# Charlie Hebdo comics **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 8, 2015, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlie-hebdo-comics/709284 "2015-01-08T03:02:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2015, 10:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlie-hebdo-comics/709284/41 "2015-01-09T10:08:51Z")
Applause!!! Several groups contributed resources to make sure the terrorist’s actions didn’t kill the newspaper. > **[Charlie Hebdo to publish 1 million copies next week: ‘They did not kill the...](https://www.nydailynews.com/2015/01/08/charlie-hebdo-to-publish-1-million-copies-next-week-they-did-not-kill-the-newspaper-contrary-to-what-they-believe/)** > > Charlie Hebdo does not surrender. The French satirical publication will print 1 million copies of its next edition — nearly 17 times more than its usual 60,000 — despite the murders of … > [@](#): > > Charlie Hebdo does not surrender. > > The French satirical publication will print 1 million copies of its next edition — nearly 17 times more than its usual 60,000 — despite the murders of a third of its Paris staff in a Wednesday terror attack. > > The weekly is due out Wednesday, right on schedule, Charlie Hebdo’s lawyer Richard Malka told French newspaper Le Monde. > > “They did not kill the newspaper, contrary to what they believe,” ---
**Author:** ![Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/les_espaces_du_sommeil/32/308_2.png) [@Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Les_Espaces_Du_Sommeil)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2015, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlie-hebdo-comics/709284/42 "2015-01-09T11:07:47Z")
> [@Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](#): > > Since the 19th century, the Légion d’Honneur as been awarded to tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people, the vast majority of them forgotten. In practice, **it does mean as much as you seem to think.** The bolded bit should be “… it does **NOT** mean as much as you seem to think.” ---
**Author:** ![mr.jp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/48db29/32.png) [@mr.jp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mr.jp)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2015, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlie-hebdo-comics/709284/43 "2015-01-09T11:52:39Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > My comment was about **mr. jp** ’s hypothetical, not this attack. So what are you saying exactly? ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2015, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlie-hebdo-comics/709284/44 "2015-01-09T13:13:39Z")
> [@Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](#): > > So yeah, feel free to diss French humour but at least provide some genuine examples. Otherwise, the only possible conclusion is that your contribution was just a gratuituous attack on a culture you know very little about… Alas, I do not speak French and must rely on translations. I have seen a number of Gérard Depardieu films and they fell flat for me–and I enjoy movies with subtitles–because it seemed stupid clowning without any substance. Like Jerry Lewis, except less funny. I use Lewis as my gauge because I’m familiar with his work and the respect the French critics have for his work, and my respect for the general taste of any nation would drop similarly were its arbiters of taste were to claim Adam Sandler as a great artist. ---
**Author:** ![jovan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/0ea827/32.png) [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2015, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlie-hebdo-comics/709284/45 "2015-01-09T14:11:04Z")
> [@gagam](#): > > The people at Charlie Hebdo saw a way to draw a black person like a monkey and get away with it (“We’re just mocking the REAL racists”), and they took it. > > “Hipster racism” is still racism. I’ve given this discussion some thought since yesterday, and as a result my opinion has shifted a bit. First of all, let me say that I am absolutely with **Les Espaces Du Sommeil**. You can’t take the cartoons, or the paper in isolation. There is a historical context and cultural references that are easily lost. On one hand, May 1968 was just one manifestation of similar events happening all over the world, such as the Vietnam protests and the counter-culture movement in the U.S., the 1969 Tokyo University protests, or the _révolution tranquille_ in Québec. Charlie Hebdo is a product of this era, like National Lampoon or Monty Python. However, the social and cultural context was not the exactly the same in France, the U.S., U.K. or Japan. As a result, while everybody was rebelling against _something_, sticking it up to “The Man,” that man was a different person in different places. The Man, in France, was the government and it was a government that was exerting far more direct influence on the press than in the U.S. or the U.K. As a result, freedom of speech and freedom of the press became a much more central issue in France than elsewhere. For some people in France, freedom of the press is a hot-button issue like second amendement rights in the U.S. That’s why to some, considering self-censorship is conceding defeat. To even consider that there are things that you can’t say or draw is to admit that you do not live in a free society anymore. There was another Man in France, and it was religion. The situation in France was completely unlike that in the U.S. In France, religion meant the Catholic Church. Sure, many French were Protestant or Jewish but these groups had always been minorities. A large majority of French were Catholics and their Church was one of the oldest, largest and most influential organisations in the world. The bunch of godless socialists that the May 68 generation saw the Catholic Church as a massive hive of reactionary thought, sexual repression, abuse of power, corruption and imperialism. They hated and still hate religion with a burning rage because they see it as the ultimate stupidity. Hence, the folks at Charlie Hebdo started lobbing obscene ink bombs at religion. But, in 1970, that strictly meant the Catholic Church. There was some outrage, just like there was when Life of Brian came out, but eventually the atheists sort of won. The influence of the Church on people’s daily lives and values dramatically waned. In 2000, mentioning Catholic priests and pedophilia in the same sentence isn’t seen as defamation, but as a statement of fact. Fighting The Man meant taking on government and religion, and it also meant standing up for the oppressed, the minorities, the weak the poor. This is where the ideals failed in the saddest, most ironic way. While Charlie Hebdo was throwing rocks at the Church, people on their side of the political spectrum were defending the rights of immigrants. Standing up for the _sans-papiers_ (illegal aliens) is a major rallying point for the French left. The tragedy is that the iconoclastic atheism, anarchy, sexual liberation, or feminism that the left had been fighting for weren’t necessarily compatible with the values of some of the immigrants they were defending. In a sad twist of fate, the left’s hatred of conservatism and religion coincided with one of their mortal enemy’s (the far right) Islamophobia. Charlie Hebdo’s sarcastically repugnant attacks on radical Islam became superficially indistinguishable from the far right’s repugnant attacks on radical Islam. Finally, as much as the May 68 generation tried to overthrow the old social order, its members were nevertheless products of this old era. They embraced open borders and waged war on racists and bigots and imperialists but they grew up in a society that was uniformly white and predominantly Catholic. This is where my opinion shifted. Charlie Hebdo is staunchly anti-racist. When they draw Africans like they’re straight out of Tintin in the Congo, it’s intentional and it’s sarcastic. But, thinking about this, I honestly asked myself whether I would be able to draw my own children with yellow skin and slanted eyes to make a sarcastic point about racism. I couldn’t, and had to accept that you could be overtly and radically _anti-racist_ while being obliviously racist at the same time. Their particular brand of shock irony and sarcasm is a product of the very culture it tries to criticize. I disagree, however, with **gagam** that they _intentionally_ took an opportunity to be openly racist. ---
**Author:** ![jovan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/0ea827/32.png) [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2015, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlie-hebdo-comics/709284/46 "2015-01-09T14:30:04Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > I have seen a number of Gérard Depardieu films and they fell flat for me–and I enjoy movies with subtitles–because it seemed stupid clowning without any substance. :dubious: Go ahead, name two movies with Depardieu featuring Jerry Lewis-like clowning. He’s in hundreds of movies, it shouldn’t be too hard. Or rather, have the grace to admit you know nothing of French culture and that your post was insulting and ignorant. Otherwise, we can have a discussion of Japan’s respect for Full House or how the other day I saw a dubbed episode of Victorious on Japanese television and have to conclude that Americans are shallow, tacky and unfunny. Also, they talk funny. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2015, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlie-hebdo-comics/709284/47 "2015-01-09T14:42:39Z")
[QUOTE=dropzone] Alas, I do not speak French and must rely on translations. I have seen a number of Gérard Depardieu films and they fell flat for me–and I enjoy movies with subtitles–because it seemed stupid clowning without any substance. Like Jerry Lewis, except less funny. I use Lewis as my gauge because I’m familiar with his work and the respect the French critics have for his work, and my respect for the general taste of any nation would drop similarly were its arbiters of taste were to claim Adam Sandler as a great artist. [/QUOTE] The problem is that humour is hard to translate to begin with. And French humour falls into two broad categories (generally speaking) : stupid clowning, and having fun with the language. The latter is heavily based on ways of saying things, or puns, or references, or bathos, or wit… all kinds of things that would be pretty hard to translate at the best of times, or explain for that matter. And of course, if you \*have \*to explain, it ain’t funny no more. A classic example would be [this scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yXFu7p5b8k), from Les Tontons Flingueurs, an old movie that’s _still_ quoted in France the way Monthy Python flicks are in the anglosphere. On the surface, it’s just a bunch of crooks getting drunk on moonshine. What’s funny about that ? Well, the way they talk. Not _what_ they talk about, mind you - just their turns of phrase, their tones of voice, and the dialogue writer’s mastery of _argot_, a particular kind of old timey slang. But my friend, if you can’t speak French or argot, and have to go by the subtitles ? You’re missing just about everything. So what the furinners mostly get from us is the clowning, ‘cause that at least works anywhere. For specific values of “work”. But note that it’s kind of the same thing the other way around, though - from y’all we get _The Hangover_, but nobody’s heard of Georges Carlin or Richard Pryor. So the French tend to believe American humour is mostly dick and fart jokes’ based. ---
**Author:** ![Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/les_espaces_du_sommeil/32/308_2.png) [@Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Les_Espaces_Du_Sommeil)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2015, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlie-hebdo-comics/709284/48 "2015-01-09T15:00:29Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > Alas, I do not speak French and must rely on translations. I have seen a number of Gérard Depardieu films and they fell flat for me–and I enjoy movies with subtitles–because it seemed stupid clowning without any substance. Like Jerry Lewis, except less funny. I use Lewis as my gauge because I’m familiar with his work and the respect the French critics have for his work, and my respect for the general taste of any nation would drop similarly were its arbiters of taste were to claim Adam Sandler as a great artist. And I’ve told that Lewis is completly irrelevant in France and has been so for decades. I doubt anyone under 35 know who he is. I’m 40 and I have extremely distant memories of a couple of things I may have seen him in. Regarding **Depardieu** , yeah he’s done comedies but… I don’t consider him a comic actor. Or put another way, there literally dozens of persons I’d think of as comic actors before I’d mention him. And I’m not even sure I’d mention him at all unless prompted. So, well it looks like what I suspected from the start was true: you have no idea what French humour is. ---
**Author:** ![Drum\_God](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drum_god/32/44_2.png) [@Drum\_God](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drum_God)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2015, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlie-hebdo-comics/709284/49 "2015-01-09T17:41:39Z")
What does the name _Charlie Hebdo_ mean? Is it the name of a historical or cultural figure? A made-up character? Is it a pun or play on words? ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2015, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlie-hebdo-comics/709284/50 "2015-01-09T18:02:10Z")
It’s just a random name AFAIK. Originally the paper was called \*Hara-Kiri, Journal bête et méchant \*(“bête et méchant” literally means “dumb and mean” but it’s an idiom that really signifies “which has no redeeming value whatsoever” or something like that), but then that paper got forbidden by the State for going one joke too far so to speak, so the editorial team had to build up a new one more or less overnight. There’s no character or person named Charlie anywhere in or near the mag, nor has there ever been. Which might have been the joke, I dunno, I wasn’t there yet :). ---
**Author:** ![wevets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wevets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wevets)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2015, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlie-hebdo-comics/709284/51 "2015-01-09T18:09:47Z")
> [@Drum\_God](#): > > What does the name _Charlie Hebdo_ mean? Is it the name of a historical or cultural figure? A made-up character? Is it a pun or play on words? Multiple parts of that are right: > [@wikipedia](#): > > In order to sidestep the ban, the team decided to change its title, and used Charlie Hebdo.[1] The new name was derived from a monthly comics magazine called Charlie Mensuel (Charlie Monthly), which had been started by Bernier and Delfeil de Ton in 1968. Charlie took its name from Charlie Brown, the lead character of Peanuts – one of the comics originally published in Charlie Mensuel – and was also an inside joke about Charles de Gaulle.[6] In December 1981, publication ceased. > **[Charlie Hebdo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo)** > > Charlie Hebdo (.mw-parser-output .IPA-label-small{font-size:85%}.mw-parser-output .references .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .infobox .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .navbox .IPA-label-small{font-size:100%}French: \[ʃaʁli ɛbdo\]; French for 'Charlie Weekly') is a French satirical weekly magazine, featuring cartoons, reports, polemics, and jokes. The publication has been described as anti-racist, sceptical, secular, libertarian, and within the tradition of left-wing radicalism, The magazin... Charlie from Charlie Brown and Charles de Gualle, and Hebdo for “weekly.” ---
**Author:** ![joebuck20](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/74df32/32.png) [@joebuck20](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joebuck20)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2015, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlie-hebdo-comics/709284/52 "2015-01-09T19:07:22Z")
Also how is the name of the magazine pronounced? I’ve heard some newscasters pronounce it phonetically, so it sounds like Charlie Heb-doh. However, on NPR I’ve heard them pronounce it so that it sounds more or less like _Charliadoh._ ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2015, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlie-hebdo-comics/709284/53 "2015-01-09T19:29:17Z")
Phonetically, no French tricks (THIS TIME ! We’ll get you yet !), Shar-lee 'eb-doh is fine. More technically speaking : the H is silent but indicates a very slight pause between the two words in speech. Also no [liaison](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liaison_%28French%29) had the first word ended with a consonant, but this particular trap doesn’t apply here. ---
**Author:** ![Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/les_espaces_du_sommeil/32/308_2.png) [@Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Les_Espaces_Du_Sommeil)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2015, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlie-hebdo-comics/709284/54 "2015-01-09T20:09:24Z")
> [@jovan](#): > > … > On one hand, May 1968 was just one manifestation of similar events happening all over the world, such as the Vietnam protests and the counter-culture movement in the U.S., the 1969 Tokyo University protests, or the _révolution tranquille_ in Québec. Charlie Hebdo is a product of this era, like National Lampoon or Monty Python. However, the social and cultural context was not the exactly the same in France, the U.S., U.K. or Japan. As a result, while everybody was rebelling against _something_, sticking it up to “The Man,” that man was a different person in different places. > > The Man, in France, was the government and it was a government that was exerting far more direct influence on the press than in the U.S. or the U.K. As a result, freedom of speech and freedom of the press became a much more central issue in France than elsewhere. For some people in France, freedom of the press is a hot-button issue like second amendement rights in the U.S. That’s why to some, considering self-censorship is conceding defeat. To even consider that there are things that you can’t say or draw is to admit that you do not live in a free society anymore. > > There was another Man in France, and it was religion. The situation in France was completely unlike that in the U.S. In France, religion meant the Catholic Church. Sure, many French were Protestant or Jewish but these groups had always been minorities. A large majority of French were Catholics and their Church was one of the oldest, largest and most influential organisations in the world. The bunch of godless socialists that the May 68 generation saw the Catholic Church as a massive hive of reactionary thought, sexual repression, abuse of power, corruption and imperialism. They hated and still hate religion with a burning rage because they see it as the ultimate stupidity. > > Hence, the folks at Charlie Hebdo started lobbing obscene ink bombs at religion. But, in 1970, that strictly meant the Catholic Church. There was some outrage, just like there was when Life of Brian came out, but eventually the atheists sort of won. The influence of the Church on people’s daily lives and values dramatically waned. In 2000, mentioning Catholic priests and pedophilia in the same sentence isn’t seen as defamation, but as a statement of fact. > > Fighting The Man meant taking on government and religion, and it also meant standing up for the oppressed, the minorities, the weak the poor. This is where the ideals failed in the saddest, most ironic way. While Charlie Hebdo was throwing rocks at the Church, people on their side of the political spectrum were defending the rights of immigrants. Standing up for the _sans-papiers_ (illegal aliens) is a major rallying point for the French left. The tragedy is that the iconoclastic atheism, anarchy, sexual liberation, or feminism that the left had been fighting for weren’t necessarily compatible with the values of some of the immigrants they were defending. In a sad twist of fate, the left’s hatred of conservatism and religion coincided with one of their mortal enemy’s (the far right) Islamophobia. Charlie Hebdo’s sarcastically repugnant attacks on radical Islam became superficially indistinguishable from the far right’s repugnant attacks on radical Islam. > > Finally, as much as the May 68 generation tried to overthrow the old social order, its members were nevertheless products of this old era. They embraced open borders and waged war on racists and bigots and imperialists but they grew up in a society that was uniformly white and predominantly Catholic. > … That’s spot-on. @ **Kobal2** That scene from _Les Tontons Flingueurs_ is great and indeed untranslatable (as is the title by the way). **Michel Audiard** was the screenwriter, right? The movies on which he worked sure broadened my vocabulary when I was a teenager :D. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2015, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlie-hebdo-comics/709284/55 "2015-01-09T22:13:21Z")
> [@mr.jp](#): > > So what are you saying exactly? Don’t tease the bear. If you’re not teasing the bear and yet the bear is still going around killing people randomly then that’s not good, but all it means is that you need to call in the authorities to hunt the thing down. If you live in fear of bear attacks, even though the odds of your actually being killed by a bear are vanishingly remote, then that’s just you being dumb not an indication that random bear attacks are a meaningful social worry. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2015, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlie-hebdo-comics/709284/56 "2015-01-09T23:45:06Z")
> [@Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](#): > > And I’ve told that Lewis is completly irrelevant in France and has been so for decades. I doubt anyone under 35 know who he is. I’m 40 and I have extremely distant memories of a couple of things I may have seen him in. Upgraded from Chevalier to Commandeur in 2006, but yeah, stuffy old people, the ones who hand out awards, have no taste in humor and probably dislike _Charlie Hebdo_ intensely. > [@](#): > > Regarding **Depardieu** , yeah he’s done comedies but… I don’t consider him a comic actor. We agree on something! 😉 But he was pushed as one in the US. And **jovan** , I see your two movies and raise you four _Asterix_ movies. > [@](#): > > So, well it looks like what I suspected from the start was true: you have no idea what French humour is. And I admitted as much, though I used those cartoons as a guide to the current state of it and came to a negative conclusion. Mea culpa, but I was born with the disadvantage of not being a native French speaker. :rolleyes: There is funny offensive humor (that’s sorta redundant) and there is humor that is offensive merely for the sake of being offensive, and those cartoons fall into the latter category. Our good cartoonists dropped the generic big nose Arab who needs a shave decades ago, leaving that for right-wing cranks. The French should, too. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2015, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlie-hebdo-comics/709284/57 "2015-01-10T01:25:05Z")
> [@jovan](#): > > :dubious: > Go ahead, name two movies with Depardieu featuring Jerry Lewis-like clowning. He’s in hundreds of movies, it shouldn’t be too hard. La Chevre and Les Compreres were both pretty slapsticky, although Pierre Richard had more of the clown role, and Depardieu was the straight man. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2015, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlie-hebdo-comics/709284/58 "2015-01-10T02:03:32Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > La Chevre and Les Compères were both pretty slapsticky, although Pierre Richard had more of the clown role, and Depardieu was the straight man. To be fair, that’s less Depardieu and more Francis Veber (the director/screenwriter). He seems to have a thing for the “naive/stupid/annoying klutz and taciturn macho tough guy” pairing, or at least often returns to that particular well when he hasn’t got any better idea. He did Jacques Brel & Lino Ventura, Pierre Richard & Depardieu, Patrick Timsit & Richard Berry… More recently he also had an older Depardieu take on the klutz’s role opposite Jean Reno. Those are incidentally not his best movies (although I suppose _La Chèvre_ was one step above the rest, and \*Tais-toi! \*can boast at least [one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbL2Efe2b5A) exemplary line). Depardieu indeed seems to have turned more strictly towards comedy and The Curmudgeon these days, but in his prime he was a lot more Brad Pitt-y. Sexy ([yes](http://a51.idata.over-blog.com/500x332/0/56/25/34/rakotoarisonpict012/_yartiDepardieuG04.JPG) ! I know it’s hard to picture, seeing him now…), a little bit dangerous, a little bit insolent, something of a dark side and cocksure as a motherfucker. He always had a side business in comedy, but his most prestigious roles were dramas - Columbus in _1492_, _Cyrano de Bergerac_, a coal miner in _Germinal_, _Jean de Florette_, _Le Dernier Métro_… and that’s how most French still see him as : one of the Great Actors. I mean, De Niro did _Analyze This_ and _Meet the Fockers_, but those titles aren’t the ones that spring to your mind when somebody talks about “a De Niro movie”, right ? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/les_espaces_du_sommeil/32/308_2.png) [@Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Les_Espaces_Du_Sommeil)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2015, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlie-hebdo-comics/709284/59 "2015-01-10T08:12:04Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > Upgraded from Chevalier to Commandeur in 2006, but yeah, stuffy old people, the ones who hand out awards, have no taste in humor and probably dislike _Charlie Hebdo_ intensely. My point exactly. Wake me up when he gets the Grand Croix ;). The thing is, the Légion d’Honneur is awarded to all kinds of people: deserving civil servants, minor artists and scientists, war veterans, all sorts of politicians. I won’t deny that it’s an official recognition of _some achievement_ but I’d argue that only the very upper stages matter. I think only 3.000 people have received the Grand Croix in 200 hundred years. That’s a more accurate mesurement of relevance. Here’s the list of the recipients for 2015 in the music field: Mady Mesplé - Grand officier Christian Schirm - Chevalier - c’est le directeur de l’atelier lyrique de l’ONP Nicolas Joel - Officier Pascal Dusapin - Chevalier Mireille Delunsch - Chevalier Christophe Rousset - Chevalier Catherine Verhelst - Chevalier And although music’s one of my main interests, I only know Dusapin, Delunsch and Rousset. > [@dropzone](#): > > And I admitted as much, though I used those cartoons as a guide to the current state of it and came to a negative conclusion. Mea culpa, but I was born with the disadvantage of not being a native French speaker. :rolleyes: It’s one thing not to know much about a culture but quite another to insult it based on an extremely limited and severely out of date sample. > [@dropzone](#): > > There is funny offensive humor (that’s sorta redundant) and there is humor that is offensive merely for the sake of being offensive, and those cartoons fall into the latter category. Our good cartoonists dropped the generic big nose Arab who needs a shave decades ago, leaving that for right-wing cranks. The French should, too. I don’t disagree (although I don’t know enough about American cartoons to provide a relevant opinion) but I say that _Charlie Hebdo_ only represents a tiny sample of French humour that is extremely biased by historical and political conditions. ---
**Author:** ![jovan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/0ea827/32.png) [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2015, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlie-hebdo-comics/709284/60 "2015-01-10T11:03:11Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > Our good cartoonists dropped the generic big nose Arab who needs a shave decades ago, leaving that for right-wing cranks. The French should, too. Congratulations, you named films that feature both slapstick and Gérard Depardieu. However, they’re all from the same series, so I hope you’ll agree that while technically you answered my challenge, in doing so you have exposed your lack of knowledge about French cinema and humour. It was obvious from the start, because as has been explained, Depardieu is first and foremost known as dramatic actor. If you had said Louis de Funès instead, your argument still wouldn’t hold but at least you wouldn’t have appeared so ignorant. There’s nothing wrong with being ignorant, and I certainly don’t hold it against you if you aren’t familiar with, or even interested in French comedy. I do have a problem with the statement quoted above, especially in the context of a discussion where racism and cultural clashes have been brought up. First, you disparage Charlie Hebdo cartoonists for using racial stereotypes. Fair enough. It took me many words to say it, but I’ve come to think this is valid criticism. You then say: “the French should too.” Which one? [There are 66 millions of them](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stereotype). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlie-hebdo-comics/709284.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlie-hebdo-comics/709284.md?page=4)