The subtle charm of the bourgeoisie: Representations of the western suburbs of Paris in the French TV series Fais pas ci, fais pas ça.
Type de matériel :
85
On hearing the word “banlieue” (or suburb) in French, the collective and media imagination tends to conjure up images of “deprived neighborhoods” and deviance, whereas the term covers much more disparate realities, especially in the Paris region. This article examines the representations at work in the series Fais pas ci, fais pas ça, associating the western suburbs of Paris—through the city of Sèvres—with its inhabitants, belonging to an upper, predominantly white, social class. It begins by considering Sèvres as a metonymy of the western suburbs, and the neighborhood as an actant-subject. This results in a contrast-based representation that endorses the “non-marking” of the territory. Then, we focus more specifically on ways in which ethnoracial and sexual minorities are presented on screen, as well as the conditions of their “recognition."
Réseaux sociaux