Love, toxicity and performance

bonjour my name is alice welcome back to my channel i hope you're doing well i hope you are relaxed and if you're not relaxed enough well i have a little poem for you [Music] [Music] [Music] so that was a beautiful poem from charles butler and i thought it was the perfect introduction to the discussion we're going to have today about french love la muerla francaise [Music] i asked you on instagram if you thought the stereotypes around french love french relationships were true without really specifying what those stereotypes were in the first place and among the replies i got a few things really stood out namely infidelity true romantics more open to non-exclusivity or polyamory and one that i found quite interesting love as a performance now there are two aspects of my personal experience that are going to come into play in the way i talk about french love and the first one is that i'm french so i grew up in france i consumed a lot of french media films i was surrounded by french people french role models second thing is that i've been quite close to or even dated guys who weren't french so i have material for comparison empirical evidence if i may say this is a video essay by the way this is very serious oh and also i already see you typing that comments saying that your french boyfriend isn't like that hashtag lucky hashtag my boyfriend does the dishes hashtag normal man so i'm going to address it right away yes for sure um every single man every single woman will not correspond to the things i'm talking about today but that's part of the job of a social scientist using real facts experiences to create social facts social trends people make culture society and that influence people in one way or another a tv series like emily in paris will have an impact on the way you see france french people paris well us french people have grown up with those stereotypical media representations so of course it's gonna have an impact on the way we do love what has been quite interesting to me is to realize that now that i spend quite a lot of time outside of france i tend to reproduce the stereotypes way more than i used to almost as a form of self-esteem fetishization fetishization self-fetishization when i'm abroad i'm the french girl and the french girl aesthetic seems to me to embody not just a dress code but also a constructed personality of french girls a girl with character effortlessly charismatic free but romantic and a strong believer in things like love at first sight or everlasting loves etc she's emancipated just enough to make her look sexy but not so much so that people could think that she could live happily with other man or even worse than that said she could be perceived as a feminist that became very clear during the meeting movement where thousands of testimonies really shook the foundations of what people thought was french love iconic french actresses art critics writers wrote an opinion piece on what they call the right to pasta namely men's right to flirt in many different ways including ways that qualify as sexual harassment these women who gained popularity during the french new wave really represents that emancipated but not feminist brand of women director eric romer really marked dalaria so late 1950s to early 1970s his female characters became more and more independent as his career advanced but that independency was framed by the presence of a men or men's perspective on them the women's bodies continue to constitute a big part of the appeal of the movie if not the movie itself in la collections illusion declare both id and claire are subjected to the male gaze eddie's body is fragmented and examined by the viewer while claire is presented in a bikini facing the camera in this shot or climbing a ladder with a short skirt all the famous actresses like leticia kester or katrin dunev not only fit but also defend that representation of women they find their emancipation in the power they have over men's basic instincts the attention they get from them during the debate between brigitte lay a signatory of the opinion peace and caroline duas a feminist activist leia defended that women have a lot of power over men but they don't realize it to which the ass answered that this form of primitive power perpetuates a culture of domination objectification and ultimately violence against women another signatory catering that you or your parents may know for the famous book the sexual life of katrin mili said in an interview that she wished she had been raped so that she could be the proof that you can move on these women make suffering part of a woman's romantic and sexual life and i'm not going to argue that love doesn't hurt of course it does sometimes but as the journalist and essayist monash lee explained in her book meaning that some of the suffering that men and women experience in heterosexual relationships could be avoided if we took the time to rethink how we approach romance as i said previously the metoo movement kind of shook the foundation of what people french people call la seduccion la francaise lardeme a la francaise these concepts have been forged by hundreds of canonical texts over the centuries movies letters paintings etc we can start with lilies and dangerous a scandalous and controversial novel about two french aristocrats where le vicon de valmon and the marquis de mertei form an unholy alliance and turn seduction into a game a game which they must win le vicon de valmon remains a figure of french deduction till this very day he's smart he's rude he's uh charismatic in the french podcast lee custom victorian explains how she read the book as a teenager just like me at school and could sense that there was something off but couldn't really pinpoint what it was and it's only during the summer 2018 that she reread the book and realized that le vicon de vermont is such a in france we would call that a rule the type of guy that doesn't take no for an answer and will insist again and again until he gets what he wants she said valmoy is unbearable he's the equivalent of those guys who spam you with dms every day here's another example this painting made it to the exhibition fragonari in love fragonard is a famous french painter of the 18th century and this painting le virus doesn't look very romantic the woman doesn't look like she's having a good time as the man is locking the door nevertheless the people running the exhibition still thought that it was okay it could be put under the label fragonard in love french people have confused and romanticized non-consensual intercourses into an excess of passionate love our culture presents men's desires as uncontrollable and it even sometimes put the blame on the women for arousing such passion the term seducer is constantly constantly used to refer to famous men who have been accused of rape sexual assault sexual harassment in the press writer and producer claude lonsman is an abrupt narcissist seducer more recently a historical figure of the daily evening news show patrick popodaver is described once again by journalists and friends as an eternal seducer but the 20 women who publicly testified against him assured the interviewers that they weren't seduced in any way intimidated yes but not seduced there is a real real issue here in france in the way we deal with rape sexual harassment as if chivalry and seduction were so ingrained in french gentleman's identity that such divines cannot even be conceptualized the general panic emerging every time a new accusation against a famous french person appears shows that what's under threat isn't just the respectability of an individual man but also a collective identity people associate france with romanticism people talk about french as a love language and some of you shared their experience with french people saying that um it seems that they take love more seriously or they are more prone to do romantic stuff well some are scared that the denunciation of abusers will tarnish that image one of them is pascal brogner a french writer and sayest in 2011 after the dsk affair doministrosken an influential french politician also described as a seducer was accused of rape by a soviet housekeeper called nafisa tudiallo pascal brugner wrote an opinion piece in le monde where he kind of talked about the whole affair and started with an anecdote of him and his family on a beach in florida where his daughter came back to them and she started removing her bathing suit and it was completely normal for them but the people around them found it a bit weird were a bit embarrassed soon the sheriff came and asked the parents to put some clothes back on the girl and his conclusion after this anecdote is that american people really have an issue with sex he then proceeded to talk about the dsk affair pretty much defending him and arguing against the criticism he received from feminist organizations in the us and in france and throughout the article his argument is pretty consistent namely that the culture around sex and love in the u.s is very different from that of france and they just don't get it he thinks that americans use today's careful to mock and condemn french love and he concluded with this sentence we can learn a lot from our american friends but certainly not how to love it's interesting to me to see that he thought the word love had a place in that article talking about rape talking about his daughter naked on the beach it's like he tried to counter the criticism on problematic french way of seducing um and just became an example of it i won't go into details into how he talked about women in this article but you know this is one instance of a larger anti-americanization movement in france by that i mean that the rise of identity-based movements like black lives matter metoo are perceived as a threat against french universalist model all the demand for individual liberties like the right to wear hijab is seen as an attack on french republican secularism so basically no signed out could show your religion in public institutions what is really at stake here and what scares people like pascal bruckner is the loss of something that gave them the right to behave in the worst ways possible and get away with it he's a seducer these men see their golden days coming to an end as american feminist literature books uh talks work in universities became a source of inspiration for french women and french feminist organizations who can access and understand those resources feminist literature from girl boss books to more radical manifestos give arguments and tools so that women feel confident enough to say when something is not appropriate i remember once i went on a date with a guy who was probably six years older than me and he felt the need very early on to justify why he was on a dating app saying that it's because you can't really strike up a conversation with a woman in the street anymore it would be a bit creepy he said that with a malicious smile and slightly raised eyebrows um no not like that yeah yeah more like that yeah i'm not going to make too many assumptions but it was quite clear to me that he was one of the guys who think that uh feminism is threatening um french art of seducing he did say later in the conversation that he found me beautiful and he immediately raised his hand and started laughing asking if he was allowed to say that um yeah like that i mean of course you can say it you can even say it twice what am i talking about that yeah i think it's important to note that he was six years older than me because i didn't find that sort of behavior among younger guys i went on a date with actually when i read pascal bruckner's opinion piece the first thing i thought was this guy is getting old it sounds very old-fashioned in fact most progressive men today would probably think the same thing would be repulsed by this language and that sort of take on love and seduction i mean the discussions one can find in feminist literature made their way to mainstream media and for sure only a certain type of feminists are invited and they're often discredited as soon as they become a bit too radical but at least those ideas are getting out there and more and more people in position of power take them seriously there's a lot of work to do to deconstruct centuries of amalgamation of love with suffering and i'm not talking about heartbreak type of suffering i'm talking about sexual assault rape harassment moral abuse etc a lot of work needs to be done to deconstruct gender stereotypes that ultimately lead to violence i mean if you've been told since you were a kid that your desires are what matters most of course we're going to have some issues with things like consent and women have a lot to unlearn as well i remember reading sally rooney's latest book beautiful world where are you so not that long ago and i was a bit skeptical about the sex passages especially between alice and felix primarily because felix was asking permission for every single thing he wanted to do to her that felt cringe to me at that moment and it took me some time to realize that that is consent we've been so conditioned to see those sex scenes where everything is so effortlessly performed it's speechless it's smooth the lovers communicate through touch through the eyes and the clothes disappeared by themselves but consent isn't just a yes at the beginning asking questions throughout the thing uh taking little pauses just to make sure how you feel if you want to continue it's good it's not cringe at all and it can even become quite funny if i could sum up this video in a few sentences i would say that we were completely misled in the way we envision love and seduction and that it's really hurting at home sexual relationships love isn't just a performance and i feel like french people can sometimes be quite bad at recognizing that because of our culture so we talked about the hundreds of texts poems paintings that romanticized toxicity and violence well today i still see very dramatic quotes from french new wave movies the account ammo souliter that i followed for quite some time follows the same logic it's very romantic poetic it captures love in its most dramatic form and sure we can all be a little bit dramatic sometimes but building a relationship on that is so toxic a majority of women follow the account which reinforces the idea that women are the most romantically involved in a relationship that love finding love is the most important thing in their lives we were socialized like that and every time we get a bit too much involved into something and face rejection then we are told that we need to focus on ourselves put ourselves first but it's not that simple right i really like this little illustration by i get soli because as women we're naturally attracted to that prince charming energy and wants to attract into that emotional turmoil it's really hard to get out of it as bell hook said in her book all about love i'm going to read the passage i'm disturbed by the weighty emphasis on self in so much new age writing on the topic and in our culture as a whole when i would talk about my yearning for a loving partner people told me over and over that i did not need anyone else they would say i did not need a companion and or circle of loved ones to feel complete that i should be complete inside myself while it is definitely true that inner contentness and a sense of fulfillment can be there whether or not we commune in love with others it is equally meaningful to give voice to that longing for communion life without communion in love with others would be less fulfilling no matter the extent of one's self-love all over the world people live in intimate daily contact with one another they watch together eat and sleep together face challenges together share joy and sorrow the rugged individual who relies on no one else is a figure who can only exist in a culture of domination what i really like about bell hicks and monash who wrote this book that really inspired this video is that they're not afraid to talk about love in the context of heterosexual relationships um as feminists surely called herself a pulmuid feminism so that would be a whimp of feminism in a way in the sense that no matter how independent she is there's always a little part of her that want to believe in the beauty of love a communion of two souls the problem in heterosexual relationships isn't so much that women love too much but rather that men don't love enough seduction is one instance of love a selfish form of love i would argue it's more like a game true love is care like a mother or father caring for their children like you caring for your friends it's caring for the people around you even those you don't know to me there's nothing more attractive than a man who truly cares not just about me because you know when we want to conquer someone we want to be our best selves so that can be a bit misleading but care about the people around him care about the little things um so yeah as i said very inspired by this book reinvent love as always i'll put a bunch of book references um i'll try to find a few talks as well um so that you can learn more about it and together we can reinvent love that's it for today thank you so much for watching i hope you enjoyed it as always we can continue the discussion in the comments section don't forget to like to subscribe if it's not done already i want to thank my patrons for their support a special thanks to jose carla jay benjamin oswald was at which if you want to support me on patreon you'll find a link in the description box and yeah i'll see you very soon [Music] you

Channel: Alice Cappelle

Views: 141,191

Keywords:

Id: awJ2-7zWeiA

Length: 18min 9sec (1089 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 29 2022