By Viviana Freyer and Holden Davitian, Staff Editors
Editor’s note: Freyer conducted this interview in French but translated it into English with the assistance of Davitian.
During the strikes that occurred on both Bryn Mawr and Haverford’s campuses last fall, the Bryn Mawr Strike Collective organized teach-ins hosted by a variety of departments, one of them being an open discussion featuring Bryn Mawr French Professor Julien Suaudeau and French-African actress Aïssa Maïga. After the teach-in, The Bi-College News staff editor Viviana Freyer interviewed Professor Suaudeau on his friendship with Aïssa Maïga, the world of Francophone cinema, and the responsibilities of French artists to highlight non-French francophone voices.
Firstly, how do you know Aïssa?
I’ve known her for a long time as an actress. I first saw her in the movie Bamako, and I remember that I was very impressed by the expressivity of her face. Her visual performance is very impressive. She has a sense of charisma that is absolutely natural, something that is very rare among French actors. She has a presence that transcends the screen that brings us into the story. I followed her work thereafter and noticed how her repertoire and range have evolved, which is also rare. Through her personality, she really transcends the limits of genre.
We have a friend in common who is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. They put us (Julien and Aïssa) in contact after Aïssa spoke at the César Awards [the highest film honor in France] in March 2020. I was very shocked by the speech’s negative reactions. For five minutes, she talks about the invisibility of minorities, so I wrote an article for Slate to say that she was absolutely right. That is when my friend put us in contact. I am simultaneously an admirer of her work as an actress and activist. I particularly admire her engagement in France’s new anti-racist movement.
In my French class, we watched Ousmane Sembène’s film La noire de… which demonstrates the revolutionary powers of cinema. Could you expand on this subject?
I think this references the power of identification, which is very specific to film. In literature, there is also an “identity pact” between the reader and the characters, but film identification, this “mimesis,” is more intellectual and less direct. In film, this identification and mimesis pass through the audiovisual media, and the presence of actors, in my opinion, is more emotional and effective than characters in literature. I think that Sembène, when he talks about the revolutionary power of cinema, makes reference to the revolutionary power and effectiveness of emotions. This can be a very positive power, but a dangerous one as well. If we look at totalitarian cinema, for example, like The Birth of a Nation by D.W. Griffith, it’s exactly this: we take an artistic form of media that has considerable emotional power and we attach it to an ideology, which is thus used as propaganda. Hollywood-cinema, racist and White supremacist cinema, Nazi-cinema, Italian totalitarian cinema, Soviet-cinema, etc.… there’s a risk that this revolutionary power can be used in a negative way. But this power exists, and if we use it with caution and intelligence, I think it is the specific quality of film when comparing it to other art forms.
You’ve lived in Philadelphia for a while now. Could you note the similarities and differences that you have noticed between American cinema and French cinema in terms of diversity?
It seems to me that the questions of race and racism, discrimination, and the invisibility of minorities has been taken into account for a longer time in American film, whether in mainstream Hollywood or independent films. This awareness has been around for a longer period of time because in the U.S., what is called “affirmative action” we call discrimination positive in French. These correctional mechanisms [meant] to reconstruct equality after slavery, segregation, and discrimination are more developed in the U.S. The problem is that, as Aïssa explained very well in the teach-in, in France, racism is considered to be nonexistent or faraway, as slavery took place in the French colonies and not regional France itself. The colonies were French, yes, they were a part of France. Yet, in the minds of most French people, regional France is metropolitan France. In past colonies in North and West Africa, and in additional colonies that have become “departments” like Guadeloupe and Martinique, slavery and colonial domination occurred. But it was “far” from or foreign to France, and it happened a while ago. French people today tell themselves, “Racism? What racism? That doesn’t exist in France.”
I say that the majority of France isn’t racist, but they have racism. The difference between the verbs “to be” (être) and “to have” (avoir) is key. The French people that are racist, for me, are easily identifiable. They’re part of the extreme right-wing party. But most people, without being racist, have racism in the sense that it is unconscious. They ignore France’s colonial history. Many French people ignore the triangular commerce between Europe, Africa, and the colonies as well as the link between this imperialist and colonionalist past and today’s discrimination of minorities, which is the outcome of this colonial history. Why are there Black, Asian, and Arab communities in France today? Because of France’s colonial history, and also, of course, because of today’s immigration stories. But it is principally a result of this colonial history. A majority of White French people don’t understand the postcolonial link because the history is simply not taught.
Cinema is the reflection of society. French cinema reflects society’s ignorance, an ignorance which the national education system is primarily responsible for, and I say this as a professor. When I was at school, up until even my university years, I learned about colonial history like a conquest: like an epic event with men who created civilization, progress, political structures, etc.
So I think that, at the same time, both recent French and American cinema have worked harder to combat these problems. More recently, in France, there has been a larger focus on these issues and a larger visibility of minorities in front of the camera. Such roles include actors like Aïssa, but also those behind the camera, like directors who make the films and screenwriters who write them and implement their ideas. If they are a White person, their universe risks being White and lacking a focus on diversity. If they are someone who is not White, their imagination will be diversified. So actors, directors, screenwriters, and of course those who finance the films. There have been more and more producers and production houses that are run by non-White French people, and this transforms the landscape.
In cinema, we talk a lot about “classic films.” From France I think of The 400 Blows, The Samurai, and Contempt. American films that come to mind are The Wizard of Oz or The Graduate or Casablanca. How do you think the label of “classic” could be exclusive, or even racist?
We are obviously talking about an aesthetic canon. It is exclusive because that entire canon is defined by a time where an extreme majority, almost the entirety, of actors, directors, screenwriters, and filmmakers were White. You referred to The 400 Blows or The Samurai, which is cinema from the ‘50s and ‘60s. Visibility for Black people in cinema was almost nonexistent.
In American cinema, it was a little different. For example, Gone with the Wind is part of the American canon, but the Black visibility is a total stereotype. The Black character both in the book and the film is completely constructed by racism.
I also think of Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Of course; they completely whitewashed the Japanese character. The Jazz Singer used blackface as well. The aspect of classicism, even the word “classic” itself, has a White, exclusive vision, and if it is executed in an intentional manner, then it is racist. We must work on decolonizing and decentering that vision.
In your opinion, what constitutes a “classic” film?
That is a difficult question because it is so retrospective. We may have to change the definition of “classic,” because today when we say “classic” we are in reality referring to that exclusive vision we talked about. But superficially, it is a term in the history of cinema that corresponds to a certain period. The first thing to do is to change the meaning of the term “classicism.” It should no longer define a period, but an aesthetic, or certain characteristics [of a film]. It is a question that interests me very much because when I reflect on how to go beyond the limits of the universalism of the classic French philosophy, I have the impression that we can return to an anterior state of French thought. I reflect on an author like [Michel de] Montaigne from the end of the 16th century who introduced the concept of relativism. It is very interesting because he is a “classic” author, perhaps the most “classic” French thinker. […] However, in his essays, he relativized the French and European point of view. That is only one point of view, and there are so many others to take into account.
I feel like we could be inspired by Montaigne, because from Montaigne we can learn that we all have biases. Even if I may not believe it, I am biased. I have my own subjectivity, history, experience, and personality that is different from yours, but it makes up a part of my identity.
Perhaps we can think about relativism when redefining “classicism,” and to give a new meaning to “classic” cinema. What would classicism be today? For me, it would be films that highlight the postcolonial diversity of each country, both for France and the United States. These countries are both results of a violent history of colonization: histories full of murder, demonization, stigmatization, and persecution. That is our heritage. However we should not hide it; it is something to be made aware of. To echo Sembène, cinema is a powerful tool for teaching that history.
That is not to say that cinema should only be educational, but we can take into account France and the United States’ postcolonial histories. We have extensively retold traditional stories of history and colonization…it is time we talk about the unknown portions of history, the parts that are concealed and aren’t taught. I feel that this way we can access a new form of classicism that is not so exclusive.
France has a gigantic global influence in terms of art and culture. Do you think French artists should be responsible for amplifying non-French francophone voices?
The problem is that there is some ambiguity when we talk about Francophonie. Francophonie refers to a linguistic space and a geographic space. In terms of postcolonialism, Francophonie refers to everywhere around the world that was part of France’s colonial empire, particularly places that still speak French today. That is not the problem. However, today’s France can use Francophonie as a neocolonial tool for influence. So, we must be very careful when we say French writers have a “responsibility” to help amplify emerging francophone writers. We need to make sure [francophone writers’ voices] are autonomous, and that they write and tell their own stories without neocolonial limitations or influences.
That is very difficult to do in cinema. It is a lot easier to do in literature because in order to write a book, you don’t need any money. It takes a lot of money to make a movie, and the majority of Francophone countries are poor. In order to find money, they have to physically travel to France. And you ask a producer for money…the producer could demand influence over the story, over casting, over certain directing choices. There, we have a form of neocultural imperialism. It is very ambivalent.
Personally I agree with [French artists amplifying Francophone voices] so long as the Francophone creator has total artistic liberty to make the movie that they want to make: control over the scenario, directing, casting, and postproduction. For example, French-Senagalese director Mati Diop, who made a beautiful film called Atlantics that I actually teach in two courses at Bryn Mawr, had French producers, but was made primarily in Senegal with Senegalese actors. And it was also in Wolof, not in French. That is a radical example, but it is rare, too rare.
To clarify, when I say “responsible,” I don’t mean that in a paternalistic sense.
Of course not.
I also think that we need to revere non-European francophone films to the same level as European films. I feel like most people wouldn’t think of a film like Karmen Geï before a film like Amélie, and I believe they came out at around the same time.
Amélie is actually an obsolete vision. It is nostalgia for old France. But what France was that? It was just a paradise for White people, not at all for minorities, and that is something people still do not understand.
What positive changes have you seen in cinema, and what would you still like to see?
Like I’ve mentioned, I’ve seen more diversity on screen, particularly with minority groups who have been almost invisible. I’ve seen Black and Middle-Eastern centered stories, but almost no Franco-Asian stories, and there is obviously French colonial history in Asian countries like Vietnam or Cambodia. Given the recent surge of Chinese immigrants in France, we have seen some more Franco-Asian directors who tell the stories of their respective communities. That is such an important change. Every day we have more and more visibility, and much less stereotypes. Like Aïssa explained, the stereotypical roles for minority men are drug traffickers or gang members or robbers, and minority women are always the domestic help or nurses. Those stereotypes are still around, but they are becoming increasingly deconstructed by contemporary films. That is progress. Another form of progress, though not as visible, is the increase of non-White filmmakers behind the camera.
What would I like to see? I would like to see these practices of having visibility both on and off the screen become systemic, even radicalized. Because it is all still quite slow, and popular; mainstream cinema in France is still full of stereotypes. For example, the movie Serial (Bad) Weddings along with its sequel…it’s a little perverse because we do see the diversity in French society. You have Black, Middle-Eastern, Jewish, and Asian characters. But it is superficial diversity, because the films still perpetuate all the racist clichés.
So there is still some work to do. The three main things are: increase visibility on-screen, make sure that visibility doesn’t rely on stereotyping, and accelerate the process of diversifying filmmakers offscreen who are going to tell the stories of their respective communities. And not even just of their own communities—of their France, and their visions of it.
Image credit: Le Bien Public
