At Emmanuelle Daviet’s microphone, Emmanuel Laurentin, head of the documentary department, explains the thoughts that guide the choice of documentaries devoted to popular culture on France Culture.
Emmanuelle Daviet: Today, in this meeting of the mediator, we are interested in the way in which France Culture takes up subjects that we spontaneously associate with popular culture: football, communities of fans who idolize singers or even the Mona Lisa which has become well beyond a masterpiece, a a true global phenomenon, behind these familiar objects, the channel offers a historical, sociological and cultural reading. So how does France Culture transform these popular phenomena into an object of reflection? This is what we are going to see today with the head of the documentary division. the World Cup, France Culture traces more than a century of existence of the French men’s team Beyond sport, you tell the story of a country, its social developments, its memories and its identities, how does a series on football help us understand French society?
Emmanuel Laurentin:It’s because I’ve always been interested in sport in particular and then also in history, obviously I met François da Rocha Carneiro, who is the producer of this show, who is a historian and who is a historian who did his thesis precisely on the Blues. This thesis is very interesting because it does not take the Blues as we usually take them, that is to say by recounting a long history, victories or defeats, but by trying to understand what some of the expressions that we have on the field mean: “The group is living well” that we have when we comment on a football match “Ah the group is living well”. Or what is it like to have a certain idea of France when you are in a French team. All of these are moments that allow us to understand the breaks, the brokenness or, on the contrary, the moments of glory and beauty that there can be in a football match or in a sporting competition over a very long period. And so by taking this question of the Blues very broadly, that is to say by taking it over a century and reflecting on the personality, the will of all those who participated in this promotion of a French team, we can understand how France, the French, French women adhere or do not adhere to this experience which is a football match or a sporting competition.
Emmanuelle Daviet: LSD, The documentary series is also of interest to fans of Johnny Hallyday, Mylène Farmer, Jul or Aya Nakamura. Long caricatured or mocked, the figure of the fan here becomes an object of study. Why do you think it is important to take seriously these popular passions which necessarily say something about our time?
Emmanuel Laurentin: Yes, we recently made another documentary on OM and one of OM’s biggest supporters who died and who is a sort of icon for the people at Olympique de Marseille. We think it is important to be interested in the way in which popular passion can cling to particular cultural subjects. I myself am an old fan and a big fan of Johnny Hallyday. What I had difficulty admitting here at France Culture for quite a few years. And so when the producer and director, Hajer Ben Boubaker and Clémence Gross, came to see me to propose this subject, I found it interesting to think about what a legitimate culture or an illegitimate culture was, and from there, by this work that they both did around the figures of Johnny Hallyday, Mylène Farmer, Jul and Aya Nakamura. And then we see how French society is evolving, how the rejections of Johnny Hallyday in the 1960s and of all those who were black jackets, have an echo with the rejection of Aya Nakamura during the Olympic Games, for example. And how this question of the popular breaks or on the contrary unites citizens around a phenomenon. And that’s very interesting historically. And there we have four very particular figures with the emergence of the young class with Johnny Hallyday, with the question of homosexuality and LGBT, with Mylène Farmer, the question of the conflict between two cities, Marseille and Paris, and the recognition of Marseille as being a big city. And also obviously with the question of what it is to be a black woman today with Aya Nakamura.
Emmanuelle Daviet: Then another popular figure with “The Mona Lisa speaks to you”. You are proposing a Great Crossing which tells the story of the most famous painting in the world, which has become at the same time a work of art, a media icon and an object of popular culture. Emmanuel Laurentin, is it this ability to bring together scholarly culture and popular culture which constitutes one of the signatures of France Culture today?
Emmanuel Laurentin: In this case, for this series we spoke with the producer Olivier Tosseri, and with Julie Beressi, the director. And our idea was to make the Mona Lisa speak. That is to say how a figure, which is a popular figure but which obviously does not speak well, is a painting. Can she tell us about her adventures over five centuries and how, in the end, she became the icon she has become? What does it mean to be on the Camembert boxes? What does it mean to become an icon that is going to be on every advertising campaign around the world. All this is a question that they asked specialists, but also great specialists in Italian painting. And when the Mona Lisa speaks, and it is a possibility for the listener to recognize themselves in this story, well, there is a bit of irony, there is a bit of distance from everything that the scholars who know the story of the Mona Lisa say, because there is the distance between Leonardo da Vinci and Mona Lisa. And us today, what happened in the meantime? How can we tell in a documentary another way of seeing the Mona Lisa? And it is, I believe, at least for me, in my eyes, it is quite a great success to have succeeded in covering this distance, in making it covered by radio and by the capabilities of a documentary.
Emmanuelle Daviet: All these documentaries and all these podcasts can obviously be found on the France Culture website and the Radio France app. THANKS.
