Reply to satire or hate speech?

Forum Index » Political Discussion

Reply to "satire or hate speech?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]A French friend's friend shared this in his Facebook page, to explain CH to people unfamiliar with it:

C.H. is not and was not "racist" or "islamophobic". It was an equal-opportunity, anti-political-correctness offender. In the tradition of hard-core French caricature, no once is spared: C.H. made fun brutally - and it made fun of everyone: [b]drug users and conservative bourgeois, catholics and muslims, whites and blacks, women and men, gays and straights, socialists and right-wingers, communists and fascists. [/b]Only, it was FAR more brutal with extreme-right-wingers and neo-fascists of all kinds, but it was quite brutal with everyone. 
This came from a double tradition: that of French caricature and satire since the early 19th century (EVERYONE gets caricatured, not only your enemies), and that of the political/intellectual/ideological movement C.H. at most corresponded to, left-wing anarchism combined with radical atheism. C.H. was also (or its authors were/are) feminist, environmentalist, internationalist, anti-fascist and anti-racist - but at its core it was anarchist, against authority, against crowd-thinking, against blind adherence to ideologies - hence it made (brutal) fun also of its own "side". If you want to understand more, you can look at Le Canard Enchaine, a French satirical weekly that is less obscene and more text-based, but as disrespectful of authority as C.H. (and many cartoonists worked for both).
When I read that C.H.'s cartoons are/were "racist" or "islamophobic" or whatever of the kind - it is worse than wrong, it is really turning things on their head. What C.H.'s humour was based on, apart from being brutal and obscene (again, a long tradition in France...), was what we call "second degre" (second degree). Not as in "second degree murder" - as in "there is a meaning that is not the first meaning that you see, but its opposite". I.e. C.H. would represent very frequently the true and bare-faced ideas that their ideological opponents were/are trying to "window dress" to look "respectable". For instance when they drew Christiane Taubira as a monkey and wrote "Rassemblement Bleu Raciste" - Christiane Taubira is the Justice Minister who pushed forward the gay marriage law, and is black, so she was a double target for the far-right, and got constantly mocked by them as a monkey (old racist joke...), but in a semi-hidden way ("dog whistles", you might say in the US). And Marine Le Pen was/is trying to look clean and respectable, with her "Rassemblement Bleu Marine". So C.H. went straight at their bullshit and exposed their ideas bare.
No one in France (or well, not many people at least) would understand it wrongly, because we are used to "second degre" (many of our jokes are based on it, much as we use the "antiphrase" when we want to praise something, as in "oh, this wine is REALLY bad", with a wink, when you are tasting some fantastic vintage with your friends), and also we know where C.H. stands politically, so we know how to interpret their jokes. So it is with humour: you often need the context and the codes to understand it. Otherwise you end up like the official Chinese media which, repeatedly, has taken "Onion" articles as "real" articles. C.H. is and was a bit like the Onion, indeed - just more politically biased (far-left), more brutal, more obscene, and low tech.
C.H. was and is gross - in comparison with the US, I think we French people tend to like a lot of "gross" stuff - strange cheese, giblets, snails, and dirty humour. Political correctness is frowned upon. And left-wing-anarchism, while not being significant in elections (of course! anarchists don't really tend to stand in elections!), is a significant intellectual tradition. And I did not always like having too much of that style of humour - I read more often the Canard Enchaine, which is harsh but less obscene. However, Charlie's leading cartoonists were also major authors, commanding a variety of styles and levels of jokes, and I read lots of their other work. They were great satirists, and they were sincere, engaged, militant supporters of open borders, open thinking, human rights etc. Calling them racists is an absurdity that is really offensive.
Oh and since I am at it, another point of major misunderstanding between Americans and French seems to be our restrictions on free speech vs. US's 1st Amendment total free speech. I have read stuff as absurd as "France's blasphemy law", and generally US writers seem to completely misunderstand (a) what the law actually forbids and (b) why it exists. So, briefly: (a) French law forbids (i) direct appeals to hatred and violence based on race [it does NOT forbid making brutal fun of people, and it does not cover religion, except if you call to violence against a community] and (ii) negation of crimes against humanity (mostly, this covers the jewish and roma genocides in WWII, but the law covers any other officially sanctioned crime against humanity) - in short, you can make fun of any religion all you want, and even make fun of any community all you want, but not call to murder and hatred --- (b) why? well, we have direct experience of where certain speech can lead. This is you could say a cost/benefit consideration - you lose some free speech, you may however limit the spread/prevalence of certain extremely harmful ideas. I have not seen any meaningful studies comparing for instance France and the US to see which effect total free speech vs. somewhat restrained free speech had on hate crimes etc. Would be complex, but interesting. I am not saying here that I strongly support one or the other - I am divided on this. But I am just saying that (1) the restriction is narrow, not a "blasphemy law" and (2) it has some strong rational justification in particular in history... Lambasting it is OK if you have serious arguments, but not just because of ignorance. As examples: C.H. was found innocent by courts of offenses against religion (mostly not covered). It was also attacked by Marine Le Pen and her father (each time they lost). But if you say "arabs are a noxious people and we should send them to the sea" or "roma are evil and Hitler did not kill enough" (it has been said...), then you fall under the law. And as a coda, it is annoying to see the same people (in some cases) screaming about "so many antisemitic attacks in France" (I read one that went as far as saying it was as bad as Germany 80 years ago...I mean, SERIOUSLY!?) and also sternly criticizing France for its legislation against antisemitism.
That was my remembrance of Charlie Hebdo, and in particular of Cabu and Wolinski, whom I have read f
for over 30 years. RIP.
[/quote]

I noticed you left out the jews.

Please post a recent CH cartoon. Something along the lines of:

[img]http://www.resist.com/updates/2009/JUN_09/KikenGreedA.jpg[/img][/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics