Applause!!!
Several groups contributed resources to make sure the terrorist’s actions didn’t kill the newspaper.
The bolded bit should be “… it does NOT mean as much as you seem to think.”
So what are you saying exactly?
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.
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.
: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.
[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, 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.
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.
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?
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 :).
Multiple parts of that are right:
Charlie from Charlie Brown and Charles de Gualle, and Hebdo for “weekly.”
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.
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 had the first word ended with a consonant, but this particular trap doesn’t apply here.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
La Chevre and Les Compreres 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 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 ! 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 ?
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.
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.
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.
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.