“It was not a musical talent contest, but a contest of ugliness, vulgarity, crudeness, exhibitionism (…broadcast to millions of children and teenagers!!)… Culture, music and Europe must respect each other otherwise no one will respect them anymore.” If you thought the controversies over the 2024 edition of Eurovision were finally behind us, that was without counting on this tweet posted on May 13 by Ségolène Royal, who had little taste of the final of the European song contest broadcast last Saturday on France 2. Going so far as to call for “a serious investigation into the methods as well as a detailed financial assessment of this shabby but obviously costly exhibition”. Just that.
Let’s say it right away, almost no one wants to take out their pen to delve into yet another controversy launched by the ex-socialist who has converted in recent years to “mélenchono-hanounism”. And fortunately, everyone is free to criticize Eurovision, its candidates, its costumes, its choreographies. However, some will have seen in this diatribe a slight hypocrisy coming from the one who has been chronicling since last September on TPMP, a program fined in recent years for having in particular: insulted a deputy, insulted one of Johnny Hallyday’s daughtersor allowed to convey conspiratorial remarks on an alleged drug taken from children.
Apart from the fact that criticizing Eurovision these days for its supposed vulgarity is not very original, the former presidential candidate is taking up the refrain… of the Kremlin! Who has long seen in this competition one more sign of the decadence of Europe. Already during Conchita Wurst’s victory ten years ago, Russian commentators announced “the end of Europe” and a “rejection of its Christian values”. Forgetting in passing that the Russians placed the Austrian candidate in third place during the televoting. An ideological rapprochement with Russia? What could be more logical for the one who, in 2022, questioned the veracity of crimes committed by Putin’s army in Ukraine. Also, Ségolène Royal must not have looked at the excellent French audiences for the competition this year (leader with 5.4 million people, or 2 million more than last year).
Eurovision, a rare opportunity in the year, if not the only one, to bring together so many Europeans around a moment of celebration. This edition’s audiences speak for themselves: 68.6% market share in Greece, 56.3% in the United Kingdom, 49.6% in Austria and 36.8% in France and Germany.
Eurovision, a rare moment when Europeans make their music heard directly, not hesitating to thwart self-righteous speeches like this year again, where despite calls for a boycott and the bias of national juries, Israeli candidate Eden Golan came second in the voters’ choice. Finally, a rare moment when the rest of the world has its eyes full of stars riveted on Europe (the ceremony is followed by some 200 million viewers each year around the world).
Let us at least recognize in Ségolène Royal a form of consistency in terms of television shows to be placed on the side of good or bad children’s programs. December 5, 1988. Little known to the general public, the woman who was then only a young deputy from Deux-Sèvres was the guest of Antenne 2. In front of the journalist William Leymergie, the socialist explained the reasons which pushed her to table an amendment for the protection of children from violence in television programs.
In her sights, cartoons adapted from Japanese manga, which she describes as “execrable”, as well as TF1 and its flagship show The Dorothée Club, which broadcasts in particular Ken the Survivor, an unsuitable program, it is true, for young children (following letters from around ten parents, the production ended up removing the most violent scenes). “I don’t have the face of modesty, I am necessarily hostile to censorship or to the idea of reestablishing moral order, but enough is enough,” she then justifies. Through her amendment, the author of the book The fed up of baby zappers intends to encourage “quality research among the youngest which will first benefit the most disadvantaged”, who “have no other leisure activity in life” than watching television. Thirty-six years later, France has become the second manga country behind Japan with 40 million copies sold last year.
Ségolène Royal more “reactive” than… Pascal Praud
And the historian Jean-Marie Bouissou puts the church back in the middle of the village in his book Manga – History and world of Japanese comics released in 2010: “Reputedly vulgar, violent and ugly, the manga has long been frowned upon in the West. It horrified lovers of “traditional” Japan[…] But this Japan, full of elegance and rigor, has always coexisted with another, less known here. A popular and rebellious Japan that cared neither for good taste nor morality. A Japan that loved big jokes and torrents of tears, bloody ghosts, sex, pleasure and drama in all their forms.”
Equally hypocritical are the accusations of exhibitionism against a musical production which has no other claim than to entertain. Ségolène Royal, spearhead of a peopolization of French political life who, already thirty-two years ago, staged her private life by opening her maternity room to television cameras. And who did not hesitate in 2008 to discuss his breakup with François Hollande on Michel Drucker’s red sofa. She, the one-woman show of the Zénith who, the same year, stunned us with “fra-ter-ni-té!”.
“We must hope that not a single euro of public or European money has gone to this dismal farce,” lamented Ségolène Royal, who seems unaware that France is one of the five largest contributors to the financing of the European Union. radio-television which organizes and broadcasts the competition This May 13, once her angry tweet has been posted on X, perhaps Ségolène Royal will have turned on her television and heard this speech by Pascal Praud defending Nemo. , the non-binary Swiss candidate who won Eurovision: “To choose, I prefer a society which allows you to live your life as a human being in freedom, even if it is perceived as an extravagance, to a regime which enslaves women or which throws homosexual men into the void at the top of a building. Democracy is the worst regime, except all of them.”
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