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Bastien Vivès, the French comic prodigy denounced for apology of child abuse

2022-12-26T11:08:29.121Z


The cancellation of the exhibition of the author of 'The taste of chlorine' at the Angoulême festival ignites the debate on the limits of artistic freedom


Bastien Vivès (Paris, 38 years old) is one of the most brilliant authors of current French comics, an artist pampered by critics and the public whose albums —intimate, subtle and everyday stories suitable for all audiences— are exhibited in the windows of bookstores and deserve the attention of the general media.

The most recent in France,

Last weekend of January

, is a demonstration of the particular narrative and poetic sensitivity of him, an Éric Rohmer of the comic strip.

But there is another lesser known Vives, and not so digestible.

Transgressor, the biggest fans of him will say, or hooligan;

simply unacceptable, even dangerous, according to its detractors.

He is the author of erotic and pornographic comics that have sometimes staged minors.

He is someone who, in the past, in social networks, internet forums and interviews, has practiced the most aggressive harassment

online

, and has confessed fantasies with minors, although he has never been denounced or even convicted of harassment or rape in real life.

More information

France reviews the sordid face of its intellectuals

In just over a week, Vivès has seen himself projected into the center of the whirlwind that is shaking the world of comics.

The Angouleme festival, the most important in the sector, has canceled the exhibition that was to be dedicated to it in its next edition, at the end of January.

An association for the protection of children has denounced him before the Justice for "dissemination of

pedo-pornographic

images ".

The images that are thrown in his face are confined to the realm of the imagination, but the complainants believe that they are punishable.

In France, the Criminal Code condemns with five years in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros "the fact of fixing, recording or retransmitting the image or representation of a minor, with a view to its dissemination, when this image or representation presents a pornographic nature ”.

The

Vivès case

brings together debates that have marked French culture in recent years.

On the one hand, there are the complaints, some formulated in books written by victims, of abuse of minors in which the perpetrators were well-known people in intellectual and political Paris, such as the constitutionalist Olivier Duhamel or the writer Gabriel Matzneff.

On the other hand, the discussion, which emerged with the Islamist attacks against

Charlie Hebdo

for publishing caricatures of Muhammad or with all the fights around the so-called culture of cancellation, on freedom of expression and artistic freedom.

"Nobody knew what the content of the exhibition was going to be," laments Richard Malka, a

Charlie Hebdo

lawyer and comic book writer.

"It was about exposing a work, it has nothing to do with his most controversial drawings, drawings that every comic book author has done one day or another, in one way or another."

It all started with the announcement, a few weeks ago, of the exhibition by the author of the acclaimed

The Taste of Chlorine

and

A Sister

in Angoulême.

For some, the exhibition represented a deserved consecration.

For others, it was not only an offense against the victims of pedophilia, but also a promotion of rape culture, as dozens of authors, editors and activists maintain in a manifesto entitled

Las razones de la rage

.

Bastien Vivès, in Paris in August 2021. JOEL SAGET (AFP)

The petition to remove the sample was launched on December 8 and collected 110,000 signatures.

A prominent lawmaker from the far-right National Rally party, Caroline Parmentier, also called for the ban.

On the 14th, the Angouleme festival announced that it was canceling it, referring to "physical threats" to Vivès.

On the 20th, the first complaint for alleged violation of the law was known.

Arnaud Gallais, a victim of incestuous abuse as a child, co-founder of the BeBraveFrance collective and initiator of the online petition to cancel Vivès's exhibition, states: “The drawings are abominable.

They say it's a cartoon, but they clearly look like children, and you see unimaginable things, totally crazy scripts that stage sexual relations.

But there are also his statements.

And he emphasizes: “All

fart-porn-criminal

work is prohibited in France.

There is no discussion possible.

You have to apply the law.

Today the [bookstore chain] FNAC, [the hypermarket on the internet] Amazon and the publishers of Bastien Vivès are outside the law”.

They are in question - among a work of almost fifty books published, among other publishers, by Casterman and Dargaud - a couple of albums.

One is

Little Paul

, starring a 10-year-old boy whose huge penis whets the appetites of the women around him.

Another is

Mental Discharge

, in which parents invite an adult to have sex with their daughters.

Vivès has been reminded, these days, of the attacks on social networks that he launched in 2017 against the feminist comic book author Emma.

“I would like one of her children to be stabbed,” she wrote.

She then removed the messages.

In an interview that same year, she stated: “Incest turns me on to the max.

Not the one in real life, but narrated, I find it great ”.

Vivès's interventions in a comics forum when he was 20 years old have also come to the surface and in which he said: "Sometimes I am attracted to girls of 10 or 12... And I say to myself 'Shit, I'm a pedophile'.. Of course, I don't do anything”.

During the controversy, Vivès intoned a

mea culpa

on Instagram.

"I condemn

pedo-criminality,

as well as its apology and trivialization," she wrote.

She defended that her pornographic comics "are part of a burlesque-humorous genre."

"Today I realize," she added, "that, beyond my works, it is above all my words that have shocked, from now on I will pay the greatest attention when I express myself in public or in the media."

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by coco ✏️🤟 (@cocoboer)

There is a common underlying issue in these controversies.

Can the man be separated from the artist and the work from him?

And, as it happens with Vivès, can his most popular work be separated from his controversial minority?

The case also puts on the table the image of the comic as a very masculine world, a world that Vivès portrays in

Last Weekend of January

, precisely set in Angoulême.

Few in the union have distanced themselves from the criticism of Vivès.

Jean-Marc Rochette is one of them.

The author of cult books such as

Rompenieves

or

El Lobo

, is outraged by the proposal of the manifesto

The reasons for anger

to introduce in Angoulême a manual that guarantees that the festival takes place "with respect for the rights of minorities, as well as in the equality of their representations”.

“I call this editorial surveillance by political commissars,” Rochette wrote on Facebook.

"I will stay as far away as possible from an environment in which these ideas can germinate."

And he concludes by announcing that he is leaving comics: "From now on I will dedicate myself to sculpture and painting."

Another who has stood out is Coco, a survivor of the

Charlie Hebdo

attack .

She posted a cartoon on Instagram showing Vivès drawing and a woman yelling at him that he is a pedophile.

Meanwhile, a priest and another man really harass the woman's son without her being aware of Vivès, paying the slightest attention.

In a message under the drawing, Coco claimed: "Right to bad taste and exaggeration!".

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Source: elparis

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