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Monstrous Modernity on French Television: La brigade des maléfices
- Marvels & Tales
- Wayne State University Press
- Volume 31, Number 1, 2017
- pp. 44-61
- 10.13110/marvelstales.31.1.0044
- Article
- Additional Information
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La brigade des maléfices, or “The Hex Brigade,” was a French television series that appeared in 1970. Through an examination of the series’ six episodes, it becomes clear that creator-writers Claude Guillemot and Claude-Jean Philippe developed La brigade as a critique of the rapid postwar modernization of France. In so many ways the series engages with this cultural context, representing France’s involvement in the processes of modernization and consumerism as a Faustian deal while valorizing other, more traditional forms of magic.