“Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.” Were he viewing the political scene in France, all that Marshall McLuhan, the prophet of the irresistible rise of image, would add to this prescient remark is: “Or she could ever be.”
Marine Le Pen is the latest victim, or beneficiary, in a French firefight over images. During a recent concert in Tel Aviv, as Madonna launched into her song “Nobody Knows Me, ” a series of images flashed across the huge screen behind her, including shots of Hu Jintao and Sarah Palin.
In this dubious pantheon also appeared a shot of Marine Le Pen — the far-right French politician — with a swastika adorning her forehead. The image lingered for just a second, but as images are wont to do, its impact continues to ripple.
While Le Pen laughed at the episode, dismissing it as a pathetic effort at publicity by a fading celebrity, her second-in-command (and partner) Louis Aliot threatened legal action should Madonna repeat the image in her Paris show on July 14.
If Madonna persists come Bastille Day, Aliot will be cooling his heels in the French courts for much of the summer. Le Pen’s opponent in the approaching legislative elections in the drab and depressed mining town of Hénin-Beaumont, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has just announced that he also has a court date with the darling of the radical right.
The leader of the radical left movement, Parti de Gauche, and like Le Pen, a candidate in the recent presidential election, Mélenchon is up in arms over a pamphlet distributed last week. Accompanying a stock photo of Mélenchon was a passage from his July 14 speech last year: “France has no future without the Arabs and Berbers of the Maghreb.”
There was no need to call in Hercule Poirot to crack the case. At first anonymous, the tract’s creators left their fingerprints everywhere by quoting the remark in Arabic as well as French. For good measure, they printed it in green, the traditional color of Islam. When Le Pen’s National Front was discovered to be behind the stunt, Le Pen, rather than denying the charge, embraced it. After all, she noted, the quotation is accurate; all her party did was add a photo, provide an Arabic translation, and stuff it in local mailboxes.
For his part, Mélenchon does not deny he made the statement; instead, he’s outraged that the pamphlet’s authors did not identify themselves.
It is tempting to dismiss these events as mere vaudeville. The projection of a swastika over Le Pen’s face suggests, at the very least, that Madonna understands French politics about as well as she does the kabbalah. While her political commentary would have applied to Jean-Marie Le Pen, his daughter has made a series of overtures to French Jewry, has surprising support among French Jews living in Israel, and succeeded in meeting the Israeli ambassador to the U.N. last year. But why not the same photo-shopping of, say, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? While Le Pen’s sincerity in regard to Jews is questionable, the Iran leader’s is not. After all, Le Pen at least acknowledges (unlike her father) the reality of the Holocaust, while Ahmadinejad dismisses it.
But these dueling court cases over politicians’ images take on surprising gravity when set against yet a third photograph: François Hollande’s official portrait as president of France. Raymond Depardon took Hollande’s picture in the garden of the Elysée Palace. Positioned toward the left half of the frame, he stands somewhat awkwardly on the lawn, looking vaguely past the right shoulder of the photographer. The effect is more prosaic than presidential, resembling less the image one hangs in every city hall than a Polaroid one discovers in the kitchen drawer.
For a president whose entire campaign was based on normalcy, Hollande must have chosen this image with great care. In the wake of Sarkozy’s frantic presidency, which featured broken promises and broken marriages, much bling and little belief, as well as the spectacular crash and burn in various hotels of Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s public career, Hollande campaigned as Monsieur Normal. It was a winning formula. What better than a Polaroid to carry this message into the Elysée?
It certainly contrasts sharply with the portrait of his Socialist predecessor François Mitterrand, seated in front of book-lined wall, an open book in his lap. It also shares little with Sarkozy’s portrait, which shows him standing in front of a library, staring at the camera, hair aglow with pomade. Neither of these poses would allay the anxiety of the French voter today. Mitterrand’s portrait reminds them of a leader who did seem more at ease with books than people, while Sarkozy’s makes you wonder about the authenticity of someone who rarely read books at all.
Yet the chorus of criticism that has greeted Hollande’s official photo suggests that his aesthetic gamble may not pay off. In fact, can it do so in an era of ideological extremes? Moderation, another word for normalcy, demands great exertion and dedication to achieve and maintain. It is, as Albert Camus noted, a position of great tension, not calm. This is especially the case in France today.
Does Hollande’s portrait — so expertly presented as inexpert, so carefully cast as casual — manage to convey these qualities? More important, despite McLuhan’s skepticism, does Hollande himself, rather than his portrait, have these crucial traits? We will have an answer by the time of Madonna’s next world tour.
Robert Zaretsky is a professor of French history at the University of Houston Honors College.