Coco, cartoonist: "Laughing is what we have left when we are at our lowest"

On January 7, 2015, in the middle of the morning, the cartoonist Corinne Rey (Annemasse, 39 years old) was leaving the headquarters of the satirical weekly

, in Paris, where she worked, when two Islamist terrorists arrived.

They gunned her down.

They forced her to go upstairs and enter her code to open the office door.

They killed eleven cartoonists, editors and employees, as well as a policeman during the flight.

More information

Comics go wild with political satire

Coco, name with which he signs in

and

, tells about it in

(Bang), one of those books from which you don't leave the same as you entered.

The same happens to the person who interviews her.

QUESTION.

Did she lose the desire to laugh?

RESPONSE.

Yes and no.

I have always considered drawing as a bubble in which you could get out of gravity and the misfortunes of the world.

Laughing is what we have left when we are at our lowest.

It is the possibility of going back and rising.

Q.

How did you manage to keep laughing, and laughing at the world?

R.

After the attack, what kept us going was to continue writing and drawing to say that the terrorists had not won, that they had not killed the newspaper or the spirit that makes

what it is: laughter, satire.

P.

Do you still think about the moment when the terrorists arrived and pointed their guns at you?

A.

Less regularly.

There was a job with the psychologist.

Time helps, but it doesn't do everything.

Sometimes I think about it again.

In moments of solitude.

P.

In moments of loneliness.

R.

Yes, because I feel particularly alone since that.

She convulsed the order of things.

I was 33 years old then.

I had just become a mom for the first time.

I never imagined that I would die like this.

Everything tore apart.

She was alone on the stairs with two terrorists.

I felt guilty.

When the Kouachi brothers said to me: “Either you or Charb”, for a long time, in my head, I had the feeling that I had chosen between myself and Charb [Stéphane Charbonnier, director of

], when it was not really a choice, but a non-choice.

Not chosen when

are pointed at you.

P.

Do you feel alone because no one can really understand what you experienced?

R.

I have tried to share things, things that I can say, and others that are in me, inside me.

I live better now.

I've relearned how to party.

For a long time I felt that I had no legitimacy to live, to do this or that.

She was alive and she didn't quite understand why.

Q.

Draw the terrorists as shadows.

R.

For me they were black, heavy and threatening masses.

As you can see, I am small.

They appeared in their black suits, black balaclavas, black weapons, black bulletproof vests.

Imposing and determined, overwhelming.

Q.

In the book there is an image that comes back again and again: you under the waves of the sea.

R.

The image came to me because I couldn't express what I felt and a word came to me that I experienced as a deep sensation: submerged.

I felt submerged.

Since I'm a bit modest and I didn't want too much pathos in the book, I used the metaphor of the wave.

The drawing allowed me to evoke the movements inside me: sometimes you're terrible, other times you're better.

It is an incessant swing, eddies.

P.

The pages about the moment of the assault on the newsroom are all black.

A.

Not really all black.

It is impossible to represent this.

attack

] made a great story about it [

, published in Spanish by Anagrama].

But writing is different from drawing.

In the drawing, frontally represent the death of Cabu [

and Coco's teacher], as I saw it, it was impossible.

And they were images that I wanted to keep, that I couldn't share.

They will stay in my head.

These black pages are crossing out.

He crossed them out late at night, as if he were coming face to face with silence.

I wanted to represent the silence of death that descended on that place.

I wanted to represent a noise.

It was a silence so strong it was like a hiss, a crackle.

The pages vibrate, because they are like the last shocks of life.

Q.

“What if I had yelled for help?

What if I had tried to run away?

What if I had pushed them down the stairs?” he wonders in the book.

Does this question still arise?

R.

No. I've gotten out of the “what ifs”.

But it was somewhat absorbing for two or three years.

Today I have learned to strengthen myself when I see, for example, very violent remarks, as is usual on social networks, such as: “He opened the door to the terrorists, he was a coward”.

I have learned to shield myself from this.

And I understood a long time ago that no one was in my place at that time.

To say “in your place I would have done this or that”?

It is a question that does not exist and cannot exist, because I was completely alone.

And because it is not possible to imagine the flash of the event: the weapons, their violence, their determination, how they spoke.

I have learned to live with this.

Sometimes it hurts to think about it again, for sure.

It is true that I tell you that I have left the loop of “what ifs”, but in my head I would have wanted to do everything to stop that.

But I'm sure even the most trained military might be powerless against Kalashnikovs.

But the unconscious works all the time.

That's how it is.

Q. After the

attack

, or the beheading of Professor Samuel Paty in 2020, is there more self-censorship or is there more surveillance of what is written or drawn?

R.

For my part, no.

After the attacks I continued to make drawings about religion or about divisive subjects.

Our job is also to disturb.

The press drawing is not an illustration, it is not done to please or to make it look pretty.

Now people react to anything under the guise of respect.

I am an atheist and secular, I do not have to respect religions.

My job is to seek debate, to be irreverent.

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