Each essay in this issue wrestles with representation. Fraser McQueen and Caroline Laurent explain how the fictions they review challenge received ideas. Corine Labridy takes another tack by addressing a film that exploits stereotypes to explain how and why we must do more with them than simply turn away.
Fraser McQueen’s review of Leyla Bouzid’s Une histoire d’amour et de désir / A Tale of Love and Desire considers Bouzid’s challenge to the all-too-familiar trope of banlieue films whereby the French woman of Maghrebi descent is “rescued” from patriarchal victimization by an adoring white man who stands as an avatar of the “universal republic.” Bouzid’s challenge, McQueen argues, is founded on a re-imagination of gender relations which, among other things, includes refreshingly new depictions of French masculinity. Bouzid further enriches her film with lessons in the history of Arab poetry that allow us to see Franco-Maghrebi culture in ways that take us beyond the political. What it adds up to, as McQueen makes visible, is a depiction of young love and desire that permits us to see metropolitan France’s place in the Mediterranean world with fresh eyes.
Caroline D. Laurent’s essay unpacks Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s Goncourt Prize-winning roman-à-clef, La Plus secrète mémoire des hommes / The Most Secret Memory of Men. That novel follows its narrator’s efforts to locate an African writer who vanished decades earlier and whose case very much resembles that of Yambo Ouologuem, the Malian author of a 1968 novel entitled Devoir de violence (translated as Bound to Violence that same year). As Sarr depicts his protagonist’s search, he reflects on the nature of literature, the impact of history, and the kinds of cultural and institutional obstacles that African writers must navigate simply to make themselves heard. The Most Secret Memory of Men is a dense, challenging novel that makes vital arguments about processes of cultural translation. Laurent’s exploration of its key themes and mapping of its narrative threads makes its stakes visible even to those who may have limited experience with African fiction.
Corine Labridy takes on the co-directed film Case départ, which tackled the improbable task of making a time-travel comedy about slavery and ended by demonstrating that such a thing remains, thus far, inconceivable. But rather than simply dismissing the movie for its obnoxious stereotypes, Labridy explores the landscape against which it appeared. For, she notes, French films about the variety of Black experience — including the experiences of enslaved people — are sorely lacking. That France lags behind even Hollywood in its ability to offer nuanced representations of Black lives is testimony to just how far French filmmakers have yet to go. It is against this background that Labridy makes some precise suggestions about how even a film like Case départ might be put to good use. Hers is useful instruction in the art of making the best possible use of even poor tools.
In sum, each essay that follows explores a film or novel that may be used by teachers of literature, history, film, and language to challenge stereotypes and enhance empathetic reflection. The works themselves, and our reviewers’ reflections on them, are lessons worth taking to heart in these terrible times when the powerful exploit racism and xenophobia to pit citizens of the world against one another.
Reviews:
Confronting Banlieue Stereotypes in Leyla Bouzid’s Une histoire d’amour et de désir/ A Tale of Love and Desire by Fraser McQueen, University of Leeds
About and Beyond Literature: Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s La Plus secrète mémoire des hommes / The Most Secret Memory of Men by Caroline D. Laurent, The American University of Paris
Skipping Case départ or Can a Time-Travel Comedy (not?) about Slavery Teach Us Anything about the French Zeitgeist? by Corine Labridy, University of Pennsylvania