French Cultural Studies for the Twenty-First Century ed. by Masha Belenky, et al (review)

THE FRENCH REVIEW, Vol. 91, No. 4, May 2018 Printed in U.S.A. Society and Culture edited by Zakaria Fatih 187 Belenky, Masha, Kathryn Kleppinger, and Anne O’Neill-Henry, eds. French Cultural Studies for the Twenty-First Century. Newark: UP of Delaware, 2017. ISBN 978-1-61149-637-6. Pp. 226. This nine-essay-strong volume contains four parts—“Press and Literary Culture”; “Race and Identity in Popular Performance”;“Repurposed Images”;“Media Storms”— and offers close readings and theories of the field of French Cultural Studies spanning the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The contributors examine “the stakes of differentiating between“high”and“low”forms of cultural expression”(xiv), as they seek to understand a particular cultural moment. Elizabeth Emery unpacks the cultural implications of nineteenth-century French photoreportages and calls into question their validity as historical documents. Chelsea Stieber demonstrates that Haitian literary magazines such as La Revue indigène were no longer primarily focused on France, but more on the specificities of Haitian culture. Examining popular plays in nineteenth-century France, Lise Schreier’s contribution examines vaudevilles and the treatment of interracial encounters. She highlights that “famously finicky censors considered blacks to be stock vaudeville characters”(63). Turning to popular Citébeur and beurette pornographic productions, Mehammed Mack scrutinizes ethnographic realism,the recycling of colonial tropes of sexuality and the marketing of these products to middle-class bourgeois whites in France today. Michael Garval’s “succulent” essay examines Third Republic menus and their manifold ideological and political implications . The illustrated menu as a Gesamtkunstwerk is characterized by a carnivalesque spirit and “allows momentary respite from, and critical distance toward, the social, political, and economic realities” (109). Susan Hiner’s essay on deltiology focuses on fin-de-siècle and early twentieth-century catherinette postcards and shows how they both “consolidated and broadcast traditional feminine roles” (128). Moving on to twenty-first-century French film, Leslie Kealhofer-Kemp’s essay about the blockbuster buddy comedy Intouchables (2011) focuses on its generally positive reception in France before delving into its far more critical reception in the United States. The directors, she argues,“did not intend for the film to be part of a dialogue about representations of France’s ethnic minorities and the legacy of colonialism, yet this became the case as much because of what the film does as what it does not do” (168). Anne Brancky discusses the reciprocity between literature and the media by analyzing the reception of Marguerite Duras’s article on the affaire Grégory published in Libération, a timely piece given that many novelists take a stand on current affairs in media outlets such as Le Point or Le Monde. Returning to the Belle Époque, Rachel Mesch examines the Tinayre Affair, which she convincingly shows “wasn’t a failure of feminism, or a sign of antifeminism or misogyny, so much as a failure of imagination”(206). Though the collection could be criticized for constituting an eclectic assemblage of seemingly unrelated subjects, spanning a variety of cultural objects and time periods rather than a clearly homogeneous body of work, all of the essays are carefully researched and articulate“the importance of the broader social and historical settings”(xix). Most of the essays are beautifully illustrated. This book is definitely worth reading. Utah State University Christa C. Jones Blanc-Chaléard,Marie-Claude. En finir avec les bidonvilles: immigration et politique du logement dans la France des Trente Glorieuses. Paris: Sorbonne, 2016. ISBN 9782 -85944-928-5. Pp. 464. En 1960 le reportage-choc“Gennevilliers bidonville”dévoilait aux téléspectateurs français le sort de milliers de travailleurs étrangers qui, exclus du marché locatif comme des hôtels garnis surchargés, se trouvaient réduits à habiter les marges de l’urbain. En région parisienne surtout, Algériens, Portugais, Espagnols, Marocains et Yougoslaves sont nombreux au cours des années 1950 et 1960 à trouver dans les bidonvilles de Nanterre, de Champigny-sur-Marne ou de Saint-Denis une première adresse. Pour la classe dirigeante et les élus locaux, le bidonville—comme la Zone ceignant la capitale pendant l’Entre-deux-guerres ou les favelas du Brésil—incarne l...