FOLLOWING the attack on Charlie Hebdo President Hollande announced a ‘national day of mourning’ today (Thursday) with lowered flags and a minute’s silence– but the phrase is far from symbolic for many of the French who see the newspaper as a treasured part of their heritage.
Here we look at why the paper is loved by the French, including interviewing Patrick Eveno, a historian of the press at the Sorbonne and president of ODI, a watchdog on press codes of practice. He joined leading press figures at a meeting with Culture Minister Fleur Pèllerin last night at which help was pledged to make sure the newspaper comes out again as soon as possible.
While not a big seller – Charlie Hebdo reached a peak of sales of around 140,000 a week in the 2000s, but has dropped under 50,000 – it is known to everyone in France, and is seen as a bastion of a certain kind of irreverent, outrageous humour that punctures pomposity and seriousness and makes fun of all those in authority.
That has always included religious figures – pick up any edition and there will be cartoons making fun of figures like the Pope or the Christian trinity, including some drawings with nudity and sexual imagery that may surprise those not used to it.
But that spirit is centuries old – as blogger on French politics Arthur Goldhammer put it yesterday, writing: “Think of obscene images of Marie-Antoinette, of priests in flagrante delicto with nuns, of devils farting in the Pope's face... It's an anarchic populist obscenity that aims to cut down anything that would erect itself as venerable, sacred, powerful.”
Founded in 1969 by the team of a then-monthly satirical magazine Hara-Kiri, Charlie Hebdo came out regularly until the start of the 1980s, when the magazine – which does not take adverts – temporarily closed due to falling sales. It re-launched a decade later, with many of the same people in the team, including cartoonist Cabu who died yesterday and who is also known to the French from his appearances on television. Cabu was especially fondly remembered for children’s show Récré A2 on which he appeared with presenter Dorothée, doing lightning-fast cartoons illustrating the show live, including pointy-nosed pictures of the host.
Initially called Hara-Kiri Hebdo (meaning “weekly Hara-Kiri”), the paper got into trouble with the government over a joke about the death of Charles de Gaulle and it was decided to change the name. The team used the name of another monthly newspaper that it produced which included French translations of foreign cartoons such as Peanuts (‘Snoopy’) – ‘Charlie’ originally came from the character Charlie Brown, but also with an allusion to De Gaulle...
Over the years it has cheerfully insulted the ‘great and the good’ of all stripes, but controversy over depictions of Muhammad started in 2006 when it reprinted the Danish cartoons, together with its own one of Muhammad on the cover, looking exasperated and saying “it’s tough being loved by cons” (vulgar slang for idiots), with the caption “Muhammad overwhelmed by the fundamentalists”. The paper ended up selling 600,000 copies – but it was sued by several Islamic bodies (unsuccessfully) and its journalists have received threats ever since and been under police protection.
That launched a debate about press freedom in France, which started again when in 2011 Charlie printed a special edition called ‘Sharia Hebdo’, with Muhammad as ‘guest editor’, including a cover image of him saying “100 lashes if you don’t die of laughing”. The paper’s offices were wrecked by a molotov cocktail following publication and it had to move premises. The next cover showed editor ‘Charb’ (Stéphane Charbonnier) in a passionate kiss with a man in Muslim dress, saying: “love is stronger than hate”.
In 2012 Charb said: “I’ve no kids, no wife, no car, no loans. Maybe it’s a bit pompous to say it, but I’d rather die standing up than live on my knees.”
It went on to produce two special one-off editions, telling the life of Muhammad from Islamic sources, "with no humour added", saying people needed to know more about the founder of the "second religion of France".
Yesterday’s edition included further references to Islam including, with a tragic irony, Charb’s last drawing, captioned: ‘Still no attacks in France’, with a goofy-looking terrorist saying: “Hang on, we’ve got until the end of January to deliver our season’s greetings”.
Prof Patrick Eveno said: “Irreverent satire is very much a French tradition, going back to the start of the 19th century, though it exists too in England with things like Punch. One of the first newspapers of the type was called quite simply Caricature, and often had problems with the government and monarchy - the editor was imprisoned and fined several times.
“We have a tradition of freedom of the press, which went hand in hand with the rise of democracy, you can’t have one without the other.”
Prof Eveno said one of the most famous French satirical publications was a newspaper just of caricatures, L’Assiette au beurre in the early 20th century. “It was that model that was taken up again, notably, around May 1968, by cartoonists like Cabu and Wolinski, who died yesterday, also Gotlib, Reiser, and Siné. It was about pushing back, continually, the limits of freedom of expression, to be more and more free.
“They pushed the boundaries further than the Anglo-Saxon countries, perhaps because there, there is more derision of politicians in the tabloids, which we don’t really have in France, so we’ve kept this tradition of caricature newspapers, of which Charlie Hebdo is the most important one. They have small print runs, though the Muhammad editions were an exception – as Charb said at the time ‘we sell a lot when we burn down’. And while they may not have big print runs, they really get themselves talked about.”
Prof Eveno said Cabu was especially loved because he was a cartoonist who could be “very tender” (though “very violent” too, when it was called for). He said:“He drew women and children admirably – Wolinski too, who had a great love for women – but he was a free spirit in every sense; a liberal, but also a libertarian, even a little bit libertine at times, all those words with ‘liberty’ in them.”
Asked if it was wrong for the paper to go so far in its Muhammad images, which included a couple of him naked in silly poses (but always in the service of a certain topical joke or word-play), he said: “They do it for Jesus, for rabbis... there’s no reason for them not to do it for Muhammad as well. There’s an aspect of French humour that’s a bit rude or scatalogical, but that’s just how it is, and why not? – if you look at things Punch used to publish, they weren’t exactly prudish either – it’s the essence of caricature to always take things a bit further.”
He said he thought the paper was right to continue printing Muhammad jokes and had not taken excessive risks. “Of course they were right. Perhaps they could have taken more precautions, but these people who work for freedom want to be free themselves, they’re not going to work from a bunker. They’re neither going to self-censure, nor go to work in an armoured car.”
Now, he said, key media figures had met with the Culture Minister and had agreed their unanimous support to help the newspaper to be published again as soon as possible. “Publishing facilities will be made available, and cartoonists and journalists. Charlie Hebdo will continue and there will be young people who will be taking things up where they left off.”
Le Monde cartoonist Plantu was among the many who expressed their outrage in drawings (with a hand writing in blood ‘with Charlie Hebdo, with all my heart’). He told RTL:“Those who have left us are immense cartoonists, assassinated by barbarians,”, adding: “All we press cartoonists are angry. Artists are stronger than those who are intolerant, than those bastards who acted [yesterday], who are cowards”.
The Cartooning for Peace organisation which Plantu set up in partnership with the United Nations to challenge abuses and injustices around the world, said in a statement: “Caricaturing and freedom of expression are unbearable for fanatics. We express our pain, sympathy and anger in the face of this crime.... These killings aim to create a regime of terror, to muzzle journalists and cartoonists, and, beyond that, all of the citizens... These barbarians will not have the last word and art and liberty will be stronger than all intolerance.”
The wife of veteran cartoonist Siné (Maurice Sinet), Cathérine Sinet, told Le Journal du Dimanche that she and her husband are similarly irreverent in their own publication, Siné Mensuel. “Charlie Hebdo was under police surveillance because of the caricatures scandal. Charb had bodyguards. But what can you do, there are raving lunatics out there. We stand at their side in the face of terrorism. We tackle all religions without exception, we make no difference between Muslims, Catholics, Jews. That it has come to this shows there’s still work to be done.”
Our thanks to reader Liam Higgins Saunders of Higgins Cartoons for his image, which pays homage to Charlie Hebdo’s origins
