The star animator claims in court the abolition of videos compiled by a feminist association. Embarrassing extracts.
Arthur, an essential figure in the French audiovisual landscape, is at the heart of a legal battle aimed at removing social networks from the videos staging it. The star host, who built his career on TF1 with successful shows like TV children Or Friday everything is allowedseeks today to protect its image.
It all started when the feminist association “take the front page” compiled and posted on its social networks several extracts of programs in which Arthur engages in comments or attitudes deemed sexist and degrading towards women. These sequences, notably resulting from the game To take or leave In the 90s and 2000s, were gathered in a 3 -minute 30 video entitled “The best of Arthur”. We see 15 women in sometimes annoying humorous extracts. The video has accumulated more than 10 million views on X.
The newspaper Liberation collected the testimonies of two women who had been candidates in the program of Arthur and who expressed their “discomfort” and their “embarrassment”. Stéphanie, who has passed in To take or leave On May 16, 2006, at 26, had notably received several comments from Arthur: “The more you resist me if the Khan [le tigre dans le Livre de la jungle – NDLR]the more I will tame you … I will do a circus number with you, “said the host, before mimicking spanking, in the general hilarity of the public.
The association, which militates against sexism in the media, wanted by this action to denounce “the trivialized misogyny” on television. “For years, Arthur has conveyed at an hour from a prime time for retrograde and devaluing shots on women, helping to normalize sexism,” reads the video.
Faced with the dissemination of these images which he judges “out of context”, “harmful” and object of a “manipulator and false” assembly, Arthur decided to bring the case to justice via his company Samaron. His lawyers seized the Paris court to demand the abolition of videos on the basis of image rights. They argue that the animator did not give his agreement for the use of these extracts and that their oriented assembly undermines his honor.
For his part, “let’s take the front page” claims the right to criticize cultural and media productions from a feminist point of view. The association believes that freedom of expression allows it to reuse these sequences to denounce problematic behaviors. She underlines that this trial is emblematic of the attempts of censorship which regularly aim for feminist activists.
The trial was held on February 17 at the Paris court. The court put its judgment under deliberation on March 31.