After a cancellation in 2020 due to the health crisis, after months of confinement and hampered social life, the Cannes Film Festival opened on Tuesday July 6 and will have until July 17 to see and judge the 24 films in vying for the palm of gold in this market which is the most important film market in the world. In fact, gross revenues from exploitation and profits from productions everywhere make cinema an issue of economic policy.
One would have thought that, in a world cruelly deprived of cinema and cultural festivals since the Covid 19 epidemic, Cannes would have taken a little break. In short, that in the space of a few days the jury would have put aside political harangues to talk a little more – well, why not – about cinema. Nay! Cinema, as in real life, sees war, censorship and political battles becoming the central subjects of several films screened during the festival.
From the opening ceremony, these themes resonated particularly strongly this year, in a festival of collective indignation, carried by the president of the Jury, Spike Lee, the first black director to occupy this position. ” This world is run by gangsters “He declared from the outset, denouncing the policies of Vladimir Poutin, Jair Bolsonaro or Donald Trump who did not” neither moral nor scruples: our duty is to take a stand against such gangsters “. And to evoke racial and gender discrimination, George Floyd as well as the claims of LGBT Georgians. Other members of the jury followed suit, such as the Brazilian Mendonça Filho or Mélanie Laurent. For little, one would almost believe that this meeting of the artisans of the big screen is a conference of the League of the rights of man or a Congress of France Insoumise.
There is nothing new, however, in this enslavement of art to politics. This is obviously not the first time that it has landed in force on the Croisette. Apart from the rather too sassy cacophony leading to the boycott in 1968, we have often seen the cultural community singing its Ode to Progress in chorus. It was called “socialist realism”. Instead of blacks, trans, homosexuals, natives, it was then to the working proletariat that Art had to pledge allegiance. In the age of Instagram and Netflix, the allegiance ” woke Has become an essential element of artistic marketing.
The term ” woke ”(“ Awakened ”in French) designates an ideological movement concerning people who would be aware of the injustice of oppression weighing on minorities. The word resurfaced around the time of the birth of the movement Black Lives Matter in 2014, as a slogan to encourage vigilance and activism in the face of racial discrimination and social inequalities such as discrimination against the LGBT community, women, immigrants and other marginalized populations. In fact, this movement is financed, accentuated and encouraged by GAFAM because it promotes globalism and its by-products which enrich it.
« The Cannes Film Festival is an apolitical no man’s land “, Jean Cocteau once said. History has not proved him right. All the conflicts in the world have splashed the Festival and guided its selection. What can the clowns of Cannes do to us? What is the problem when we know that art has been political since the dawn of time? For now, art is an element of extraordinary complicity for the dominant economic forces using this importation of foreign and ephemeral social struggles in which actors claim to make history …
However, we would be ill-advised to shun this return to cultural life. There is no doubt that culture ” woke »Will die out, knowing the same fate as the McCarthyism of the fifties and that, despite these endless militant speeches, our cinemas will have so much better to offer. Starting with sparkling works like that of Albert Dupontel “ Goodbye idiots », Dramatic comedy on the absurdity of our society, which won seven statuettes during the Césars 2021 ceremony. Otherwise, extroverts and exhibitionists, who interests?
Pierre Nespoulous
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