Alexandra Giroux

Young French Females’ Attitude Toward Menstruation

Menstruation in several cultures has been considered with fear and wonder. However, this blood, which regularly flows from the woman, is a totally natural phenomenon that a female experiences usually each month. Only pregnancy, special contraception means, marginal ways of living or some diseases allow the woman to be rid of it. Menstrual blood is a liquid which connotes a variety of symbols, from birth to sexuality. It is the external manifestation of an internal process. While male genitals can easily be shown externally in its apparent form, the female anatomy is more complex as the genital apparatus is internal and kept hidden like a secret. Related to life, death and sex, it is the subject of numerous myths. The key question to be asked is as follows: how is menstruation dealt with in Western society, with a particular focus on the narratives and discourses about menstruation among young French women. Currently it is still a taboo subject because of the influence of our cultural inheritance. Womanhood, femininity and menstruation are sophisticated and mythic construction created by our civilization. Scientists and general practitioners monopolize the discourse about it. Only few academics wrote about this subject in the psychological, sociological and social anthropological fields. The academic knowledge produced in these areas has been dominated by males. The aim of this paper is to hear the women’s voices in order to understand how menstruation, a natural thing, is in fact really cultural. The focus is on French culture in particular, and especially the generation of women who are in their twenties. Four French students living in Scotland have been interviewed in order to explore in a small way this vast topic of menstruation and how it is regarded in developed European societies. The objectives of this work are to understand connotations of the menstrual blood and the behaviour of people towards it, to investigate the theories of some feminists about menstruation, to allow women to talk about their periods in other ways rather than medical ones. Further, it is about analysing this discourse and criticizing our relationship with an understanding of the concept of menstruation. First, this essay puts forward a review which helps to give a broad approach to the topic. Once it has set out the main themes, the methodology, the findings and the discussion of the results are presented. This essay finishes with a reflection on control and how power is exercised over the body of women using the pretext of menstruation.

First, it should be pointed out that France as a multicultural society has been influenced by the habits of different groups. However, traditional beliefs still hold sway. A famous original French belief states that during menstruation, women would not be able to make mayonnaise successfully. It was also long believed that a child conceived during the menses would be red haired, silly or that he would have diseases such as leprosy or ulcers. Religion plays an important part in the way we perceive menstruation. Jewish women must not have sexual intercourse during menstruation and Muslims have to wash themselves in a kind of ritual. In the Old Testament, blood is viewed as unclean. “Inter urinas et faeces nascimur” says the Church (“we are born between urine and faeces”). Fairy tales unconsciously prepare young girls for menstruation. In Snow white, the queen, sewing, pricks her finger with a needle and she decides to have a child with lips as red as blood. The meaning of this extract is that women need to bleed to give birth. It is interesting to stress that menstruation splits the life of the woman in different times, depending on the culture. In France, there are several stages in the life of a female: the girl, the teenager, the woman and the post menopausal woman. All these phases are related to the presence or the absence of menstruation. The post-menopausal woman does not have any menstruation, and so, she is not “useful” anymore for the society in terms of not being able to have babies. The uterus may be seen as a void to be filled. Thus, menstruation would be seen as the proof of a failure. However, it can be as well seen as a success: it is like a reminder that the reproductive system works correctly. Usually, in other time and other places, menstruation was considered as bad, even if it is possible to find some exceptions. A cosmic power has sometimes been given to menstruation: the reason for this has been found in the moon cycles, the seasons or the rhythm of the tides.  In our culture, we are frightened of blood in general because it is related to death or illness, because it is a vector of contamination for diseases. Women often feel pain during menstruation. The etymology of the word “pain” is “poena” means “punishment” in Latin. The concept of PMS is controversial and it could be constructed by culture. De Beauvoir describes menstruation as a hard thing in her well-known book, The Second Sex: “menstruation is painful: headaches, over-fatigue, abdominal pains, make normal activities distressing or impossible” (1949, p.353). As a feminist, it is striking to read that from her hand. Even this really open-minded thinker of the middle of the 20th century stresses only the bad aspects of menstruation in this quote reinforcing all the clichés that we have about it. The way that writers describe menstruation is really important because it has an influence on our perception.

Menstruation is a cultural fact because it is constructed but, most of the time, the discourses that we can find about it are medical discourses. The medical model therefore appears to dominate western discourses over and above social and cultural ones.  At least in print, menstruation is accepted as a normal body process but some consider menstruation as “the weeping of a disappointed uterus” (Jeffcoate 1975, quoted in Laws 1990, p.93). Lots of general practitioners encourage women to have children to get rid of their menstrual pain, as if women had to let their body do what it is intended for. Some of them go further.  Several books have been written by general practitioners on menstruation and even on the ability – or not – to have intercourse during this period of the month. There is as well the idea that hormones would alter women’s behaviour. By using the expression “PMT”, “Premenstrual tension”, general practitioners encourage woman to focus only on the bad aspects of their feelings, before menstruation. General practitioners control the boundaries of the social norm of what constitutes femininity. The institution of science is a social institution where medicine reproduces and legitimates patriarchal values. Women who take the pill bleed each month, but in reality, this blood is only there to mimic the natural cycle and to reassure some women. Currently, some females can decide to get rid of their periods and to choose a pill which does not provoke this artificial bleeding. The attitude toward menstruation is therefore ambiguous: some women want to get rid of it others want to still bleed once a month. Periods play an ambivalent role in our lives as they are something that we can see, something with a huge symbolic significance and something to be hidden.

According to the etiquette of menstruation, women should not make men aware that they are menstruating (Laws 1990, p.29) nor of how they cope with it. Advertisements for sanitary wear are usually politically correct: the blood used is blue, the vocabulary is naïve and nothing is embarrassing. But the expression “sanitary protection” is problematic because it leads people to believe that blood is dirty or dangerous. Currently, some companies even provide some even some protective tins to hide sanitary protection devices, with black pant liner and specific towel to perfume the vulva. In the clean male-centred world of pornography, menstruation, cyprine or any other fluids of the woman are banned. Some feminists have argued that we should positively consider the menarche as a girl’s coming of age. However, nothing has happened to consider the cycle glamorously and respectfully (Greer 1999, p.37). Menstruation can be used to emphasise men’s power over women. The production of this fluid is passive, whereas the production of sperm or urine is active. The menstrual flow can be seen as uncontrolled and unchecked and, by analogy, the woman can be seen like that. So, women seem to be devalued by menstruation but it may be as well an object of jealousy by men because it is the sign of child-bearing ability. While the female’s body is not aimed to serve male sexual desires, menstruation could be seen as a resistance to the man’s will. During her period, the woman would often be thought to be useless and the resistance to having sex could be considered by some men as an invitation to legitimise adultery.

Even though in lots of cultures, menstruation was depreciated, in some of them they had a positive attitude toward it. A research done in 1983 by the World Health Organization among women of all socioeconomic classes in ten countries shows that they see menstruation as a positive event (Delaney J, Lupton MJ and Toth E. 1988, p.14). Moreover, a large majority of them would not voluntarily get rid of it.  Now, some contraceptive devices allow women to control or to get rid of their periods. For the first time, women are able to free themselves from natural determinism. Some feminists have sought to represent menstrual blood in a positive light. These thinkers, who are from “Mai 68” are artists or intellectuals belonging to the “Second Wave” in the sixties. Some artists have tried to remove the complex that we can have about menstruation, by using it at the main point of their work. Orlan, for instance, explains one of her performances: she was using “a huge magnifying glass to show [her] vagina (the pubic hairs on one half were painted blue) during [her] period” and “a video screen showed the head of the man or woman who was about to see another showed the head of women and men who were looking and at the exit, Freud’s text on the head of Medusa was distributed” (Orlan, quoted in Greer 1999, p.38).

This review is the start point of a deeper research focusing on French females. Through this project, the researcher wanted to explore this subject from her own auto-ethnographic perspective also, as well as from the four women chosen as interviewees: Emanuelle, Laetitia, Charlie and Martine. Indeed, all the women interviewed are really similar to her: same gender, same age and same nationality. The thematic analysis of the views on menstruation of the young French women has to be considered also in relation to the feminist standpoint theory which influenced the researcher. Because women are not often asked to talk about the subject of menstruation, their point of view is interesting. In order to understand the real point of view of the subjects, the interview, as a qualitative method of research, was chosen. Most of the books discussed in the literature review present menstruation as a taboo so a one-to-one interview allows the person to feel more confident and to talk more freely. The semi-directive interview is an interesting way to let people talking about what they want. Nevertheless, the French female students who answered the questions cannot be taken as representative of the whole French female population. They are just a few out of the many and may not be typical because they have accepted to talk about menstruation. Indeed, some young women who were asked to participate in this research refused the proposition. They explained that they thought that the subject was too strange or that they would not be comfortable to talk about it.

Through the interviews, four key ideas were systematically discussed by the participants: the women’s link with temporality, their behaviour during menstruation, their relationships with family and friends, and finally the idea of control and power. Menstruation plays an important part in the life of a woman and reflects her link to temporality. Nowadays women live longer and thus experience more menstrual episodes during their life-span. Men’s perception of time is somewhat different because they do not have any periods. Menarche is a key step in the life of a woman. For two of the interviewed women, it was a positive experience and they were happy. For the two others, it was scary and they wanted to hide it. Charlie knew as well what periods were because she had an elder sister. She was happy to have her periods because she had the feeling of being “a whole woman”, like her friends who already all had their menstruation. For all the interviewed young women, the menopause is far away but they have their own idea about how they will react when they won’t have periods anymore. Martine thought that when women have the menopause, they are often retired and they do not have the same link with time as do younger women: when a woman has her periods, she usually knows when the beginning of her cycle is and what day she will begin to bleed. Most of the time women talk about their menstruation when they experience pain and problems, or when it is related to childbearing or contraception. But some women try to make things different. Vanessa Tiegs (2004) for instance wants to produce a positive image of menstruation and paints with her menstrual blood. During her periods, she feels more creative and she expresses the menstrual cycle every month.  All the girls interviewed used pads for their first period, and not a tampon, though some are using this method currently. None of the interviewed women used alternative protections like a menstrual cup, a sea sponge or a tissue towel, because they were not known to them or rejected them because it meant having a closer contact with their own blood.When she has her periods, Emmanuelle tries to avoid practising sport and sometimes, it is so painful that she cannot go to the university. It can be assumed that women may attribute bad moods to being premenstrual. PMS might be considered as a cultural construction and the relationship that women have with their relatives may explain a lot about the construction of our different cultures.

When the young girl has her periods for the first time, a woman plays often the role of the mentor: for Martine and Charlie, it was the grandmother who was present; for Laetitia and Emmanuelle, it was the mother. All say that they would not have talked about it to a man, even though it is someone in the family. Charlie said that she would not talk about it to her father because they have a “blood relation”, which suggests that the blood of the menstruation is seen as having a different connotation than the blood in the veins. Foucault (1981, p.116) explains that sex is concerned with power and surveillance: pedagogy, medicine and economics and so on are perfect surveillance tools. Now, technology is easily associated with the idea of good: using tampons is considered modern. It is important to keep in mind that taking the pill like she does could be thought to be against nature as well as natural is not synonymous with good. The only thing is that women should have access to the information to make up their minds and to decide if they want to have periods or not. Each woman has a special relationship with her general practitioner when it comes to menstruation. Laetitia pointed out that sometimes, when male general practitioners ask this kind of question, they are smiling a little bit. She thinks that it may be considered as a misogynist reaction. Really often, men are those with the medical gaze and women are their helpers, although men themselves cannot go through the female body experience. Women are often the passive victims of the doctor’s ministrations. The pill is both a liberator and a problem for the woman. It gives her more power because she can choose to have babies and periods. But at the same time, it can have negative effects on the body and it reinforces the idea that only women should care about issues surrounding reproduction. Control of reproduction is done through the control of periods and taking the pill is considered as the correct thing to do because it is technological and modern.

To sum up, menstruation is both very present and very absent in our society. Culture plays an important part in its symbolic construction, as much as our perception of menstruation constructs our culture. Usually, the knowledge that we have about it is from the perception of medical knowledge, as an attempt to rationalise a little known subject. The lack of knowledge about it leads lots of men to use their construction of menstruation in relation to their beliefs about women as an argument to depreciate women and to support and therefore perpetuate patriarchal society. In the majority of the cultures, people do not talk a lot about menstruation, except when it is discussed within a scientific discourse. So, women tend to hide it and often leave it in a framework imbued by the negation of their own body. Of course, generalisations must be avoided and some women have a positive approach to their bodies. Through the interviewing of the four French women, the idea of gender relationship was really present. It has been suggested that menstruating women have a different link to temporality than men. Periods appeared to be important because they seemed to be the most obvious evidence that the women can have children. Menstruation is connected with reproduction. The mother who gives life to the daughter is often the same person who will help the young girl with her menarche, a sign that shows that she can be a mother as well. This relationship is privileged and the women cannot all the time talk freely of this subject with their male friends, for instance. Unconsciously, women know that they do not have a huge interest in discussing this subject as it is used as a coercion tool. Jokes, medicalization or even notions of “aberrant” hygiene can be used by them to control the bodies of women. This study may contribute to breaking the taboo and to allowing women to talk about menstruation but the road is long. The more civilized we are, the more distant with our bodies we become.  Menstruation has been made into something horrible by so-called “civilized man”, and different technology devices allow women to control their flow. This is often imposed upon them by cultural restrictions. However, they have the choice: being slaves of technology or being in control. The problem is complex and the power exercised cannot be considered as springing only from man to dominate women. Women perpetuate this taboo. One of the pieces of evidence is the fact that some girls who were asked to take part in the interviews declined the invitation, explaining that the subject was personal. The aim of this essay is not to write an apology of menstruation. Women should have the appropriate information about it. They should be able to use the sanitary protection that they want, they should be able to decide if they really want to take the pill and they should even be able to choose if they want to have their periods.  Tampons or the pill that seemed at first sight to be a revolution for women can finally immure them. The woman’s body has to be rethought and this can be achieved only by the mutual work and commitment of both genders. But some people, most of the time women, try to change our perception of menstruation, in order to have a more positive attitude toward it. If menstruation is not the problem, then attitudes to it could be. Menstruation is often linked up with womanhood alone, but hopefully this is not totally true and they must not be limited by it. Women are more than a womb which has to be filled.

>> Dissertation “Young French Females’ Attitude Toward Menstruation”

La pornographie définit toute production – écrit, dessin, peinture, photographie, film, spectacle – qui vise à provoquer l’excitation sexuelle. Souvent, elle est considérée comme blessante ou dégradante pour la dignité de la personne, en raison de la présence explicite ou implicite d’éléments de contrainte, de violence physique ou psychologique, de mépris ou de déséquilibre de pouvoir. Dans de nombreux pays, sa diffusion est soumise à la loi, par un âge minimum requis ainsi que des espaces et des moments bien définis. Ainsi, la pornographie entretient des liens étroits avec la question de la morale. Dans son ouvrage, Penser la pornographie, Ruwen Ogien s’intéresse au rapport entre ces deux notions. A travers son étude, il définit le concept d’ éthique minimale. Comment envisager la pornographie autrement qu’à travers tous les clichés et les aprioris que nous en avons ? A la lecture de ce texte, quelques éléments de compréhension sont apportés au lecteur. Quelle est la justification de la stigmatisation de la pornographie par la société ? Dans cette guerre métaphysique et morale, comment Ogien nous exhorte-t-il à aller contre le moralisme personnel ?

Alors que l’idée de l’érotisme est de suggérer, de montrer l’âme à travers les corps personnifiés, la pornographie a un but totalement opposé : gros plans sur les organes génitaux, vulgarité – il s’agit de susciter les satisfactions brèves du consommateur. Face à la pornographie stigmatisée, Ruwen Ogien pose le concept d’éthique minimale. Conception qui propose de réduire la morale à trois concepts. Selon l’auteur, de nombreux libéraux devraient s’en remettre aux trois principes suivants : neutralité à l’égard des conceptions substantielles du bien, principe négatif d’éviter de causer des dommages à autrui et principe positif qui nous demande d’accorder la même valeur aux voix ou aux intérêts de chacun.
L’éthique et la morale sont deux concepts différents. La morale a une connotation religieuse, elle comporte une notion de contrôle imposée de l’extérieur, elle porte sur le bien et sur le mal et crée des obligations. L’éthique quant à elle est laïque, comporte une notion d’auto-contrôle, part de l’intérieur de la personne, porte sur le positif et le négatif, elle nous fait réfléchir et nous responsabilise.
Le juste et le bien sont également à différencier. Le juste a une dimension collective alors que le bien renvoie à la personne, à l’effet que la pornographie pourrait avoir sur l’individu.
Souvent, les détracteurs de la pornographie mettent en avant qu’elle va contre la dignité de l’homme. Porterait elle atteinte à notre qualité de personne humaine en nous présentant comme des objets ? Selon l’auteur, il s’agit d’une autre manière de parler d’ « outrage aux bonnes moeurs » ou de « troubles à l’ordre public ». La pornographie est vue comme « réifiante », « objectifiante » et « déshumanisante ». Mais au fond, qui est réifié ? Les personnages ? Les catégories représentées ? Les spectateurs ? Est-il au moins vrai que la pornographie réifie ? Si ce postulat est vrai, en quoi est-ce un problème ? Les acteurs ne peuvent être considérés comme objets puisqu’ils ne répondent pas aux critères d’absence d’autonomie, d’inertie, de violabilité, de possession et d’absence de subjectivité. Ils répondent seulement aux critères de fongibilité et d’instrumentalité. L’auteur explique que « pour un kantien, le traitement comme objet peut être acceptable tant que l’autonomie (ou le consentement) n’est pas niée ».
Si tant est que la pornographie objectifie, est-ce nécessairement un mal ? N’est ce pas au contraire une force qui lui permet de s’inscrire dans un important mouvement intellectuel ou artistique contemporain ?  Sur quelle nuisance se base-ton alors pour condamner la pornographie ?

Ce genre cinématographique auraient selon certains des effets immédiats et durables, sur  le problème de l’émancipation de la femme et sur la protection des enfants. Dans notre époque post soixante-huitarde, l’idée que la femme pourrait être un objet est violemment critiquée. Au fond, qu’il s’agisse de la femme ou de l’Homme, le problème est le même. Les corps présentés dans la pornographie ne peuvent être considérés complètement comme des objets et s’ils le sont, ce n’est pas un argument suffisant pour s’y opposer. Qu’en est-il des enfants ? La pornographie leur est interdit alors que dès treize ans ils sont considérés comme assez responsables pour aller dans des centres de correction et dès quinze ans, ils ont la majorité sexuelle. Pourquoi la pornographie ne leur serait accessible qu’à partir de dix-huit ans ? Probablement qu’elle n’intéresserait pas les tous petits et si elle intrigue les plus grand, où est le mal à vouloir satisfaire cette curiosité ? Lorsque le double cryptage a été recommandé à la télévision, pour la diffusion, au delà du comportement « laxiste » des parents ou de l’Etat, c’est le comportement des jeunes qui a été dénoncé. Au lieu de parler d’une génération violente et sans repère, ne vaudrait-il pas mieux valoriser les principes de liberté de s’informer, d’éducation dans l’autonomie et de refus du traditionalisme ?
L’auteur se propose de revenir sur trois points. Une préférence peut être injuste ou répugnante mais pourquoi le serait-elle plus si c’est un enfant qui l’exprime ? Ensuite, il explique qu’il pourrait exister des raisons normatives de défendre l’idée que « la pornographie ne doit pas détenir le monopole des moyens de satisfaire [sa] curiosité sexuelle » mais aussi des raisons du même genre de ne pas l’interdire complètement aux jeunes. Enfin, il pose la question de savoir quel prix nous sommes prêts à payer, en terme de liberté publique pour « épargner » les enfants.
Ces trois reflexions le mènent à la question des droits de l’enfant où il confronte « illégal » à « psychologiquement traumatisant » et les « dommages psychologiques aux « dommages idéologiques ». Les progressistes y sont vivement critiqués puisque dans côté, ils considèrent les enfants responsables juridiquement et sexuellement, et de l’autre, la pornographie leur est interdite. Ogien commence par prendre l’exemple des impôts : il est illégal de ne pas les payer mais ce n’est pas pour autant que le percepteur risque d’être traumatisé psychologiquement. A l’inverse, une rupture n’est pas illégale mais elle peut avoir de forts dommages psychologiques. Peut être est-ce en suivant l’opinion publique ou les moeurs que le législateur a interdit qu’un message pornographique soit diffusé s’il risque d’être vu par des mineurs. Il instaure une règle mais qui peut démontrer qu’elle est liée à un désir de prévenir des dommages psychologiques ? Le lien entre la vision de ces images et les éventuels traumatisme est-il si net ? Certes, il y a des émotions immédiates comme l’excitation ou le dégoût mais qui a prouvé qu’il y aurait des « atteintes durables à l’identité personnelles » par exemple ? Des expériences sur des enfants semblent inconcevables du point de vue de la morale, probablement car elles seraient considérées comme « violentes » même si encore une fois, l’existence de liens entre pornographie et violence est à démontrer.
Une tendance encore plus désastreuse consisterait selon l’auteur, à confondre le psychologique et l’idéologique. Dire que la pornographie encourage à dissocier les sentiments et la sexualité n’est pas un problème psychologique authentique. C’est simplement la défense d’une idéologie conventionnelle. Et de toute façon, dissocier sexualité et amour est-il plus grave que de dissocier sexualité et procréation ?

Au fond, dans ces guerres métaphysiques et morales, Ogien se positionne contre le moralisme personnel. Il fait même état de situations où le sexe est légitimé. Si l’on condamne le traitement froid du corps, il faudrait également s’en prendre aux sciences naturelles, aux documentaires et à une grande part des arts plastiques. Le corps pouvant être lui aussi un médium, nombreux sont les réalisateurs ayant montré explicitement dans leurs films des représentations répondant stylistiquement aux critères de la pornographie. Il suffit de penser à Lars von Trier, Catherine Breillat ou encore Bruno Dumont. Est-ce pour autant que leurs oeuvres ont moins de valeur ? Question rhétorique, évidemment que non. Certains films pornographiques peuvent d’ailleurs même être élevées au rang d’oeuvres, comme par exemple le film Lilith où Ovidie est réalisatrice. Dans ce film, l’héroïne a une psychologie importante à saisir pour la compréhension du film. Psychologie nécessaire et bien plus que dans des documentaires d’information ou d’éducation sexuelle : là, les sexes ne sont que sexes ! Sur de grandes chaînes familiales comme « Planète », on peut voir des sexes en activité sans même savoir à qui ils appartiennent.
Alors pourquoi ces discours de protection ? Se positionner contre la pornographie, n’est-ce finalement pas une manière de vouloir se préserver soi-même et la société ? Les pornophobes, avant de vouloir protéger leurs enfants ne voudraient-ils pas se protéger personnellement ? Dans ce cas là, la pornographie est une affaire plus privée que publique. Si ces réactions sont du pur moralisme, elles sont injustifiées du point de vue de l’éthique minimale. Vouloir faire des zones réservées à la pornographie dans les villes consisterait de la même manière à la ghettoiser, la stigmatiser. De même, quelles sont les motivations des associations dites de protection de la famille ou religieuses ? L’argument des enfants n’est-il pas un prétexte pour censurer des messages qui ne plaisent pas à ces personnes mêmes ? Les combats de ces associations peuvent même aller contre l’art ultra conceptuel. Pourquoi ces mêmes associations ne sont pas si virulentes lorsque des enfants sont victimes cette fois de pédophilie par les prêtres ? Les enfants seraient alors un prétexte pour combattre « la bête moderniste ou progressiste ».

Il convient pour finir de s’interroger sur la rigueur méthodologique d’Ogien. Lorsque l’auteur évoque la stylistique des film et leur fin, il écrit « fin de toute façon bâclée et incroyablement bien-pensante dans de nombreux films, à ce que disent les plus courageux qui ont eu la curiosité de les examiner ». Est-ce un trait d’humour ou laisse-t-il supposer que lui-même n’est jamais arrivé à la fin d’un film pornographique ? Cela voudrait-il dire qu’il écrit un essai sur un sujet qu’il ne connaît finalement même pas entièrement ? De plus, souvent, il part d’exemple précis et uniques pour expliquer son idée. L’induction est-elle le meilleur moyen pour son argumentation ? Il prend par exemple le cas d’un psychiatre spécialisé dans le développement psycho-sexuel qui affirma qu’en vingt cinq années de pratique, il n’avait jamais été confronté à des problèmes psychologiques provenant de l’exposition à la pornographie. Est-ce parce que ce médecin n’a pas rencontré de tel cas qu’effectivement ils n’existent pas ? Quand il écrit « aucun jeune, je suppose, ne s’est retrouvé aux urgences médicales après avoir vu un film ou lu un livre pornographique », on a envie de lui demander sur quoi il base ses suppositions. S’il s’était un peu plus renseigné sur le sujet, il aurait constaté qu’aux urgences, les médecins sont parfois confrontés à des cas bien étranges comme des objets tranchants coincés dans des cavités intimes. Probablement que l’idée de cette pratique n’est pas tombée de nulle part.
Des approximations sont également     présentes dans son texte. Ogien écrit, en parlant du lien entre sexe et amour, « Les jeunes d’autrefois qui, dit-on, ne séparaient pas ces choses ont-ils eu une vie sexuelle et amoureuse d’adulte plus belle, plus épanouie ? » Dit-on ? Qui est « on » ? Et de quels jeunes parle-t-on ? De quelle époque ? S’agit-il des jeunes gens qui était mariés tôt par leurs parents, ensemble, dans le seul but de capitalisation de la propriété ? Dans ce cas la réflexion de l’auteur est contestable.
De la même manière, une autre réflexion manque un peu de rigueur : « Personne ne pense à interdire la vente de bière ou de pastis sous le prétexte que les enfants risquent d’ouvrir une bouteille quand leurs parents sont au travail ou à l’hypermarché ». Justement, l’auteur a tort car la vente d’alcool est soumise à une législation stricte : certaines enseignes n’ont pas le droit d’en vendre après vingt-deux heures et dans un bar, il faut être âgé d’au moins seize ans pour consommer une boisson alcoolisée. La comparaison n’est donc pas pertinente.

A travers ce texte, Ogien montre comment il est nécessaire de repenser la pornographie, au-delà de nos a prioris qui nous incitent à la condamner radicalement. Même si l’auteur ne prend jamais clairement position, il montre que les arguments des pornophobes sont facilement contestables. La pornographie est plus une affaire privée qu’une affaire publique. Nous devons envisager notre rapport à elle de manière individuelle. Si certains la considèrent comme dangereuse, elle peut aussi être pour d’autres un élément d’épanouissement comme le montrent les recherches actuelles des porn studies aux Etats-Unis.

Comme une image

Réalisé par Agnès Jaoui
Avec Marilou Berry, Agnès Jaoui, Jean-Pierre Bacri
Digipack, 2 DVD, PAL, Tous publics
DVD Zone 2
Audio : Français Dolby Digital 2.0, Français Dolby Digital 5.1
Vidéo : Format 16/9 compatible 4/3, Format cinéma respecté 1.85, Format DVD-9, Film en Couleurs
Contenu : DVD 1 Audio description pour les malvoyants Bandes-annonces StudioCanal DVD 2 “Le cinéma Harlequin” (15′) Making of (60′) Scènes coupées (25′) Bêtisier Conférence de presse Cannes 2004

Ce petit objet sent encore bon le sable chaud, nous rappelant ainsi que Comme une image a remporté le Grand Prix du Scénario, à Cannes, en 2004. Rions donc mais rions intelligent avec le dernier opus du tandem de scénaristes Jaoui / Bacri. Comme le titre l’indique, la problématique du film est l’image. Selon Jung, chacun se crée une apparence, de manière à mieux communiquer avec les autres, liant ainsi les notions de démarche collective et inconscient individuel (si si, ce psychanalyste a osé écrire une phrase comme ça, c’est vraiment la class). Puisque nous sommes dans les expressions arty-petits-fours, notons aussi le « schématisme didactique » dont sont parfois accusés les deux auteurs. Ces derniers ne le rejettent pas, expliquant que les personnages sont là pour servir leur démonstration. Pour revenir au DVD même, un point des bonus mérite d’être signalé : dans la même idée que les sous-titres pour sourds et muets, un commentaire pour malvoyants est accessible.
Les Bidasses en folie

Réalisé par Claude Zidi
Avec Gérard Rinaldi, Gérard Filipelli, Jean Sarrus
DVD Zone 2
Audio : Français Mono
Vidéo : 16/9 Compatible 4/3, Format cinéma respecté 1.66
Contenu :
Le Film : 90 mn
Interview de Claude Zidi
Interview des Charlots
Clips des Charlots
Clip des Martin Circus “Je m’éclate au Sénégal”
Une Bande-annonce

On joue ? Une petite question… quel célèbre réalisateur a commencé comme assistant auprès de Claude Zidi ? (Cette phrase n’a pas d’autre fonction que de montrer la grande culture des journalistes de l’équipe.) Alain Chabat ? Marc Dorcel ? Eh non. Il s’agit de Luc Besson. Et c’est pour cela que nous nous devons de voir et revoir Les Bidasses en folie. Certes, me direz-vous, ce film repasse beaucoup sur TF1 au mois de mai car il y a plein de jours fériés. Je vous répondrait tout simplement que la chaîne ne vous offre pas la cerise sur le gâteau : les clips des Charlots. Car au-delà des talents incontestés d’acteurs, cette joyeuse bande de trublions a un autre tour dans sa poche pour séduire la gente féminine : la chanson. Romance, poésie et subtilité au programme. Merci Gaumont pour la réédition de ce film qui nous accompagnera lors de nos grands moments de solitude. Alors, on reprend en chœur le refrain de « Le trou de mon quai » ?

Our civilization is built upon both high and low culture and we need tools to understand the link between these two notions. Bakhtin (1895-1975), writer or Rabelais and his World was interested in the transgressive qualities of carnival and the grotesque, including a critical utopia. This text has in our post-modern society offers a new insight. This essay will try to consider how the relationship between high and low culture is worked out today, through a piece of analyse of Bakhtin’s work on Rabelais. First, it will be stated that Bakhtin’s theories are important to understand our society: after a typology of carnival and the grotesque, it will be explained how these notions are still present in our culture in order to challenge the power. But some limits will be envisaged like the issues commodification or spectacle, before wondering if it is still possible nowadays to make a distinction between high and low culture.

To begin, it can be stated that Bakhtin’s account of carnival and the grotesque continues to be an indispensable instrument for analysing the relationship between the high and the low in contemporary culture.  A typology of the carnival and the grotesque will help the reader to be more familiar with these notions. Carnival is a profane celebration tolerate by the Church that takes place before Lent, in which people feast and dress in costume and when “the world turned upside down”. It used to challenge the Church morale. The traditional carnival has inspired through time and spaces different variations. For instance, in some areas of France, one hundred days before the A Level, pupils wear fancy dresses and do the mess in the high school. The grotesque refers to the use of bizarre, absurd, irony, laughter and excess, dealing with the dichotomy life and death. This art is characterized by the mixture of parts of humans and animals, the presentation of defecation and vomit, which has to be considered as a whole celebration of the body. For instance, in The Phantom of Liberty (Buñel 1974), bourgeois conventions are demolished when a couple of friends seat all together on toilet bowls and hide themselves when they want to eat. “The grotesque expresses not the fear of death but the fear of life” (Kayser cited in Bakhtin 1984, p.50). Carnival and the grotesque question the notions of utopia and dystopia. Irrupting into the everyday life, the carnival is a period where hierarchies are temporally lifted although narrative disappointments are experienced by some people. Some traces of the carnival and the grotesque can be found in our culture, in reaction to the process of repression.

We live in an atomized society of abundance, of accumulation, which tends to obscenity, in Latin, ob scene, behind the scene. Therefore, the carnival can be seen as a collective response to challenge power such as capitalism, bureaucracy or gender issues. In Nancy, France, once a month, during the “vélorution”, hundreds of people wear fancy dresses, ride their bicycles and go in the street to protest and to ask for more space and security for them in the city. The gay pride is the same concept: people holding parades and asking for more rights and equality within sexual difference. In March 2008, in Paris, sex workers and activists celebrated the “Pute pride” (hooker pride) in reaction to the laws which oppresses prostitutes. Bennett (1986) takes the examples of Blackpool and the seaside, which he considers as an unregulated land, site of carnival praxis. The idea was “to expose the working classes, if only for a day, to the improving physical and moral climate then prevailing in Blackpool” (p.138). In The Sopranos, the words used are quite vulgar, for instance one of the character has the nickname “Big Pussy”, which is an important element of the carnivalesque (Work 2002). If language is an interesting aspect to consider, the body is even more. Since the modernity, we tend to hide the body functions. “The body is where the power bearing definitions of social and sexual normality are, literally, embodied, and is consequently the site of discipline and punishment for deviation of those norms” (Fiske 1987, p.248). People refuse the identity proposed by the dominant ideology and use the body as a material against morality, discipline and control.  Larsen (2001, pp.68-69), inspired by Freud’s theories about the anal stage, analyzes South Park: “The episode “Cartman’s Anal Probe” presents Cartman as the exemplary post-modern acephale, suffering amnesiac abduction and the resultant lapses in self-regulated subjectivity, the schizophrenic invasion and probing of sacrificial organs of the body (the anus), the unfolding of the classical body onto a plane of seductive and impenetrable surfaces, with the prioritized inspection of the (expressionless) anus signifying the lack of disciplined and expressive “self” which marks out the grotesque body”. Orlan playing with her body material or modern primitives reconsidering their skin as a semantic field express that they owe their body. As Foucault (1979) has argued, “the power exercised on the body is conceived not as a property, but as a strategy, that its effects of domination are attributed not to ‘appropriation’, but to dispositions, manoeuvres, tactics, techniques, functionings”.

Carnival and the grotesque are anti-hegemonic strategies to escape the hierarchy, the church, or other power like capitalism. They are a temporally and spatially determined transgressions followed by the restoration of the social order. These notions are tainted with Marxist theories, with the idea of challenging the power, like in The Island of Slaves (Mariveaux, 1725), a play about servants and masters, on a desert island where a group of slaves decide to take the power. The carnival is the dream of a free world where people would not miss anything. “The suspension of all hierarchical precedence during carnival time was of particular significance” (Bakhtin 1984, p.10). It is exactly what De Certeau argues in his book The Practice of Everyday life (1984) when he explains that the everyday man uses tactics such as urban nomadism, poaching or bricolage to subvert the state power imposed upon him. If the State tries to control the people whenever and wherever, each individual has his own micro possibilities of resistance. For Gardiner (in Crossley and Roberts 2004, p.39), all these things “constitute a crucial resource through which the popular masses can retain a degree of autonomy from the forces of socio cultural homogenization and centralization”. Mary Russo (1997 in Conboy, Medina and Standury) in a feminist point of view explains that the category of the grotesque “might be used affirmatively to destabilize the idealization of female beauty or to realign the mechanism of desire” (p.10). As the transsexual body challenges the bodily boundaries, the female grotesque body is “the body of becoming, process and change”. Pregnancy, aging or obesity can be used to lead the people think about the boundaries marking high culture and organized society. But some critics of the carnival can be made: it was not spontaneous because people had days off, some groups used to excluded because of racism and outsiders were accused of several things like diseases. Current carnival and notions of the grotesque can as well be subject of some critics.

It can be wondered if Bakhtin is out of context because his theories have their own limits. Humphrey (in Brandist, C and Tihanov, G (eds). 2000. p.167) points out two key limitations: “it does not enable us to describe the complex range of ways in which cultural practices make us of inversion at the level of symbolic form, since all inversion is read as resistance, and neither does it enable us to investigate with any degree of refinement how forms of culture come to acquire and express various kinds of political meanings and effects historically”. To understand correctly these issues, we need to consider the notions of commodification, class struggle and gender struggle. Now, the upper-class, which is associated with the high culture, is also the producer of the low culture. Little Britain may be a grotesque show but the purpose for BBC is at the end to earn money. Likewise, the social aim of the carnival has disappeared and his purpose is most of the time commercial, like the Venetian Carnival can be. The case of Blackpool analyzed by Bennett mentioned earlier is criticized by Webb (2005). He thinks that Bakhtin’s concepts have been over-utilized. He explains for instance that with the help of a “geographical class regulation” (p.125), class distinctions were maintained. He states that utopia cannot really be found in the case of Blackpool because it was “a space of pleasure for the working class created in large part by the working class” (p.131). Strinati (1995, p.191) makes as well an interesting feminist critic and explains that usually high culture – art – is associated with masculinity production, work, intellect, activity, writing. On the opposite, mass culture – popular culture – is associated femininity, consumption, leisure, emotion, passivity, reading. But another thing can be pointed out: today, we tend to consume more than we participate.

The Carnival of Rio may be a popular event but it is a show where casual people do not participate. Mass people are only the viewers who watch that in the television. Similarly, Big Brother is the screen materialization of a fake show where the participants gazed leave their boring life in front of a camera: they eat, swear and fart and their behaviour is glorified by the viewer, by the voyeur, the stalker. The spectator who wants to become spectacle will try to mimic what he sees in the Medias, by using the same postures, clothes or expressions than his pathetic idols. Our life is influenced by all the images that we continuously see from the television to the cinema, from the porn movies to the freak shows. In our society influenced by a bourgeois sensibility, the woman of the porn industry is slim, she has no hair, no periods, and sometimes it is even hard to guess if her body produces cyprine. It can be seen as an infantilization of the body. This taboo is present as well in advertisement: a campaign for a sanitary towel usually shows how it is efficient by a demonstration with blue blood. An other taboo is talking about diseases because it reminds us that we will die one day. Guy Debord (1967), in his pessimistic analyze explains that “understood in its totality, the spectacle is both the result and the project of the dominant mode of production. It is not a mere decoration added to the real world. It is the very heart of this real society’s unreality. In all of its particular manifestations – news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment – the spectacle represents the dominant model of life. It is the omnipresent affirmation of the choices that have already been made in the sphere of production and in the consumption implied by that production. In both form and content the spectacle serves as a total justification of the conditions and goals of the existing system. The spectacle also represents the constant presence of this justification since it monopolizes the majority of the time spent outside the production process”. But the spectacle is not the life, it is his inversion. The mass-entertainment industry allows us to escape the world for a few hours. Nothing changes and at the end, when people leave Disneyland, the pumpkin is not a coach anymore. However, the problem has to be rethought in context, which means that we need to take in consideration the fact that we live in a post-modern world.

In our post-modern society, it can be asked what the meaning of what we see in the Medias is and if even it means anything. Strinati (1995, p.225) states that “there are no longer any agreed and inviolable criteria which can serve to differentiate art from popular culture.” The distinction between high culture and low culture is complicated. It is more complex than literature, painting and sculpture versus popular music, tattoo art and pornography. Although Jean-Louis Costes, performer artist, plays with his urine, feces and sperm on stage, he is recognized to be “an artist” by the profession and he is invited all over the world. The post-modern pieces of art use intertextuality and the frontier between high and low tends to disappear. Exhibitions in the streets, happenings, art in situ are evidence that it is harder and harder to consider that a work belongs to this or that category. If an extract of a symphony is used in an advertisement, this tune will be tarnished and although it used to be considered as related to high culture, the masterpiece will probably loss a bit of its symbolical value. Moreover, it can be wondered if carnival and the grotesque are really achievable today because we live in an individualistic society where the idea of community is not really present. Carnival was the idea of lots of different people going all together in the street and it was not a compilation of individual isolated actions.

In our society, carnival and the grotesque do not have the same meaning than they used to have but still, these concept help us to understand what is problematic in our culture. These concepts still exist in our society, in a fragmented and localised form. The aim is still the same than in the past id est it is a way to challenge the power. But in the capitalist society, carnival and the grotesque can be used by some people for the only purpose of making money. Sometimes, the social aim disappears so class and gender struggle are still present. More than an event where everybody can participate, carnival and the grotesque are now most of the time a voyeuristic show where the scopic pulsion of the spectator is satisfied. Moreover, it is much more complicated to inverse the notions of high and low currently because they tend to disappear with postmodernism. The analyse of Bakhtin is thus still interesting in the contemporary culture but we need to bear in mind that things have changed and a recontixtualisation including politic, economic and social issues is necessary.
References:

Bakhtin, M. 1984. Rabelais and his World. Bloomington: Midland Books, Indiana University Press.

Bennett, T (et al). 1995. Popular Culture and Social Relations. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Brandist, C and Tihanov, G (eds). 2000. Materializing Bakhtin: The Bakhtin Circle and Social Theory. New York: Palgrave.

Conboy, K Medina, N and Standury, S (eds). 1997. Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist theory. New York: Columbia University Press.

Crossley, N and Roberts J.M. (eds). 2004. After Habermas: New Perspectives on the Public Sphere. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

De Certeau, M. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. University of California Press: Berkeley.

Debord, G.1967. The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books

Fiske, J. 1987. Television Culture. London: Routledge

Foucault, M. 1979. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books.

Larsen, D. 2001. South Park’s Solar Anus or Rabelais Rectum. Cultures of Consumption and the Contemporary Aesthetic of Obscenity. in Theory, Culture and Society. Volume 18, Numero 4.

Strinati, D. 1995. An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture. Routledge: London.

Webb, D. 2005. Bakhtin at the Seaside: Utopia Modernity and the Carnivalesque. in Theory, Culture and Society. Volume 22, Numero 3.

Work, H. 2002. Big Bellies and Bad Language: Carnivalesque in The Sopranos. in Media Edcational Journal. Issue 32.