A room in Le Musée de la Seine-et-Marne is dedicated to protest songs – not familiar songs of the 1960s, but more modern ones. The earliest song I noted, apart from the obvious 'Le Temps des cerises', was Renaud's 'Miss Maggie'. GiedRé, because of her youth and therefore ignorance of the atrocities Margaret Thatcher perpetrated on the British public, of how Thatcher's shadow continues to destroy Britain, can perhaps (but only perhaps) be excused her criticisms of this song. And although Renaud may in part have intended 'Miss Maggie', after the deaths in the Heysel stadium in Brussels, as a criticism of macho behaviour as opposed to feminine sagacity, this is a violent and well-aimed indictment of Thatcher's tyranny:
Ten years later Francis Cabrel launched an attack on bull fighting, denouncing the brutality of the corrida. For a French person at the time to attack the mindless slaughter of bulls in the name not of sport but of art was perhaps a little bold, but in the L214 generation, any cruelty to animals is considered by many as murder. 'Est-ce que ce monde est sérieux ?'
Coming before the #MeToo / #BalanceTonPorc phenomenon, Jeanne Cherhal's 'Quand c'est non, c'est non' strikes a modern chord: 'No means no'. Unwelcomed sexual advances are not welcome: t'as pigé, connard ? Protest songs must never die, never be diluted. 'Pisser debout' as a protest song? Well, some things never change unless you get really radical.
No comments:
Post a Comment