La Vérité…’, L’Express, 1 February, pp. 52–3 Greene, Naomi. 1995. ‘La Vie en rose: Images of the Occupation in French Cinema’, in Lawrence D. Kritzman (ed.), Auschwitz and After: Race, Culture, and “the Jewish Question” in France (London: Routledge), pp. 283–98 Guénif-Souilamas, Nacira. 2000. Des «beurettes» aux descendantes d’immigrants nord-africains (Paris: Grasset & Fasquelle) —— 2007. ‘L’Iconographie républicaine des Marianne « multicolores »: une arme de destruction massive au service de l’universalisme abstrait’, in Isabelle Rigoni (ed.), Qui a peur de la télévision en couleurs? La  Diversité culturelle dans les médias (Paris: Aux lieux d’être), pp. 85–107 Guerrin, Michel. 1997. ‘Les Portraits parlés de Luc Choquer’, Le Monde, 7 April, p. 20 —— 2002. ‘La Collection d’identités de Luc Choquer’, Le Monde, 16 February, p. 32 Hall, Stuart. 1996. ‘New Ethnicities’, in David Morley and Kuan-

2 ­ 42

Representing References ethnicity

Hsing Chen (eds), Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (London: Routledge), pp. 441–9 —— (ed.) 2001. ‘The Spectacle of the “Other”’, in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London: Sage), pp. 223–90 Hammer, Clairette. 1986. ‘Richard Anconina, “un homme normal, juif”’, Les Nouveaux Cahiers, 84, 82 Hardwick, Joe. 2011. ‘So Over the Rainbow? The Singular Plurality of Martineau and Ducastel’s Drôle de Félix’, in Jo McCormack, Murray Pratt, and Alistair Rolls (eds), Hexagonal Variations: Diversity, Plurality and Reinvention in Contemporary France (Amsterdam: Rodopi), pp. 101–17 Hargreaves, Alec G. 1995. Immigration, ‘Race’ and Ethnicity in Contemporary France (London: Routledge) —— 2015. ‘Empty Promises? Public Policy Against Racial and Ethnic Discrimination in France’, French Politics, Culture & Society, 33(3), 95–115 Hargreaves, Alec G., and Antonio Perotti. 1993. ‘The Representation on French Television of Immigrants and Ethnic Minorities of Third World Origin’, New Community, 19, 251–61 Harris, Sue. 2000. ‘Cinema in a Nation of Filmgoers’, in William Kidd and Siân Reynolds (eds), Contemporary French Cultural Studies (London: Arnold), pp. 208–19 Harrison, Nicholas. 2003. Postcolonial Criticism: History, Theory and the Work of Fiction (Oxford: Polity) Hartmann, Florence. 1999. ‘Calixthe Beyala: “Il n’y a pas de Navarro ou de Julie Lescaut noirs”’, Le Monde (Television Supplement), 10–11 October, p. 3 Hayward, Susan. 1993. French National Cinema (London: Routledge) Hayward, Susan, and Ginette Vincendeau (eds). 2000. French Film: Texts and Contexts, 2nd edn (London: Routledge) Helcké, Joanna. 2001. ‘Le rôle de l’ethnicité dans la consommation télévisuelle en France’, Migrations Société, 74, 19–30 Hewitt, Leah D. 2008. Remembering the Occupation in French Film: National Identity in Postwar Europe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan) Higbee, Will. 2001a. ‘Hybridity, Space and the Right to Belong: MaghrebiFrench Identity at the Crossroads in Karim Dridi’s Bye-Bye’, in Lucy Mazdon (ed.), France on Film: Reflections on Popular French Cinema (London: Wallflower), pp. 51–64 —— 2001b. ‘Marginality and Ethnicity in French Cinema of the 1980s and 1990s’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Exeter)

References

243

—— 2013. Post-Beur Cinema: North African Émigré and MaghrebiFrench Filmmaking in France since 2000 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press) Higuinen, Erwan, and Olivier Joyard. 2002. ‘“J’aimerais faire encore des films d’intervention”’, Cahiers du cinéma, June, 83 Hirsch, Marianne. 1997. Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) Hussey, Andrew. 2004. ‘ZZ Top’, Observer Sport Monthly, April, pp. 14–23 Huston, Nancy, and Leïla Sebbar. 1986. Lettres parisiennes: Histoires d’exil (Paris: Bernard Barrault) Ince, Kate. 2002. ‘Queering the Family?: Fantasy and the Performance of Sexuality and Gay Relations in French Cinema’, Studies in French Cinema, 2(2), 90–7 Izzo, Jean-Claude. 1995. Total Khéops (Paris: Gallimard) —— 1996. Chourmo (Paris: Gallimard) —— 1998. Solea (Paris: Gallimard) Jackson, Julian. 2010. ‘La Rafle’, Film and Fiction for French Historians: A Cultural Bulletin, 1, December, http://h-france.net/fffh/the-buzz/ la-rafle/ [accessed 6 October 2016] Jakubyszyn, Christophe. 2004. ‘L’appel de Sharon aux Juifs de France soulève l’indignation’, Le Monde, 20 July, p. 3 Jeanmougin, Yves. 1992. Marseille/Marseilles (Marseille: Parenthèses) Jones, Amelia. 1998. Body Art/Performing the Subject (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press) Jones, Kathryn. 2010. ‘Franco-Algerian Sites of Memory: Leïla Sebbar’s Journeys of Remembrance’, Dalhousie French Studies, 93, 43–52 Kaganski, Serge. 2001a. ‘«Amélie» pas jolie’, Libération, 31 May —— 2001b. ‘Comment je me suis disputé à propos d’Amélie Poulain’, Les Inrockuptibles, 12 June Kealhofer, Leslie. 2013. ‘Maghrebi-French Women in French Téléfilms: Sexuality, Gender, and Tradition from Leïla née en France (1993) to Aïcha: vacances infernales (2012)’, Modern & Contemporary France, 21(2), 183–98 Kedadouche, Zaïr. 1999. ‘Les quotas sont un racisme à l’envers’, Libération, 15 November, p. 6 Kerviel, Sylvie, and Jean-Jacques Larrochelle. 2009. ‘Où va France 3?’, Le Monde, 1 November Kessous, Mustapha. 2009. ‘Moi, Mustapha Kessous, journaliste au “Monde” et victime du racisme’, Le Monde, 23 September Klarsfeld, Serge. 2005. Adieu les enfants (1942–1944) (Paris: Mille et une nuits)

2 ­ 44

Representing References ethnicity

Klein, Gilles. 2010. ‘Réfractaires à “La Rafle”, comparés à Hitler’, www.arretsurimages.net/breves/2010-09-30/Refractaires-a-La-Raflecompares-a-Hitler-id9236, 30 September Kochan, Miriam, and Lionel Kochan (eds). 1975. The Jewish Family Album: Yesterday’s World in Old Photographs (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul) Konopnicki, Guy. 2000. ‘Taxi 2: marche arrière toute!’, L’Evénement du Jeudi, 6 April —— 2001. ‘La Vérité si je mens (2): le Sentier gaulois contre Big Brother’, Marianne, 19 February Kristeva, Julia. 1980. Pouvoirs de l’horreur: essai sur l’abjection (Paris: Seuil) —— 1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press) Kruks, Sonia. 2001. Retrieving Experience: Subjectivity and Recognition in Feminist Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell) Kuhn, Annette. 2002. Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination (London: Verso) Lalanne, Jean-Marc. 2001. ‘Des bobards en bobines’, Libération, 7 February, p. 36 Larcher, Jérôme. 2001. ‘Le Cabinet des curiosités’, Cahiers du cinéma, May, 112 Le Bars, Stéphanie. 2012. ‘La majorité des moins de 34 ans ignorent ce que fut la rafle’, Le Monde, 16 July Lejeune, Philippe. 1998. L’Autobiographie en France, 2nd edn (Paris: Armand Colin) Lepron, Louis. 2012. ‘Sorties ciné: des journalistes invités à c­ ondition de dire du bien des films’, 7 February, www.rue89.com/rue89-­ culture/2012/02/07/sorties-cine-des-journalistes-invites-­conditionde-dire-du-bien-des-films [accessed 19 August 2015] Leruth, Michel F. 1998. ‘François Mitterrand’s “Festival of the World’s Tribes”: The Logic of Exoticism in the French Revolution Bicentennial Parade’, French Cultural Studies, 9, 51–80 —— 2001. ‘Themes of the French Year 2000 Celebrations’, Modern & Contemporary France, 9, 467–82 Lévy, Claude, and Paul Tillard. 2010. La Grande Rafle du Vel d’Hiv (Paris: Tallandier) Lionnet, Françoise. 1992–93. ‘“Logiques métisses”:  Cultural Appropr­ iation and Postcolonial Representations’, College Literature, 19–20 (3/1), 100–20 Lloyd, Cathie. 1999. ‘Race and Ethnicity’, in Malcolm Cook and Grace

References

245

Davie (eds), Modern France: Society in Transition (London: Routledge), pp. 34–52 Lutz, Catherine, and Jane Collins. 2003. ‘The Photograph as an Intersection of Gazes: The Example of National Geographic’, in Liz Wells (ed.), The Photography Reader (London: Routledge), pp. 354–74 Macé, Éric. 2006a. ‘«Ne pas quantifier, ne pas nommer »: L’impossible lutte contre les discriminations dans les programmes de la télévision française’, in Nacira Guénif-Souilamas (ed.), La République mise à nu par son immigration (Paris: La Fabrique), pp. 178–95 —— 2006b. La Société et son double: Une journée ordinaire de télévision française (Paris: Armand Colin/INA) —— 2008. ‘Réprésentation de la diversité dans les programmes de télévision: synthèse du rapport remis à l’Observatoire de la diversité dans  les  medias audiovisuels du Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel’, www.csa.fr/content/download/33747/433160/file/synthese_rapport_ eric_mace.pdf [accessed 6 October 2016] Macey, David. 1998. ‘The Algerian with the Knife’, 4(2), Parallax, 159–67 Malonga, Marie-France. 2000. ‘Présence et représentation des minorités visibles à la télévision française: une étude du CSA’, La Lettre du CSA, 129, pp. 12–14 —— 2005. ‘Television and Black Paris: Towards a Reception Theory for  Terrestrial TV Programmes’, Journal of Romance Studies, 5(3), 65–77 —— 2007. ‘Minorités ethniques et télévision française: de la représentation à la réception. Les populations noires face au petit écran’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Université Paris II) Marks, Laura U. 2000. The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (Durham, NC: Duke University Press) Marshall, Bill. 2009. The French Atlantic: Travels in Culture and History (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press) Martin-Castelnau, David, and Guillaume Bigot. 2001. ‘Le Secret d’Amélie Poulain’, Libération, 28 May Mazdon, Lucy (ed.). 2001. France on Film: Reflections on Popular French Cinema (London: Wallflower) McGonagle, Joseph, and Zineb Sedira. 2006. ‘Translating Differences: An Interview with Zineb Sedira’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 31(3), 617–28 McKinney, Mark. 2011. The Colonial Heritage of French Comics (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press) —— 2013. Redrawing French Empire in Comics (Columbus: Ohio State University Press)

2 ­ 46

Representing References ethnicity

Mérigeau, Pascal. 2001. ‘Guédiguian fait son bilan’, Le Nouvel Observateur, 11 January, pp. 50–52 Michelin, Alexandre. 2009. ‘Plus diverse la vie? Plus diverse la fiction!’, in Images de la diversité: Nouveaux projets, July, p. 7, www.cnc.fr/CNC_ GALLERY_CONTENT/DOCUMENTS/publications/­dossiers_et_ bilan/diversite/CNC_diversite_2009.pdf [accessed 24 July 2009] Miller, Ann. 2007. Reading bande dessinée: Critical Approaches to French-Language Comic Strip (Bristol: Intellect) Milot, Olivier. 2009. “Plus belle la vie” à Larue…’, Télérama, 26 August http://television.telerama.fr/television/plus-belle-la-vie-a-larue,46403.php [accessed 6 October 2016] Minh-ha, Trinh T. 1989. Woman, Native, Other: Writing, Postcoloniality and Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press) Mirzoeff, Nicholas. 1999. An Introduction to Visual Culture (London: Routledge) Morain, Jean-Baptiste. 2010. ‘Pour Rose Bosch, ceux qui n’aiment pas “La Rafle” rejoignent Hitler en esprit’, www.lesinrocks.com/cine/­ cinema-article/t/51362/date/2010-09-27/article/pour-rose-bos​ch​-​ce ux-qui-naiment-pas-la-rafle-rejoignent-hitler-en-esprit/, 27 Sep­t­em­ ber [accessed 19 August 2015] Morini-Bosc, Isabelle. 2007. Plus belle la vie: le livre d’or (Paris: Le Tigre bleu; Telfrance) Morio, Joël. 2014. ‘France Ô, un amer cocktail’, Le Monde, 12 December Mury, Cécile. 2001. ‘La Vérité si je mens! 2’, Télérama, 10 February, p. 45 Nataf, Isabelle. 2008. ‘Une saga au zénith de sa popularité’, Le Figaro, 18 November Ndiaye, Pap. 2008. La Condition noire: essai sur une minorité française (Paris: Calmann-Lévy) Neath, Samantha. 2002. ‘Debbouze, Jamel’, in Margaret A. Majumdar (ed.), Francophone Studies: The Essential Glossary (London: Arnold), p. 72 Nimis, Érika, and Christine Peyret. 2012. ‘“Rien n’est simple dans les images…” Entretien d’Érika Nimis avec Christine Peyret’, 17 April, www.africultures.com/php/index.php?nav=article&no=10703 [accessed 10 July 2014] Nini, Soraya. 1993. Ils disent que je suis une beurette (Paris: Fixot) Ostria, Vincent. 2001. ‘Occupons-nous d’Amélie’, L’Humanité, 22 September Ouaj, Jamil. 1998. ‘More Colour in the Media’, The European Institute for the Media – The Bulletin, 15(3), p. 7 —— 1999. More Colour in the Media: Employment and Access of Ethnic

References

247

Minorities to the Television Industry in Germany, the UK, France, the Netherlands and Finland (The European Institute for the Media) Perivolaris, John. 2003. ‘Humanism Reimagined: Spain as a Photographic Subject in W. Eugene Smith’s “Spanish Village” (1951) and Cristina García Rodero’s España oculta (1989)’, in Alex Hughes and Andrea  Noble (eds), Phototextualities: Intersections of Photography and Narrative (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press), pp. 149–64 Péron, Didier. 2010. ‘“La Rafle”: leurres de vérité pour le Vél d’Hiv’, Libération, 10 March Perotti, Antonio. 1991. ‘Présence et représentation de l’immigration et des minorités ethniques à la télévision française’, Migrations Société, 18, 39–55 Perrot, Michelle. 2004. ‘Préface. Les Routes algériennes de Leïla Sebbar’, in Leïla Sebbar, Mes Algéries en France (Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule: Bleu autour), pp. 9–13 Peyret, Christine. 2012. Traverser sans la voir. Se souvenir, broder, là-bas… la guerre! (Polignac: Éditions du Roure) Pierre et Gilles. 2007. Pierre et Gilles: double je, 1976–2007 (London: Taschen) Place-Verghnes, Floriane. 2011. ‘The Photobiographical Today: Signs of an Identity Crisis?’, in Natalie Edwards, Amy L. Hubbell, and Ann Miller (eds),Textual and Visual Selves: Photography, Film, and Comic Art in French Autobiography (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press), pp. 99–114 Powrie, Phil. 2001. ‘Marius et Jeannette: Nostalgia and Utopia’, in Lucy Mazdon (ed.), France on Film: Reflections on Popular French Cinema (London: Wallflower), pp. 133–44 Pratt, Murray. 2004. ‘Félix and the Light-Hearted Gay Road Movie: Genre, Families, Fathers and the Decolonization of the Homosexual Self’, Australian Journal of French Studies, 41(3), 88–101 Pratt, Murray, and Denis M. Provencher. 2011. ‘(Re)casting Sami Bouajila: An Ambiguous Model of Integration, Belonging, and Citizenship’, in Sylvie Durmelat and Vinay Swamy (eds), Screening Integration: Recasting Maghrebi Immigration in Contemporary France (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press), pp. 194–210 Procter, James. 2004. Stuart Hall (London: Routledge) Provencher, Denis M. 2008. ‘Tracing Sexual Citizenship and Queerness in Drôle de Félix (2000) and Tarik el hob (2001)’, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, 12(1), 51–61 Pullen, Christopher. 2008. ‘The Films of Ducastel and Martineau: Gay

2 ­ 48

Representing References ethnicity

Identity, the Family, and the Autobiographical Self’, in Robin Griffiths (ed.),Queer Cinema in Europe, (Bristol: Intellect), pp. 49–62 Ramdane, Nasser. 2000. ‘Notre République métissée’, Libération, 30 May, p. 7 Rees-Roberts, Nick. 2008. French Queer Cinema (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press) Rollet, Brigitte, and James S. Williams. 1998. ‘Visions of Excess: Filming/ Writing the Gay Self in Collard’s Savage Nights’, in Owen Heathcote, Alex Hughes, and James S. Williams (eds), Gay Signatures: Gay and Lesbian Theory, Fiction and Film in France, 1945–1995 (Oxford: Berg), pp. 193–208 Rosello, Mireille. 1998. Declining the Stereotype: Ethnicity and Representation in French Cultures (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England) —— 2001. Postcolonial Hospitality: The Immigrant as Guest (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press) Ross, Kristin. 1995. Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press) Rothberg, Michael. 2009. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press) Rousso, Henry. 1987. Le Syndrome de Vichy (1944–198…) (Paris: Seuil) Roy, Kate. 2009. ‘A Multiple Otherness: Beginning with Difference in the Writing of Leïla Sebbar’, in Helen Vassallo and Paul Cooke (eds), Alienation and Alterity: Otherness in Modern and Contemporary Francophone Contexts (Oxford: Peter Lang), pp. 265–88 Sabbagh, Daniel, and  Shanny Peer. 2008. ‘French Color Blindness in Perspective: The Controversy over “Statistiques Ethniques”’, French Politics, Culture & Society, 26(1), 1–6 Said, Edward W. 1979. Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books) Schilt, Thibaut. 2007. ‘Hybrid Strains in Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau’s Drôle de Félix (2000)’, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, 11(3), 361–8 Schnapper, Dominique. 2003. ‘Le Communautarisme est-il une fatalité?’, Le Nouvel Observateur, 16 January, pp. 52–3 Sciama, Lidia. 1993. ‘The Problem of Privacy in Mediterranean Anthropology’, in Shirley Ardener (ed.),Women and Space: Ground Rules and Social Maps (Oxford: Berg), pp. 87–111 Scott, Clive. 1999. The Spoken Image: Photography and Language (London: Reaktion)

References

249

Sebbar, Leïla. 1982. Shérazade: 17 ans, brune, frisée, les yeux verts (Paris: Stock) —— 1985. Les Carnets de Shérazade (Paris: Stock) —— 1991. Le Fou de Shérazade (Paris: Stock) —— 2003. Je ne parle pas la langue de mon père (Paris: Julliard) —— 2004. Mes Algéries en France (Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule: Bleu autour) —— 2005. Journal de mes Algéries en France (Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule: Bleu autour) —— 2008. Voyages en Algéries autour de ma chambre (Saint-Pourçainsur-Sioule: Bleu autour) Shepard, Todd. 2006. The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press) Shilton, Siobhán. 2013. Transcultural Encounters: Gender and Genre in Franco-Maghrebi Art (Manchester: Manchester University Press) Silverman, Max. 1999. Facing Postmodernity: Contemporary French Thought on Culture and Society (London: Routledge) —— 2013. Palimpsestic Memory: The Holocaust and Colonialism in French and Francophone Fiction and Film (Oxford: Berghahn) Silverstein, Paul A. 2004. Algeria in France: Transpolitics, Race and Nation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press) Simon, Patrick. 2008. ‘The Choice of Ignorance: The Debate on Ethnic and Racial Statistics in France’, French Politics, Culture & Society, 26(1), 7–31 Smolar, Piotr. 2004. ‘Marie L. pourrait être mise en cause pour “dénonciation de délit imaginaire”’, Le Monde, 14 July, www.lemonde.fr [accessed 2 November 2005]. Solomons, Jason. 2009. ‘Cinema’s a Very Shocking Tool. You Must Ask Yourself What You’re Using it For’, Observer Film Magazine, December, pp. 20–5 Sontag, Susan. 2002 [1979]. On Photography (London: Penguin) —— 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others (London: Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Sotinel, Thomas. 2000. ‘Dérangé des voitures’, Le Monde, 29 March —— 2001. ‘Amélie et la boîte aux fantasmes’, Le Monde, 8 June Sotiriadi, Tina. 2004. ‘An Interview with Zineb Sedira’, in Zineb Sedira, Telling Stories with Differences (Manchester: Cornerhouse) [on DVDROM] Stafford, Andy. 2010. Photo-Texts: Contemporary French Writing of the Photographic Image (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press) Strauss, Frédéric. 2000. ‘Les Fantaisistes du réel’, Télérama, 22 April, 32

2 ­ 50

Representing References ethnicity

Streuli, Beat. 1999. Marseille (Arles: Actes Sud) Swamy, Vinay. 2006. ‘Gallic Dreams? The Family, PaCS and Kinship Relations in Millennial France’, Studies in French Cinema, 6(1), 53–64 Tagg, John. 1982. ‘The Currency of the Photograph’, in Victor Burgin (ed.), Thinking Photography (London: Macmillan), pp. 110–41 Taieb, Karen. 2012. Je vous écris du Vél’ d’Hiv. Les lettres retrouvées (Paris: J’ai lu) Tarr, Carrie. 1997. ‘French Cinema and Post-Colonial Minorities’, in Alec G. Hargreaves and Mark McKinney (eds), Post-Colonial Cultures in France (London: Routledge), pp. 59–83 —— 2005. Reframing Difference: Beur and Banlieue Filmmaking in France (Manchester: Manchester University Press) Tarr, Carrie, with Brigitte Rollet. 2001. Cinema and the Second Sex: Women’s Filmmaking in France in the 1980s and 1990s (London: Continuum) Théate, Barbara. 1997. ‘Anconina dans le Sentier, l’humour juif en dix leçons’, Le Journal du Dimanche, 27 April Thomas, Dominic. 2007. Black France: Colonialism, Immigration, and Transnationalism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press) —— 2010. ‘History, Museums and National Identity in France’, Bulletin of Francophone Postcolonial Studies, 1(1), 1–7 Tidd, Ursula. 2000. ‘Visible Subjects: Lesbians in Contemporary France’, in Abigail Gregory and Ursula Tidd (eds), Women in Contemporary France (Oxford: Berg), pp. 171–90 Tin, Louis-Georges. 2008. ‘Who is Afraid of Blacks in France? The Black Question: The Name Taboo, the Number Taboo’, French Politics, Culture & Society, 26(1), 32–44 Ulmer, Bruno, and Florent Mangeot. 2004. Casa Marseille Inch’Allah (Marseille: Images en Manoeuvre) Vanderschelden, Isabelle. 2007. Amélie: Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001) (London: I. B. Tauris) Vassallo, Helen. 2012. The Body Besieged: The Embodiment of Historical Memory in Nina Bouraoui and Leïla Sebbar (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books) Vincen deau, Ginette. 2001a. ‘Café Society’, Sight and Sound, August, 22–5 —— 2001b. ‘La Ville est tranquille’, Sight and Sound, November, 59–60 Vincenot, Alain. 2012. Vél’ d’Hiv. 16 juillet 1942 (Paris: L’Archipel) Waintrop, Édouard. 1997. ‘Sentier lumineux: la comédie est facile mais généreuse’, Libération, 14 May, p. 4 Walcott, Derek. 1996. ‘The Sea is History’, in Frank Birbalsingh (ed.),

References

251

Frontiers of Caribbean Literature in English (London: Macmillan), pp. 22–8 Waldron, Darren. 2009. Queering Contemporary French Popular Cinema: Images and their Reception (New York: Peter Lang) Weber, Eugène. 1986. ‘L’Hexagone’, in Pierre Nora (ed.), Les Lieux de mémoire, t. II, La Nation, ii: le territoire (Paris: Gallimard), pp. 97–116 Weill, Claude. 2003. ‘Une France plurielle…ou éclatée?’, Le Nouvel Observateur, 19 June, pp. 6–10 Wieder, Thomas. 2012. ‘Vél’ d’Hiv: M. Hollande réaffirme le rôle de la France’, Le Monde, 23 July Wieviorka, Annette. 2010. ‘“La Rafle”, drame pédagogique et l’hymne à la France’, Libération, 15 March Winock, Michel. 2004. La France et les Juifs: de 1789 à nos jours (Paris: Seuil) Yee, Jennifer. 2003. ‘Métissage in France: A Postmodern Fantasy and its Forgotten Precedents’, Modern & Contemporary France, 11 (2003), 411–25 Zachmann, Patrick. 1987. Enquête d’identité: un Juif à la recherche de sa mémoire (Paris: Contrejour) Zarachowicz, Weronika. 2006. ‘Mistral gagnant’, Télérama, 2927, 15 February, pp. 62–64 Žižek, Slavoj. 1989. The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso)

Filmography

A bout de souffle. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard. Ciné Classic. 1960 A la place du coeur. Dir. Robert Guédiguian. Diaphana. 1998 A l’attaque! Dir. Robert Guédiguian. Diaphana. 2000 L’Argent fait le bonheur. Dir. Robert Guédiguian. K Films. 1992 Astérix et Obélix: mission Cléopâtre. Dir. Alain Chabat. Pathé Distribution. 2002 Au revoir les enfants. Dir. Louis Malle. Pyramide. 1987 Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob. Dir. Gérard Oury. Imperia Films. 1973 Bella ciao. Dir. Stéphane Giusti. SND. 2001 Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis. Dir. Dany Boon. Pathé Distribution. 2008 Bled Number One. Dir. Rabah Ameur-Zaïmèche. Les Films du Losange. 2006 Bye-Bye. Dir. Karim Dridi. Diaphana. 1995 César. Dir. Marcel Pagnol. Compagnie Méditerranéenne de Films. 1936 Chacun cherche son chat. Dir. Cédric Klapisch. Bac Films. 1996 Le Chagrin et la Pitié. Dir. Marcel Ophuls. NEF – Nouvelles Éditions de Films (Paris). 1971 Change-moi ma vie. Dir. Liria Bégéja. Pan Européenne. 2001 Les Chansons d’amour. Dir. Christophe Honoré. Bac Films. 2007 Chaos. Dir. Coline Serreau. Bac Films. 2001 Les Choristes. Dir. Christophe Barratier. Pathé Distribution. 2004 Le Cinquième Élément. Dir. Luc Besson. Gaumont Columbia Tristar. 1997 Comme un aimant. Dirs. Akhenaton and Kamel Saleh. Mars Films (Paris). 2000 Dans la vie. Dir. Philippe Faucon. Pyramide. 2008 Dans Paris. Dir. Christophe Honoré. Le Petit Bureau. 2006

Filmography

253

Dernier été. Dirs. Robert Guédiguian and Frank Le Wita. K Films. 1981 Le Dernier Métro. Dir. François Truffaut. MK2 Diffusion. 1980 Dieu est grand, je suis toute petite. Dir. Pascale Bailly. Mars Films (Paris). 2001 Dieu vomit les tièdes. Dir. Robert Guédiguian. K Films. 1991 Drôle de Félix. Dirs. Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau. Pyramide. 2000 Douce France. Dir. Malik Chibane. Lazennec Diffusion. 1995 Elle s’appelait Sarah. Dir. Gilles Paquet-Brenner. UGC Distribution. 2010 Être et avoir. Dir. Nicolas Philibert. Les Films du Losange. 2002 Exils. Dir. Tony Gatlif. Pyramide. 2004 Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain. Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet. 20thCentury Fox. 2001 Fanny. Dir. Marc Allégret. Compagnie Parisienne de Location de Films. 1932 La Fille de Keltoum. Dir. Mehdi Charef. Cinétévé Distribution. 2002 La Fille du RER. Dir. André Téchiné. UGC Distribution. 2009 French Connection 2. Dir. John Frankenheimer. 20th-Century Fox. 1975 Gomez et Tavarès. Dir. Gilles Paquet-Brenner. SND. 2003 Gomez vs Tavarès. Dirs. Gilles Paquet-Brenner and Cyril Sebas. SND. 2007 Les Guichets du Louvre. Dir. Michel Mitrani. Gaumont. 1974 La Haine. Dir. Mathieu Kassovitz. Lazennec Diffusion. 1995 Hexagone. Dir. Malik Chibane. Ciné Classic (Paris). 1994 L’Homme est une femme comme les autres. Dir. Jean-Jacques Zilbermann. PolyGram Film Distribution. 1998 L’Immortel. Dir. Richard Berry. Europa Corp Distribution. 2010 Inch’Allah Dimanche. Dir. Yamina Benguigui. ARP Sélection. 2001 J’ai pas sommeil. Dir Claire Denis. Pathé Distribution. 1994 La Journée de la jupe. Dir. Jean-Paul Lilienfeld. Rezo Films. 2009 Khamsa. Dir. Karim Dridi and Luc Martinage. Rezo Films. 2008 Lady Jane. Dir. Robert Guédiguian. Diaphana. 2008 Lévy et Goliath. Dir. Gérard Oury. Gaumont. 1987 Mains armées. Dir. Pierre Jolivet. Mars Distribution. 2012 Marius. Dir. Alexander Korda. Gaumont. 1931 Marius et Jeannette. Dir. Robert Guédiguian. Diaphana. 1997 Mauvaise foi. Dir. Roschdy Zem. Wild Bunch Films. 2006 La Marseillaise. Dir. Jean Renoir. Connaissance du Cinéma. 1938 Mémoires d’immigrés: l’héritage maghrébin. Dir. Yamina Benguigui. Cara M. 1998

2 ­ 54

Representing Filmography ethnicity

Mesrine: l’ennemi public n°1. Dir. Jean-François Richet. Pathé Distribution. 2008 Mesrine: l’instinct de mort. Dir. Jean-François Richet. Pathé Distribution. 2008 Mina Tannenbaum. Dir. Martine Dugowson. Union Générale Cinématographique. 1994 Monsieur Klein. Dir. Joseph Losey. Tamasa Distribution. 1976 MR 73. Dir. Olivier Marchal. Gaumont. 2008 Nationale 7. Dir. Jean-Pierre Sinapi. Rezo Films. 2000 Nénette et Boni. Dir. Claire Denis. Pyramide. 1997 Nuit et brouillard. Dir. Alain Resnais. Connaissance du Cinéma. 1956 L’Outremangeur. Dir. Thierry Binisti. TFM Distribution. 2003 Le Pacte des loups. Dir. Christophe Gans. Metropolitan Filmexport. 2001 Paris. Dir. Cédric Klapisch. Mars Films. 2008 Partir revenir. Dir. Claude Lelouch. Connaissance du Cinéma. 1985 La Petite Jérusalem. Dir. Karin Albou. Pyramide. 2005 Le Placard. Dir. Francis Véber. Gaumont Columbia Tristar. 2001 Le Promeneur du champ de Mars. Dir. Robert Guédiguian. Pathé Distribution. 2005 Quand on sera grand. Dir. Renaud Cohen. Océan Films (Paris). 2001 La Rafle. Dir. Roselyne Bosch. Gaumont. 2010 Raï. Dir. Thomas Gilou. Pan Européenne. 1995 Rois et reine Dir. Arnaud Desplechin. Bac Films. 2004 Rouge midi. Dir. Robert Guédiguian. K Films. 1985 Samia. Dir. Philippe Faucon. Pyramide. 2000 Taxi. Dir. Gérard Pirès. ARP Sélection. 1998 Taxi 2. Dir. Gérard Krawczyk. ARP Sélection. 2000 Taxi 3. Dir. Gérard Krawczyk. ARP Sélection. 2003 Taxi 4. Dir. Gérard Krawczyk. ARP Sélection. 2007 Tchao Pantin. Dir. Claude Berri. Pathé Distribution. 1983 Toni. Dir. Jean Renoir. Télédis. 1935 Total Khéops. Dir. Alain Bévérini. Pyramide. 2002 Le Transporteur. Dir. Louis Leterrier. Europa Corp Distribution. 2002 Le Transporteur 3. Dir. Olivier Mégaton. Europa Corp Distribution. 2008 Un conte de Noël. Dir. Arnaud Desplechin. Bac Films. 2008 Un, deux, trois, soleil. Dir. Bertrand Blier. Gaumont Buena Vista International. 1993 Une affaire de femmes. Dir. Claude Chabrol. Diaphana pour MK2. 1988 Un long dimanche de fiançailles. Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Warner Bros France. 2004 Un prophète. Dir. Jacques Audiard. UGC Distribution. 2009

Filmography

255

La Vérité si je mens! Dir. Thomas Gilou. Océan Films (Paris). 1997 La Vérité si je mens! 2. Dir. Thomas Gilou. Warner Bros Pictures. 2001 La Vérité si je mens! 3. Dir. Thomas Gilou. Mars Distribution. 2012 La Ville est tranquille. Dir. Robert Guédiguian. Diaphana. 2001 Vivre me tue. Dir. Jean-Pierre Sinapi. Cinétévé Distribution. 2003 XXL. Dir. Ariel Zeïtoun. Gaumont Columbia Tristar. 1997

Television and radio broadcasts Aïcha. Dir. Yamina Benguigui. Elemiah/Auteurs Associés/France 2. 2009 Aïcha 2: Job à tout prix. Dir. Yamina Benguigui. Elemiah/Auteurs Associés/France 2. 2010 Aïcha 3: La Grande Débrouille. Dir. Yamina Benguigui. Elemiah/Auteurs Associés/France 2. 2011 Aïcha 4: Vacances infernales. Dir. Yamina Benguigui. Elemiah/Auteurs Associés/France 2. 2012 Boccara, Philippe. 2009 ‘Plus belle la vie: le soap de Marseille’, Interception, France Inter, 14 June Plus belle la vie, episodes 1–260, broadcast on France 3, 30 August 2004 – 2 September 2005

Art works Mariën, Marcel. 1956. ‘La Dernière Carte’, Les Lèvres nues, 8, May Sedira, Zineb. 2000. From The Series Self-Portraits, Self-Portrait or the Virgin Mary —— 2000. Silent Sight —— 2002. Mother Tongue —— 2003. Mother, Father and I —— 2003. Retelling Histories

Index

A bout de souffle (film) 178 A l’attaque! (film) 196, 200 Abd el-Kader 103 abjection 204 abortion 202‒4 ACHAC 14 l’Acsé 229 Adjani, Isabelle 219‒20 l’affaire du RER-D (2004) 130 Aflou 111‒12 agency, women’s 128 Aïcha films 117‒28 Alaouchiche, Islam 219 Albou, Karin 131 Algeria’s links with France 103‒15, 128, 211 Algerian heritage 83‒7, 102‒4, 116‒18, 123, 128, 207 Amélie (film) 22, 24, 31, 52, 71‒82, 209, 211, 215, 222 Anconina, Richard 168‒9 Andrew, Dudley 78‒9 anti-Semitism 3, 16, 129‒31, 143‒4, 148, 175, 177 Arab Spring 125 Arhab, Rachid 53 Ascaride, Ariane 192 Ashkenazi Jews 129, 166 Audiard, Jacques 214‒15 Audin, Maurice 106 auteur cinema 70, 73‒5, 81

autobiography 104 L’Autre 1 Balibar, Étienne 108 Balladur, Édouard 9 Balzac, Honoré de 223 Banaji, Ferzina 146 bande dessinée 18 banlieues 4, 12, 28, 30, 39, 75, 119, 123 Barratier, Christophe 22 Barthes, Roland 191 Bayrou, François 5 Bebga, Paul 217 Bégéja, Liria 49 Benguigui, Yamina 86, 116‒20, 123‒8 Bénichou, Maurice 77 Besson, Éric 20‒1 Besson, Luc 160, 207 Bévérini, Alain 180, 196 Beyala, Calixthe 55‒6, 61 Bhabha, Homi 91, 94‒8 Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis (film) 215‒16 Bigot, Guillaume 73 Bitton, Gérard 167 blackness 18 Blier, Bertrand 196 Blumenfeld, Samuel 172 Boon, Dany 215, 219

257

Index

Bosch, Roselyne 132, 146‒9, 152‒3, 176 Bouajila, Sami 40, 48‒52, 70, 210 Bouchareb, Rachid 49, 70 Bourdon, Jérôme 59 Bourges, Hervé 56 Boyon, Michel 69 Braque, Georges 196 Brel, Jacques 217 bricolage 112 Brilliant, Richard 33 Burdeau, Emmanuel 207 “burqa law” 22 Cassel, Vincent 214 Catholicism 77‒8 Cayla, Véronique 71 Cézanne, Paul 196 Le Chagrin et la Pitié (film) 149 Chevènement, Jean-Pierre 6, 9 Chibane, Malik 123 chibanis 107 Chirac, Jacques 5‒6, 62, 130, 154 Choquer, Luc 23‒38, 82, 186 Christianity 90‒3 cinema in general 11‒12, 16‒17, 22‒4, 39‒52, 70, 79, 83, 85‒6, 117, 125‒8, 132, 146, 153, 159‒60, 174, 180‒1, 192 Le Cinquième Élément (film) 160 Ciot, Pierre 180 circumcision 135, 143 Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration 21 citizenship, French 6‒9 Clarke, Graham 88‒9, 92 Club Averroès 61‒2 CNC 71, 79, 81 cohabitation 35 Cole, Alistair 2, 9 Collectif Égalité 55‒6, 61 Collins, Jane 184 communitarianism 16‒17, 19, 61, 186, 232, 236 Conan, Éric 61 Conseil constitutionnel 8, 10 Conseil d’État 10

Conseil supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA) 54‒69, 231 conviviality 227, 229 Corsica 9, 47, 50 cosmopolitanism 2 Cotillard, Marion 216 criminality 207 cultural identity 10 de Rosnay, Tatiana 154 Debbouze, Jamel 31‒2, 70, 77, 209‒11, 215, 219 Debré, Jean-Louis (and Debré law, 1997) 5‒6 Delacroix, Eugène 31 Delahaye, Luc 1, 185 Delon, Alain 180 Denis, Claire 75, 202 Dernier été (film) 198‒9, 202, 206 Derrida, Jacques 14, 90, 107 Desplechin, Arnaud 75 Diana, Princess of Wales 76 Diefenthal, Frédéric 208 Dieudonné 55, 131 discourse, concept of 14‒15 discrimination 3, 7, 61, 123 see also positive discrimination diversity in programming on television 64 qualitative and quantitative 62‒4 in society 62‒7 see also ethnic diversity Djabri, Aïssa 166 Donadey, Anne 113 Douce France (film) 123 Douyard, Johnson 217 Dridi, Karim 180 Drôle de Félix (film) 23, 39‒51, 77, 125 Ducastel, Olivier 23, 39, 49, 125 Dyer, Richard 14, 17, 70 Dyke, Greg 69 Edwards, Elizabeth 91 egalitarianism 2 El Guindi, Fadwa 88, 92 Elbaz, Vincent 169

2 ­ 58

Elle s’appelait Sarah (film) 132, 146, 154‒9 Elmaleh, Gad 169 equality before the law 2 L’Estaque 192‒3, 196‒200 ethnic diversity 2, 9‒10, 17, 22‒4, 32‒4, 39, 46‒7, 53‒6, 62‒83, 86, 117‒18, 124, 180, 185, 191, 210, 213, 217, 221, 231‒2, 235 ethnic minorities 22‒3, 30, 55, 59‒66, 69, 78, 81, 179, 186‒7 ethnicity 3‒4, 7‒19, 22‒3, 30, 43‒4, 53‒4, 188, 233, 235 definition of 12‒13 exogamy 165 Ezra, Elizabeth 78, 80 faire le zouave 212 The Family of Man exhibition (New York, 1955) 189‒91 Fanon, Frantz 34 FASILD 229 Faucon, Philippe 119‒20, 131 Fenton, Steve 12‒13 La Fille du RER (film) 131 film see cinema Foreign Legion 25‒6 Foucault, Michel 14‒15, 234 la francophonie 2 Frankenheimer, John 180 Freedman, Jane 29 French Constitution 2, 8, 60, 233 French language 10 French Studies 12 Frenchness 15‒16, 22‒6, 32, 39, 50, 52, 76‒82, 125, 232 Fruits et légumes (television programme) 58 Fysh, Peter 8 Garanger, Marc 90 Garcia, José 169 Gilou, Thomas 49, 81, 133, 160‒1, 166, 169‒77 Gilroy, Paul 115, 227, 230 Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry 4 Giusti, Stéphane 179

Representing ethnicity Index

Godard, Jean-Luc 178 Goude, Jean-Paul 28 Greene, Naomi 149 Guédiguian, Robert 179‒81, 192‒207, 224, 231 Guénif-Souilamas, Nacira 116, 127 haik veiling 88, 92, 101, 211 Halimi, Ilan 131 Hall, Stuart 13‒15 Hargreaves, Alec G. 7, 54‒5, 64 harkis 107 Harrison, Nicholas 105 Haute Autorité de Lutte contre les Discriminations et pour l’Égalité 10 headscarf affair 5, 21 see also  veiling by Muslim women Hewitt, Leah D. 146 Higbee, Will 11, 180, 209‒10 Hirsch, Marianne 137, 141, 190‒1 Hitler, Adolf 147, 152‒3 HIV 41‒2 Hollande, François 21, 67, 153‒4 Holocaust, the 138, 140, 143, 167, 175, 177 Honoré, Christophe 75 humanism 189 ‘hyphenated identities’ 107 IAM (rap group) 179 Ince, Kate 51 infantilisation 49 Les Inrockuptibles 74, 81, 152 Institut d’Études Politiques 9 Islam 5, 10, 22, 89‒90, 93, 122‒3 Izzo, Jean-Claude 180 Jackson, Julian 149 Jacobin tradition 2‒3 Jeanmougin, Yves 181‒91, 198, 231 Jeunet, Jean-Pierre 22, 24, 52, 71‒82, 209, 221 Jewishness and Jewish populations 16‒17, 78, 90, 128‒45, 158‒67, 172‒7

259

Index

Jones, Grace 28 Jones, Kathryn 112 Jospin, Lionel 5, 130‒1 Julie Lescaut (television series) 223‒4 Kaganski, Serge 72‒7, 80‒2 Kassovitz, Mathieu 78 Kechiche, Abdellatif 49, 70 Kerviel, Sylvie 223 Kessous, Mustapha 219 Klapisch, Cédric 49, 75 Klarsfeld, Serge 148‒9 Kochan, Miriam and Lionel 141 Konopnicki, Guy 171 Krawczyk, Gérard 178 Kristeva, Julia 204 Kruks, Sonia 3 Kuhn, Annette 145 languages national see French language regional and minority 8 Lapillonne, Anne-Marie 190 Larcher, Jerôme 80 Larrochelle, Jean-Jacques 223 Laurent, Mélanie 150 Le Pen, Jean-Marie 6, 74 Lejeune, Philippe 104 Létard, Valérie 65 Lévy, Claude 158 Libération 74, 81 Lionnet, Françoise 112 Lloyd, Cathie 2‒3 Losey, Joseph 158 Lutz, Catherine 184 McDonald, Sir Trevor 53 Macé, Éric 59 Macey, David 113 McKinney, Mark 18 Maffesoli, Michel 223 Maghrebi heritage 4, 11‒12, 16, 20‒3, 29‒33, 39, 42‒52, 57, 60, 70, 77, 84‒5, 104, 116‒20, 123‒7, 176, 179‒82, 185, 208‒15, 218‒21, 226‒7

Mami, Cheb 44 Mangeot, Florent 180 Mariën, Marcel 114‒15 Marius et Jeannette (film) 192‒3, 196, 199‒200, 224 Marks, Laura U. 99 Marley, Bob 217 marriage, status of 8, 34‒5 ‘La Marseillaise’ 178 Marseille 17, 46‒7, 75, 176, 178‒232 Marshall, Bill 17 Martial, Jacques 55, 68 Martin-Castelnau, David 73 Martineau, Jacques 23, 39, 45, 49, 125 Mattéoli, Jean 130 memory 142‒5 Merad, Kad 215 Merah, Mohamed 131 Michelin, Alexandre 226 Miller, Ann 18 Minh-ha, Trinh T. 101 Ministère de l’immigration et de l’identité nationale 20 Mitrani, Michel 158 Mitterrand, François 4, 130, 192 Montoute, Édouard 216 Môquet, Guy 153 multiculturalism 115, 188 Munz, Michel 167 music videos 57‒8 Nacéri, Samy 207‒21, 226 National Front 4‒7, 20, 40, 73‒4, 80, 180, 205 national identity 20‒4, 27, 51 Navarro (television series) 222‒3 Ndiaye, Pap 18 New Wave cinema 70 Nori, Claude 25 Nuit et brouillard (film) 130 Observatoire de la diversité audiovisuelle 68 Ophuls, Marcel 149 Ouaj, Jamil 60

2 ­ 60

Pacte civil de solidarité (Pacs) 8, 35 Pagnol, Marcel 198, 224‒5 Paquet-Brenner, Gilles 132, 146, 155‒9, 176 Paris 16, 74‒82, 119, 148, 178‒9 Pasqua, Charles (and Pasqua law, 1993) 5 Peer, Shanny 10 Pelosse, Bernard 37 Perivolaris, John 189 Perotti, Antonio 54‒5, 64 Perrot, Michelle 106 Peyret, Christine 112‒14 Philibert, Nicolas 22 photography 22‒38, 87‒92, 132‒45, 180‒6, 189‒91 black-and-white 144, 189‒90 as a replacement for memory 142‒3 Pierre et Gilles 25 Place-Verghnes, Floriane 109 Plus belle la vie (television series) 181, 222‒32 Poivre d’Avor, Patrick 53 positive discrimination 2, 9, 61, 63 “postmemory” (Hirsch) 137, 142 Pratt, Murray 41 Procter, James 14 Un prophète (film) 214 Provencher, Denis M. 42 public service television 7 Pullen, Christopher 41 Pulvar, Audrey 53 quotas for minority groups 69, 81 La Rafle (film) 132, 146‒53, 156‒9 la rafle du Vél’ d’Hiv (1942) 130, 132, 146‒8, 151‒4, 157‒9 Rahim, Tahar 214‒15 raï music 201‒2 regional identities 17 religion 187‒9, 211 see also Catholicism; Christianity; Islam religious symbols and insignia, wearing of 5, 7, 21

Representing ethnicity Index

Renoir, Jean 178‒9, 200 republican universalism 1‒4, 7‒8, 16, 19‒20, 24, 37‒8, 43, 49, 51, 63, 82, 230, 233‒6 residence regulations for foreigners in France 5‒6 résistancialisme 149, 151, 157, 159 Resnais, Alain 130 Richet, Jean-François 214‒15 rioting in France (2005) 7, 62 road movies 51, 125 Rosello, Mireille 11 Roselmack, Harry 53 Rothberg, Michael 114 Rousso, Henry 113 Roy, Kate 107 Sabbagh, Daniel 10 Said, Edward W. 235 Samia (film) 119 sans-papiers 6 Sarkozy, Nicolas 2, 9, 20‒1, 131, 153 Sciama, Lidia 92 Scott, Clive 36, 142, 145, 187 Scott-Thomas, Kristin 154‒5 Sebbar, Leïla 85‒6, 102‒16 Sedira, Zineb 85‒102 segregation 187 Sephardic Jews 129, 166, 172, 176 Sharon, Ariel 131 Shepard, Todd 115 Shilton, Siobhán 91 Shoah Memorial, Paris 130, 147‒8 Silverman, Max 7, 32 Silverstein, Paul A. 108, 114 Sinapi, Jean-Pierre 49 Sontag, Susan 142‒3 Sotinel, Thomas 81 Stafford, Andy 102 stage names 219 Steichen, Edward 189 stereotyping 167, 171, 213‒16, 221, 235 Streuli, Beat 180 Tagg, John 190 Tarr, Carrie 11, 49, 51, 127

261

Index

Taxi films 176‒81, 207‒22, 226, 232 Téchiné, André 131 téléfilm 117, 127‒8 television 10, 23‒4, 53‒5, 60‒71, 83, 117, 221‒32, 235 Thomas, Dominic 18, 21 Tiersen, Yann 72 Tillard, Paul 158 Tillion, Germaine 106 Tin, Louis-Georges 18 Tomasini, Pascal 224, 226 Total Khéops (film) 180 ‘transcoloniality’ 106 Ulmer, Bruno 180 Vanderschelden, Isabelle 72, 74 Varda, Agnès 106 Vassallo, Helen 110 veiling by Muslim women 5, 21‒2, 87‒93, 98‒100, 122‒5 see also  haik veiling La Vérité si je mens! films 132‒3, 160‒70, 175‒7 Vertigo Productions 167 La Ville est tranquille (film) 180‒1, 192‒207

Vincendeau, Ginette 74‒5, 77, 178, 194‒5 Vincenot, Alain 158 Virgin Mary, depiction of 89‒92 visual culture in general 11‒19, 21‒4, 52, 78, 82, 85‒6, 102, 114, 146, 158‒9, 180, 233‒6 Walcott, Derek 202 Waldron, Darren 50 Weissman, Joseph 150‒1 whiteness, norm of 16‒17, 51‒2, 70‒82, 216, 220‒1, 235 Wieviorka, Annette 149 Wolfreys, Jim 8 women’s role in films 220‒1 in politics 8 xenophobia 6‒7 Zachmann, Patrick 132‒46, 176 Zarachowicz, Weronika 230 Zidane, Zinedine 103, 106, 207, 210, 221 Žižek, Slavoj 235 zones d’éducation prioritaire (ZEP) 9