Interpreting Social Violence in French Culture: Buzançais, 1847-2008

CHAPTER FIVE: Jacquerie as Cartoon and Television Drama

126 ch ap ter f iv e Jacquerie as Cartoon and Television Drama Crime doesn’t pay: The Jacquerie of Buzançais! —“La Jacquerie de Buzançais,” in France-Soir (1956) Bread and wine: Social drama, or the unbridling of the criminal instincts of the crowd? —Le Pain et le Vin, television movie (1978) A fter World War II, the Buzançais affair reappeared not only in familiar genres—such as the political press, historical fiction, and crime stories —but also in other media that renewed its importance to the general public: the cartoon strip, television, historical scholarship, local history, genealogy, and theatrical performance mined the affair in new ways. These innovations presented images of social conflict to a mass audience, demonstrating Buzançais’s continuing relevance to traditional issues, as well as its ability to attract an increasingly apolitical general interest. The different media , by their very nature, approached their audiences through different processes , mechanisms their creators knew and used. The crudity and boldness of cartoons, designed for readers to absorb in a glance, evoked strong emotions based on visual stereotypes. Television dramas, which unfolded over many minutes, juxtaposed historical images with fictional personages to produce complex effects that might educate as well as entertain. le crime ne paie pas in 1956 In 1956 the newspaper France-Soir recast the Buzançais story in its famous popular cartoon series Le Crime ne paie pas (Crime Doesn’t Pay). Dedicated to reporting “authentic, sensational, criminal affairs” from the past, it focused nineteen consecutive issues on the “Jacquerie of Buzançais.”1 The paper’s wide- 127 Jacquerie as Cartoon and Television Drama spread circulation assured greater public awareness of the episode than ever before. In 1956 France-Soir proudly emblazoned on the first page: “The only French daily paper with a circulation of over a million.”2 It had achieved this success by appealing to the broadest French audience. Its owner and guiding force, Pierre Lazareff (1907–72), had worked for several papers before the war, and in 1932 he joined Paris-Soir, helping to make it the most widely read daily newspaper in France. During the war, Lazareff moved to New York to escape the persecution of Jews during the occupation. There he worked for the Voice of America. With the Liberation, he returned to France and took over the French resistance movement’s paper, Défense de la France, quickly transforming it from an underground tract into a successful daily, renamed France-Soir. By 1948, the paper had gone from a quarter of a million issues a day to 630,000. In 1954, it leapt the million mark, and by 1957 it sold 1,350,000 copies a day.3 After the war Lazareff’s paper swiftly seized the attention of French readers. Having learned the newspaper business both during France’s interwar era (the apogee for the press4 ) and during the war in the United States, Lazareff sought to make France-Soir both a grand journal (“a national ‘paper of record’”) and a paper with mass popular appeal—in effect a hybrid of the New York Times and the prewar Paris-Soir. To accomplish this journalistic equivalent of squaring the circle, Lazareff combined a bold presentation style (eye-catching print format, widely dispersed photographs) with aggressive reporting of both national and international affairs, sports news, unusual or common interest stories (the faits divers), gossip columns, serialized novels, self-improvement advice , and cartoon strips. France-Soir included advice columns for women (on fashion, home decoration and repairs, child rearing, exercises to keep fit, and romantic relationships), crossword puzzles, television and radio guides, and horoscopes. Under Lazareff’s enterprising direction, France-Soir became the first daily paper to run a full page of cartoons every day.5 His ambitious, dynamic strategies received a much needed injection of capital in 1949, when the Librarie Hachette acquired control of the paper. Thus bolstered, France-Soir built a staff of highly skilled national and foreign correspondents and photographers, often by raiding the ranks of competitors. The strategy worked. During the height of its success, the paper printed as many as eight daily editions, often displaying different headlines and lead stories. From a total of twenty-six national news- Interpreting Social Violence in French Culture 128 papers published in the period immediately after the Liberation, only sixteen remained in 1950 and twelve in 1953. France-Soir was first among them.6...