For Beauvau, the novel is “pornographic content”. Sales of way too small, a children’s novel written by Manuel Causse, was banned for children under 18 by a decree published in the Official Journal on July 17. The publishing house of the book, Thierry Magnier, reacted by explaining to be “left speechless” by a decision of the Minister of the Interior which she considers “violent”. To explain it, this one underlines the presence “of a complacent description of many very explicit sex scenes” which make the story present “a danger for minors who could acquire it or consult it”.
In The Parisian, the author disputed this interpretation, explaining that he wanted to “offer a progressive path towards learning about adult sexuality”. “There was a lot of editing work on this novel, we spent a lot of time deconstructing these scenes to avoid the pitfalls of rape culture or macho clichés with my editor, he continued. It’s a deconstructive novel in reality, and not pornographic”.
The author and his publishing house had taken care to include on the back cover a mention addressing this book to an informed readership, from 15 years old. But these precautions will not have been sufficient: seized by the commission for the regulation of children’s books – which had previously expressed its reluctance to the publisher of the book, as indicated in the decree – the Ministry of the Interior has therefore decided to restrict its sale.
A law inspired by a 1930s debate
Composed of 16 members appointed by the Ministry of Justice for a three-year term, this commission brings together a member of the Council of State – its president -, civil servants representing the Ministers of Culture, National Education, Justice and the Interior, but also representatives of youth publishers, general practitioners, authors, and youth organizations. Any publication aimed at young people must pass through his hands. Otherwise, the publisher or the director of publication may be sanctioned by a fine of 3,750 euros. It is therefore she who, as part of her duties, examines the content of a work likely to put children “in danger”.
“If she considers that the content is not compliant, she sends a letter to the publisher or the director of publication, who must then add a banner indicating a restriction on sale at a given age”, explains Anna Arzoumanov, lecturer authorized to direct research in linguistics, author of Artistic and literary creation on trial. This commission is based on a law of July 16, 1949 “relating to publications intended for young people” which provides “that publications intended for young people must not contain any content of a pornographic nature”. Adopted just after the Second World War, the text is written with a view to protecting young people, due to an increase in juvenile delinquency. “The debate was quite similar to that which agitates our contemporaries with video games today, points out Mathilde Lévêque, professor of literature at the Sorbonne Paris-Nord University. In the 1950s, it was feared that American comics and comic strips would make the youngest readers violent.
Two seemingly distant political camps find common ground on the text: the Catholic milieu, represented by figures such as those of Abbé Louis Bethléem – a specialist in public denunciations of novels in the 1920s – and the Communist Party, eager to stem the arrival of comics in France. It is this curious team which, from the 1930s, is activated to prepare a text which responds both to the moral requirements of the religious and to the anti-imperialism of the Communists. “The text presents very strong moral and ideological considerations, which take up the currents of thought of the time”, continues Mathilde Lévêque. Until it was amended in 2011, the law specifies that works aimed at young people must not favorably show “banditry, lying, theft, laziness, cowardice, hatred, debauchery or any acts qualified as crimes or misdemeanors or likely to demoralize children or young people, or to inspire or maintain ethnic prejudices”.
Fantomette and the Club of Five
Its purpose is clear: to preserve the innocence of minors. “Beyond the bans on children’s books, this text also led to a lot of self-censorship among publishers, continues Mathilde Levêque. By presenting Le Club des Cinq in the Pink Library, Hachette assumed to publish investigations that had neither murder nor blood. Same thing for Fantômette, whose creator, George Chaulet, said that he had been asked not to make a villain too bad and, above all, not to stage a murder! “
The slider of what is seen as harmful to children is, however, changing over time. In the 1950s, Henri Queuille, Minister of the Interior in the Pleven government, had some fifteen publications linked to the Soviet Union banned. His successors will do the same, even if, from the middle of the decade, the attention of power shifts to publications of a sexual nature. On December 20, 1956, Jean Gilbert-Jules issued an order prohibiting the publication of The libertineby Robert Desmond, or by The Enormous Bed, by Henry Jones – “An Enormous Bed”, in French. Even after 1968, several hundred magazines of a sexual or pornographic nature were banned from sale. But it is their importation from abroad which partly justifies this decision. In the 1990s, the nature of the prohibitions changed: a decree of December 31, 1993 proscribed, for example, the publication of Al Moutawasset, “considering that the circulation in France of this publication is likely to cause dangers for public order because of its violently anti-Western and anti-French tone, and the insults against Jews it contains”. On May 31, 1994, it was the turn of Christ in Islam to be withdrawn “considering the lack of observation of the editor”, in particular for “the incitement to racial hatred which it contains”.
Over the past thirty years, the list of prohibited – or limited – publications listed in the Official Journal has however dried up considerably. From a few hundred under Raymond Barre, between 1976 to 1981, there were only a few dozen in 1995. The last orders date back to the period 2009-2010 (about thirty, mainly relating to pornographic magazines). Requests from the commission are indeed rare: in its 2018-2020 activity report, it explains that it sent 3 letters to a publisher, out of 298 non-periodical works examined in 2018 – and only one out of 317 issues of periodical publications. The following year, she reported the book Teaching Tawheed to Childrens, banned later in a decree dated July 5, 2019. In the latter, the Interior justified this prohibition of a work which “contains remarks likely to incite discrimination or hatred towards people who do not practice Wahhabi Islam”.
“But the procedure is not always the same: certain books are reported by associations, or individuals and are examined or re-examined a posteriori”, resumes Anna Arzoumanov. In 2002, the Children’s Foundation contacted Nicolas Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior, to demand that minors be prohibited from Candy pink, a book featuring a pedophile narrator. As today, the possibility of the banning of the book had sparked a lively controversy, many pointing to the risk of a return of censorship. After hesitating, the Beauvau tenant had been convinced by Antoine Gallimard, the publisher, and had finally refused to ban it.