“Beyrouth, à la Folie”

“Beyrouth, á la Folie” 1 Walid Ra’ad H ORS LA VIE by Maroun Baghdadi, the French official selection to the 1991 Cannes film festival, is about a Frenchman’s ordeal in Beirut as a “ Western hostage.” Inspired by the real-life account written by Roger Auque, Hors la Vie proposes a complex and original treatment of the episode in Franco-Lebanese relations referred to as “ PAffaire des Otages.” 2 This treatment clarifies some aspects of the complex nature of France’s historical relations with Lebanon, and chal­ lenges the hitherto narrowly geopolitical analyses of the Western hostage crisis.3In this essay, I will concentrate on the following questions: How does the film’s treatment of a French photojournalist’s “ ordeal” as a Western hostage contest France’s historical ties to Lebanon? And what is at stake in Baghdadi’s emphasis on reading the Western hostage crisis through specific representations of the Lebanese capital? Paris o f the Middle East—Hors la Vie’s opening sequence, praised by critics as presenting “the truth of this city [Beirut] and of this war [the Lebanese civil war],” offers two very familiar images.4The first is that of the photojournalist hero in the figure of Patrick Perrault, and the second is that of the Lebanon of the past 17 years, the Lebanon that has become synonymous with anarchy and destruction. I propose first that Hors la Vie relies on a popular conception of photojournalism in order to present Perrault as a politically and ideo­ logically neutral witness to the civil war, and subsequently to offer his account as the uncontested proof of the inability of the Lebanese and the Arabs to govern themselves. Both instances, I will argue, function, on the one hand, to displace French complicity in the abduction of French nationals in Beirut and the socio-political turmoil in Lebanon and, on the other, to justify France’s colonial intervention in Lebanon. Having qualified as “ the hot spot” in the world from the mid-seven­ ties on, Lebanon witnessed a deluge of Western correspondents seeking to provide news agencies and institutions with a bank of images and analyses that, it would seem, could just as easily have been borrowed from previous Third World “ hot spot” civil wars—Biafra, Benin, Chad, Bangladesh, or Katanga. However, Lebanon and the Lebanese civil war came to represent not just another Third World “ hot spot.” The naming Vol. XXXIV, No. 2 31 L ’E spr it C réa te u r and visualizing of the Lebanon of the past two decades betrayed an ambivalence that fluctuated between “ nostalgia and regret” and “’fear and loathing.” I can but marvel and be baffled by the avalanche of terms and images that have come to dominate the bank of descriptions and characterizations of Lebanese subjects and spaces, both in and outside of Lebanon.5Indeed, Beirut for some Western reporters was not only “ the most important story for quite a while,” 6but it was also “ exciting, it was intoxicating, it was journalistic paradise” (Gersh 9), “ the Casablanca, the center for the Middle East correspondents” (10). Steve Hagey of United Press International comments, “ The dirty little secret about Beirut is what fun it was. It was often scary and creepy, but it was absolutely hilarious fun. I can’t remember anything that was as much fun or as exhilarating” (Gersh 11). That correspondents should unabash­ edly extol the joys of working in war-torn terrain should not come as much of a surprise. One only needs to be reminded of the statements of such heralded war photojournalists as Don McCullin boasting that he “ used to be a war a year man, but now it is not enough. I need two a year.” 7 Such statements highlight a seldom publicly acknowledged aspect of photojournalism and photojournalists’ interests in war, an aspect that challenges the popular conception which holds that: (1) war photojournalists are neutral observers, faithful and uncorrupted wit­ nesses to the situations and events of the world; (2) that they are commit­ ted, humanly and morally, to the stories they cover and are willing to put themselves in situations of extreme danger in order to record and report on the oppression...