“The left no longer knows how to speak to the Beauf” | EUROtoday
“MAis what a big beautiful! », Can we sometimes hear, think or exclaim. Born in 1973 under the pencil stroke of Cabu, designer of Charlie Hebdothe figure of “Beauf” is now anchored in the collective imagination. He is this rude, grivois, badly fagoté, crado character on the edges, not very fute and often convinced to be right against the rest of the world. The sociologist Gérard Mauger, specialist in the subject, defines the Beauf as “a personality carrying stigmata, characterised by his thick stupidity and his supposed widespread sense. »»
Can we summarize France of “Beaufs” to this alone social illustration, not fully false, however constructed on a priori contemptuous? No, after all, and that is why you must learn Ascendant Beauf (Editions du Seuil), printed by Rose Lamy. This activist for girls’s proper, effectively rooted on the left, recognized for her Instagram account Prepare for the struggle, reappropriates on this new very intimate check the determine of Beauf.
The creator, who additionally assumes herself as a “Beaufe”, tells with a sure type of tenderness her childhood carrying a mule cup, her household, the social slaps that she took herself when she started to frequent the small intellecture-cultural bourgeois. This ebook isn’t just a ebook. It is a robust testimony of a lady on the left, who, we hope, will find yourself inspiring her political camp, too typically inclined to wallow in social contempt.
The level: What is a Beauf?
Rose Lamy: The designer Cabu has made it an emblematic character of comics, however the idea of Beauf stays tough to outline. It all will depend on everybody’s requirements. Does anybody have dangerous tastes? An individual perceived as silly, poor, not very engaging, uncultivated, even near the acute proper? The 2021 version of the Great and the Petit Larousse describes it as a “average French with narrow and limited ideas, generally behaving with vulgarity”.
For my half, I feel that “beauty” is linked to an supposed deficit of cultural capital, mixed with a low need for private transformation. Beauf, if exists, can be the one who lets go, who doesn’t take some time to enhance his situation.
The feminine determine of Beauf, the “beautiful” subsequently, appears much less embodied. How would you signify it?
Beaufe, when represented, typically seems because the spouse of her “guy”, like characters like Ladies Bidochon, Tuche or Groseille. In the media, it’s not often put ahead, besides when it’s talked about as a sufferer of home violence. It doesn’t make the headlines, just isn’t on the heart of main social debates, and no in -depth feminist reflection is devoted to her.
She distinguishes herself from the Parisian bourgeois girl, perceived as stylish and indifferent, by her look marked by extra. Beaufe is outlined by the “too”: too vulgar, too uncared for or conversely too sexualized, or decreased to the stereotype of the cagole. It is embodied by figures like Loana, Nabilla or the celebrities of actuality TV and social networks.
Are we conscious of being Beauf once we are Beauf? Patrick Sébastien is commonly labeled Beauf. He even says that if, like him, being Beauf is being humanist and never consuming alcohol, then he’s proud to be.
He is true. And that illustrates that the idea of Beauf, in actuality, says extra about the one that employs him to designate somebody than on the one who’s focused. Besides, even once I use this time period, I do it with numerous distance, as a result of I’m effectively conscious that I actually am fairly near this determine. I simply surprise what it could change if we accepted this phrase, if we mentioned: “Yes, okay, I’m that. But without making it a pride or a claim.
I think we are all a little beautiful in certain places. For example, at the moment, I am tours in bookstores and interviews. For many, it is not at all “Beauf”. And yet, I sometimes have the impression of being the “stunning” in the publishing community: I come from social networks, with a little diploma, and at the beginning, we wondered a little what I was doing there. In this sense, I say to myself: “Yes, okay, I’m the gorgeous publishing. »It fits me. But I don’t withdraw it from delight id.
You write that the left now not is aware of the right way to communicate to the Beauf. For what ?
I’ve the impression that that is based mostly, partly, on a phenomenon analyzed by the sociologist Gérard Mauger, who specializes within the research of the character of Beauf. According to him, this break dates again to May 68, a historic second when the aspiration for the revolution was based mostly on the proletariat, imagined to be the engine of change. However, when this proletariat was referred to as upon to vote, he primarily supported the coalition of De Gaulle. It created a sense of betrayal, I feel, and marked the start of a discourse of contempt and brutality in direction of this inhabitants, perceived as refusing change and transformation.
Does RN do it higher?
No, as a result of he assigns them to one thing else: a withdrawal, a defensive posture, and infrequently a racist discourse. This imaginative and prescient doesn’t correspond to my expertise in my atmosphere, the place there may be additionally numerous gentle, love and pleasure. By essentializing the favored courses as illiberal and closed, they don’t seem to be accomplished service.
In addition, on the questions of sophistication battle, the RN doesn’t act. What harms the favored courses is the austerity insurance policies, the budgetary decreases that result in the closure of the general public companies that the RN endorses. We will even word the absence of concrete measures of their packages, such because the return of the ISF.
Why do you write that the idea of Beauf is used to dehumanize common courses?
I attempted to use a precept from the feminist battle, which reveals that there’s a continuum of sexist violence, beginning with phrases. The phrases are important: for instance, changing “passionate crime” with “feminicide” made it potential to politicize the topic. In the identical means, insults and denigration facilitate, later, bodily violence, sexual assault, even feminicides. All that is linked.
With the determine of Beauf, we desensitize the destiny of the favored courses. This delusion, this character-repairing that doesn’t actually exist, reduces folks from the favored courses to jokes or stereotypes, eradicating part of humanity. At the top of this continuum, these courses are the primary victims of labor accidents, decreased life expectancy, or inequalities in medical deserts. My aim was to indicate that these phrases, removed from innocent, take part in an oppression system that kills.
You struggle on this ebook the “cultural gentrification”. What is this idea?
What I name cultural gentrification follows the identical logic as city gentrification, however within the discipline of artwork and discourse. The dominant courses settle in a territory of popular culture, annexed it, and destroy it by emptying it with what made its “popular” nature.
To uncover
The kangaroo of the day
Answer
The instance of Juliette Armanet taking on the tune “You will forget me” by Larusso on France Inter illustrates this phenomenon effectively. Larusso, together with his festive and disco type, was mocked on the time. But within the model of Armanet, refined and solemn, the tune all of the sudden turns into “beautiful” for some, as a result of it’s cleaned from its Beauf varnish.
Beauf is typically trendy. The mule cuts flourish on the heads of younger Western males and we typically rediscover the wolf t-shirts. We come again to cultural gentrification. I had this reduce all my childhood. I feel somebody from common courses will relatively flee a reduce that stigmatized it.
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