Long-haul rape

Don Giovanni, Donna Anna, Dorian Gray, DSK

I haven't really blogged since the first images of the DSK affair. Unlike our great media, print and TV, which don't know where to give scoops, pulling like marshmallows the poor snippets of information that fell into their laps to animate the landscape against all legal ethics, I thought the spectacle was too huge, too staggering to throw my comments on paper, like a battery chicken suddenly released in the open air and too excited by this new influx of freedom not to have a heart attack.

Do we really realize how lucky we are to finally experience such a degradation of the political and media world live?
Do we really measure the consequences on the representation and the world of images in which we are made to live all the time, since advertising had the audacity to be admitted as a value?

For my part, I never cease to find this unheard of and am in joyful and daily hope that it will get worse

DSK, Tron, before them, Alliot-Marie, Ferry, Longuet, soon Lagarde, not to mention the summary execution, quickly slipped under the carpet of Bin Laden, by an Obama who no longer appears to be so different from the others.

Again, again! I can't wait for it to continue; for the political class to roll around in the shit on the now irremediably (!) slippery slope of its greed. Let's hope that an unprecedented blunder reaches dear Marine; although in this case it will be more difficult, since it is more delicate to smear the openly visible filth and the Nazi salutes (nice novelty!?) within her formation, are not enough to effectively surprise us.

The human being, a creature fascinated by images beyond measure, finally sees Dorian Gray emerge under the crust of the varnish, which has come to do its job.

No matter how much we instinctively know things, how much we suspect the worst malpractices in high places, it has never changed anything. Unfortunately, knowledge is no match for beliefs. This is not new. We are beings cut in two and knowledge only influences our behaviour very little and very slowly.

From this state of affairs stems, on the one hand, a phenomenal amount of reflection that is now accessible not only in written works and on the stage, but also on the Internet, and on the other, attitudes that are immovably inert. Until now, no link seemed to be really made between our consciences and the reality of our situations as slaves. Of course, there are the overdose reactions: 1789, May '68 at home and all the others that are happening elsewhere, at this very moment and in the future. But as far as we are concerned, from the king's head rolling in the basket (let's just imagine the media shock that it could have been at the time!), to the roadway of Paris stripped to throw stones at the police force, passing even, why not, by the revolution of the ballot box and the election of Mitterrand in 81 (didn't we hear then moved militants saying: "23 years we were waiting for this! "), our relationship as simple citizens to power has certainly evolved, but has never been reformed.

We continue to believe, year in and year out, that after all, it is unfortunate that power is the attraction of megalomaniacs, but "can we do otherwise than be led like children under tutelage, by the great ones who know everything about this world that is too complex for our little heads", isn't it? We fear them; we envy their power; we distrust them; we resent them; we even hate them; and then from time to time, a new, slightly different head of steam, a new messiah with a seductive language appears on the airwaves and screens and it's all over for the good French idiots that we are. All we have to do now is enjoy the pleasure of lamenting our disappointment for five years.

Well, I have the feeling that something has begun that is much less spectacular than a revolution and perhaps much more effective in terms of social therapy, to cure us of the need to have "fathers" and "mothers" to guide our lives through the dangerous swamps of the world. That perhaps, I like to believe, the man, the woman, "of the common" as Jean Dubuffet would have said, is, reluctantly for the moment, becoming an adult. No, I don't think it's a question of making the revolution again, as we have always heard. At the moment - and I am talking about this country - there is no longer any reason to spill blood in the gutter, and that is fortunate for us. Others have dirtied their hands and their consciences for us before. Thank you very much to those monsters, the Saint-Justs and Robespierres, for I would not have liked to be one of them. We are now being offered the opportunity for all of us to really wake up, to free ourselves from the perverse impact of images by digesting the real symbolic shocks that their manipulations betray. The machine is perhaps getting out of control sooner and faster than we had hoped. This is the revenge of true democracy, which, if we are sufficiently attentive to what is happening, will be able to turn the now infamous media tools against those who agitate them. How can we do this? Simply by detaching ourselves from them. By taking away the power that we have unwisely allowed them to take, seduced as we were by their apparent proximity to art, cinema, graphic design, and playful humour.

No, there has never been any humour behind an advertisement that aims only to sell its junk. No, there is no wit or empathy behind a bank or insurance company's pitch.

No, there is no sincere love for his or her people in a leader who, in the best of cases, without his or her knowledge, is strictly subject to his or her thirst to incarnate a model for his or her flock. All of them, when they are not pure swindlers aware of their own degeneracy, only aspire to be wonderful guides to whom we will dedicate the longest possible gratitude. Ah, to embody goodness, righteousness, efficiency, pugnacity, benevolence, authority, respect, understanding... What quiet ecstasy! What leader has not dreamed of such an impact: to be loved for his virtues. And I am in a good position to tell you that, because who is more of a boss than a director, apart from a head of department, a guard, a teacher or a factory foreman? We all dream of being a good parent, equal or antithesis to our own; in any case, better than the ones we never had. It almost seems as if it would be the goal of supreme power to be loved for being a good shepherd. Even the despicable Stalin was moved to tears when he was portrayed as strong and compassionate, according to the child of a director of his propaganda fictions who awaited the verdict of the Father of the Peoples, full of anguish, at the end of each screening. Yes... what emotions from a distance of mass graves!

The thing that happens to us is perhaps to timidly give ourselves the courage to no longer need little fathers and little mothers. To be fed up with convincing ourselves that only a "fathering" personality can protect us from aggression and conflict. And if we realized that we are the employers, that it is not a question of giving them our voice (terrible symbol! Who can speak with my voice? Are we dumb and without intelligence?), but to order their services for such and such a necessary task?

I am therefore deeply happy, and it is no coincidence, that sexual scandals come to our rescue to re-baptize the human in its foundations.

Let us stop dreaming this fantasy of Purity under the guise of deities, princes and princesses, kings and queens, humanists and responsible leaders, because it does not exist in us. Of course we are all capable of feelings and even sometimes of actions that are noble in our eyes, but this is only exceptional and we must realize once and for all that it is only through considerable and sustained efforts that we become civilized, that we become better. Did DSK abuse his immense power? Presumably; perhaps yes, perhaps even without any real awareness of doing so, or perhaps he himself is a victim of expressly being put on the spot by way of temptation over his weaknesses. Was his alleged victim sexually coerced? Unfortunately, it's quite possible, given her social situation compared to this man's. All this is the object of justice and I am not able to know if she will really speak out. What I can analyse, however, is that literature and music have made us admire Don Juan and that when we are faced with the possible actual figure of the great evil lord, we cannot bear to let him go unpunished, while his mythical icon arouses our emotion when he defies the law of God and man.

The flamboyant outsider who gives hope to our thirst for freedom from all restraints becomes a despicable scumbag in real life. Casanova is suddenly no longer a daring libertine when one gets too close to his bed. The question then is no longer a simple question of justice about a man implicated for his actions, but whether or not we admire evil, how far and how much we give it a place in our hearts? How do we need it to be and dream ourselves more powerful, devastating and "revolutionary" than we are? For, as has been written often enough, if there is a figure of revolution, it is Don Juan, and even more so, Don Giovanni.

What a change of era! Let us only remember on the eve of the Mitterrand years, when the magnificent and disturbing silhouette of Ruggero Raimondi lined the walls of Paris and the great European capitals, how little we thought of the velvet of his singing, Losey's subtle staging and Mozart's music told nothing more than the story of the glory of an extraordinary man, who begins his passionate descent into hell by raping a woman, Donna Anna, and, more incidentally, by murdering his father, who was passing by.

Having been an unconditional fan, literally transcended by the work and this staggering interpretation, I can tell you that a cloud of hysterical women followed the singer in all his movements without being disturbed in the least by the ambiguity of the work as regards the condemnation of rape. The terrible lord was punished, but he never repented, and that was the pleasure he gave us. "What panache! "we said to each other among fans of all sexes. What I'm trying to raise here is the impact of moral cleansing on the production of images and meaning and how it has evolved since, perhaps 9/11, but possibly before. Shortly after the triumph of that brilliant Don Giovanni, born of Daniel Toscan du Plantier's visionary desire, there was the outbreak of AIDS; a new shock in terms of the association of sexual imagery that then shaped my thinking, my intimate life and my mind. Perversion", as it was more easily thought of then in the underground sphere inherited from the seventies, was the way to become a "beautiful people" and not one of those pitiful scum of the earth, who contributed to the mediocre world of the market economy by his small daily work.

Gone is Strauss-Khan, his unfailingly traumatized victim, his fair and compassionate wife and his real or supposed act of violence. What speaks to me in this extraordinary show is the widespread denial today of human nature.

There's no need to jump at the chance to do your "citizen" kakou, to rant, to boo feministly or to have a slice of indignation to put on your CV

All this exists, I don't deny it of course and believe me, if we could make my male congeners stop, for the vast majority of them, behaving like heavy, brutal, bloodthirsty, misogynistic and homophobic men, I would dress like a fairy.

The problem, and the only one in my opinion, is that we don't naturally admit to being rapists, pedophiles, castrators and filled with the most dull hatred, armed with a parental dispute to make the whole planet pay. This is our animal reality; this is what it means to be a "pure" human.

Everything that makes us tolerant, bearable and civilized beings is only the fruit of our efforts, our curiosity, our personal learning and not of our education which, uncontrolled, led by old lost children with no real experience, whose name is: parents, most often results in the opposite, as we know. It is not an open door that I push there; because if all this seems perfectly admitted or known, what makes all the difference is to tell each other and to believe. To do this, the practice of theatre gives all the keys to those who have the intelligence to devote themselves to it and should inspire others, if not the entire population.

Rape is life

Being in a game situation one day makes you understand definitively and concretely all the duality that we have. And if we are at all honest, we realize that we are not "good" and that this is not the point. That men and women are capable of the worst exactions without going as far as to look for them in the news of the day, and that betraying one's ideals is the easiest way to respond to the problems posed to us by existence.

Acting as a judge of others remains the place of the spectator and for ever, those who have trodden a stage will not be able to come back to sit next to it carefree.

So let's do some theatre to better see the world of representations cracking. And not just any theatre. A theatre that sees and understands, that shows, translates, transforms and does nothing but wait, feel and reflect, so that we will never be tempted to be politicians ourselves one day.

The Internet offers the opportunity to mix minds and the live show creates the meeting of bodies. Let no state or institution decide what is good to say or show. Let's not let any e-G8 oust civil society from the debates on the economic benefits of the Web. The stakes are enormous and it is this revolution that we must not allow to be confiscated.

The creators of free software, Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds and so many others less known, have provided us with unstoppable tools to take the measure of what brings millions of us together throughout the world: our desire for peace, solidarity and independence, our creative capacities and our intelligence. Let's use them more and more each day to understand their subtleties and pitfalls, to escape, at least once, from being mere consumers in front of our computers.

Let's create, blog, make sites to understand our world and for the pleasure of sharing. If the powerful indulge in reprehensible and perverse acts, it's simply because they have the means to do so and because they follow the banal natural slope of the over-powerful human being, and I'm talking about the abuse of power from the very first steps, at the threshold of the smallest office.

Our chance, as ordinary people, is not to desire power, but means

The "good" means, in all areas, are not those that are sold to us. No more so in creation than elsewhere. Let's stop being fascinated by the images of others without having produced our own. Boycott by indifference and personal creation open the way to another way of functioning.

We will only be "saved", open to others and honest in our behavior, by the conscious and generalized realization of our intimate, obviously sexual and greedy nature.

Putting it into words, into a scene, into a link, drawing up a portrait of it without morals, transcends it and makes us insensitive to the raw desire to abuse our primary forces. There is no need to tread the dreaded stage of real life as the terrain of its extreme passions. Their representations are just as true. Current events are proof of this, since everything is an image for us now, in our perception of the vast world delegated to the media.

Yes, since the beginning of our humanity, rape and murder have certainly been common practices to enjoy and satisfy our desires. We are still among them and there is no point in denying it or taking offence at it through the denunciation of scapegoats for our failings.

Let them be put out of action until better; let the victims be allowed the best possible reparations and for the rest, let us forge plans for the future: to seize our brains and to offer without complacency a wall of refusal to the grimacing figures who work by seduction to their careers as short-legged prophets. Let's leave this system, let's take only the useful to create our pleasant, because it is this system that must change and become our tool.

Yes, since childhood, rape is life; but life is also what we decide to do with it, here and now, with the immediate means at our disposal, so that symbolic fathers and mothers become useless ghosts forever.