Monstrous Modernity on French Television: La brigade des maléfices

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.