These are two sequences of yesteryear that triggered lightning, unearthed this week by the programs "Quotidien" and "Canap 95", on TMC.
In the first, in 1995, the young co-host Pépita, alongside Patrice Laffont and Laurent Broomhead, was subjected to clearly inappropriate remarks and jokes about her clothes, her physique, her skin color in the France 2 game "Pyramid" .
Via a postcard sent and displayed on the screen, she is even compared to a chimpanzee.
# Canap95: The popular game show was "Pyramid", where Pepita distributed the prizes to the winners.
And today, reviewing the images, we say to ourselves that it should not be easy every day for her ... pic.twitter.com/WdAq85A2Fw
- Daily (@Qofficiel) March 30, 2021
The second sequence seems surreal: in 1988, Pascal Praud produced a report for "Téléfoot", on TF1, devoted to six black players - including the very young Marcel Desailly and Antoine Kombouaré - new holders of FC Nantes, who will "change color ".
The staging makes them… come down from a tree.
Unconscious or trivialized racism?
“It's not in good taste.
By reviewing these images, I wonder how we could have had such an idea… Obviously we would not do it again today, it would not occur to us ”, reacts the journalist who hosts“ L'Heure des pros ”on C News and“ The listeners have the floor ”on RTL.
After the hallucinating sequence of Pyramid was broadcast in # Canap95, we searched a little and we found a report broadcast in 1988 by Téléfoot, on TF1, devoted to the black players of FC Nantes ... 🙄 # Daily pic.twitter. com / D0eJPzMvsA
- Daily (@Qofficiel) March 31, 2021
At 24 years old, Praud had just joined "Téléfoot" and recalls that this subject had been conceived with an editor in chief, and that the players had lent themselves to the game. hindsight: “It's always dangerous to put on your 2021 glasses to judge another period.
Watch the 1990 ads on
Bamboula
cakes
… Or even very famous movies.
How is it possible that homosexuality was a crime until 1981, that women did not have their own checkbook until 1965?
The great philosophers of antiquity never wrote about slavery, although they were surrounded by slaves and found it normal… ”
"There was a whole system of dated thought which, today, would not pass"
Pépita, she reacted with virulence in our columns to the montage presented by TMC of the sequences of “Pyramid”, which she considers misleading: “We were sometimes sandbox level, it's true… But nobody noticed that like racism at the time.
And I can tell you that if someone had really disrespected me, I would have run right into them.
I would never have accepted such behavior.
If there is one place where I have never experienced misogyny or racism, it is on the
Pyramid
plateau
, ”she explains, adding that it was she who, jokingly, had laughed. of a "Looks like me" about the chimpanzee postcard.
"Mass television is the reflection of the mores of an era, the copy of the culture of the moment, a mark of society even if public television has a duty to be vigilant," comments a former boss of La Deux.
Opinion has evolved on questions of sexism, racism and the representation of diversity.
What may have happened on the
Pyramid
plateau
was not slippage at that time because it was not codified as such.
There was a whole system of dated thought which today would not pass.
"
"We must take the time to listen to those who are subjected to racism"
So, question of humor, look, context?
Michel Leeb, regularly attacked for his sketch of the 80s, "The African", and his formidable "These are not my glasses, these are my nostrils", took it again in his "best of" in 2017, defending all racism.
The magazine Jeune Afrique had castigated during this recovery other stereotypes of the sketch, such as cannibalism.
A debate that annoys the 1998 world champion Lilian Thuram, at the head of his Education against Racism Foundation.
"The reality is that there was and still is racism on television," confides the record holder for the selections for the France team.
When Sarkozy plays again recently on the reconciliation of the words
monkeys
and
negroes
on the plate of Quotidien, nobody reacts live.
When you turn on the TV, there are racist comments that you are not even aware of.
You have to take the time to listen to those who suffer from racism, and learn about history.
I grew up in a world where black people were necessarily lazy on a soccer field.
A black guard was no, he was going to do something stupid, while a black attacker, yes, because we supposedly had a sense of improvisation… It is against these stereotypes that we must fight.
"
"We can laugh at anything if there is a writing intelligence"
Sidney, the first non-white TV icon with his show "HIPHOP", on TF1, launched in 1984, also recalls that we start from very far: "I received racist letters, remembers the host today 65 years old.
I often said
Brothers
in the program and people wrote to me:
No, I'm not your brother
… I brought little Mohamed and little Mamadou in front of the cameras.
I was from La Courneuve, and there weren't many whites among the early street dancers.
The minorities finally found themselves on TV, we were proud, because until then we had not seen them ", lights Sidney Duteil, for whom the sequence of" Téléfoot "is not surprising.
“The black footballers of my youth, Marius Trésor or Gérard Janvion, there was always someone at the stadium to shout:
Come down from your tree
.
I have been confronted with racism since I was born.
But the show was supported and wanted by Marie-France Brière, the director of varieties of TF1, who had known me at Radio France, and Hervé Bourges, the boss of the channel.
This revolution is also thanks to them ”.
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“Things are moving,” confirms the comedian Pascal Légitimus, even if I heard on TV:
this role is not for you, it is necessary to whitewash
.
I was refused a role recently because I was too typed.
There is always a reluctance among decision-makers.
Me, I am an actor, not a color ”.
The ex-Unknown sees racism still overwhelmingly present.
“At the start of the Covid, remember those who changed sidewalks as soon as they saw an Asian…”.
For him, in humor, everything is a question of finesse: "With the Unknowns, we did a sketch on the Arabs who said when speaking of Asians
we are no longer at home
!"
You can laugh at anything if there is a writing intelligence.
"