The postponing of `La Pudeur ou l`Impudeur`:

299
REVIEW ESSAY
The postponing of ’La Pudeur ou l’Impudeur’:
modesty or hypocrisy on the part of French television?
JEAN-PIERRE BOULÉ*
French intellectuals have long concealed their homosexuality to the public
at
large (e.g., Barthes, Foucault). Jean-Paul
Aron broke the silence in
an
given to Le Nouvel Observateur and talked about having contracted
Aids; Alain Emmanuel Dreuilhe wrote one of the first accounts of dying of
Aids in 1987.1 But by far the most widely read fictional works on the subject
interview
are those of Herv6 Guibert: A 1’ami qui ne m’a pas sauv6 la vie2 and Le
Protocole compassionnel,3 the first of these two books having exceeded sales
of 150.000 in France by December 1991, not including the resurgence in sales
following Guibert’s death on 27 December 1991; it has also been translated
into English.4 TF1 had scheduled ’La Pudeur ou 1’Impudeur’, a film Guibert
himself had shot with a camcorder between June 1990 and March 1991, for
transmission on Monday 20 January 1992 at 0.15, but on Friday 17 January
1992 the transmission was postponed by TF1. The story behind the original
scheduling, as well as the postponing of ’La Pudeur ou 1’Impudeur’, tells us
much about French television’s attitude to what they define as acceptable
’reality shows’.
Frangoise H6ritier-Aug6, chair of the CNS (Conseil national du sida), had
written to Patrick Le Lay, controller of TF1, and to Jacques Boutet, chair of the
CSA (Conseil sup6rieur de l’audiovisuel), requesting ’qu’un groupe restreint de
membres du Conseil national du sida puisse, dans le cadre d’une projection
priv6e, visionner ce document avant sa projection’.5 On 16 January 1992,
there were a series of articles in the newspaper Le Quotidien du medecin,
warning against the impact of the film. Gilles Pialoux, a consultant at the
Pasteur hospital, even talked of the possible ’effet dramatique’ of the film. On
17 January 1992, Jacques Boutet replied to Fran~oise Heritier-Auge, informing
her that the CSA had requested TF1 to arrange for the film to be viewed by the
icomit6 de visionnage’ (monitored by the CSA), as well as by a member of the
CNS. On the same day the CNS published a communique stating that ’La
* Address for correspondence: Dr Jean-Pierre Boule, Department of Modern Language, Nottingham
Polytechnic, Clifton Lane, Nottingham NG118NS.
300
’met en scene un temoignage individuel et n’a
valeur
de
aucunement
t6moignage d’information ou d’exemple g6n6ralisable
vivant
avec le VIH’.6 Meanwhile an assistant of ~tienne
les
a toutes
personnes
vice-controller
of
TF1, informed Frangoise H6ritier-Aug6 that the
Mougeotte,
a
while
film was postponed, then,
later, that it was not. She subsequently sent
Etienne
a fax to
Mougeotte, informing him that she could not view the film on
1992
but that she would be willing to view it at a later date. One
18 January
film
the
was postponed.~ A spokesperson for TF1, explaining its
hour later,
invoked
the
CNS’s concern that the film was likely to ’causer une
decision,
certaine emotion, notamment aupres des personnes souffrant du sida’.8
Following the viewing of the film by the committee, it was then rescheduled
for Thursday 30 January 1992 at 23.15 on TF1 and the CNS was given the
opportunity to warn viewers about its content before the transmission.
The film had in fact very nearly been in danger of never finding a television
channel willing to show it. By October 1991, it had not been bought by any of
the French Channels ;9 ’La Sept, Canal + et La Cinq’1° had all turned it down.
’La Sept’, in on the original project, had even refused to view it. ’Canal +’ and
’La Cinq’ turned it down after viewing it. TF1, having accepted to show it, was
only concerned about scheduling it late fmollgh 11 The reasons given were
twofold: ’Nous ne voulions pas
des telespectateurs tombent sur ce film
En
hasard.
en
le
outre,
par
programmant si tard, nous pouvions difficilement
8tre suspect6s de voyeurisme’.12 Apart from the aforementioned article in Le
Quotidien du medecin, there was a four page spread on the film in Lib6ration
on Saturday 18 January 1992. In it, Arnaud Marty-Lavauzelle, chair of ’Aides’
(Association d’aide aux malades du sida) was rather apprehensive about the
possible interpretation of the film by television viewers: ’Le film renforce ces
representations de la fatalit6, de la destruction et de la souffrance morale. Un
crudity show spectaculaire’.13 ’Notre avis’, the T6]6 7 jours television guide,
introducing the film, read as follows: ’Des images quasi-cliniques, le corps
dans toutes ses mis6res (...)’.14 That there should be a degree of apprehension
about the viewing public’s reaction was understandable. Guibert, after taking
part in ’Apostrophes’ in March 1990, following the publication of A 1’ami qui ne
m’a pas sauv6 la vie, said that he started to receive an average of twenty-five
letters per day from viewers and/or readers. 15 Fran~oise Giroud reiterates the
point: ’Guibert est ne du ventre de la television, apres un &dquo;Apostrophes&dquo; (...)
il a touch6 le public (...)’.16 The postponing of ’La Pudeur ou 1’Impudeur’
highlights the appeal of Guibert as a media phenomenon, with television
frightened of, and unable to control, its own impact. There was no warning by
the CNS before the transmission of ’La Pudeur ou 1’Impudeur’, as had been
proposed by TF1. However the film was followed by Pascale Breugnot, the
producer, interviewing Professor Michel Kazatchtine from the Broussais
hospital on advances in curing Aids. In his first reply, Professor Kazatchtine
stated: ’Nous avons, je crois, des raisons (...) de ne pas rentrer dans la
d6sesp6rance que laisse entendre ce film (...)’. Reading from a piece of paper,
Pudeur
ou
1’Impudeur’
que
301
his main strategy consisted in
stressing dates, notwithstanding the fact that
only thirty days old, but it was a way of distancing viewers from
Guibert’s film, shot between June 1990 and March 1991: ’Je sais d6ja que 92 ne
sera pas comme 91, parce que j’ai vu que 91 n’a pas ete comme 90 et que 90 n’a
pas ete comme 89 ou 87’. How Aids sufferers could derive optimism from
such a statement is rather baffling.
Paul Rambali, reporting on the postponing of ’La Pudeur ou 1’Impudeur’ in
the Guardian commented: ’While boasting of the risk they were taking in
broadcasting the film after several others had turned it down, the channel was
on a hair-trigger, ceding to the first charge that their uncompromising reality
show was merely a crude, exhibitionist spectacle’. 17 The irony, according to
Rambali - bearing in mind that a lot of viewers had not heard that the filming
had been postponed and waited up on the Sunday night to see it - was that
’Instead of Guibert’s harrowing corpse-to-be, there was the crude spectacle of
plump, healthy nudity and unprotected sex (...) (viewers were) gaping
instead at a soft-porn comedy (...)’.18 The ’modesty’ of the French television
authorities seems to be more of a case of hypocrisy. Especially since after the
programming on Thursday 30 January 1992 there were no protests to speak of
concerning the content of the film - just as there had been no controversy
when the film was shown on television in Switzerland in October 1991.
What was the controversy about? To answer this question, one needs to start
by looking at how the project of the film came about. During the summer of
1990, Guibert’s health was deteriorating; the anti-aids drug AZT did not seem
to be working and he could no longer write. Pascale Breugnot, a television
producer, wrote to him: ’Puisque vous pretendez ne plus 6crire (...) je vous
propose d’occuper cette zone interm6diaire en r6alisant un film dont vous
seriez a la fois 1’auteur et le sujet’.19 After much hesitation, Guibert started to
use a camcorder which followed his every day life as an Aids sufferer and he
did all the filming himself. Twelve hours of filming were recorded by
Guibert2° before the editing of the film by Maureen Mazureck, which took her
from the Autumn of 1990 to May 1991, its final length being fifty-eight
minutes. In it we follow Guibert in his bedroom struggling to get up, in the
bathroom struggling to wash his private parts, on the toilet, taking his tablets,
visiting his doctor, his physiotherapist, doing his exercises and going on
holiday. In his books Guibert had talked openly about the possibility of
committing suicide, had purchased the necessary drugs which he then took
with him on all his travels and rehearsed: (...) je me verserais dans un verre
d’eau ces soixante-dix gouttes, je l’avalerais, et puis qu’est-ce que je ferais? Je
m’etendrais (...) Combien de temps ga prendrait pour que mon coeur cesse de
battre ?’.21 This scenario, printed in A l’ami qui ne m’a pas sauve la vie, is also
used as a voice-over during the film where Guibert stages a game of Russian
roulette with two glasses of water, one filled with the seventy drops of
Digitaline, rotating them on the table until he is confused as to which one
contains the drops, before drinking one of them and lying in an armchair, not
1992
was
,
302
knowing if he was ever going to wake up. When he eventually does, he says:
’Je suis sorti épuisé de cette experience, comme modifi6. Je crois que filmer ~a
a change mon rapport a l’id6e du suicide (...)’. Maureen Mazureck, the film
editor, confirmed Guibert’s account: ’(...) il a vraiment mis les gouttes dans
l’un des deux verres (...) il est alle jusqu’a se glisser un bas sur la tete pour
respirer moins bien’. 22 Shameless nudity and a staged suicide were enough to
frighten off French television channels.
As for Guibert, ’La Pudeur ou 1’Impudeur’ simply adopted the tone of all his
other works (as a photographer, a filmscript writer and a writer) in its pursuit
of truth - (’Dire la verite tout en appelant son recit roman (...) &dquo;quand je
disparaitrais&dquo;, remarquait-il en 1988, &dquo;j’aurais tout dit, je me serais acharn6 ~
reduire cette distance entre les v6rit6s de 1’exp6rience et de 1’ecriture.&dquo;Jamais
sans doute parmi les ecrivains d’aujourd’hui, projet litt6raire n’a en effet 6t6
lie a un tel souci de reduire au minimum la marge entre ces deux vérités’)23 and in its simultaneous
transcription of his life (’D’où vient que son
voire
son
esth6tique,
6thique d’6crivain, ait consiste, pour le principal, à
mettre la vie au net au fur et a mesure qu’il vivait ou qu’elle se d6roulait
devant lui, par une sorte de transcription immediate et continue’).24 In fact, in
a tragic case of ’misc en abime’, Guibert attempted buiuide by taking a dose of
the day before
his thirty-sixth birthday on 17 December 1991;
admitted to hospital, he died on 27 December 1991.
Paul Rambali used the expression ’reality show’ in describing ’La Pudeur ou
1’Ir.zpudeur’. It is no coincidence that the producer of the film, Pascale
Breugnot, whom Guibert calls at times ’bestiale’25 or ‘charognarde’,26 is in fact
associated with what is called in French ’le reality show’. The current shows
on French television are ’Perdu de vue’, ’L’Amour en danger’, ’La Nuit des
h6ros’, ’En quate de v6rit6’ and more recently ’Mea culpa’, produced by
Pascale Breugnot and Bernard Bouthier. These shows attract a considerable
audience (’Perdu de vue’: ten million viewers; ’La Nuit des h6ros’: seven
million viewerS27) . They are shown during prime time28 and are so popular
that presenters of more traditional ’vari6t6s’ shows like Jean-Pierre Foucault
(’Sacr6e Soiree’) are changing the style of their shows to encompass the new
trend. Hence Zana Muhsen (one of the two Birmingham girls sold in an
arranged marriage in the Yemen) was recently invited to ‘Sacree Soiree’ which
that night registered twelve million viewers.29 These reality shows originate
from local television networks in America. They were invented to compete
with national networks.3° The concept of ’reality’ is not reserved to
programmes like shows: ’Reality pub’ is also taking off, hence the Benetton
advert about an Aids victim dying in his father’s arms. If French television can
schedule in ’L’Amour en danger’ Florence and Fred talking to a psychoanalyst
(Catherine Muller), asking why they don’t make love any more,31 watched by
millions of television viewers, then where is the consistency in so many
television channels refusing ’La Pudeur ou 1’Impudeur’ and in TF1 rescheduling
it at the first protest?
Digitaline
303
irony in the co-producer of ’Mea culpa’, Bernard Bouthier
co-producer being Pascale Breugnot) defending ’Mea culpa’ by
a
drawing parallel with ’La Pudeur ou 1’Impudeur’: ’Lorsque c’est Herv6
Guibert qui filme son intimit6, tout le monde s’en felicite (...) Mais qu’un
quidam dise: &dquo;Moi, ga ne va pas, j’ai choisi la television pour en parler&dquo;, ga
c’est intolerable’.32 According to him, popular culture (which he claims he is
defending) is always scorned by elitist culture (’la culture savante’).33 In an
illuminating article about the television reality shows, Norbert Bensaid
rejected the argument about popular culture: ’Ce serait mepriser le peuple que
refuser de le voir tel qu’on le fait 8tre, et m6priser sa culture que ne pas croire
qu’elle se r6duit a ces curiosites cancanieres’.34 He reminds us that the truth
incarnated in the reality shows always carries along with the notion of
voyeurism (which he does not necessarily condemn) that of ’l’impudeur’ ,35
There is
(the other
a
lot of
shamelessness, because of the inevitable ’devoilement brutal d’une realite
reduite a elle-meme et touchant au sexe, 4 la mort, 4 la violence (...)’.36
’L’impudeur’, he defines as ’(...) une transgression des lois de la bienséance’ ,37
’biens6ance’ here is synonymous with ’pudeur’, modesty. Thus, ultimately, it
is by appealing both to our shamelessness and to our modesty that ’La Pudeur
ou l’Impudeur’ transgresses the definition by French television of reality
shows: modesty and hypocrisy are acceptable; shamelessness and honesty
are
not.
REFERENCES
1. Alain Emmanuel
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
Dreuilhe, Corps à corps (Paris: Gallimard, 1987).
Hervé Guibert, A l’ami qui ne m’a pas sauvé la vie (Paris: Gallimard, 1990).
Hervé Guibert, Le protocole compassionnel (Paris: Gallimard, 1991).
Hervé Guibert, To the Friend who did not Save my Life (London: Quartet, 1991).
Frank Nouchi, ’Le film d’Hervé Guibert devrait être diffusé jeudi 30 janvier sur TF1’,
Le Monde, 22 January 1992, 10.
Ibid.
All this information is drawn from the above article.
Patrick Kéchichian, ’TF1 décide le report de la diffusion du film d’Hervé Guibert’, Le
Monde, 19 - 20 January 1992, 20.
’Cela dit, personne ne veut de ce film. Toutes les chaînes ont dit non’. In ’Hervé Guibert
son dernier entretien’ L’Evénement du Jeudi 2-8 January 1992, 109 (Reprinted from
the October 1991 issue).
Michel Braudeau, ’Le beau diable’, Le Monde, 24 January 1992, 24.
Annick Peigné-Giuly, this information is given in: ’Du caméscope à l’écran’,
Liberation, 18 -19 January 1992, 22.
12. Ibid.
13. Eric Favereau, ’Un
"crudity show" aux vertus ambigües’, Liberation, 18 - 19 January
1992,31.
14. Télé 7 jours, 18 - 24 January 1992, 51.
15. Hervé Guibert. Le Protocole compassionnel, 178.
16. Françoise Giroud, ’Deux lions pour Fabius’, Le Nouvel Observateur, 23 - 29 January
1992,31.
304
Paul Rambali, ’Bitter cry from the confessional’, The Guardian, 23 January 1992, 27.
Ibid.
Hervé Guibert, Le Protocole compassionnel,
.
174
Patrick Kéchichian, ’TF1 décide le report de la diffusion du film d’Hervé Guibert’.
Hervé Guibert. A l’ami qui ne m’a pas sauvé la vie, 218-9.
’Maureen Mazureck: "Sa façon de regarder un lézard"’. Libération, 18 - 19 January
1992,23.
23. Antoine de Gaudemar, ’Hervé Guibert, la mort propagande’, Libération, 28 - 19
December 1991, 26.
24. Hector Bianciotti, ’Jusqu’au bout de la nuit’, Le Monde, 29 - 30 December 1991, 1.
25. Hervé Guibert. Le Protocole compassionnel, 65.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
26. Ibid., 174.
27. Chantal de
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
Rudder, ’La télé dont vous êtes le héros’, Le Nouvel Observateur, 12 - 18
March 1992, 40.
If we take as an example ’La Nuit des héros’, it is scheduled on Saturdays at 20.50 on
’Antenne 2’. The four ’stories’ for Saturday 21 March were: ’Deux bébés sauvés des
flammes’; ’Sauvé par Pyrex’ (a dog); ’L’Agresseur du bowling’; ’Le Bonheur, c’est
simple comme un coup de fil’.
Chantal de Rudder, ’La Mahmoody connection’, Le Nouvel Observateur, 12-18 March
1992, 45.
Fabrice Pliskin, ’La télé dont vous êtes le héros’, Le Nouvel Observateur, 40.
Ibid.
.
Ibid
Ibid.
Norbert Bensaïd, ’L’illusion du "tout dire"’, Le Nouvel Observateur, 12 - 18 March
1992,42.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.