La Satire Politique et la Liberté de la Presse au 19e Siècle (Political Satire and Freedom of the Press in 19th Century France) A Thesis Presented to the Honors Tutorial College, Ohio University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Graduation from the Honors Tutorial College with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in French Morgan Beard May 2019 1 English Summary Chérif and Saïd Kouachi arrived at the offices of Charlie Hebdo at 11:20 am on the morning of January 7, 2015 their faces covered and their Kalashnikov assault rifles drawn. The two brothers, French born of Algerian heritage, had come to punish the journalists and cartoonists of the popular and controversial satirical magazine for publishing cartoons which mocked the Muslim prophet Muhammad. The core staff of the magazine was gathered in the meeting room, wrapping up their discussion on the coming issue, when the first shots rang out announcing the gunmen’s entrance into the building and the death of Frédéric Boisseau, a maintenance man who was working downstairs. But, three floors up, in the noisy conference room of Charlie Hebdo, no one heard them. Moments later, cartoonist Corinne “Coco” Rey descended the stairs with a colleague to smoke a cigarette before leaving to pick up her daughter from preschool. They did not make it to the ground floor before the gunmen found them. The Kouachi brothers forced Coco to show them where Charlie Hebdo’s offices were and to enter her code to unlock the door. The cartoonists, journalists, and magazine staff were still milling about in the wake of their meeting when Coco was led into the newsroom by the heavily armed attackers. Within two minutes, the brothers had killed nine Charlie Hebdo employees and a police officer who had been charged with protecting editor Stéphane “Charb” Charbonnier. The gunmen asked for several people by name, including well-known cartoonists Jean “Cabu” Cabut, Georges “Wolin” Wolinski, Bernard “Tignous” Verlhac, and Philippe “Honoré” Honoré, as well as Charb himself, all of whom were executed. Coco was spared, as were a number of other women. The brothers would later state that their religion forbade the killing of women and they did not seem to be aware that one of the people they killed at Charlie Hebdo, Elsa Cayat, was a woman. The two killed their 2 twelfth victim, a police officer name Ahmed Merabet, as they left the building and escaped in their car. Before driving off, one of the brothers proclaimed loudly to the street at large that they had avenged the prophet Muhammad. They were both killed two days later after being cornered by police roughly 20 miles northeast of Paris. Before their deaths, the Kouachi brothers identified themselves as members of al-Qaeda, confirming what had already become quite clear, that the attack was religiously motivated. Charlie Hebdo had previously been attacked for its portrayals of Muhammad in November 2011 when a firebomb burned their editorial offices to the ground and even in 2006 when they were sued (unsuccessfully) under anti-racism laws. However, an analysis of Charlie Hebdo’s covers between 2005 and 2015 published by the French newspaper Le Monde showed that only 1.3 percent of front-page caricatures were directed at Muslims. In fact, caricatures about Islam accounted for only 20 percent of religious satire published on the front page of the magazine. These figures seem to show that Charlie Hebdo did not single Muslims out as unique subjects of ridicule. In fact, Islam made up only a small percentage of the customs, politics, and ideas that were satirized in the magazine. The response in France was resounding. Thousands poured into the streets of the capital and other French cities the day of the attack, even while the perpetrators remained at large, to show their support for the magazine and its right to freedom of speech. Over the course of the following week, the slogan “Je Suis Charlie,” (“I am Charlie”) created by Joachim Roncin, was used over 6 million times by social media users from around the globe. The first issue of Charlie Hebdo published after the attack featured a cartoon of Muhammad on its front page (fig.1). In the cartoon, the Muslim prophet holds a sign which reads “Tout est pardonné” (“All is forgiven”). The issue sold over 8 million copies, over 100 times its usual print run of 60,000 copies. 3 Figure 1 Left: the front page of a November 2011 issue of Charlie Hebdo in which Muhammad is pictured as the guest editor. He promises “one hundred lashes if you don’t die from laughter.” Right: The first issue of Charlie Hebdo released after the January 2015 attack. The protests showed the French people’s commitment to freedom of speech but also their support for something more historic. Since the French Revolution ended in 1799, France has seen almost ten different systems of government rise and fall under the popular sovereignty of its fickle electorate. The many revolutions, coups, and elections that marked the nineteenth century in France created a mindset which has endured longer than any one regime. It can still be seen today in the mass “Gilets Jaunes” (“Yellow Vests”) movement, as well as countless other large- scale protests, strikes, and manifestations which take place almost daily in France. Throughout its long history of civic unrest, the French have looked to the press for guidance in their struggles, to provide them with information, to set the tone of public debate, and, most importantly, to speak truth to power. Charlie Hebdo is merely one modern iteration of this rich pedigree but, symbolically, it represents the whole family. 4 In this thesis, I will look back on the history of political satire in the French press with the goal of demonstrating why the French have such a strong emotional attachment to a press that seeks to inspire offence nearly as often as laughter. I will discuss the ways in which powerful people of diverse origins have attempted to silence the dissenting voices of France’s often vulgar and brutal satirists. I will show how caricature became both an art and an important revolutionary tool during repressive regimes. My thesis will show the reader why the French hold sacred the right to mock that which is sacred. Satire has existed in France for centuries in the form of books, plays, and visual arts but satire in the press could only begin to develop as press rights were established and technology became more widespread. Freedom of the press developed slowly in France compared to in the United States. True press freedom was not granted on a permanent basis until 1881 and even then, it came with caveats. However, the satirical press finally got its first opportunity to develop under the July Monarchy, led by Louis-Philippe. In 1830, a charter was introduced which promised (misleadingly) that censorship would thereby be ended and would never be reintroduced. This guarantee, along with the popularization of the innovative printing process of lithography, which facilitated the easy and cost-effective mass printing of hand-drawn illustrations, provided the foundation for a controversial new kind of press. In the 1830s, the literacy rate in France was quite low, probably around 30 percent, although there is no definitive record. As a result, written satire was relatively inaccessible, especially for the lower classes. This created demand for a more direct medium of communication, visual art. After all, one did not need to know how to read or write in order to interpret a drawing. In this way, visual art was thought to communicate directly to the senses, while writing was said to pass through the mind before being interpreted emotionally. 5 The first pioneer of caricature and the satirical press, and perhaps the most important figure in the development of the medium, was a young man named Charles Philipon, who came to Paris in 1823 at the age of 17. Philipon was an artist with a passion for humor and politics but his most important talent was his ability to predict what the public craved. He was quickly drawn to lithography upon his arrival in the capital and by 1829 he had founded his own caricature house called La Maison Aubert (named for his brother-in-law and financial partner). It was that same year that Philipon became an investor and critical actor in one of the first caricature magazines in France, La Silhouette. There he learned the art of caricature and the business of magazine administration as he developed his understanding of his target audience, skills that would prove invaluable to him less than one year later when he founded his own humor magazine. La Caricature was a satirical weekly published by La Maison Aubert, which was strategically placed in the chic Passage Véro-Dodat near Les Halles and the Louvre. This is an important detail because it shows that Philipon chose to cater to a bourgeois (middle-class) audience. That conclusion is further supported by the fact that La Caricature (and Le Charivari, which would be Philipon’s second publication) was only available via a 52 franc-per-year subscription or in public salles de lecture (reading rooms). That was much more than the average working-class citizen could afford as blue-collar salaries averaged only about three to four francs per day at the time. La Caricature was marketed as something of a collector’s item. Its prints were of very fine quality, reproduced on expensive paper, featuring deeply scornful political messages which drew heavy fines from the government censors.