"When you attack Gérard Depardieu like this, it's art that's attacked." The phrase is part of a controversial column of support signed this week by 56 artists, including Carla Bruni and Victoria Abril, in which they denounce a "lynching" against the actor, accused of rape and other sexual assaults by more than a dozen women. The text, which has unleashed a new wave of indignation in France, also defends the work of justice as an argument to stop criticism of the actor and highlights an old debate: should the work be separated from the artist? Does art justify everything?
The column, titled "Don't erase Depardieu," was published in the conservative daily Le Figaro a few days after French President Emmanuel Macron defended the interpreter's presumption of innocence. The leader also stated that he will never participate in "manhunts" and ruled out the possibility of withdrawing the Legion of Honor from the artist, as suggested by the Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul Malak, until there is a judicial conviction. That distinction, the country's maxim, "is not for morality," the president stressed.
Both Macron's reaction and the column of support for Depardieu added fuel to the fire. The 75-year-old actor is at the center of the media whirlwind for the recent release of an unreleased video in which he makes sexual comments towards women, during a trip to North Korea in 2018. His statements have had particular resonance in light of the accusations against him and led the province of Quebec, in Canada, to withdraw his medal of honour and the Belgian commune of Estaimpuis to withdraw his title of honorary citizen. The wax museum in Paris also decided to remove the figure of the artist.
An icon of the seventh art and the protagonist of more than 200 films, Depardieu has been denounced to the authorities by three women, one of them a Spanish journalist. The allegations are for sexual assault and rape. A court indicted him in 2020 for one such case, which was initially shelved. Thirteen other women have accused him of sexual violence during film shoots between 13 and 2004. Offences that the interpreter denies.
The case is divisive. On the one hand, there are those who defend his legacy and that he can continue to act, since he has not yet been tried. "Whatever happens, no one will ever be able to erase the indelible mark of his work, which has left an indelible mark on our time. The rest, all the rest, concerns justice, justice alone," says the letter, signed by leading figures in the French cultural world. "To dispense with this great actor would be a tragedy, a defeat. The death of art," they insist.
On the other hand, there are those who consider that it is the straw that breaks the camel's back and that both Macron and the signatories of the letter despise the victims. "It's a very pedagogical platform. What we see is how an environment is going to organize itself and use arguments like 'he's a sacred monster, he's a genius' to protect someone," Anne-Cécile Mailfert, president of the Women's Foundation, told Agence France Presse.
Murielle Reus, vice-president of MeToo Media, an association that fights against sexism and sexual violence in the media, told Franceinfo that "there is a very strong social change towards sexual and gender-based violence" and that there is "a generation that still does not understand these social changes".
After the publication of the column, explanations from some of the signatories followed. Some, such as the actor's ex-partner, Carole Bouquet, expressed their discomfort after the identity of the writer came to light. He is a little-known actor, who writes for the far-right magazine Causeur, is a friend of Depardieu's daughter, Julie, and close to Éric Zemmour, a former ultra candidate in the presidential election. Filmmaker Nadine Trintignant decided to withdraw her signature after her identity became known, the weekly Le Point revealed on Friday.
Depardieu "is indispensable to the artistic history of our country," said Yannis Ezziadi, an actor and editorialist for the far-right magazine Causeur. The performer, known among others for his roles in Cyrano de Bergerac (1990) or the Asterix and Obelix saga (1999-2012), was aware of the letter before its publication, but insisted that he did not ask for help from the signatories, according to local media. Several personalities refused to sign the tribune, the actor added, according to the same sources.
Actor and singer Michel Fau, one of the signatories, noted in an interview with BFMTV: "They try to tell us that the artist must be reasonable, a role model for society. It's completely terrifying. I think the artist should continue to be flamboyant, scandalous, obscene and unruly." Another of the signatories, Jean-Marie Rouart, an 80-year-old member of the French academy, added: "[Public] opinion is on the wrong track. By foolishly moralizing these great artists, we are in the process of seeing a fundamental freedom suppressed and, above all, what makes France happy, the humor we could have and the complacency we had with the lives of great artists."
The letter and its reactions are reminiscent of other cases and the complex reaction in France to the #MeToo movement. In 2018, a column signed by 100 French artists and intellectuals, including actress Catherine Deneuve, claimed the "freedom to importune" indispensable for sexual freedom and warned about the repercussions that the new climate could have on cultural production.
"The struggles for the autonomy of art dating back to the nineteenth century partly explain the reactions of intellectual and artistic circles to the #MeToo. But the autonomy of art also serves as a pretext for those who want to maintain male domination," French sociologist Gisèle Sapiro, author of Can the Work Be Separated from the Author? [translated into Spanish in key intellectual editions], told this newspaper. And he adds: "The sacralization of creation, which is very strong in France, and the relationships of reverence and dependence that surround creators and performers, allow some of them to abuse their position and benefit from the law of silence and the connivance of those around them, as well as from the tolerance of justice."
The cases of film director Roman Polanski, convicted of raping a minor 50 years ago, writer Gabriel Matzneff, accused of pedophilia, and singer Bertrand Cantat, convicted of murdering his partner, although very different, "show different facets of this impunity of artists," Sapiro points out.
Polanski, despite being persecuted in the United States since the late 1970s, triumphed at the César Awards. Matzneff still received a literary award. And Cantat, sentenced to eight years in prison for the murder of Marie Trintignant, did not completely disappear from the public scene for many years. An aura towards the artist that, through social advances and the expansion of the feminist movement, is increasingly questioned. And it is less and less tolerated.
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