A great writer is an alchemist who manages to transform reality into literature. A writer who will be read centuries after his death is able to put the right words on the confusion of feelings and feelings. A great writer is always one step ahead of reality, as if hearing what was to come, digging as deeply as possible into the artificial surface of beings and things. A short passage from Michel Houellebecq’s latest opus, Annihilate, jumped out at the majority of readers – those who enjoy the novel and those who don’t. The writer managing to put into words a universal feeling.
“And Bruno, he knew, would also have felt uncomfortable with his creative burgers, these zen spaces where you could have your neck massaged during the trip while listening to the songs of birds, ( …) finally, with the general turn that things had taken, with this pseudo-playful atmosphere but in reality of an almost fascist normativity, which had gradually infected the smallest corners of daily life.
So that was it! This malaise in the trains, these pink or blue labels, these silly signs, this crèche atmosphere for all, this diffuse feeling of being infantilized, debilitated, it was this “pseudo-playful” atmosphere but in reality of a quasi-fascist normativity”. Paradoxically, since our world dresses in colorful and childish playfulness, it has never been so brutal. Rare are the daily journeys where we do not witness a screaming spat, rare are the conversations that do not begin with remarks on the brutality and the ambient aggressiveness. The decor is worthy of an innocent cartoon, the reality is closer to a town in the Wild West before the imposition of law. In a time that wants to be “benevolent”, where the official speech purrs with good feelings, never has reality so much contradicted the verbal and aesthetic appearance of pastel happiness for all.
“It’s as infantilizing as it is ugly”
To celebrate France’s presidency of the Council of the European Union, Renew Europe, a social-liberal group in the Parliament of Strasbourg, released a poster that would turn any nature-loving pacifist into a decompressing psychopath. We see in the foreground a red pot where a meadow with the contours of Europe is depicted, surrounded by trees, hills, plains, a pile of books placed there, wind turbines in the background behind which shines a radiant sun , a dove of peace of course, and a black hand, wearing a beaded bracelet in LGBT colors and holding a purple watering can decorated with the stars of the EU: the common pot of our future reduced to the innocence of a drawing kindergarten child. All in a deluge of playful colors that are more akin to a distorted vision of reality following an LSD intake. It’s as infantilizing as it is ugly, as unreal as it is counterproductive. Staring too long at this poster gives you, at best, gothic cravings; at worst, to break everything.
This poster also referred me to the excellent South Korean series, Squid Game, where a group of men and women in debt up to their necks play life-size children’s games, the outcome of which is victory or death. The violence is palpable in every shot, accentuated by the candy pink decor; the brutality of the killing is redoubled by the childish atmosphere. Appearance is an illusion, perversity flourishes more in an innocent setting. Tel Dolores Umbridge, fabulous character ofHarry Potter, all dressed in pink, soft voice and childish laughter, surrounded by her purring cats, who tortures her students and proves to be the most formidable of the agents of the one-whose-one-does-not-say-the-name. A perverse fascist disguised as a nice grandmother who sugars her tea more than reason, here is the most accurate definition of our schizophrenic days.
The revealing pandemic has shed light on widespread infantilization. The citizen is reduced to a 3-year-old child who needs to be taken by the hand to cross the street. This forced atmosphere of simple benevolence reveals only one thing: the break between the increasingly bellicose reality, where the chapels clash openly, and the official discourse which tries, in vain, to mask the violence. The real will always have the last word.