A petition has been launched so that the name Serge Gainsbourg is not given to a Paris metro station.
“‘Serge Gainsbourg‘in the metro, it’s no’: here is the name of a petition launched on November 26 on the platform Change.org. The starting point of this controversy? The decision taken by RATP and Île de France Mobilités to give the name of Serge Gainsbourg to one of the new stations of the Paris metro, which will be located on the extension of line 11, after “Mairie des Lilas”, a nod to look at the famous song The Lilac puncherpublished in 1958. Six new stations are to be created at the end of the work, which began in 2016. The first of them must therefore inherit the singer’s name, as a tribute.
An initiative which is controversial, the petition against this baptism totaling more than 4,000 signatures to date. Its creators denounce the tribute paid to a singer whose songs and behavior today raise a number of questions. “Serge Gainsbourg’s violence against women and his pedocriminal and even incestuous tendencies (to name but a few) are nevertheless public knowledge, and we are outraged that his person is in the spotlight in the Paris metro” , it is detailed in the petition.
According to this petition and the detractors of a metro station in his name, Serge Gainsbourg is in fact accused of having trivialized sexual violence against minors, sometimes incestuous, in various outings, but also in two of his songs: Titicaca And The doll that makes. In the first, he sings about wanting to “drown a “girl” in Titicaca, then “take her corpse on board”; in the second, he details: “It’s a little doll that goes… A little doll that says daddy. And I’m careful with my hips. Not to jostle her too much. It’s so easy to make her cry. Yes, I’m careful with my hips. Not to jostle her too much. Because I’m afraid of tearing my doll.”
Another song singled out, the hit Lemon Incest, released in 1984 and in which, according to the creators of the petition, “Gainsbourg sings and makes her daughter Charlotte, then 12 years old, sing her incestuous fantasy.” Overall, the sulphurous singer is accused of having trivialized violence against women under the cover, among other things, of passion. “This decision to pay tribute to Gainsbourg is a spit in the face of the victims” of violence, it is summarized in the petition.