There are those who subtly pretended not to hear, between the turkey and the Yule log, the pole raised by their neighbor at the table on the “Depardieu affair”. Those who announced, from the start of the festivities, that they did not want to discuss it. “Everything except Depardieu”, they declared from the outset, fearing that the fragile family understanding would explode for good at the mention of the facts alleged against the actor – three complaints filed since 2018 for rape and sexual assault , more than ten testimonies from journalistic investigations concerning repeated sexual comments and/or touching during filming, and images broadcast by the magazine Further investigation at the beginning of December on which the actor regularly makes insistent sexual comments, sometimes mentioning young minors. And then there are those, numerous, among whom the inevitable debate around the presumption of innocence, the cancel culture and the difficulty of taking into account the words of victims on the subject of sexist and sexual attacks has definitely been invited to the Christmas meal. For some, justice is the only one that can decide the Depardieu “case”. For others, the evidence collected so far is more than enough to socially condemn the actor. In short, Gérard Depardieu has become the symbol of a growing gap between two conceptions of society, and more generally, between two generations.
It must be said that in a few days, a succession of events increased the indignation of both camps, heating up the most partisan people. In reaction to the accusations against the artist, the Minister of Culture Rima Abdul Malak announced on December 15 that a disciplinary procedure would be initiated by the Grand Chancellery of the Legion of Honor, to decide whether the honorary decoration awarded to Gérard Depardieu in 1996 must be “suspended or not, withdrawn completely or not”. Followed, on December 20, an interview with the Head of State on the program C to you, viewed by more than 3.3 million people, in which Emmanuel Macron takes the opposite view of his minister, pleading that the Legion of Honor is an Order which is “not there to preach morality”. Questioned about the actor’s actions, he said he was “a great admirer of Gérard Depardieu”, believed that the latter made France “proud” and denounced “a manhunt”. The controversy swells, until the publication in the newspaper Le Figaro, on December 25, a column signed by around fifty artists defending Depardieu, and denouncing in particular a “lynching” against him.
All that was needed to sharpen the debates and resolve positions within families at the end of the year. “My first reaction was shock. I was very surprised by the terms used by my aunt, who took up the word “lynching” in reference to simple “serious” remarks and “incriminating” reports against Depardieu.” , Julia, 29, despairs following a heated conversation on the subject with her sixty-year-old aunt. “I think that our generations are much better at naming things than previous generations. For my part, I have no problem talking about sexual harassment and rape, and considering these facts to be reprehensible, while she repeated that justice had to do its job,” she explains. Same assessment on the side of Juliette, 17 years old, for whom the debate at the table led to the famous platform of the Figaro and the presumption of innocence. “There is clearly a generational divide, but also a gender divide: my aunts and I have the feeling that Depardieu can no longer be considered a great figure of French cinema given the acts he committed, when my grandfather rather started from the principle that it is up to justice to decide,” she says. On these notions, it was difficult for the young woman to find common ground with the opposing party: “I had the feeling that despite the overwhelming evidence and testimonies, he was defending the indefensible.”
Rejection of inheritance from elders
The conflict is not new: director of the Politics and News department at Ifop and head of the “Gender, sexuality and sexual health” expertise within the polling institute, François Kraus recalls that the same debates and arguments divided French society at the time of the Polanski affair, in 2020, or during the accusations of sexual assault by Dylan Farrow against his adoptive father, the director Woody Allen – who was never condemned by the courts. “The #MeToo movement was based on the principle of believing the victims and not letting anything go, while the previous generation relied more on the principle of presumption of innocence, which obviously leads to very extensive debates on the issue” , he deciphers. For the pollster, the generational divide around these questions is obvious: in a study carried out by Ifop before the second round of the 2022 presidential election, 35% of women aged 18 to 24 declared that the defense of women’s rights and the fight against sexism was a “decisive issue” regarding their vote – a figure which drops to 17% among women aged 65 and over.
Sociologist specializing in generations and co-author of the work Turning 20 in 2020. The new generation gap (Odile Jacob, 2020), Claudine Attias-Donfut recalls that the current generation is “the first to have developed such a strong relationship with sexist and gender violence”. “There exists within it an extreme intolerance with regard to this violence, and a real intransigence towards the elders who could give the impression of not condemning it enough. This manifests itself in a rejection and a general accusation of the heritage of the elders, which we also find on the theme of ecology, for example”, she explains. Much more than in form, it is in substance that the researcher observes an increasingly deep divide between the two parties. While all generations will agree to blame rape or sexual harassment, it is the means used to do so that divides. Some will thus have the feeling that justice does not go fast enough or far enough, “at the risk of being imbued with cancel culture coming from Anglo-Saxon countries”, laments Claudine Attias-Donfut, when others will have the sensation of witnessing a media lynching which replaces justice. “These are in fact values which collide, and which are difficult to reconcile,” she believes.
The Depardieu “name”
Added to these generational conflicts, according to François Kraus, are the ideological debates of the time. “Beyond age, there is also a question of gender: among many men of all generations, there is a position of privilege that we do not wish to call into question. The Depardieu affair is ultimately the incarnation of the end of an era, where artists were allowed certain things that are morally difficult to accept today,” he analyzes. Professor emeritus in film studies at Bordeaux Montaigne University and host of the site Le Genre et l’Ecran, Geneviève Sellier confirms. In the current debate, “the notions of the place of cinema in French cultural identity” – of which Depardieu was the symbol for decades – and “the explosive debates in France around violence against women, famous “freedom to annoy” or cancel culture.” “A traditional and elitist conception of male-female relationships is opposed, through the so-called relationship of seduction, and contemporary conceptions which come more from the Anglo-Saxon universe and are based on the notions of consent and respect. And it’s an explosive encounter,” she comments.
The Depardieu “name” also has its role to play in the intensity of family debates about him. Through his extensive filmography – more than 200 films in fifty years of career -, the eclectic nature of his work and his international influence, the man has become over time “a symbol of culture, language and the French spirit”, recalls Olivier Alexandre, sociologist specializing in cinema and responsible for research at the CNRS. “This is an important dimension: he is not just considered as the Parisian and elitist actor, but as a Rabelaisian character, who has an anchor with the land, the working classes, who loves food, wine, with this old French side which makes it a projection surface in itself which crystallizes the debates.” According to the researcher, “the Depardieu affair” would thus become a sort of standard to position itself in family meals, as much as in the political sphere or in the world of cinema. “The whole challenge now lies in the ability to sort out the place of the actor in French cinematographic heritage, his place as a litigant, and the symbol that he represents in the new debates and conflicts which cross our society,” he concludes.
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