“I know you,
Lauzier”; the French Algerian who’s satirical Tranches de Vie appeared
in Pilote in the 70s – or alongside western artist
Alexis (Pictorial 44)
I knew his talent for acerbic wit, seemingly against both the
bourgeoisie and “les babas cool” or trendy lefty hippy druggy flower communes.
In subsequent years he took his talent to films, most famously in Mon
Pere, Ce Heros with Gerard Depardieu (1992). The version with Marie Gillain, not to
be confused with the English language version (also with Depardieu). It can
only be seen in French, trust me.
Having been aware of his seminal bande desinnee Souvenirs
d’un Jeune Homme, this became the film P’tit Con (stupid jerk)
with Guy Marchand and Souad Amidou playing the Algerian love interest (1984).
Since Mon Pere, Ce Heros is set in an Algerian beach resort, there is a
connection between the two.
It’s sort of the less rule-bound and more communally chaotic
spontaneity. Some of the scenes of Algerian street-life in P’tit
Con could equally be Harlem, Spanish or black, there’s so little
difference.
In our societies the same rules of competition apply across the board
so –surprise surprise – we turn out similar types. One way to put it is that
chaotic communal spontaneity has more of a Claude Levi-Strauss structure –
predator, prey, intermediary Hyborian Bridge 59.
In P’tit Con street-life is guys and dolls and mopeds, maybe
some gangs. Guy Marchand acts as the intermediary between predator and prey in
that, even though he chases Souad Amidou with a view to a kill, even putting
her up after her neighbours get surly, he doesn’t sleep with her for awhile.
His reasons are something like he will when the time is right (that’s why he’s
a con). So, it’s a
typically French intellectual ride! Marchand is looking for meaning.
Meaning is also the theme of the other film. Fourteen year old Marie
Gillain’s character meets a young scuba diver and to impress him starts weaving
a fantasy life round her rotund dad. Some of the best scenes are of an Algerian
evening band oozing smarm, Gillain dressing well and gliding round the floor,
the rotund Depardieu in tow and scuba diver well and truly hooked.
The spontaneity of action in the Sea Breeze Algerian resort again is
much less rule-bound and so much more lusty and freely expressed of desire and
maybe carnality (she resists). There’s a touching scene as Depardieu casually
offends a sweet thing then chases her sobbing through the dusky sand.
Les babas cool in P’tit
Con are certainly less rule-based and Marchand is introduced to a
threesome which he flunks out of. When Amidou arrives things liven up, and
she has a good line debunking their Freudian pretensions on capital (like
Godard inWeekend ).
Amidou wears hot-pants and a loose Arabesque kaftan that allows for a
very expressive street vibe. In fact, the hippy garb of les
babas cool makes their bawdy ways appear very natural, part of the scene. This
made me think that sexuality in communal settings that are not capitalist and
rule-based but more like matriarchal and patriarchal is an inevitable part of
the physical actions of the household (and its corresponding psyche). Even if
Lauzier makes sarcastic digs at the flower people, he prefers them to bourgeois.
In both films, the communal spontaneity produces the structure for the
chase (predator, prey - a combination of spontaneity and structure.) Well, do
birds do much else? Isn’t it true to say that the competitive rules we follow
take us out of that area of spontaneous action?
So, is it true to say that spontaneity is structured in that
naturalistic sense, that frees the instinctive actions? Mon
Pere, Ce Heros reminds me a bit of Godard (Neptune) who uses myth in modern
settings, more or less to subvert the too rational man of doubt and uncertainty
(or the AI which runs Alphaville)
Myths are actions; they are structured (predator, prey, gods, man) but
are outside the rule-bound society. In societies with a mythical substratum, physical lustiness is
employed in active pursuits – harvest festivals, trampling the grape, such
earthy things as fulling (Hyborian Bridge 60), maypole dancing.
The structures of these societies are physical; in other words, related
to the Earth’s rotation. Since a perspective reality is mathematical, not
physical (C4) it could explain why in some sense we are all prisoners of
“Newton’s knives”.
These were the shiny instruments he used in a dark box with a single
light hole, to test the throwing of shadows and multiple “infractions”
(refractions) of the beam against a white card. A shining knife is simply a
thin mirror which reflects or refracts.
In the universe of the knife, everything is perspective – mathematical
– whereas the physical reality is a relativity of proportions – sun, moon – to
the Earth’s rotation. Acolytes will always tend to go for the mathematics of a
case – as with Einstein’s Relativity – just because that is the universe they
are in (“Alice”)
In other words, Einstein has become a prisoner of Newton’s knives, just
because that universe is so attractive to acolytes who dabble in numbers. You
could say anything electromagnetic is
also a prisoner of the knives since it is bound to be digital.
That universe is simply one that is constructed of perspective (light)
and not structured by means of the Earth’s rotation (sun and moon).
A structured universe does not have rules, since they are products of
order. It has physical action of physical needs (on Earth), primarily the chase
(hunt), the search for a mate, homemaking and, with Man, the harvest.
This is why Howard’s brawny and lusty heroes and heroines are so true
to the physical history of Man before we became prisoners of these very
convincing knives of the sorcerer Newton (“Pets” Hyborian Bridge 56)
I noticed from this quote that Newton prefigured a parallel universe,
which seems to show that it’s intrinsic to the phenomenon of light, not to the
proportionate reality which is physically true to this Earth of myth.
And since Space is divisible in infinitum, and Matter is
not necessarily in all places, it may be also allow'd that God is able to
create Particles of Matter of several Sizes and Figures, and in several
Proportions to Space, and perhaps of different Densities and Forces, and
thereby to vary the Laws of Nature, and make Worlds of several sorts in several
Parts of the Universe. At least, I see nothing of Contradiction in all this.
Not to put too fine a point on it bawdiness is completely
to do with proportions and those of genitalia especially! Greek myths abound
with incongruous pairings. In P’tit Con, Marchand finally gets together
with Amidou and it doesn’t go to plan, the bodily mishap is typically bawdy. I
wouldn’t say pornographic as nothing is visible (as CC Beck says Pictorial 4).
All the stuff about bodily fluids might just have
something in common with Fulling Hyborian Bridge 60 The basic
physicality of active pursuits that can be sexual or can be just productive.
The two are not separated. The sorcerer Newton obviously takes all the
physicality out of production (as we now see) and so sex becomes totally
separated.
So, the film seems to portray an alternative to the cold-blooded
capitalist dating game that seems to have pornographic outlets that are totally
distinct from home and hearth (is that 50 Shades?) If that is actually a
parallel reality, then there might be thought to be something puritanical in it
that divorces us from the body.
You almost wonder if Freud is a consequence of that
puritanical divorce that makes moral rules for the body! The sense I got from P’tit
Con was that Marchand is almost pathologically in his head and that plays
out as bawdy farce. For awhile he ends up in a sanatorium – is that the fate of
modern Man in his pathological hygiene?
Rustic areas are intrinsically dirty, lusty and brawny
and that is their strength. Our age of hygiene seems to be a consequence of
sorcerers who have really created a universe of the head and not of the
physique, or psyche. Myth.
