Bête Et Méchant: Politics, Editorial Cartoons and Bande Dessinée in the French Satirical Newspaper Charlie Hebdo

Bête et méchant: Politics, Editorial Cartoons and Bande dessinée in the French Satirical Newspaper Charlie hebdo

Jane Weston

Abstract The weekly French satirical newspaper, Charlie hebdo, which originally ran from 1969 to 1982, pending a revival in 1992, distinguishes itself through its bête et méchant [‘stupid and nasty’] humorous heritage, defined in its parent publication, Hara-Kiri, as the freedom to make jokes on potentially any subject, however taboo. Whilst this satirical ethos predominated in Charlie hebdo up to 1982, its enduring place in the publication has become more ambiguous since 1992, with the abrupt sacking of Siné in July 2008 seemingly belying its vigorous defence of provocative humour in the context of the 2006 Danish caricature affair. An important underlying continuity nonetheless remains in Charlie hebdo and transcends the bête et méchant project: that of negotiating a space for satirical expression that has continuously engaged with both elements of bande dessinée and the rich French tradition of polemical editorial cartooning and caricature.

Single-panelled editorial cartooning,1 bande dessinée,2 and hybridisations of the two have always coexisted in the French satirical newspaper Charlie hebdo [‘Charlie Weekly’], both within its original format, which ran from 1969 to 1982, and since its revival in 1992. One of the most important specificities of this satirical weekly publication within the French humorous press is its association with bête et méchant [‘stupid and nasty’] humour, the provocative satirical brand of the group of humorists and cartoonists who first conceived of the term in the early 1960s in the context of the monthly satirical magazine Hara-Kiri.3 Bête et méchant humour favoured scatology, sexually explicit material and black humour in general. A key early example of such spirit was a parodical, but genuine advertisement that appeared in Hara-Kiri mensuel in December

1 Editorial cartoons are defined for these purposes as single-framed cartoons intended to provide some kind of commentary on real-life events. 2 Bande dessinée is defined here as extended, multi-panelled word-image narrative on a wide variety of subject matter, fictional or otherwise. 3 The magazine first appeared in September 1960 as a ‘mensuel satirique’, changing to ‘mensuel bête et méchant’ in May 1961.

European Comic Art 2.1 ISSN 1754-3797 (print) 1754-3800 (online) © Liverpool University Press 110 jane weston 1964 for Renoma, a Parisian tailor, which claimed that the shop had been a former favourite of Hitler, who had bought all his favourite suits there. Whilst this piece provoked violent protests by Jewish deportee groups, the journal’s founder François Cavanna situates such humour within a serious justification of the group’s ethos as a determinedly de-sacralising force: Rien n’est sacré. Principe numéro un. Pas même ta propre mère, pas les martyrs juifs, pas même ceux qui crèvent de faim… Rire de tout, de tout, férocement, amère- ment, pour exorciser les vieux monstres. C’est leur faire trop d’honneur que de ne les aborder qu’avec la mine compassée. C’est justement du pire qu’il faut rire le plus fort, c’est là où ça te fait le plus mal que tu dois gratter au sang. [‘Nothing is sacred. Principle number one. Not even your own mother, not the Jewish martyrs, not even people starving of hunger… Laugh at everything, ferociously, bitterly, to exorcise the old monsters. It would pay them too much respect only to approach them with a straight face. It’s exactly about the worst things that you should laugh the loudest, it’s where it hurts the most that you should scratch until it bleeds.’]4 Defined as the freedom to laugh about potentially any subject, however taboo or sensitive, bête et méchant humour was adopted from Hara-Kiri and predomi- nant in the original Charlie hebdo up to 1982. In contrast, only an ever-dimin- ishing echo of it has persisted since 1992, although it undeniably remains, as a central tenet of Charlie hebdo’s original spirit, a key reference point in debates surrounding the publication’s current satirical tone. Over the past 15 years, the ongoing importance of bête et méchant humour in relation to Charlie hebdo has been illustrated by the growing sense of betrayal expressed by a significant portion of its readership over its turn to an increasingly serious, and less juvenile, satire, under the strong and autocratic editorship of Philippe Val.5 Under Val, the defence of a serious set of values has indeed far more explicitly nourished the newspaper’s editorial line than was ever the case in the original Charlie hebdo. In certain contexts it has chosen to place such concerns above the perpetuation of bête et méchant humour, which tends to reject barriers to provocation and jealously protect the freedom of contributors to take risks in terms of their jokes, regardless of its potential to violate seriously held moral convictions. The sacking in July 2008 of the long-standing contributor Siné for his refusal to apologise for contributing jokes seen by some to leave the newspaper open to accusations of anti-Semitism illustrates how, at least in certain contexts, the original profoundly libertarian tenets of the newspaper now take

4 François Cavanna, Bête et méchant (Paris: Belfond, 1982), 233. 5 Present-day contributor Charb stated, in interview, about the ethos in the new Charlie hebdo: ‘Méchant peut-être, bête de moins en moins. La nouvelle formule de Charlie, c’est moins des gags ou des plaisanteries gratuites qu’avant […] c’est un peu plus prétentieux qu’avant, mais c’est aussi plus politique, comme orientation’ [‘Nasty, perhaps, but less and less stupid. The new formula at Charlie is fewer gratuitous gags and jokes than before […] it’s a little more pretentious before, but it’s also a more political orientation’]. Interview of 29 January 2004. Politics, Editorial Cartoons and Bande dessinée in Charlie hebdo 111

second place to editorial prudence, even at the cost of alienating a portion of its readership.6 An important counter-balance to such changes in the satirical ethos of Charlie hebdo is the extent to which there is still aesthetic continuity with the original publication. Beyond the presence of cartoonists from the original Charlie hebdo, this is because it continues to foster the cross-pollination of elements of bande dessinée and traditional editorial cartooning in its very distinctive house style. This has, to an extent, offset its now frequently lacklustre engagement with libertarian and provocative humour as a guarantor of continuity. It is, I shall argue, the principal reason why today’s Charlie hebdo is still readily identifi- able as a ‘spiritual’ successor to the original newspaper. It continues to engage with current affairs through various forms of cartoon art. In this analysis, I shall therefore examine the evolving role of bête et méchant humour in relation to Charlie hebdo and its predecessor, Hara-Kiri, situating such changes in the context of the ongoing opportunity it accords to its cartoonists: that of negotiating a space for satirical expression which has continuously engaged both with bande dessinée and a rich French tradition of editorial cartooning and caricature dating back to the nineteenth century.

The ‘Original’ Charlie hebdo: 1969–1981 Charlie hebdo was first published under the name of Hara-Kiri hebdo in 1969, as a weekly supplement to the radically provocative satirical publication, Hara- Kiri, where bête et méchant was first created to label its satirical ethos. Hara-Kiri was founded in large part through the efforts of François Cavanna, its editor and major talent-spotter, and Georges Bernier, who was responsible for its sales and distribution and who later became one of its emblematic and anarchic bête et méchant humorists, under the pseudonym Le Professeur Choron. Cavanna’s editorship served to nourish bête et méchant humour in Hara-Kiri, due to his lucid instinct for how such humour could provide contributors and readers alike with a source of illicit, carnivalesque pleasure where painful subjects could be explored in a context of unusually high freedom from any imperatives to take them seriously.7 Humour generally taboo in the press, like jokes on the

6 In an article in Le Monde of 22 August 2008 (‘De quoi Siné est-il le nom?’ [‘Of what is Siné the Name?’]),Bernard-Henri Lévy presented Val’s decision as a response to a violation of the founding pact of Charlie hebdo. The existence of any such pact refers to the new version of Charlie hebdo rather than the original, which was never overtly explicit in terms of its prohibitions for humour: ‘Voilà un directeur – Philippe Val – qui rappelle au chroniqueur le pacte fondateur qu’est, pour Charlie hebdo, leur journal, le refus catégorique de toute forme d’antisémitisme ou de racisme et qui lui demande, en conséquence, de s’excuser ou de s’en aller’ [‘Here is a director – Philippe Val – who reminds this contributor of the founding pact which is, for Charlie hebdo, the categorical refusal of all forms of anti-Semitism or racism and which therefore asks him to apologise or to leave’]. 7 Cf. Cavanna’s autobiographical work, Bête et méchant. 112 jane weston military, death and sexuality were therefore a staple in the magazine.8 Hara-Kiri was above all created as a reaction against much of the popular humorous post-war French press, with newspapers such as Marius, Le Hérisson [‘The Hedgehog’] and L’Almanach Vermot being typical of the style rejected.9 Hara-Kiri sought to challenge thematic and aesthetic blandness with graphic images, drawing on scatological, sexually explicit material and elements of the grotesque. Its front cover photographs were exemplary in this respect, becoming increasingly shocking and facetious as the decade progressed. An example of such covers is a photograph of a naked woman wrapped in an enormous coil of boudin (March 1966). Another (July 1965) had as its headline ‘Peut-on bronzer sans soleil?’ (‘Can You Tan without the Sun?’): the woman smiles in the affirma- tive, posing on the beach with her back covered with blisteringly bright red scalds from an iron. Beyond the humorous press, post-war bande dessinée was another satirical target of the group, owing to its entrenchment within the youth market in a context of moral protectionism. Georges Wolinski, for example, contributed an adult parody for Hara-Kiri of Tintin, ‘Tintin pour les dames’, featuring drunkenness, licentiousness and a stubble-faced, motorbike riding, cigarette- smoking Tintin (July–August 1962). Cavanna was notably critical of post-war bande dessinée, having worked as a children’s bande dessinée artist in the 1950s, deeply regretting the moral sanitisation of the medium in the context of post-war France: L’heure était à la vertu, à la pureté, à la régénération. On traquait par-dessus tout la ‘vulgarité’ […] Le dessin pour enfants, pour tout petits enfants, ça ne comblait pas mes appétits profanateurs. Il me piaffait dans le ventre des besoins d’énormes ricane- ments vengeurs, mes férocités me restaient sur les bras, […] je me voulais Rabelais, je me voulais Ubu, et l’on me donnait à faire risette aux nourrissons. [‘It was a time for virtue, purity and regeneration. Above all, it was “vulgarity” that was hunted down […] Cartooning for very small children did not satisfy my profanatory appetites. I craved great, vengeful sneering laughter, I had no outlet for my ferocities […] I wanted to be Rabelais, I wanted to be Ubu, and the only thing I was given to do was to keep young children smiling.’]10

8 Contributor Gébé commented in interview (with Valérie Minerve Marin, June 2001) of bête et méchant humour: ‘On abordait des sujets qui étaient totalement tabous dans la presse. Bon, le sexe évidemment, mais aussi la mort, la religion, l’armée, tout ça.’ [‘We tackled subjects which were completely taboo in the press. Sex, of course, but also death, religion, the military, all that’]. 9 Humour in L’Almanach Vermot has been described as: ‘Plaisir du calembour exécrable [….] cet humour continue imperturbablement à brocarder belles-mères et fonctionnaires, cocus et moder- nité.’ [‘Pleasure of the execrable pun […] this humour imperturbably continues to poke fun at mothers-in-law and civil servants, cuckolds and modernity’]. See G. Verlant et al., L’Encyclopédie de l’humour français: De 1900 à nos jours [‘The Encyclopaedia of French Humour: From 1900 to the Present Day’] (Paris: Éditions Hors Collection, 2002), 17. 10 Cavanna, Bête et méchant, 35–36. Politics, Editorial Cartoons and Bande dessinée in Charlie hebdo 113

Cavanna composed a team of contributors to Hara-Kiri who often had specialist knowledge of bande dessinée, alongside that of caricature and cartooning culture in general.11 A major shared inspiration at the outset was the anarchic humour of Mad Magazine, and a key contribution of the group to the evolution of the humorous press in France was to have introduced a publication to reflect a comparable, or arguably even more radically abrasive, spirit to Mad. The group moreover combined the anarchic spirit of Mad with that of the most violent French Belle Époque caricature at the height of its popularity in L’Assiette au beurre [‘The Butter Plate’], hence reawakening a dormant tradition. As Michel Ragon points out: De 1881 a 1914, les revues satiriques se multiplient: La Caricature en 1880, Le Rire en 1894, L’Assiette au beurre en 1910. La violence, atteinte aussi bien dans le graphisme que dans l’expression, fait de cette période l’âge d’or de la caricature. Il faudra attendre les années 1960/70 pour que la caricature retrouve la vigueur, la force contestataire des années dites de la Belle Époque. De l’Assiette au beurre à Hara-Kiri et à Charlie hebdo, l’esprit est le même, superbement retrouvé après un entracte plutôt fade d’une cinquantaine d’années. [‘From 1881 to 1914 there were ever-greater numbers of satirical magazines: La Cari- cature in 1880, Le Rire [‘Laughter’] in 1894, L’Assiette au beurre in 1910. The violence of its graphic style and expression made this period the golden age of caricature. Only in the 1960s and 1970s did caricature regain the vigour and adversarial power of these Belle Époque years. The spirit of L’Assiette au beurre, Hara-Kiri and Charlie hebdo was the same, superbly revived after a rather insipid 50-year interval.’]12 Hara-Kiri served as a training ground for Charlie hebdo’s subsequent cartoon- based artwork, consisting of elements of single-panelled and strip cartoons, bande dessinée, photo-montage, short humorous prose and home-made parodies in the style of Mad. Material was deliberately diverse, but it usually converged in terms of the bête et méchant themes discussed above. There was no editorial cartooning, however, given that Hara-Kiri eschewed direct engagement with politics and current affairs. Nonetheless, the audacity of its sexually explicit and amoral tone in the context of Gaullist France made it subject to government censorship on two occasions in the 1960s.13 In both instances this arose on the grounds of representing a danger under the July 1949 law for the protection of youth morality. The second 1966 ban, largely ignored in the press, elicited support in the form of a petition from various cultural heavy-weights such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Further signatories included Louis

11 Major contributors to Hara-Kiri who went on to contribute to Charlie hebdo included Reiser, Bernier, Cabu, Wolinski, Gébé, and later Willem, Fournier and Siné. Fred and Topor were both major contributors to Hara-Kiri but left the group before the creation of Charlie hebdo. 12 Michel Ragon, ‘Antimilitarisme et caricature’, preface to Où vas-tu petit soldat? À l’abattoir! [‘Where are you Going Little Soldier? To the Slaughterhouse!’] (Paris: Éditions du Monde Libertaire, 1989). 13 The first ban fell in July 1961 and lasted until November 1961; the second fell in May 1966 and was lifted in January 1967. 114 jane weston Aragon, Jean-Christophe Averty, Francis Blanche, Jean Effel, Robert Escarpit, Edgar Morin, Raymond Queneau, Alain Resnais and Sempé. Such endorsement illustrated the capacity of bête et méchant humour in Hara- Kiri to resonate with prominent left-wing French intellectuals, despite its crude- ness and the cruelty of much of it, frequently targeting as it did the weak and disadvantaged in society without apparent remorse. The nature of the support they received from such figures suggested that a degree of intellectual cachet had been successfully grafted onto the magazine, with bête et méchant humour implicitly inviting connoisseurs of avant-garde humour to demonstrate engagement with such material as advanced irony and ‘hygienic’ black humour, rather than interpreting it as first-degree stupidity and nastiness.14 Bête et méchant humour indeed conveyed a spirit which in some ways resonated with the exis- tentialist movement, with its rejection of notions of the sacred, and implied radical doubt as to the validity of the value-based assumptions nourishing the foundations of morally conservative sensibilities. Bernier is cited by Jean-Marc Parisis in interview: J’ai découvert, longtemps après, qu’on était tous complètement agnostiques dans la bande. On ne croyait en rien, on n’avait aucun tabou, on se foutait de notre propre gueule, de tout le monde. On se marrait de la mort. On ne s’est pas convaincus les uns les autres, ça s’est fait tout seul. [‘I found out much later that we were all completely agnostic in the group. We didn’t believe in anything, we had no taboo, we took the piss out of ourselves, out of every- body. We laughed about death. We didn’t convince each other, it happened on its own.’]15 It was the events of May 1968 that served to push the group into more directly politically relevant satirical material, inaugurating a new engagement with editorial cartooning. The spontaneous success of May 1968 publications such as Action and L’Enragé and their striking visual components, to which many of the Hara-Kiri cartoonists such as Wolinski and Cabu contributed, indicated the extent to which topical political publications with visual satirical elements were now well placed to attract the endorsement of a large readership. Hara- Kiri hebdo was therefore launched in 1969 with the aim of meeting the new priorities of the readers. Odile Vaudelle, Bernier’s long-term girlfriend, recalls the importance of the 1968 events and the influence of the publications they spawned: L’Enragé n’a vécu que le temps des événements, mais il a prouvé à Cavanna, à Choron, et à toute la bande, qu’un journal collant à l’actualité, vite fait, imprimé à la diable, avec de petits moyens, non seulement était réalisable, mais avait un public.

14 Hara-Kiri fostered its association with a prestigious black humorous lineage in 1964 by featuring a ‘Guide Michelin’ of good quality humour, citing such authors as Cami, Ambrose Bierce, Tristan Bernard, Roald Dahl, Boris Vian, Alphose Allais, Groucho Marx, Jonathan Swift and Saki. 15 Jean-Marc Parisis, Reiser (Paris: Grasset, 2003), 57. Politics, Editorial Cartoons and Bande dessinée in Charlie hebdo 115

[‘L’Enragé only lasted for the period of the events, but it proved to Cavanna, Choron and all the group, that a newspaper dealing with current affairs that was quickly put together and printed at top speed without much funding was not only possible, but was in demand.’]16 Alongside this expansion into topical political cartooning, the group consoli- dated its links to bande dessinée through the creation of Charlie mensuel, which was modelled on the Italian adult bande dessinée magazine Linus and which looked to import previously ignored bande dessinée into France for the first time, as well as printing the work of bête et méchant cartoonists. Charlie mensuel was significant as the first majorbande dessinée magazine specifically for adults in France.17 Hara-Kiri’s cartoonists were able to expand both into bande dessinée for adults for publication in Charlie mensuel, and into militant editorial cartooning for Hara-Kiri hebdo. Their renewal with the spirit of the anarchic caricature of the Belle Époque thus went hand in hand with making inroads into a rapidly evolving bande dessinée market, with its new emphasis on adult material. There was therefore a particularly strong basis for cross-fertilisation between the genres in their work, as reflected in the pages of Charlie hebdo. The turn to politics and current affairs in Hara-Kiri hebdo and the launch of Charlie mensuel as a specialised bande dessinée publication came at the vanguard of the wider shift in post-68 France where commercially oriented cartooning became increasingly liberated in tone, embracing politics and sexuality and other primarily ‘adult’ topics, as the publishing repressions of post-war concern for youth purity were swept away. Many of the Hara-Kiri group became explicitly politically engaged in their work for the first time as a result of May 68, linking their provocative humour to the spirit of the movement with an increasingly sincere militancy that had previously been absent in Hara-Kiri, in the context of a highly morally conservative society.18 Such concern to take full advantage of the changed spirit of the early 1970s was undoubtedly fuelled

16 Odile Vaudelle and Christian Bobet, Moi, Odile, la femme à Choron: La petite histoire de Hara-Kiri et Charlie hebdo [‘Me, Odile, Wife of Choron: The Tale of Hara-Kiri and Charlie hebdo’] (Paris: Menges, 1983), 153. 17 As Ratier argues, ‘Cette période va donc permettre l’éclosion de la BD dite pour adultes. Si V Maga- zine, Hara-Kiri et Pilote en sont les parrains, le premier père spirituel est Charlie mensuel’ [‘This period thus marked the blossoming of so-called adult bande dessinée. If V Magazine, Hara-Kiri and Pilote were its godfathers, its first spiritual father was Charlie mensuel’]. See Gilles Ratier, Avant la case: Histoire de la bande dessinée francophone du XXe siècle racontée par des scénaristes [‘Before the Frame: The History of the Twentieth-Century French-Language Comic Strip as Told by the Writers’] (Paris: PLG, 2002), 63. 18 Wolinski commented of his experiences of May 68: ‘Moi, j’y croyais sincèrement et je m’amusais en même temps. Il y avait un vent de liberté, d’utopie et d’humour dans tout ça. Les affiches étaient belles, c’était très excitant, les rues, les barricades. Je ne croyais pas qu’il existait une jeunesse aussi sensible aux injustices d’une société vieillissante’ [‘I believed in it sincerely and I had fun at the same time. There was a wave of freedom, utopia and humour in it all. The posters were beautiful, it was very exciting, the streets, the barricades. I didn’t believe that young people were so sensitive to the injustices of an aging society’]. See Laurence Garcia and Cabu, Cabu 68 (Paris: Actes Sud, 2008), 56. 116 jane weston by their anger over earlier governmental censorship of Hara-Kiri. Hara-Kiri hebdo therefore brought bête et méchant spirit into the militant political arena, where in the words of Jean-Marc Parisis, the following ethos prevailed: ‘Tous les camps sont pourris, sauf le leur. Le camp de l’humour brutal, de la dérision absolue, choquante, hygiénique. Le camp des hommes détestant les camps, l’information, la publicité’ [‘All sides are corrupt, except theirs. The side of brutal, absolute, shocking and hygienic humour. The side taken by people who hate taking sides, who hate the news and advertising’].19 Hara-Kiri hebdo was subject to debate in the media for the first time when it notoriously greeted the death of General de Gaulle in 1969 with the bald headline: ‘Bal tragique à Colombey: 1 mort’ [‘Tragic Dance at Colombey: One Death’]. The headline cross-referenced the tragic events of a few weeks previously, in which over 40 young people had been killed at a fire in a discotheque at Saint-Laurent-du-Pont. It was Georges Bernier who thought of the headline. Such a front-page cover was unusual, its lack of cartoon making it a somewhat ironic point of singular notoriety for the humour of a group whose work was usually so entrenched in cartooning. Within a week of the headline, the newspaper was banned by the Interior Minister, Raymond Marcelin, putatively on the grounds of pornographic content but, as was widely acknowledged elsewhere in the press, in retribution for the ‘bal tragique’ headline. The censorship was universally condemned in the press, regardless of the reservations of certain newspapers such as France-Soir about the quality or acceptability of bête et méchant humour in general.20 This support emboldened the group to face the small but real risk of imprisonment and they immedi- ately relaunched the publication under the new title of Charlie hebdo, dated 23 November 1970. This adaptation of the bande dessinée magazine’s title was again illustrative of how bande dessinée and bête et méchant satire intermingled in the context of the group’s ongoing projects. The first issue ofCharlie hebdo indeed featured a cartoon strip from Peanuts, which continued Charlie mensuel’s introduction of Schulz’s work into France, but this series was discontinued in Charlie hebdo when it became apparent that the newspaper would be toler- ated, despite being a revamped Hara-Kiri in all but name. There was therefore no need to present itself as a weekly supplement to Charlie mensuel with a new emphasis on bande dessinée imports. With Hara-Kiri hebdo renamed as Charlie hebdo, the publicity coup of the

19 Jean-Marc Parisis, Reiser, 55. 20 France-Soir (19 November 1970) commented: ‘Quels que puissent être les motifs des mesures frap- pant Hara-Kiri, France-Soir qui a été souvent victime de l’esprit bête et méchant de cette publication, ne peut que déplorer ces mesures […] La liberté de la presse est un bloc. Elle impose qu’on accepte la licence, la stupidité, la malhonnêteté intellectuelle’ [‘Whatever the motives might be for the measures taken against Hara-Kiri, France-Soir, which has often fallen victim to the bête et méchant spirit of the publication, can only deplore these measures […] The freedom of the press exists as a block. It demands that we accept licentiousness, stupidity and intellectual dishonesty’]. Politics, Editorial Cartoons and Bande dessinée in Charlie hebdo 117

‘bal tragique’ dramatically boosted readership numbers, and the first half of the 1970s marked a period of rapid expansion of Bernier’s Paris-based parent publishing company, Les Éditions du Square, with compilations of the work of individual bête et méchant contributors being published in album format as part of the Série bête et méchante.21 Meanwhile Charlie hebdo consistently featured elements of bande dessinée, conventional editorial cartooning, longer texts and hybrids of these elements. This style contrasted with the largely text-dominated format of its distant weekly satirical rival, Le Canard enchaîné,22 which had continued to perpetuate the turn away from caricature to text-based satirical material in the topical satirical press from its creation in 1915.23 Bête et méchant humour as it had existed in Hara-Kiri resonated reasonably well with Charlie hebdo’s post-68 readership in the early 1970s, but contributors were also sensitive to the readership demand for a more positive political engagement through a form of less satirically destructive material.24 The work of Gébé in Charlie hebdo is exemplary in this respect, and was also stylistically innovative by the way it favoured a loosely framed bande dessinée-esque format, within which long textual elements intermingled with a diffuse visual narrative with no strict order being determined for the reading of the page. In the series L’An 01 [‘Year 01’],25 he created a utopian project calling for society to put a temporary end to traditional employment structures, to allow for prolonged critical reflection over more meaningful and pleasurable ways of living for the future. Such work became emblematic of the new politicised use of bande dessinée-related pieces in Charlie hebdo. Beyond L’An 01, another important example of politically engaged bande dessinée in Charlie hebdo was the work of Cabu, who put satirical commentary to the purpose of investigative reporting, creating a series of BD-reportages on his travels around France, where he would undertake investigative work

21 Examples of albums produced by Les Éditions du Square at the time include Cabu’s Les Aventures de Madame Pompidou (1973), Cavanna’s L’Aurore de l’humanité: Et le singe devint con [‘The Dawn of Humanity: And the Monkey Became an Arsehole’] (1972), Gébé’s Il est fou [‘He’s Mad’] (1971) and Reiser’s La Vie des bêtes [‘The Life of Dumb Animals’] (1974). 22 Literally ‘The Chained Duck’, the title is a play on ‘canard’ as slang for ‘newspaper’. 23 See A. Ziv, ed., National Styles of Humor (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1988). See in particular page 75. 24 Parisis indeed goes as far as to argue: ‘Les idées de Mai ont affranchi les anciens lecteurs du journal, créé une nouvelle demande que la ligne dure bête et méchant du mensuel ne peut satisfaire. Pour les lycéens, les étudiants, les profs dessalés, les communautaires, les cadres progressistes ou révolutionnaires, enfin le vivier de marginaux et de travailleurs intellectuels qui constituait la majeure partie du lectorat d’Hara-Kiri, l’heure est à la recherche de nouvelles formes de vie, au travail du réel’ [‘The ideas of May emancipated the old readers of the newspapers, creating a new demand that the hard bête et méchant line could not satisfy. For the high school students, university students, demystified teachers, the communitarians, the progressive or revolutionary cadre, indeed the stock of outsiders and intellectual workers which made up the major part of Hara-Kiri’s readership, the time had come to search for new ways of life, to try and change reality’]. See Parisis, Reiser, 99. 25 Gébé, L’An 01 (Paris: Éditions du Square, 1972). 118 jane weston at the invitation of readers.26 Contributions such as this from the early 1970s mark some of the earliest examples in France of bande dessinée as documentary and as personal testimony, although Cabu rarely represented himself directly within his work, other than within the textual narrative of the pieces. A notable example of Cabu’s approach was a piece on slum clearance problems in Nice that appeared in Charlie hebdo of 25 June 1973. Shocked by what he saw, and determined to report the extent of the squalor, he attacked the mayor of the city, Jacques Médecin, for corruption and his failure to address the problem. Condemning Médecin for giving higher priority to municipal projects such as city beautification, he reported on how these were often used to conceal the ever-increasing number of parking meters in the city, which were being installed by a company in which Médecin’s wife was a major shareholder. Médecin sued Cabu for 210,000 francs for these corruption allegations. Cabu lost the case but received a fine of only 300 francs, rather than the sum originally demanded. Such cases illustrated the capacity of bande dessinée in Charlie hebdo to provoke controversy and to militate for change. Cabu was particularly concerned to be perceived as a serious journalist and commentator, rather than simply a provocative humorist, although remaining loyal to the tenets of bête et méchant humour.27 Such work in Charlie hebdo often reflected a degree of creative hybridisation between bande dessinée and single-panelled editorial cartooning. For instance, in elements of the work of Reiser and Cabu, rather than creating multiple panels, they would often convey complex narrative in multi-layered, fluid stages within a large single panel sometimes taking up a whole page. Cabu comments on the difference between this style, pure bande dessinée and traditional editorial cartoons, situating the origins of such work in Hara-Kiri: Reiser parlait à propos de nos styles de dessin séquencé. C’est une manière de jouer de l’espace bien plus libre et surtout définitivement en rupture avec les canons ou dessins humoristiques ou même ceux de la BD. Cela vient de ‘Hara-Kiri’ où nous voulions nous exprimer avec une écriture, un langage différents, sorte de contrepoint à notre humour noir et incisif. [‘Reiser referred to our styles as sequenced cartoons. It was a much freer way to play with space and, above all, definitively a break from the canons of humorous cartooning or even bande dessinée. It started with Hara-Kiri, where we wanted to express ourselves with a kind of writing, a sort of counterpoint to our black, cutting humour.’]28

26 See the interview with Cabu published in this issue of European Comic Art. 27 In Le Figaro of 22 May 1973 Cabu defined his position as follows: ‘Je cherche à faire rire tout d’abord, mais je suis un journaliste politique. Je fais mon métier de dessinateur. Je ne m’attaque pas à une personne, mais à ce qu’elle représente. À Charlie hebdo, on cherche à faire reculer les limites du bon goût, qui est une notion bourgeoise dont on n’a que faire. Il faut secouer les gens, il faut dire les choses’ [‘I try to make people laugh first and foremost, but I am a political journalist. I carry out my trade as a cartoonist. I don’t attack individuals, but what they represent. At Charlie hebdo, we try to push back the limits of good taste, which is a bourgeois notion we couldn’t care less about. You have to shake people up, you have to say things’]. 28 Cabu, Cabu et Paris (Paris: Connaissance des Arts Hors Série, 2006), 11. Politics, Editorial Cartoons and Bande dessinée in Charlie hebdo 119

More traditional single-panelled dessin de presse also featured greatly in Charlie hebdo, however, and whilst such work marked a departure from Hara- Kiri, it harked back to a more traditional form of caricature dating from the nineteenth century,29 capitalising on the editorial punch of such single-panelled pieces, which would often convey some of the newspaper’s bluntest messages. Favoured topics included the defence of the environment, anti-militarism, the ridicule of religion, and animal rights issues. Charlie hebdo’s front covers particularly revived the pamphleteering force of the genre as had previously existed in publications such as L’ Assiette au beurre.30 Blunt messages conveyed as headlines to its editorial cartoons included: ‘Votez con, vous n’avez pas le choix’ [‘Vote like an Arsehole, You Don’t Have a Choice’] (15 March 1971); ‘La Lune, on s’en fout!’ [‘We Don’t Give a Damn about the Moon’] (21 July 1969); and ‘Chasseurs = sales cons’ [‘Hunters = Dirty Arseholes’] (13 September 1971). The unusually strong impact of this revived aesthetic of editorial cartooning was felt on various occasions when its insolence leaked beyond the pages of the newspaper. For instance, two weeks after a cartoon by Wolinski representing Michel Debré as a madman with a funnel on his head, frothing at the mouth (Charlie hebdo 20 November 1972), there was a demonstration of over 200,000 people in Paris against Debré, where large numbers of participants marched with funnels on their heads in reference to the gag.31 The freedom of tone and of style accorded to contributors to Charlie hebdo served as inspiration for subsequent bande dessinée-related publications, including L’Écho des Savanes from 1972. Competition from the publication, however, contributed to the reduced demand for Hara-Kiri and Charlie hebdo, although it also provided some bête et méchant contributors with a new forum for their work. Bernier later wrote bitterly: L’arrivée de L’Écho des Savanes coïncide avec la chute de Hara-Kiri. Pourquoi? Parce que le lecteur est un enfoiré, un infidèle. C’est toujours la recherche de la nouveauté. Donc est arrivé L’Echo des Savanes, et qu’est-ce qu’ils ont trouvé dedans? Wolinski. Reiser. [‘The arrival of L’Écho des Savanes coincided with the fall of Hara-Kiri. Why? Because readers are unfaithful scoundrels. Always looking for novelty. So L’Echo des Savanes turned up and what did they find in it? Wolinski. Reiser.]’32 Moreover, the editorial cartooning of the group came to be in demand by non-satirical publications, such as Le Nouvel Observateur (Reiser) or Paris-Match

29 Examples of journals featuring such caricature are La Caricature, Le Charivari and the later L’Assiette au beurre. 30 The front covers of Charlie hebdo most commonly featured a single editorial cartoon which was selected each week by the whole team, with the week’s other editorial cartoons being published under a separate section entitled ‘Les Couvertures auxquelles vous avez échappé’ [‘The Covers You Missed Out On’]. 31 Cf. Odile Vaudelle, Moi, Odile, la femme à Choron, 192. 32 Georges Bernier [Le Professeur Choron], Vous me croirez si vous voulez [‘It’s Up to You Whether You Believe Me’] (Paris: Flammarion, 1993), 190. 120 jane weston and L’Humanité (Wolinski). Charlie hebdo continued only until January 1982, due to falling readership numbers and the mounting debts of Les Éditions du Square, which had overextended itself and which was fatally hampered by Bernier’s casual accountancy, which he concealed until it was too late for anyone else to do anything about it.33 Charlie hebdo also failed because its bête et méchant comic spirit lost its original novelty value in the absence of the morally restrictive, taboo-ridden publishing context of its origins. This was discussed in depth in January 1982 on TF1 in Michel Polac’s Droit de réponse [‘Right to Reply’] dedicated to the newspaper’s demise.34 One invited guest, the journalist and author Dominique Jamet indeed argued: Charlie hebdo a été un très, très grand journal […] Charlie hebdo, comme Hara-Kiri, a gagné la célébrité lorsqu’il a été censuré, après le fameux titre […] C’était l’époque héroïque de Charlie hebdo, c’était une époque où il y’avait censure et barrières. Et lorsque nous sommes entrés dans une époque où ces tabous n’étaient plus interdits, Charlie hebdo a enfoncé des portes ouvertes. [‘Charlie hebdo was a very great publication […] Charlie hebdo, like Hara-Kiri, became famous once it had been censored after the famous headline […] It was Charlie hebdo’s heroic period, it was a period when there was censorship and barriers. And when we reached the period when these taboos were no longer forbidden, Charlie hebdo broke down open doors’].35 The newspaper thus ultimately failed to renew itself sufficiently in a changed societal context. Moreover, the consensus was that Charlie hebdo was no longer fashionable in the eyes of a new, younger generation, who no longer felt connected to the 68 protest movement, and who found the newspaper’s irrev- erent spirit increasingly available elsewhere in the media, for instance even in the style of Libération.36 However, the outpouring of protest from readers at its disbanding indeed indicated a continued demand for its material, and high- lighted the extent to which the newspaper was still valued by many, even if they no longer always regularly purchased it. Jean-François Kahn provided a fitting tribute to the newspaper’s impact in January 1981: Charlie hebdo, ça a quand même été un événement. On aime, on aime pas, on a pu être choqué, parfois […] mais on ne peut pas nier que ça a été un événement dans la

33 See Cavanna in Cabu 68, 56. 34 The programme gained a notoriety of its own as a result of its drunken participants coming to blows. 35 Droit de réponse, TF1, 2 January 1982. 36 Bernier comments: ‘Et s’amène le quotidien Libération. On lui avait montré la voie. Il s’est mis à faire quotidiennement ce que faisait Charlie hebdo. Il donnait les informations parallèles qu’on avait l’habitude de donner. Ils ont carrément piqué le ton d’insolence, même certains titres de rubriques […] Libération nous a vraiment aidé à crever!’ [‘Then there was Libération. We had cleared a path for it. It began to do every day what Charlie hebdo did. It gave out the parallel information we were used to giving. They completely stole the insolent tone, even the titles of some columns […] Libération really helped kill us off’]. See Georges Bernier [Le Professeur Choron], Vous me croirez si vous voulez, 185. Politics, Editorial Cartoons and Bande dessinée in Charlie hebdo 121

presse et dans le temps, que Charlie hebdo apportait une façon différente de parler des choses, on n’osait pas parler d’une certain manière ou de dire des choses sur certains événements, sur certaines personnes, sur certaines valeurs. [‘Charlie hebdo was certainly significant. You can like it or not, you can be shocked sometimes […] but you can’t deny that it was significant in the press and in its time, that Charlie hebdo brought a different way of speaking about things, people didn’t dare to speak in a certain way or to say things about certain events, or certain people, or certain values.’]37

The ‘New’ Charlie hebdo: 1992–the Present Day Charlie hebdo was relaunched in 1992 under Philippe Val’s editorship.38 The relaunch owed a certain amount to chance, alongside the concerted willpower of a core group which included many members of the original bête et méchant team, but with Cavanna now only one of the contributors, rather than the editor. The revival of Charlie hebdo was certainly not a foregone conclusion, but was the consequence of Val breaking away from the satirical publication La Grosse Bertha [‘Big Bertha’], accompanied by contributors to the new Charlie hebdo.39 There was widespread interest at the outset from former readers of Charlie hebdo, nostalgic for the provocative excesses of the original bête et méchant project.40 Charlie hebdo was fortunate once again to attract a full team of cartoonists, as well as the additional collaboration of the left-wing singer-songwriter, Renaud. Previous contributors to Charlie hebdo who returned to collaborate with Val included Cavanna, Cabu, Gébé, Wolinski, Willem and Siné. Bernier was a notable exception, however, as he was not approached as a collaborator and remained estranged from the newspaper up to his death in 2005.41 This in part indicated the incompatibility of Bernier with Val, who very quickly estab- lished himself at the head of the publication with a degree of authority that had

37 On Midi 2, France 2, 3 January 1982. 38 Val was originally a chansonnier who rose to prominence in the 1970s as part of a successful comic musical duo with Patrick Font, Font et Val, before turning to journalism, contributing notably to Libération at the beginning of the 1990s, where he met Cabu. 39 Val co-founded La Grosse Bertha in 1991 with Jean-Cyrille Godefroy, on the single issue of attacking the first Gulf War. 40 In an article entitled ‘Cabu et Val: Duettistes’ that appeared in Le Nouvel Observateur of 13 August 2008, Delfeil de Ton comments on the instant success of the revived title of Charlie hebdo: ‘Sur la légende du titre, les annonces partout dans la presse, le 20-heures de TF1, etc., 150.000 exem- plaires du premier numéro vendus, 200.000, je ne sais. C’est la valeur patrimoniale du titre qui fait le succès immédiat. Pas eu besoin de dépenser un sou et de quoi déjà tenir des mois’ [‘On the back of the legend of the title, announcements were made in the press, on the TF1 8pm news, etc., 150,000 copies were sold of the first issue, or even 200,000, I don’t know. It was the patrimonial value of the title that made for its immediate success. No need to invest a penny and already there was enough to last months’]. 41 The title Charlie hebdo had never been officially declared under Bernier’s name, despite his former position as director of Hara-Kiri and Charlie hebdo. He unsuccessfully sued for the rights in 1993, which were attributed by the judge to Cavanna. 122 jane weston not existed in the original, consciously egalitarian, editorial structure of Charlie hebdo.42 The continued importance within Charlie hebdo of bande dessinée, editorial cartooning and the hybridisation of these was apparent from the outset, although lengthier editorials also became a more dominant feature of the new publication. Various younger cartoonists were key to the new team, including Charb, Luz, Tignous, Jul, Honoré and, since 2004, the first female cartoonist, Catherine. These contributors nonetheless often cite the older members and the bête et méchant ethos as a key inspiration for their work. For instance, Tignous told me in interview: Je suis un fils spirituel deHara-Kiri , de Charlie d’avant, forcément. Mais au même titre que La Gueule ouverte, de Siné massacre, de L’Énragé, enfin de toute cette généra- tion. Enfin de tous les gens qui ont essayé de faire passer une idée à travers la blague. Pas seulement à faire: ‘ha ha ha’, et puis, rien. [‘I am a spiritual son of Hara-Kiri, of the old Charlie, definitely. In the same way asLa Gueule ouverte [‘The Open Mouth’], Siné massacre, L’Enragé, of that whole generation. All those people who tried to convey ideas through their jokes, not simply to make people laugh, and then nothing.’]43 The layout of the new Charlie hebdo up to 2005 was very similar to the original. Many contributors were allocated a regular slot in the newspaper to fill as they pleased, with the remainder of the space being shared by its journalists and used for collaborative pieces. It also regularly included full- or even double-page cartoon ‘frescos’ on a given theme from the week’s news, conveying numerous humorous mini-narratives within the wide optic of the single frame. The work of the cartoonist Luz was often printed in such a format.44 Luz also moved into bande dessinée proper via the production of fanzines, after which he published the autobiographical piece, Cambouis, documenting his experiences of the aftermath of Jean-Marie Le Pen reaching the second round of the 2002 presi- dential elections.45 From 2005, Charlie hebdo introduced the use of multiple colours within the same edition for the first time, which favoured a move to a more modern, bande dessinée inclusive format. It also took the step of inviting new contributors from

42 In a Télérama article of 24 July 2008 (‘L’Honneur perdu de Charlie hebdo’ [‘Charlie hebdo’s Lost Honour’]) Stéphane Mazurier writes critically of the change in ethos this brought to the newspaper: ‘Aujourd’hui, il y a bien un chef, c’est Philippe Val et personne d’autre. Et alors? […] Le problème est précisément que Charlie hebdo ne devrait pas être un journal comme les autres, qu’il a été fondé il y a près de 40 ans pour proposer autre chose que la presse traditionnelle’ [‘Today, there is clearly a boss, it’s Philippe Val and no one else… So what? […] The problem is precisely that Charlie hebdo should not be just another newspaper, it was founded nearly 40 years ago to offer an alternative to the traditional press’]. 43 Interview with Tignous, 29 January 2004. 44 In interview Luz told me that he found that he preferred such a style, alongside a bande dessinée, to the simple editorial cartoon, which did not allow him sufficiently to convey the complexity of his responses to political events (interview of 29 January 1994). 45 Luz, Cambouis (Paris: L’Association, 2002). Politics, Editorial Cartoons and Bande dessinée in Charlie hebdo 123

bande dessinée, such as Joann Sfar, who contributed from 2005 to 2006 with a column entitled Mon Cahier d’éveil [‘My Early-Learning Notebook’], where he presented his thoughts on the week’s events in a fluid, single-panelled format similar to that pioneered by Reiser and Cabu. Since 2006, Riad Sattouf has also contributed a weekly strip, entitled La Vie des jeunes [‘The Lives of Young People’], where he presents anecdotes of everyday, yet incongruous and soci- ologically disturbing occurrences involving young people witnessed over the previous week. Charlie hebdo cartoonist Riss has spanned the traditional dessin de presse, bande dessinée and hybrids of these in his published work in the newspaper. As well as producing punchy editorial cartoons, which are frequently selected for the front cover, he has moved into creating often grotesque cartoon ‘frescos’ for the newspaper, as well as branching into bande dessinée. Most notably, in 2006 he worked alongside Charlie hebdo’s lawyer, Richard Malka, and the investigative journalist, Philippe Cohen, to produce what was announced as ‘la première BD-enquête’ [‘The First Investigative Journalism in BD’], which presented the background to the political rise of Nicolas Sarkozy, starting from his childhood, in La Face karchée de Sarkozy,46 and enjoying commercial and critical success. A follow-up, entitled Nicolas 1er, was published in 2007,47 and in November 2008 the group published a new BD-enquête, still on Nicolas Sarkozy and with the addition of his wife, Carla Bruni: Carla et Carlito.48 Following the example of George Bernier’s Les Éditions du Square, Charlie hebdo has regularly produced compilations of the work of its cartoonists, as well as thematic compilations, published by its parent publishing company, Les Éditions Rotative. These have included the multi-volume autobiography of Siné,49 which took the same format as his regular column in Charlie hebdo up to July 2007, Siné sème sa zone [‘Siné Spreads Havoc’], a hybrid of political cartooning and written editorial, in which his editorial commentaries are handwritten, and columns are drawn by hand with cartoons interspersed, around which his texts are arranged. Published thematic compilations based on work in Charlie hebdo have included ones on the subject of the Pope (Les Années Jean-Paul II [‘The Jean- Paul II Years’]),50 and Chirac (La Success story du président).51 In September 2008,

46 Philippe Cohen, Richard Malka and Riss, La Face karchée de Sarkozy (Paris: Vents d’Ouest/Fayard, 2006). The title is a play on ‘the hidden side of Sarkozy’ [‘face cachée’] and a reference to the high- powered Karcher hoses with which Sarkozy suggested that a tough working-class housing estate might be cleaned. 47 Philippe Cohen, Richard Malka and Riss, Nicolas 1er (Paris: Éditions Rotative, 2007). 48 Philippe Cohen, Richard Malka and Riss, Carla et Carlito (Paris: Vents d’Ouest/Fayard, 2008). 49 Siné, Ma Vie, mon oeuvre, mon cul! [‘My Life, My Work, My Arse’] (Paris: Les Éditions Rotative, 1999). 50 Riss, ed., Charlie hebdo présente les années Jean-Paul II (Paris: Hoëbeke, 2005). 51 Cabu, Charb, Gébé, Honoré, Jul, Luz, Riss, Tignous, Willem and Wolinski, La Success story du président (Paris: Hoëbeke, 2006). 124 jane weston the group launched a further publishing house, Éditions Les Échappés. This publishing house represents an exciting new development, as announced on its newly launched website in September 2008: Afin de poursuivre le travail au-delà de l’actualité hebdomadaire, Les Échappés publie- ront des BD politiques, des reportages écrits ou dessinés, des chroniques, des enquêtes, et éditeront aussi des dessins de presse. Le programme des parutions comportera archives et créations originales. [‘In order to continue its work beyond weekly current affairs,Les Échappés [‘The Escapees’] will publish political bande dessinée, written or drawn reporting, chron- icles, investigative reporting, and will also edit editorial cartoons. The publishing programme will include archive material and original creations.’]52 Meanwhile, Charlie hebdo has continued the tradition of printing eye- catching, and frequently provocative, front-page covers featuring a single large- scale editorial cartoon. One of its most striking (12 November 2001), with a bête et méchant edge, was a front page cartoon by Cabu in response to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, which illustrated the newspaper’s continued predilection for irreverence bordering on bad taste. It featured a stockbroker in one of the Trade Center towers watching one of the aeroplanes heading for his window whilst shouting into his telephone: ‘Vendez!’ [‘Sell!’]. The fact that the newspaper was willing to print this in the direct aftermath of the event situates it within a mode of humour that is usually only found in informal, anonymous contexts, such as drinking venues or on the internet, as explored by sociologist Elliott Oring.53 Charlie hebdo has been subject to numerous trials in the context of its cartooning, the majority of which it has won, which was not the case with the original Charlie hebdo and Hara-Kiri.54 In December 1996 , however, it did lose a case on appeal, over a cartoon by Riss that had used illustrations to encourage those against the Pope’s policies on contraception and abortion to defecate in the fonts of their local churches. Despite this kind of provocative humour, the present-day Charlie hebdo is primarily committed to the defence, through provocative satire, of a number of serious values, including that of laïcité. Val has explicitly defined these as follows: Il n’y a pas de controverse sur la ligne éditoriale. Celle-ci n’est d’ailleurs pas une ligne, mais une charte générale édictée par François Cavanna, le fondateur du journal. Il y fait obligation d’être fidèle à la laïcité, à la défense de l’écologie, aux principes démocratiques, aux idéaux des Lumières, aux droits de l’Homme, à la lutte contre le racisme et l’antisémitisme et à la dénonciation de la cruauté contre les animaux.

52 Source: http://www.charliehebdo.fr (accessed 1 March 2009). 53 Elliott Oring, Jokes and their Relations (Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1992). 54 Val spoke in interview (2 February 2004) of the impact of such court cases: ‘Procès, la plupart on a gagné. On a fait avancer le droit de la presse. Il y a des jurisprudences sur Charlie hebdo. On est content de ça’ [‘We have won most of our court cases. We have contributed to the advancement of press law. There are jurisprudences relating to Charlie hebdo. We are happy about that’]. Politics, Editorial Cartoons and Bande dessinée in Charlie hebdo 125

[‘There is no controversy over the editorial line. It’s not a line in any event, but a general charter set by François Cavanna, the founder of the newspaper. It demands loyalty to laïcité, the defence of ecology, democratic principles, the ideals of the Enlightenment, the struggle against racism and anti-Semitism and the condemnation of cruelty to animals.’]55 Whilst bête et méchant humour was preoccupied with making jokes on sensitive topics as a matter of principle, under Val Charlie hebdo’s satire is presented as la résistance joyeuse, or joyful militancy.56 Such favouring of serious political values is rarely open to the unchecked original spirit of bête et méchant humour, with carnivalesque obscenity being held back if it is deemed necessary for the coherence of the newspaper’s critical message. If provocative humour is perceived a useful tool to further its serious agenda, however, Charlie hebdo is quick to defend its use, drawing on its bête et méchant heritage if necessary. This was particularly apparent in the context of the newspaper’s most high- profile court case to date, which concerned its handling of the Danish caricature affair.57 Charlie hebdo had produced a special edition, dated 8 February 2006, wherein it reproduced the series of caricatures of the prophet Mohamed that had originally been commissioned by the Danish broadsheet newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and that had resulted in violent orchestrated international protests. In addition to reproducing the original cartoons, the Charlie hebdo team produced further ones of its own, including an editorial front cover cartoon by Cabu, in which the prophet covers his face in his hands and laments, ‘C’est dur d’être aimé par des cons’ [‘It’s hard to be loved by arseholes’] alongside the headline ‘Mohammed débordé par les intégristes’ [‘Mohammed Overcome by Integrists’]. Con was a clearly inflammatory term, but also one which resonated with the predilection for the use of con as an adjective within Hara-Kiri and the old Charlie hebdo to describe the abject quality of humanity in general. Charlie hebdo’s satirical material on the caricature affair was defended at the trial as intended vigorously to defend the right to mock religion in the context of laïcité, regardless of the sensibilities of believers. This message of disregard for sensitivities and the right to provocative humour once more appealed to its legacy of bête et méchant spirit. The February 2007 trial for incitement to racial hatred, led by the Grande Mosquée de Paris, the Union des Organisa- tions Islamiques en France and the Ligue Islamique Mondiale, resulted in the newspaper’s acquittal, much to its triumph. Alongside that of numerous other politicians and prominent public figures,

55 Interview of 2 February 2004. 56 Val stated of this spirit (interview of 2 February 2004): ‘Je disais simplement que c’était dégueu- lasse quand on rencontre des militants qui disent: “Moi, je sacrifie ma vie à cette cause”. Et moi je dis: “Arrête! Fais autre chose!” Si tu n’en tires pas de bonheur, ça n’a pas de justification’ [‘I simply said that it was disgusting to meet militants who announce “I’m sacrificing my life to this cause”. I say, “Stop! Do something else!” If you don’t get happiness from it, there’s no justification’]. 57 On the subject, see the article by Plantu in this volume. 126 jane weston Charlie hebdo received a statement of support from Nicolas Sarkozy at the trial, who, eager to climb aboard this particular electoral bandwagon, argued for ‘la liberté de sourire de tout’, a message which also clearly echoed that of the bête et méchant ethos, albeit tempered into the idea of ‘smile’ rather than ‘laugh’. In his verdict of 22 March 2007 the judge, Jean-Claude Magendie, moreover also situated the right to laugh within the broader accepted tradition of provocative satire in France: Toute caricature s’analyse en un portrait qui s’affranchit du bon goût pour remplir une fonction parodique, que ce soit sur le mode burlesque ou grotesque […] [L]’exagération fonctionne alors à la manière du mot d’esprit qui permet de contourner la censure, d’utiliser l’ironie comme instrument de critique sociale et politique, en faisant appel au jugement et au débat. [‘All caricature is read as a portrait that emancipates itself from good taste to fulfil a parodical function, whether in the burlesque or grotesque mode […] [E]xaggeration functions in the same way as jokes that allow for censorship to be eluded, for irony to be used as an instrument of political and social critique, by calling for critical judg- ment and debate.’] With this successfully defended case, Charlie hebdo therefore once again found itself testing the limits of free speech. It was probably never in great danger of losing, given the absence of blasphemy laws in France, but this did not detract from the media attention the case attracted. Whilst the provocative humour of the newspaper in the Danish caricature affair fitted cleanly into Charlie hebdo’s commitment to the defence of laïcité, in July 2008, its prior insistence on the right to laugh at everything was proven not to apply to Siné, who was sacked from the newspaper for his joking material, which had nevertheless passed unnoticed prior to publication of the issue in question. Tensions had long existed between Val and certain other contributors to Charlie hebdo, who still strongly valued, wherever possible, a more global, taboo-breaking and anarchic content.58 Siné was exemplary in this case and had even shunned editorial meetings at the new Charlie hebdo from the outset, due to his aversion to their overly earnest atmosphere. His work was simply faxed in on a weekly basis. In his column of 2 July 2008, he attacked Nicolas Sarkozy’s son, Jean Sarkozy, for opportunism in his forthcoming marriage to the millionaire Jewish heiress Jessica Sebaoun, citing rumours that he would be converting to Judaism for the occasion and would therefore go far in life. For Val, this comment perpetuated an odious form of anti-Semitic stereotype by linking Judaism with financial success. On 8 July 2008, Siné’s article was denounced on the radio station RTL’s On Refait le monde [‘Let’s Change the World’] programme by the Nouvel Observateur journalist Claude Askolovitch, a personal friend of Val, who referred to it as ‘un article antisémite dans un journal qui ne l’est pas’ [‘an anti-semitic article

58 Some ceased collaboration with Charlie hebdo, most notably Lefred Thoron. Politics, Editorial Cartoons and Bande dessinée in Charlie hebdo 127

in a newspaper that is not’]. Siné was subsequently sacked from the newspaper when he refused to apologise in conjunction with the publication of a unanimous condemnation of his comments, to be signed by the entire Charlie hebdo team. His removal from Charlie hebdo generated both widespread readership uproar, which was often vented on the internet, and intense discussions in the media, which went on throughout the summer of 2008. Much of the uproar centred around the apparent double standards of a newspaper which had vocally defended the freedom to laugh at everything in the context of the Danish caricature affair, implicitly drawing on itsbête et méchant lineage, but which had then shown such an uncompromising reaction to Siné. A petition in his support was drawn up on the initiative of Éric Martin, Benoît Delépine and Lefred Thouron, and the fact that it rapidly gathered over 20,000 signatures indicates the strength of the feelings aroused, stemming from frustration with the perceived incoherence of the newspaper’s humorous ethos as it exists today.59 Indignation was also expressed by commentators who might potentially have been expected to keep a degree of distance. For instance, in the Télérama article entitled ‘L’Honneur perdu de Charlie hebdo’ (see above), cultural historian Stéphane Mazurier argued that the paper was no longer worthy of its old title, given its treatment of Siné: En virant Siné, Val élimine un des derniers bastions de résistance interne au journal. Charlie hebdo est mort. Pourquoi conserver ce titre ? Il y a tromperie sur la marchan- dise, sinon publicité mensongère. En tant qu’historien du Charlie hebdo des années 1970, je demande donc solennellement à M. Val de changer le nom de son journal. Plusieurs possibilités s’offrent à lui:Le Meilleur des mondes illustré, Le Figaro rigolo ou Sarkoland-Posten. [‘By firing Siné, Val has elimated one of the paper’s last bastions of internal resistance. Charlie hebdo is dead. Why keep this title? The label is misleading, even deceptive. As a historian of the Charlie hebdo of the 1970s, I solemnly request Mr Val to change the name of his newspaper. Several options are open to him: The Best of All Worlds Illus- trated, The Funny Figaro or Sarkoland-Posten.’] It is important to point out, however, that in the midst of the uproar, the principal founder of bête et méchant, Cavanna, reiterated his loyalty to the project in the newspaper, confirming that in his view, in present-day France, today’s Charlie hebdo was still the closest surviving match to his original bête et méchant project. He stated:

59 The petition, published in Le Nouvel Observateur of 30 July 2008, stated: ‘Nous connaissons bien Siné: sa grande gueule, sa violence intellectuelle, son humour et surtout sa maison ouverte à tous: Juifs, Arabes, Français, Noirs, Auvergnats, Bretons, pédés, communistes (liste non exhaustive), tous unis pour conchier autour d’un (ou plusieurs) verres une société de plus en plus bien- pensante et moraliste’ [‘We know Siné well: his big mouth, his intellectual violence, his humour and above all his house open to all: Jews, Arabs, Frenchmen, black people, Auvergnats, Bretons, gays, communists (a non-exhaustive list), all united to denigrate around one (or a few) drinks an ever more right-thinking and moralistic society’]. 128 jane weston

Quoi qu’on puisse dire – ou plutôt, qu’on suggère par omission – j’ai créé ce journal. Moi, Cavanna. Avec Choron, oh que oui, et Delfeil de Ton, et Cabu, et Wolinski, et Reiser, oui, oui! En tout cas, sans moi, il n’aurait pas existé. J’y ai insufflé ma conception de l’humour et de la critique, tout ça, tout ça. Quand les circonstances firent de moi un simple collaborateur, je me suis plié à la discipline commune. Je ne crois pas avoir démérité. C’est pourquoi je défends ce journal avec toutes mes forces, de toute ma convic- tion. Il n’est pas exactement tel que je le concevrais si… Le ton n’est pas tout à fait le mien, c’est le moins qu’on puisse dire… Il n’empêche pas que la presque totalité de l’ancienne équipe – sauf Delfeil – s’y retrouvait, y compris Siné, et n’y subissait aucune contrainte, n’est-ce pas Willem, n’est-ce pas, Cabu, n’est-ce pas, Wolinski? [‘Whatever might be said or, rather, suggested by omission – I created this newspaper. Me, Cavanna. With Choron, oh yes, and Delfeil de Ton and Cabu, and Wolinski, and Reiser, yes yes! In all events, without me, it wouldn’t have existed. I breathed into it my conception of humour and critique, all of that. When circumstances meant I became a simple collaborator, I kept in line with the common discipline. I don’t think I have let anyone down. This is why I am defending this newspaper with all my strength, all my convic- tion. It is not exactly how I would conceive it if… The tone isn’t quite mine, that’s the least one can say… But almost the entire team – apart from Delfeil – came back together, including Siné, without restrictions – isn’t that so Willem, and Cabu, and Wolinski?’]60 Siné, however, went on to launch a new weekly satirical newspaper, Siné hebdo, in September 2008. The newspaper is vigorously seeking to set itself up as a more legitimate successor to the original Charlie hebdo, attempting more faithfully to reproduce the militant bête et méchant spirit of the 1970s.61 It also includes elements of bande dessinée intermingled with editorial cartooning, and as such poses a direct challenge to Charlie hebdo in terms of its aesthetics.62 Such a challenge may, however, prove to be a stimulus to healthy competition between the two publications, serving as a catalyst for further experimentation with form and style in the cartoon-based satirical press.

60 The statement was made in Charlie hebdo, 30 July 2008. 61 In an interview in Le Matin [‘The Morning’] of 7 February 2009 entitled ‘Antisémite: L’Insulte qui a remplacé fasciste’ [‘Anti-Semite: The Insult that has Replaced Fascist’], former Hara-Kiri and Charlie hebdo contributor Delfeil de Ton commented: ‘Ils ont fait une erreur en virant Siné. C’est d’ailleurs marrant, car son journal pique pas mal de lecteurs à Charlie hebdo. Je suis sûr que Val n’avait pas prévu cette réaction, une réaction à la Choron! Il y a un état d’esprit qui revient, proche de celui des années 1970’ [‘They made a mistake by firing Siné. It’s funny as well, because his newspaper is stealing a good number of Charlie hebdo’s readers. I’m sure Val didn’t expect this kind of reaction, a Choron-esque reaction! A particular kind of spirit has returned, similar to that of the 1970s’]. 62 Art historian Guillaume Doizy provides a running commentary and critical assessment each week of the two publications’ front covers, ‘Le Match Charlie/Siné hebdo’, on his website at http://www. caricaturesetcaricature.com (accessed 1 March 2009). Politics, Editorial Cartoons and Bande dessinée in Charlie hebdo 129 Conclusion The Siné affair has served to reveal amongst much of Charlie hebdo’s readership a clear nostalgia, sometimes bordering on romanticism, for the original bête et méchant project as it existed in Hara-Kiri in the 1960s and which was carried over into the original Charlie hebdo, as has been argued in this article. Such nostalgia has helped to fuel the commercial success of Siné hebdo to date. Choosing between the purchase of Charlie hebdo and Siné hebdo is currently far from a non-partisan act, given the intense bitterness of the Val–Siné divide. The most likely beneficiaries of the resulting profusion of material, if the two publications continue to flourish, should, however, bebande dessinée and caricature enthusiasts. It is to be hoped that both publications will be able to prosper in the French satirical press market, to facilitate ongoing innovation, sharing between them the complex legacy of the bête et méchant project of the 1960s and 1970s. Whatever direction the publications take, neither is likely to renew the exact verve of bête et méchant spirit as it existed in its original form. Bête et méchant humour in the 1960s and 1970s, as is the case for all humour, was indeed a highly culturally determined, fragile and difficult-to-reproduce form of expression, both in terms of the conditions of its production and of its reception. The satirical taboo-breaking of Hara-Kiri in the 1960s was almost unique to the publication at the time, but today pseudo-acts of provocation are appropriated even in advertising culture, to the point of becoming a standardised, ubiquitous and pleasure-driven carnivalesque orthodoxy.63 The loss of the type of taboos that contributed to the fall of the original Charlie hebdo is thus still in effect, today more than ever. Racist, reactionary joking might today be a new form of taboo for humour, but these are not taboos likely to be seriously breached by either Charlie or Siné hebdo.64 In contrast to the elusiveness of bête et méchant comic spirit today, however, the scope for continued development of the satirical newspaper format as a site for hybrid elements of bande dessinée and editorial cartooning remains as rich and flexible a field as ever. This aesthetic legacy of the original Charlie hebdo, which cannot be separated from its bête et méchant history, will be able to endure as the ongoing spirit of the original newspaper.

63 Cf. Michael Billig, Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humour (London: Sage, 2005), especially page 240. 64 The humorist Dieudonné is a more likely candidate for such a role. Cabu Reporter

Interview of Cabu by Tanitoc*

Abstract French editorial cartoonist and comic-strip artist Cabu (pen name of Jean Cabut) is interviewed by Tanitoc, French cartoonist and contributing artist to European Comic Art. They talk about the evolution of political caricature in France, differing reactions of people to being caricatured by a cartoonist or being filmed, and the use of archetypes in caricature. Cabu also discusses the influences of other cartoonists on his own art, the high points of his cartooning career, his cartoon reportages, and various book publications of his work.

The most obvious function of the game of caricature is to provide a critical deforma- tion that tends to reform (or to abolish) what it deforms. The language of the artist here joins that of the ‘moralist’: the caricaturist accuses by accentuating a character trait [le caricaturiste accuse un trait], because he is the accuser of a moral attitude. Claude Roy, ‘Esprit de la caricature’1 You know, the 1970s represent a true archeo-world for us today. Those were the Pompidou and Giscard years, with the media bottled up and government ministers who called up journalists on the editorial boards of the public news media. […] Things that were funny in 1970 did not make anyone laugh in 1992 – and I am delighted about that, because the work of a humorist is to be a researcher and to invent new forms of humour. Philippe Val, interview December 20052

* This interview was conducted on 7 November 2007 and was originally published as ‘Cabu reporteur’ in 303: Arts, recherches, créations 99 (2007), 50–63. It is reproduced here with the kind permis- sion of Cabu, Tanitoc and the editors of 303: Arts, recherches, créations (http://www.revue303.com). Notes by the translator (Mark McKinney) are indicated as such (Trans. note). All others are by Tanitoc, from the original French version. 1 Claude Roy, ‘Esprit de la caricature’, La Caricature, art et manifeste, du XVIe siècle à nos jours [‘Carica- ture as Art and Manifesto, from the Sixteenth Century to the Present’], eds. Ronald Searle, Claude Roy and Bernd Borneman (Geneva: Albert Skira Éditions d’Art, 1974), 13. 2 Philippe Val, interviewed by Alain Barbanel and Daniel Constantion in Médias 7 (December 2005). The quotation is from page 44. Trans. note: Georges Pompidou, after having served as prime minister for more than six years under President Charles De Gaulle, was president of France, 1969–1974. He was succeeded by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who was president 1974–1981. Both

European Comic Art 2.1 ISSN 1754-3797 (print) 1754-3800 (online) © Liverpool University Press 132 cabu The history of printing techniques has accompanied artists since saunterers [le badaud] purchased wood-cut prints that narrated the hanging of notorious bandits. Etymology teaches us that ‘reporter’ is an English term from the nineteenth century and derives from the old French term ‘reporteur’: ‘one who relates’. So what is so special about the idea of a confrontation between reality and a drawing, to create a narrative aimed at a multitude of readers? Some day one must write the history of all the cartoonist reporters, who, from Jules Grand- jouan to Ronald Searle, via Feliks Topolski, crossed social and geographical fron- tiers to capture words and gestures, thanks to their eloquent drawings. Cabu, who was born in 1938, was destined to become a professional sketch-maker and storyteller for the news press: he decided to become a ‘press cartoonist at the age of ten’, admired the drawings of Dubout and of the cartoonists of L’Assiette au beurre [‘The Butter Plate’] and produced a school newspaper, From A to Z (the principal banned its sale!). In 2003 Cabu went to Nantes to view the Jules Grandjouan exhibit: it seemed wise to compare their work of cartoon reportage for the press and to speak with someone who has been a key player in the history of the satirical press in France since the 1950s, focusing especially in this interview on his work as a reporter.

Tanitoc: Recently you visited your hometown of Châlons-en-Champagne, to sit at the stand of the newspaper L’Union de Reims [‘The Union of Reims’]. I would like to go back in time, to your encounter with Jean-Marie Boëglin, in 1953, at this very same newspaper, when he was in charge of its local bureau.

Cabu: I was fortunate to run into Jean-Marie Boëglin, because when I look back at my drawings from that period... they weren’t that great!

Tanitoc: Thanks to that encounter, you began to draw fairground events for L’Union...

Cabu: Yes, and town-hall meetings. I started out like that. Now when I go to the French National Assembly, I think of the municipal meetings of Châlons, but... it’s on a grander scale!

Tanitoc: So you were doing reportage from the very beginning of your career. What form did this take? Sequences of images? Some drawings of important moments, with commentary? Or were you simply taking down visual notes?

Cabu: Sometimes, but because I was not too good at sketching [en croquis], they

were right-wing presidents. Philippe Val is a musician and journalist, who (with Cabu and others) helped relaunch the left-wing satirical Parisian weekly Charlie hebdo in 1992. He is currently its editor and publisher. On Charlie hebdo, and Hara-Kiri and Le Canard enchaîné, see Jane Weston’s article in this issue of European Comic Art. Interview of Cabu by Tanitoc 133 were really snapshots; not direct drawings [du dessin direct]. Not sketches such as I make now, on the spot, directly. They were a form of commentary on news items. For example, I made drawings about the week’s films being shown at Châlons.

Tanitoc: Do you think that independent production is the best kind, and that in the end, when one looks at the history of the press in France, where a lot of bande dessinée writers and artists have launched publications (subsequent generations have generally come out of the fanzine scene), that cartoonists need to take charge of things for themselves? I’m thinking of [René] Goscinny at Pilote, and auteurs like Fred at Hara-Kiri…

Cabu: I think that right now things are a lot easier for young cartoonists, with desktop publishing and computers. They can create a newspaper much more easily than we could: yesteryear, we did this with roneotype – you know, it was prehistoric stuff! But the main thing is to produce and sell a newspaper by oneself, even if it’s handwritten.

Tanitoc: This might be jumping way ahead, but could you say something about your current positions at Charlie hebdo and at Le Canard enchaîné? What is it, how do you see yourself, as a cartoonist, in your position as editor, for example in your choice of editorial matter? And what do your professional responsibili- ties consist of?

Cabu: At Charlie hebdo, I’m president of… what… what’s it called? [Laughter]

Tanitoc: You’ve forgotten the title printed on your business card?

Cabu: They gave it to me, because a title was needed, it’s rather… honorific! At Charlie, you know, the decisions are collective, even the choice of the cover is mostly collective. On Monday evenings, there are about 50 drawings on the wall, and everyone gives his or her opinion. Generally there’s a cover that emerges, that everyone likes. Otherwise, if there are several, its the editor-in- chief, Philippe Val, who casts the deciding vote. At Le Canard it’s not the same, because it’s in the hands of the journalists, who choose the drawings: we’re not there when the choice is made.

Tanitoc: You say ‘the journalists’, but I have to react to that, because you yourself have been a card-carrying journalist since…

Cabu: Since 1964: number 21,991. How about that! And on my card it says ‘cartoonist reporter’ [dessinateur reporter]. Very few cartoonists have a press card, 134 cabu because you have to prove that you focus on the news. It doesn’t give you a lot of privileges, contrary to common belief: it used to get us onto train platforms without having to buy a platform ticket, but now… We can get into certain museums…

Stimulating Encounters Tanitoc: Let’s get back to the 1960s: so you were working for L’Union de Reims…

Cabu: Yes and I was also already working for Hara-Kiri, from 1960. I had just returned from the Algerian War. I was lucky, I had encountered Fred at Ici Paris, while taking in my drawings, as I had done weekly, beginning in 1956. We hit it off well. One day he tells me: ‘I have a friend who wants to start up a newspaper. Do you want to join in?’ I said: ‘Okay, with you’. He introduced me to Cavanna.3 That’s the story. I was lucky, because it’s a trade where you’re mostly isolated, with each person at his or her drawing table, and from that point on, when I joined the team of Hara-Kiri, Reiser was already there. Topor was already there.4 So I had the benefit of an incredible opportunity to emulate others.

Tanitoc: There have been worse teams, that’s for sure. Can you say something about the ‘Mésaventures de Marie-la-lune’ [‘Misadventures of Loony Marie’]? (Fig. 1)

Cabu: Oh, yes, because ‘Marie-la-lune’ was a homeless person in Châlons – we said a hobo [clocharde], at the time, which was right – who lived in a garden shack, right behind my parents. She crisscrossed the town to pick up boxes, or tin cans, which she sold. I had made a ‘star’, one could say, out of her, because I had the ‘Misadventures of Loony Marie’ in L’Union de Reims. But after a while I realised that kids were throwing rocks at her, whereas I wanted people to take pity on this poor old lady. The fact that she was in the newspaper meant that she was on the receiving end of even more stones than before. So I stopped. That’s when I grasped the meaning of village idiocy [la connerie municipale]!

Tanitoc: I had been wondering whether you had ever given up defending anyone, as a cartoonist reporter. Your comics are pretty ferocious with the people you meet, on the whole. I would say that they don’t have a Robin Hood side to them…

3 Who encouraged him to go into the cabarets to do drawn reportage about popular singers, by giving him the rubric ‘Coin de nappe’ [‘Tablecloth corner’]. 4 Trans. note: Jean-Marc Reiser (1941–1983) was a satirical cartoonist from the Lorraine region. Roland Topor (1938–1997) was an artist of many talents: cartoonist, song-writer, script-writer, etc. Interview of Cabu by Tanitoc 135

Figure 1: ‘Les Mésaventures de Marie-la-Lune’ [‘The Misadventures of Loony Marie’], L’Union de Reims (1962)  Cabu. 136 cabu

Figure 2: ‘Lettre ouverte au ministre des anciens combattants’ [‘Open letter to the Minister of Military Veterans’]. The biting humour of this page, produced to a considerable degree by the contrast between the narrating textual voice and the visual narrative, should not prevent the reader from understanding that it superbly condenses and recounts the war-time experiences of Cabu in Algeria. Originally published in 1969, and reprinted in Cabu, Les Années 70 (Issy-les-Moulineaux: Vents d’Ouest, 2007)  Cabu. Trans. note: This page also supplies us with the genesis of Cabu’s beauf [‘redneck’] character – he is, first of all, a hard-nosed French army veteran of the Algerian War. Interview of Cabu by Tanitoc 137

Cabu: Sometimes I defend people, but I don’t think that we have a lot of power. Because people have been attacking stupidity for so long… Look, it’s been multiplied by ten, especially with all the television channels. So one has to remain modest. It’s not because one is defending someone that it helps out that person.

The Moral Tanitoc: I’m thinking again about your encounter with Jean-Marie Boëglin: you’ve talked about the impact, the importance that the Algerian War had for you, specifically for your anti-military stance, what you lived and saw down there (Fig. 2); you say that, ironically, this same Jean-Marie-Boëglin also ended up in Algeria during that period…5

Cabu: But facing me.

Tanitoc: On the other side. In the Jeanson network.6 You finally got together again in 1976, 1977, for a joint publication. Could you tell us a little bit more about this book, Ouvrez le massacre (La Démolition de Châlons) [‘Start the Massacre (The Demolition of Châlons)’]. Did all the material that you had accu- mulated during those town meetings serve as root soil for it? What form did the collaboration take?

Cabu: My pal Boëglin had not returned to Châlons, his hometown too – where his parents were still living – for 14 years... Because the putchist generals had been amnestied before […] the people, including him, who had assisted the FLN.7

5 As told in Cabu, Cabu passe aux aveux [‘Cabu Owns Up’], with Jean-Paul Tibéri (Paris: Jean-Cyrille Godefroy, 1990). 6 Trans. note: During the Algerian War, Francis Jeanson (1922–), a French philosopher close to Jean- Paul Sartre, organised a covert network of French supporters of the Algerian FLN (cf. below). The réseau Jeanson [‘Jeanson network’] helped FLN militants avoid arrest in France, and smuggled funds out of France, for deposit in Switzerland (part of the money was then used to buy arms for the FLN, to fight the French). This gave rise to their nickname of porteurs de valise [‘suit- case carriers’]. It took the French secret service (DST, Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire [‘Direction of Territorial Surveillance’]) three years to track down the network, and when it finally succeeded in doing so (in 1960), it failed to catch Jeanson himself. Cf. Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962 (New York: New York Review Books, 2006; first ed. 1977), 237–238 and 416–417. 7 Trans. note: The putchist generals (Maurice Challe, Edmond Jouhaud, Raoul Salan and André Zeller) tried to wrest control of the French army from President De Gaulle in April 1961, because of the move towards Algerian independence. After the Algerian War (1954–1962), a series of French amnesty laws, enacted over several decades, eventually erased virtually all penalties and judge- ments against French government personnel (including the generals) and civilians who had taken part in illegal actions (e.g., rebellion, terrorism, torture, sabotage) against the French government and its agents during the War. The FLN is the Front de Libération Nationale [National Libera- tion Front], the primary Algerian nationalist organisation, which launched the insurrection on 1 November 1954. 138 cabu When he returned, it was a shock, obviously, because a mayor had destroyed half of the city to put up a shopping mall, which was always flooded because it was too close to the canal, the Mau. Construction work wasn’t moving forward; and in the meantime, a Carrefour hypermarket had opened on the outskirts of town, and had sucked out the whole downtown. All the stores clustered around it, just like in a lot of medium-sized cities in France. The downtown became a desert. We realised that a RPR mayor had done more harm to Châlons than the bombardments during the War,8 when the German army had demolished a neighbourhood. The things that we had lived through before stood us in good stead, because we had something to measure by: we had known a city that had been animated. There was economic censorship when five hundred copies of Ouvrez le massacre arrived: we didn’t know that the newsagent for the news- stand was a buddy of the mayor, from the same political party. He warned him. The mayor told him: ‘Okay, I’ll buy the lot!’ It had come out with Éditions du Sagittaire (a branch of Grasset). It took ten days for us to have books sent out again through another channel. But there was a moral to the story: finally, the mayor demolisher lost the elections and a Communist was elected! Imagine, in a city of civil servants, with a military base, what a traumatic event there had to have been, for a Communist to be elected! What I liked about the regional press, was that if you make a drawing that shocks people or that questions a local leader, you get feedback on it right away: people talk to you about it, they chew you out… whereas in our national papers, besides getting sued, you don’t often get feedback! There was a funny side, a very endearing one… We had the impression that we could have an impact on something.

Seventies Tanitoc: The Éditions Vents d’Ouest are publishing a series of books that bring together your work, decade by decade. The first volume, Les Années 70 [‘The Seventies’], has come out. How did you proceed, to select a portion of your countless works?

Cabu: I didn’t have a hand in putting the book together: it’s Alain David, a book series editor, who poked around in my attic. I let him do as he pleased, and by the way, I’m happy with the result. He’s preparing Les Années 80 [‘The Eighties’], and I wish him good luck! (Asked about this work, Alain David explained that: For Les Années 70, I thumbed through all of Charlie hebdo from 1969–1979. Begin- ning with about two thousand pages, I then made a purely subjective selection, trying

8 Trans. note: RPR, i.e. Rassemblement Pour la République [‘Gathering for the Republic’], a right- wing, Gaullist political party created in 1976, and absorbed in 2002 into a new political formation, the UMP (now the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire [‘Union for a Popular Movement’]). Interview of Cabu by Tanitoc 139

to eliminate the anecdotal, although keeping some of it, and retaining the essential material. I had to eliminate a lot, and tried to focus on the beautifully done pages. It’s a personal vision of 1970s France, that of an opinionated author, who is leftist, pacifist, a sixty-eighter [soixante-huitard],9 who likes lightheartedness and is curious about everything. And, I should add, is not sectarian.) Tanitoc: There are many double-pages, published in Hara-Kiri, then in Charlie hebdo.10 I was wondering about how you go about making them. You’ve said that you would go out on Tuesday and then return on Friday, for the wrap-up.

Cabu: Always at the end of the week. Now we do the wrap-up on Monday. What was interesting is that at that time I would stay with readers. I had a rubric entitled, ‘Invite me, and I’ll visit your home!’ I think it’s the only newspaper that would allow that. If I drew for Le Figaro, it would sure surprise me if I could stay in readers’ homes! I’ve sometimes slept in haystacks, or in piles of hay in barns, because I went to visit some communes [communautés]. A reader would tell me: ‘If you come visit me, you’ll have plenty enough to fill up a page!’ In the beginning, I looked through the subscribers’ list, to figure out to whom I should write. There was always someone who would answer me and invite me over.

Tanitoc: Did you have a special purpose? For example, before drawing these pages about the nuclear facility at Dampierre-en-Burly (Fig. 3), did you contact people?

Cabu: Yes, I had chosen the subject of nuclear power, because at the time people were talking about it a lot. There were a lot of anti-nuclear demonstrations – furthermore, you can see what that produced: nothing at all. There needed to be a lot more people. The politicians said: ‘When you have 100,000 demonstrators or more, it’s worth an opinion poll’. Below that level they didn’t give a damn. That’s why small demonstrations aren’t worth anything; the large ones are.

Building the Narrative Tanitoc: Let’s talk about those comics reportages. In ‘Comment vivent les riches?’ [‘How Do the Rich Live?’], a reportage in Loir-et-Cher, where we meet a famous castle owner, there’s an obvious formal device: you build things up, and then we realise that it’s about Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who was President then (Fig. 4). How did you go about building the narrative and organising the

9 Trans. note: Someone who participated in the student and worker uprising of 1968 in France; cf. below, the final section of the interview. 10 Hara-Kiri, which became Hara-Kiri hebdo in 1969 and disappeared one year later, having been banned by the Minister of the Interior after its famous headline: ‘Bal tragique à Colombey: 1 mort’ [‘Tragic Ball at Colombey: 1 dead’], after the death of General De Gaulle in his home in Colombey. On this subject see Jane Weston’s article in this issue of European Comic Art. 140 cabu

Figure 3: ‘Dampierre-en-Burly’, from Cabu, La France des beaufs (Paris: Éditions du Square, 1979)  Cabu. double-page? Did you think it through ahead of time? Did you draw the page on site, or in the train on your way home? Two days later?

Cabu: Yes, in the train I often found the thread of the story: that’s what you have to find. In a reportage you tell a little story, so it can’t be too disjointed. You need an angle. Sometimes I had one from the outset. Sometimes it didn’t Interview of Cabu by Tanitoc 141

work at all, because I couldn’t draw it, so it wasn’t the right one! In any case, I make sketches on little slips of paper and then I put them together. That’s how I go about doing my reportages.

Tanitoc: What I find interesting, is that we do in fact have drawings made on site, based on your observation of the surroundings, and at times we have characters – which are your archetypes – who take charge and play a role: the bearded leftist, the redneck hunter [le beauf chasseur]… 142 cabu

Figure 4: ‘Comment vivent les riches?’ [‘How do the rich live?’], Cabu (1979), repub- lished in Les Années 70 [‘The 1970s’] (Issy-les-Moulineaux: Editions Vents d’Ouest, 2007)  Cabu. Interview of Cabu by Tanitoc 143

Cabu: I also encountered rednecks on site! But still, I shouldn’t… It’s not the best way of doing a reportage. Even if there are archetypes, one should reinvent them, one shouldn’t… You see, I’m being self-critical! One shouldn’t invent. One should reproduce reality. Reality is funny enough. One always wants to 144 cabu draw one’s characters: it’s so easy! But one shouldn’t do it too much. If you do reportage, you should translate what you see.

Influential Quills Tanitoc: Your drawings from that period – tell me if I’m wrong, because one always makes connections that aren’t necessarily pertinent – remind me of a certain number of cartoonists, specifically Searle, an Englishman, who, throughout the war, was held as a prisoner in a Japanese camp and risked his life to draw some extraordinary sketches of that experience...

Cabu: Ah yes, I’m familiar with those drawings. They really are very, very good.

Tanitoc: … and reportages like that of Hamburg, in the red-light district:11 they depict strip-teasers, clients, etc.

Cabu: Yes, yes. I don’t deny their influence. Ronald Searle was also a master, that’s for sure.

Tanitoc: Did you also read publications like The New Yorker?

Cabu: I would buy Punch,12 which was an English publication, not The New Yorker. Because it has a coldish humour. It’s true that it’s very, very British. I myself don’t use nonsense a lot: I’m surely French-ish [franchouillard] in that way!

Tanitoc: In 2003 you were in Nantes with Claire Bretécher for the exhibition dedicated to the Nantes cartoonist Jules Grandjouan (1875–1968).13 Had you been aware of his work?

Cabu: I was familiar with the issues of L’Assiette au beurre with his drawings.14 I’ve always admired Grandjouan, it’s true. His life is mysterious: why did he stop drawing… I don’t understand that very well.

Tanitoc: I think that in Grandjouan’s case, there was a kind of weariness. He was an unsuccessful candidate twice in legislative elections. After his Commu- nist commitment and then his expulsion from the Party, he had projects, a kind of utopia for the city of Nantes… In any case, I see a connection between your

11 This illustrator and great admirer of George Grosz was sent around the world from 1959 to 1969 by Frank Zachary, the artistic director of Holiday Magazine. 12 The satirical, illustrated weekly, remarkable also for its longevity (1841–1992, then 1996–2002). 13 In the museum of the castle of the Dukes of Brittany in Nantes, from 1 February to 11 May. 14 The journal – which was illustrated, libertarian and satirical – was published from 1901 to 1912. Interview of Cabu by Tanitoc 145

Figure 5: An image of the Ben Barka trial, drawn by Cabu for Le Figaro (1967)  Cabu.

respective work, whatever Jean Dutourd may think,15 beyond the fact that you both lost court cases over your antimilitaristic publications, especially because you and Grandjouan have been present at important trials: he at the retrial in the Dreyfus Affair, in Rennes, which he covered…

Cabu: That’s true, yes.

Tanitoc: …and also the fact that L’Assiette au beurre allowed him to rub shoul- ders, like you in your professional début, with some of the best-known artists in the profession: Caran d’Ache, Rabier, Delannoy…16

15 Both Cabu and Dutourd were invited by Bernard Pivot, on 9 December 1977, to participate in the French cultural television show Apostrophes, on the Antenne 2 channel. Dutourd had challenged Cabu, who had come to talk about his À Bas toutes les armées [‘Down With All Armies’], accusing the cartoonists of Charlie hebdo of not possessing the talent of the cartoonists of L’Assiette au beurre. 16 Trans. note: Caran d’Ache (Emmanuel Poiré; 1858–1909) is a famous Franco-Russian cartoonist, perhaps best known today for his (often anti-semitic) editorial cartoons on the Dreyfus Affair. He also worked extensively on a wordless comic book (Maestro), never published during his lifetime, and published many short, wordless comics. Benjamin Rabier (1864–1939) drew cartoons and comics, including ones about Gédéon le canard [‘Gideon the Duck’]. He also made animated cartoons and 146 cabu

Cabu: But he wasn’t an anti-Dreyfusard, like all the other cartoonists: Forain, Willette…17 All of them, except for Steilen and him.

Tanitoc: What experiences have you had in drawing cartoons at trials? In 1966, 1967, you were covering…

Cabu: The Ben Barka trial for Le Figaro (Fig. 5). But that was before Hersant, and I would never have done that under Hersant!18 I covered the trial for 45 days.

Tanitoc: In the press box…

Cabu: Yes, and you know, they never found his body. De Gaulle had said: ‘I want to know the truth’, but we never learned it. It was a trial that the Parisian elite came out to watch and be seen at [où le Tout-Paris a défilé]. A great trial.

Tanitoc: So there was a nice collection of individuals?

Cabu: Yes, it was ideal for drawing. I even saw Papon take the stand. He was Prefect of Police at the time, and he said that ‘everything was above board’ [‘tout était en règle’]!19

Tanitoc: Now your work is mainly that of a newspaper cartoonist: an image that comments on the news.

Cabu: Now there are young cartoonists at Charlie who are picking up the torch.

wrote plays. Aristide Delannoy (1874–1911) was a painter and cartoonist, who contributed anar- chist cartoons to various publications and was imprisoned for a pacifist caricature, depicting a French general (d’Amade) as a butcher, for his participation in the French military ‘pacification’ (i.e., conquest) of Morocco. 17 Adolphe Léon Willette (1857–1926) was likewise born in Châlons. In 1889 he ran as the ‘anti- semitic candidate’ [sic] in the legislative elections of Paris. Trans. note: Jean-Louis Forain (1852–1931) was a talented French cartoonist and painter. Swiss-born Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen (1859– 1923) moved to Paris, where he worked as a cartoonist, illustrator and painter. 18 Trans. note: Robert Hersant (1920–1996) was a French media magnate. 19 Trans. note: Maurice Papon (1910–2007) was a high French government official who rose to become Minister of Finance under Prime Minister Raymond Barre. He is now best known for two state crimes in which he played a key role: sending Jews from the Bordeaux region to the Drancy concentration camp (where many died) in the Paris region, and from there to the Nazi death camps; as Prefect of Police for Paris, under President De Gaulle, he directed the police massacre (of dozens or hundreds), beatings and a vast roundup (of thousands) of Algerians during a mass demonstration organised by the FLN in Paris on 17 October 1961. He helped to cover up both of these crimes for many years, before he was finally tried and judged for crimes against humanity, for his role in the Nazis’ Final Solution. Interview of Cabu by Tanitoc 147

Figure 6: L’Incendie du 26 août 2005 dans le 13 arr. (M. Chevaleret)’ [‘The fire of 26 August 2005 in the 13th arrondissement (Metro station Chevaleret)’], from Cabu, Cabu et Paris (Editions Hoëbeke, 2006)  Cabu. Trans. note: This fire, possibly set by criminals, killed seventeen Africans, including fourteen children, and injured dozens of others. At the time of the fire 139 people, from several African countries (Mali, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Gambia), were living in the 1920s-era building located on boulevard Vincent Auriol. It was one of the worst French fires, in terms of deaths caused, since the end of the Second World War. The building was owned by the city of Paris and operated by an independent agency (France Euro Habitat), whose responsibility in the nature and spread of the fire has been investigated. It was one of three fires in Paris that same year that killed a total of 49 people, many of whom were African immigrant workers or their children. It sparked a major public debate and an effort by the government to provide better housing to vulnerable, working-class immigrant workers. 148 cabu Tanitoc: People like Luz…20 What do you think?

Cabu: It’s a good thing that they’re there. There’s also Riss,21 who’s very good. They have their own perceptions of things, and that’s very good. In Charlie hebdo one can do reportage, because no other newspaper gives a whole page to a cartoonist. From time to time there are attempts, but… It’s only in Charlie that one can do that (Fig. 6).

The Heart of the Subject Tanitoc: So let’s talk about the role, in reportage, of the film image, and of its supposed power in comparison with the drawn image. You look at the people you encounter with the acute eye of a cartoonist. I believe that you are very discreet in your way of going about your business, but do you encounter hostile or positive reactions, from people being drawn? Or do you work from memory after having taken notes directly?

Cabu: No, I always try to draw in front of the client! Someone who sees you scribbling is unnerved. Whereas if you bring in a movie camera, people don’t hold anything back; they let it all out. I’ve seen that for myself, because during the 1980s I participated in a television show entitled La Vie en face [‘Life on the Other Side’]: a one-and-a-half-hour reportage that aired around 11 p.m. There were three perspectives [regards]: the eye of a great photographer, there was a film director and there was a cartoonist. And we mixed it all together. It was montage, not live material. For example, we spent a week at Libé.22 A week in Villejuif, among the cancer patients. Obviously, there was preparatory work first. There were sick people, former smokers, who wanted to talk about their experience with tobacco, volunteers. And I made drawings against tobacco. I showed them to the sick person, in bed, ill with a smoker’s cancer, and who were close to the end, generally. If it made them laugh, we used the drawing! We did a report in the high security prison of Flins: we were in an inmate’s cell (furthermore, we were happy to get out in the evening!), and he didn’t want me to draw him – whereas in front of the TV camera, he told all: he had done a hold-up, anything we wanted, but the drawings, they bothered him! I don’t

20 Trans. note: Luz (Renald Luzier) is a satirical cartoonist who contributes to Charlie hebdo and has published several comic books as well. 21 Trans. note: Like Luz, Riss is a satirical cartoonist at Charlie hebdo who also publishes comic books. Like Cabu, Riss has covered French trials as a cartoonist reporter (see, for example, his book on the Papon trial). Photographing and filming trials is generally not allowed in France, whereas drawing or sketching them is accepted. 22 Trans. note: Libération, a newspaper founded by members of the French far left (Jean-Paul Sartre was a co-founder), is now a vaguely left-of-centre Parisian daily, struggling to stay afloat. Comics fans appreciate the special issue that the newspaper publishes on the Thursday of the annual French comics festival in Angoulême. Interview of Cabu by Tanitoc 149

Figure 7: ‘Cimetière de Leningrad’[‘Leningrad Cemetery’], from Cabu, Plutôt Russe que mort [‘Better Red than Dead’] (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1987)  Cabu.

Figure 8: ‘Une petite mendiante au jardin botanique de Calcutta’ [‘A young beggar girl in the botanical gardens of Calcutta’], from Cabu, Cabu en Inde [‘Cabu in India’] (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2002)  Cabu. 150 cabu know why… It’s true that it bothers people when we draw while they’re watching us. You’ve surely observed that too. You can hide behind a movie camera, and there you can draw to your heart’s content. You’re not seen, they only see the camera, they’re only interested in that! Their 15 minutes of celebrity.

Tanitoc: Have you ever been sent out by a newspaper to cover a specific event? I’m thinking of that because I was again looking at images made by Grand jouan, who had been sent by L’Assiette au beurre, along with Florès and Delannoy, to cover the catastrophe in the Courrières mines (official toll: 1,099 dead, 562 widows, and 1,133 orphans).

Cabu: I don’t think that I’ve ever covered a catastrophe. I drew a bit for Le Matin de Paris [‘The Paris Morning’], for which I went to do a reportage with Jean-Paul Kaufman.23 Three days in the Nantes wine country, to find out whether Coluche would get his signatures.24 Kaufman, who was familiar with the region, told me: ‘We’re going to have some mayors who are pretty funny. I think that they’re going to give him their signature’. And in the end, after having been to 29 town halls in three days, none wanted to ‘give his signature to a clown’. That was commissioned work. Or some trials. But I didn’t cover the tsunami, or similar things. The most disheartening things were the military trials of conscien- tious objectors, which were always held in a military court. There were armed soldiers, who presented arms at the opening. That has a strange effect. It’s really... It’s frightening. Aside from that, I always try to keep my reportages in the realm of comedy (Figs. 7 and 8).

May 1968 Tanitoc: What struck me when I read La France des beaufs was that in the end not much has changed.25 Marchais is no longer with us,26 but we still find the

23 A journalist who unintentionally became famous in May 1985, when he was kidnapped in Lebanon along with the researcher Michel Seurat, by the Organisation de la Justice Révolutionnaire [Islamic Jihad Organisation]. 24 Trans. note: Coluche (Michel Colucci), born in 1944, was a stand-up comic and film actor who became a national folk hero, before he died in 1986 in a motorcycle accident. He launched himself as a candidate for the French presidency in 1981, but withdrew before the elections. Candidates for the presidency must obtain several hundred signatures of elected officials (including mayors) before they can be put on the national ballot. 25 A collection of reportages published by the Éditions du Square in 1979. Trans. note: Beauf [‘redneck’] is a term probably derived from beau-frère [‘brother-in-law’] and launched by Cabu’s comics and caricatures. 26 Trans. note: Georges Marchais (1920–1997) was a French trade unionist and politician, who rose through the ranks of the French Communist Party (PCF) and its trade union (the CGT) to become Secretary General of the PCF (1972–1994). He was a member of the French Parliament and was a candidate for French presidency. Humorists loved to poke fun at him, in part because of his colourful mannerisms and use of language. Interview of Cabu by Tanitoc 151 same well-known faces among the political personnel. And – is it funny or depressing? – a form of immobility, of inertia among people’s perceptions, in social choices, rituals, communal living habits…

Cabu: It’s true. You’re right. Things aren’t moving much.

Tanitoc: There’s perhaps a corresponding form of nostalgia. The two answer each other, periodically.

Cabu: The only moment when I really believed that we were going to change the world a little, was in 1968. I’m a sixty-eighter [soixante-huitard]. It’s a good memory for me, contrary to Sarkozy, who should reflect on things. Before 1968, a divorcé could never have been elected to the French presidency. He was already a divorcé before Cécilia left him. He would never have become president without May 1968. What has really changed a lot, in spite of it all, is the mindset of women, and the benefits that they have accrued since then. It’s normal, moreover, because they had to catch up from way behind. It’s May 1968 that made French society evolve a bit. I agree with you though: it hasn’t evolved much in spite of it all!