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Laure Murat: "Adèle Haenel's posture was like a declaration of war between a docked world, which I want to believe is dying, and a world on the way. "

Saturday March 7, 2020

Sophie Joubert

Historian and essayist, professor at the University of California (UCLA), Laure Murat published in 2018 "A sexual revolution? Reflections on the Post-Weinstein "(Stock). She returns to the Caesar attributed to Roman Polanski, analyzes the scope of Adèle Haenel's gesture and the French resistance to the MeToo movement. Interview.

What is your feeling about the Caesar ceremony? What problems did she reveal?

A feeling of disgust and disbelief at an endless masquerade where everything was ringing false. It was both a height of cowardice and out of date. The whole ceremony was based on the inability and refusal to name: to name the crisis situation in which the cinema industry finds itself, to name Adèle Haenel and her courage to have been the first to speak in France, to name until surname of Polanski, swallowed by Daroussin, or mocked under the nicknames of Popol or Atchoum. There has been talk of anti-Semitism against Polanski, who himself played on the obscene ambiguity of a comparison of his case with that of Dreyfus. I would rather speak, more generally, of a very French collaboration. No one on stage had a memorable word, a gesture of solidarity. No one has dared to put their foot in it. The lack of thought and commitment reached an unprecedented level. There was something astounding about seeing this conspiracy of silence unfold in the atmosphere which, constantly beating around the bush, turned the evening into a celebration of the void and the unspoken. Unsaid very clear to everyone: a man accused of rape by twelve women was nominated twelve times. As if such an enormity were to slip away, casually. All in all, I would have preferred someone to say out loud: we make this choice.

This evening - and this is only an apparent paradox - was actually the worst that could have happened to Roman Polanski, the great thousand-time award-winning filmmaker, who did not need that umpteenth rattle in his career. Because the Academy has achieved a triple feat: insult the Jew, celebrate the rapist and discredit the words of women. We know the formula: "Whoever says nothing consents". This evening, between aphasia and inconsistent babble, was one of the hushed consent of an entire community to the old order. The final prize list had the value of an unambiguous choice of society.

See also: Caesars. Polanski awarded under a shower of critics

What does this César for best achievement awarded to Polanski mean?

By crowning Roman Polanski, the Académie des Césars not only spat in the face of millions of victims of sexual assault around the world, it sent a very clear message: "Rape, you will be rewarded, shirk it. justice, you will be awarded ”. As if the revolution initiated by #MeToo had not happened. As if this planetary movement, this global awareness did not question anything. In France. This is undoubtedly what is called the cultural exception.

In the name of the separation of man and artist, this hoax that would disempower some criminals and not others, the Academy will deny having singled out a talent above all. The truth is, she is using an aesthetic alibi to justify the unjustifiable: impunity. As if artists weren't litigants. As if genius was above the law. As if women are just whores and liars. In doing so, French cinema, which boasts of its emancipatory function and claims to defend freedom of expression and creation, reveals its true face: an industry of extraordinary conservatism.

In the name of the prescription of crimes and the presumption of innocence, the Academy will still justify itself for not having to take into account accusations that are based only on old facts and unverifiable denunciations. Personally, I am very attached to the rule of law. I would even like, to tell the truth, that it be reinforced, to remedy the extremely serious dysfunctions precisely revealed by MeToo. Besides that Polanski is still under an arrest warrant in the United States, it is also questionable why he does not file a libel suit against these "hysterics" who wrongly accuse him. To ignore these denunciations by honoring today a man who has won dozens of times in his career is to take sides with this supposedly immutable order which urges women to be silent and scorns their word. That is to say to Adèle Haenel: "Shut up". It is to side with a system which, by the very admission of the Minister of Justice, is deficient and which sees the proliferation of feminicides, because after three testimonies to the police, a woman does not return to complain: she's dead.

Do you think, as Adèle Haenel told the New York Times, that France has "completely missed the boat of #metoo"? You spoke in 2018 of "French dissidence to the #MeToo movement", do we have new proof of this today?

"To miss the boat" is the translation of "miss the boat" appearing in the New York Times, literally "to miss the boat". But what I believe is that France, or at least a certain France which benefits from the system, did not arrive too late on the quay out of breath. She doesn't want to go up on the bridge. This is a deliberate refusal. This implies that this France has, in reality, very well taken the measure of the danger and the potential scope of MeToo. And she is doing everything in her power to prevent a movement that may well undermine her little prerogatives. The “Deneuve tribune” (published in Le Monde) was a first step in this active dissent. Since then, the news has continued to show the scale of the situation and the urgency to rethink the issue of consent and relations of domination. The Caesar ceremony was a second step, but a second step "squared", marked by a double denial: the door opened by Adèle Haenel not only returned to her in the face but the Academy of Caesar has placed a lock. additional, to the tune of “Nothing Happened in Hiroshima”. See the scene where Adèle Haenel gets up: everyone is looking elsewhere.

This posture was like a declaration of war between a docked world, which I want to believe is dying, and a world on the way. The good news is that this war is forcing everyone to position themselves.

Is what happened symptomatic of an environment, an industry, the cinema, or can we draw lessons from it at the level of French society?

Sexism, rape, child crime transcend all walks of life and all social classes, without exception. What happened is symptomatic of the film industry, such as the Matzneff affair in the literary world, the Abitbol affair in the sports world, the Preynat affair of the Catholic Church ... on condition of specifying that 'we say "symptomatic" to mean "visible" or, if you like, "mediated". The reality is that we are not dealing with singular monsters of a decadent cultural or social elite, but with a global system that concerns all of society.

Is this a war between the dominant and the dominated, as Virginie Descentes says in her text which appeared in Liberation on Monday?

Yes, if you consider that the sinews of this war, as in all wars, is money - and Virginie Despentes insisted on this. But to oppose the dominant and the dominated is also to suggest the infernal couple executioners and victims. However, I believe that this polarization, which is used too quickly, does not explain much, and that it is above all more complex than one thinks. What strikes me above all is that voluntary servitude to the patriarchal moral order and submission to institutional violence go far beyond the man / woman, White / Black divide, as the Caesar ceremony vividly demonstrated. . That the Academy chose two women, Claire Denis and Emmanuelle Bercot, to award the César for best achievement obviously owes nothing to chance. But you should also know that they knew in advance the name of the winner in the envelope and that they had agreed to deliver together a "prize" and not deliver a "verdict", in the words of Claire Denis. One can also wonder about the fact that Anaïs Demoustier did not have a word for Adèle Haenel, nor Ladj Ly. In other words, whether you are a white woman like Claire Denis, who knows the mechanisms of oppression so well, or a young director whose skin color is the object of a system of discrimination, does not prevent you from lending a hand. strong in the domination and crushing of the words of the victims.

See also: Nora Philippe: "A system continues to monopolize its privilege"

What do you think is the scope of Adèle Haenel's gesture, who left the room? Does it make it possible to leave the status of victim?

Its reach is decisive - provided, of course, that it is followed by the implementation of real change within the entire French film industry. As Fabienne Brugère and Guillaume Leblanc say in Liberation (tribune of March 3, 2020), this gesture of Adèle Haenel and the Portrait of the young girl on fire team, to which must be added the non-reappearance of a Florence Foresti "disgusted", opens the way to another regime. The two philosophers write: “Albert Hirschman, in an important book, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, had, in 1970, underlined that, faced with the failures of institutions, individuals have the choice between three behaviors: taking the exit door ( exit), take the floor (voice) or resign (loyalty). Adèle Haenel, Céline Sciamma, Florence Foresti and everyone who left the room showed that the "exit" was indeed the beginning of the voice. "

This "warlike" outing, just before the end of the ceremony, was also the striking proof that it had become impossible for Céline Sciamma and Adèle Haenel to remain in this assembly, whatever happens and whatever the result of the meeting. last attribution: that of the best film, for which Portrait of the young girl on fire was nominated. They did not wait for the final prize list. They didn’t go to the carrot. Mass was said.

This gesture saved the honor of the Caesars - a shame: the silhouette of Adèle Haenel, index finger pointed at the sky, denouncing "shame", was the only living moment of this sinister evening. She literally gave substance to her political word. And that’s why this gesture, this decision, this event, this dignity, to get up and go, to refuse the injunction to silence and voluntary servitude to power, has gone around the world. In her interview with Mediapart (November 3, 2019), she had already marked a decisive turning point: by breaking the impasse executioner / victim and by proposing to deconstruct a "system" - one which literally put on a spectacle at the Caesar ceremony - it offered a new choice of society. His gesture is part of the logical continuity of this project. If Fanny Ardant says she is ready to follow Polanski "to the guillotine", symbol of the end of the aristocracy, I want to believe that the younger generations will follow Adèle Haenel into a more dignified and more democratic world.

Are we in a period of reaction, of regression, or on the contrary in a new wave of freedom of speech with the hashtag #jesuisunevictime? More generally, what reflection can we carry out on the status of victim?

Recognizing the victims' status is an essential and necessary step, which involves, in mirror image, getting the executioner to recognize his crime. But it can only be a first step. Because the executioner / victim partition most often looks like a dead end. It freezes adversaries, it sediments the trauma. Above all, it installs in the sole affect what should be thought of by the concept. Not to mention the almost inevitable risk of victimization competition, however obscene - the defenders of Polanski do not hesitate to speak of him as a "victim" of a media lynching or to recall that Samantha Geimer has "forgiven" him. , remedy for all evils (without specifying that this was after the payment of half a million dollars, a condition for stopping the proceedings she had initiated against him).

The second step is the one proposed by Adèle Haenel and I interpret it as an exit from the top: not to anathematize “monsters” (which do not exist, she specifies) but to deconstruct the system of the grip, intimidation, harassment, domination of bodies, consubstantial with capitalist violence. Trying to understand how we act, how to resolve the balance of power is a political project that should involve everyone, at all levels.

Adèle Haenel and Vanessa Springora have one thing in common: rather than posing as victims, they prefer to question the consent of society and the workings of a system. In both cases, justice ignored them. In both cases, the justice system seized their case. Adèle Haenel and Vanessa Springora do not accuse, they seek to understand, so that what happened to them does not happen to others. However, I deeply believe that this “intelligent” position is the one that bothers and offends the most. This invitation to dialogue is seen as an insurmountable threat. The world of cinema bosses, like Olivier Carbone, casting director, prefers to promise in response to Adèle Haenel, "a well-deserved dead career", as he posted on his Facebook page the day after the Caesars. And return her to her status as an actress charged with being beautiful and being silent.

How to analyze the unease triggered by Aïssa Maïga's intervention and the virulent criticisms that followed?

The icy reception of the room comes, in my opinion, from two sources: the nature of the subject (diversity and inclusion), which the majority do not want to hear about in the name of universalism, or more precisely of endemic racism; the form chosen by Aïssa Maïga, awkward in the face of an assembly whose hostility was palpable, even if, on the bottom, she was right all along: on whitewashing, stereotypical roles, the need to work together. It didn't shock me in any way that she said counting black people in the room. That Eric Zemmour and Nadine Morano, who were the first to say they were horrified by these words, find themselves in a room with 1,600 blacks and ten whites. I would be very surprised if they didn't do the math. As for Bruno Retailleau, president of the Les Républicains group in the Senate (invited on France Inter on March 3, 2020), outraged to see the “radical bad practices of American campuses” imported into France, that he therefore come to take a tour in the universities across the Atlantic, where we welcome and respect minorities other than in France. And certainly not because of some quota policy, unconstitutional in the United States, or affirmative action, which has been abolished there.

See also: Sexual violence, the women's lawyer forum creates controversy

How to think after Caesar? How to get out of the war, crystallized by social networks?

I do not know. What I do know is that it is imperative that the new generations, especially men, get involved and unite. That an organization like 50/50 multiply the proposals, and that the new management of the Academy of Caesar take the measure of the stakes, so that we never relive this ceremony of shame. And that the press, above all, do not let twitter make the law, under the influence of emotion and insult, and open its pages to more analysis and substantive debate. Finally, it is imperative that the public authorities take over and establish a real policy on inequalities, devoting budgets worthy of the name.

You have often insisted that there is no question of censoring works. What work of pedagogy, of image education, of the place and representation of women on the screen should be undertaken?

I find it fascinating that the idea that a global awareness, in this case driven by MeToo, leads to a critical reflection on art by revealing to us certain unthought, especially on the representation of women. It is not a question of retroactively and anachronistically plating a contemporary ideology on the films of the past. It is even less about condemning a work a posteriori or censoring it - a censure against which I object, indeed, without ambiguity. It is about understanding what constituted and constructed our imaginations, according to which codes and which implicit, which formal methods and which aesthetic biases. Revision is not revisionism. It is a basic critical activity, which takes into account the long time; it is a desiccation operation.

This is what interested me for example in Blow up: how a rape, because it is aestheticized, manages to disappear from our consciousness and our memory? how does it reappear thanks to a topicality which suddenly makes us more clairvoyant and more attentive? This is all the more fascinating to me since Blow up is precisely the story of a crime that no one has seen and that the photographer unknowingly captured. This reflection in no way affects my judgment on the masterpiece that is this film: it helps me better understand how aesthetics treat the violence of certain representations and imprint our unconscious, according to the presuppositions of a period.

Likewise, I wouldn't think of throwing Jules Verne in the trash because he was anti-Dreyfus, misogynist and anti-feminist. On the other hand, I am interested in the idea that he was all of this, at the same time as a staunch defender of the struggles for independence - all of his work can be read as an anti-colonialist and anti-slavery manifesto. It is not about judging but about analyzing. It is a workshop or laboratory logic, not a court.

Watching films again, rereading books, reviewing plastic works is like saying: where do we come from? And hence where do we want to go? It is an exciting project for artists, whose function, it seems to me, is to invent a different outlook on the world. It is also an opportunity to renew our representations of eroticism and the clichés that are so often attached to it.

See also: Cinema. Caesars with the scent of scandal

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