I discovered that I came from popular classes in high school. Before, I thought I was rather well located on the social scale. I was the last child at the expense of my large family and things were better from an economic point of view. I was no longer entitled to scholarships like my three big sisters, it was proof that we arrived slowly in the small middle class. I even considered myself as an heiress, my father’s legacy was waiting for me on an account blocked until I was 18 years old. 30,000 euros. No one had a fortune like the bank around me.
It is when I collide with the students of the center of Bourges (dear), that I understand the social gap that there is between us. My second year is difficult, we are only three or four students from my college to find ourselves in a predominantly city center class. The ladies of the catechism advised me in college to take the Latin and German options second language, to be with good students. The strategy of social distinction works, but perhaps a little too much: I am not at the level. I painfully pass in first L, where I finally flourish. In the final year, I am a good part of students in letters and philosophy and my main teacher predicts me a bright future in college.
In reality, Joe Dassin is the opposite of the masculinities in the presence this evening in 2001, in the living room where the party is held.
One day, a little before the white baccalaureate of French, the best of the class, the few rare city center-oriented downtown, are absent. I have the unpleasant feeling of not having been invited to an evening where all my friends went. At the end of the course, I head to the office of Mme J., who teaches us philosophy. “Where are the others?”I ask. She answers me, a little embarrassed, that they pass the preparatory competitions to Sciences Po. “You are not there? …”she said in a sigh. “It’s what?” Anxious, as a fault, she explains the issues to me. I feel stung in a place that I did not know yet. A cold sweat that crosses the body.
I hide my injury behind pride, the one I will feel many times later, that of class humiliated, the one who makes my parents say “all rotten”, to distance violence. I don’t care, I tell him, I don’t interest me. Then on the way back to the garden city, I realize, sounded, that I will never have the same opportunities as the city center whose parents plan Sciences Po for their children. Without being able to formulate it yet, I understand that there are keys to open the future, invisible, social, cultural capital and that I do not have them.
It was the following year that I realized that I am beautiful. We are in 2001, the university is in effervescence. More interested in politics than by the history courses that I will eventually abandon, I am committed to UNEF, then very quickly I join Sud student and participate in the blocking of my university. Feminism is already floating around me, through punk music and the movement of the Riot Grrrls, but I do not pay attention to it yet. At that time, I was one of the people who think that the class struggle comes before all the other fights.
It is the time of evenings between activists in apartments to redo the world, sprawled on used sofas in the smoke of rolled cigarettes. A world that we wish to anti-capitalist, alterglobalist and anti-imperialist. In the background: Noir Désir, the Bérurier Noir and other groups of the local scene in black, color of anarchism which is dear to us. I remember a very watered party night. I do not know what we are celebrating because everything was a pretext to organize After evenings: a general meeting, a demonstration, a concert.
That evening, we are about fifteen in an apartment, it is late and the song “In the eyes of Emilie” sounds in the living room.
Ah, Joe Dassin! It is difficult to express the love I have had since childhood. I like his look at life and particularly his vision of love without heroism, without exacerbated, humble and healthy romanticism.
“Romeo, Juliet and all the others,
At the bottom of your books, sleep in peace!
A simple story like ours
Is one that we will never write. “
It is Beauf love. Our ruptures will not change the world, it will continue to turn without us. So, like us, as we are leaving, without thinking about tomorrow.
From where I come from, the parents dance slows in the village hall on “Indian summer” and grove until the early morning on “the Champs-Élysées”. Joe Dassin embodies a figure of a benevolent, kind, sensitive, romantic man, even if he has long been considered a cheesy for texts that we consider too simple, sometimes stupid.
In reality, Joe Dassin is the opposite of the masculinities in the presence this evening in 2001, in the living room where the party is held. My university comrades are more intellectual, even in love, they have great theory on free love, the non-exclusivity of relationships, against heteronormativity sung by Joe. They surely do not like his candor either, they who are passionate about political strategy, the balance of power and the physical violence they encourage during the demonstrations.
The first notes of the “Emilie eyes” resonate and I exult. I don’t really understand the text of this song, but I like its familiar melody and its epic structure. I throw myself on what serves as a dance track and start to sing the lyrics I know by heart. There is no irony at home at that time, no distance. But very quickly, I feel in my comrades a look that disturbs me. The host of the evening, the owner of the 33 rpm, exclaims by covering the music: “I bought 50 cents at the disc fair.” As if he was trying to distance himself, to let him know that he had not accessed this song of his own free will, or “Like everyone”. Anticapitalist reflex, I then said to me to justify the words of the one who probably does not want to participate in fattening the record industry, still colossal in 2001.
My discomfort is bigger when I notice that the group of friends survived in the same momentum the catchy side of the title. Soon I can no longer hear Joe Dassin’s voice. They are on the track, jump in all directions and howl the text, ironic on the supposed weaknesses of the words. They swing arm, arm in caricatural way, taking the intonation of an operetta singer. They mimic, they exaggerate the state of drunkenness to better get worse in the depths of popular culture.
“It’s my guilty pleasure”exclaims a comrade, obtaining the amused validation of others. Uppercut and Ko Technique. If I am guilty, what is my crime? I panic like a child who does not understand why she is punished. I am so afraid that they realize that I belong to the camp of the faults at the camp, that I do not seem to seem of my humiliation. I compensate and mens: “Same for me!”
It will take me years-and write this book-to understand that these friends were themselves taken in a logic of distinction. To distinguish this variety culture, popular, beauf. My taste for Joe Dassin was sincere. Theirs and that should not leave any doubt, ironic, festive, like a passenger carelessness which makes them superior to those who would like this title in the first degree.
