France’s Presidential Election Splinters the Country’s Culturati

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/05/arts/france-presidential-election-sophia-aram.html

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PARIS — The French comedian Sophia Aram took to the airwaves of one of France’s most popular morning radio shows this week. In the squealy voice of a teenage girl, she cried, “I can be against toothbrushes, and against cavities!” She then added: “Hashtag: NeitherCheeseNorDessert.”

Ms. Aram was making light of what she saw as a worrisome trend ahead of the French presidential election on Sunday, a race that has divided the country’s intellectuals and cultural figures: voters, especially on the left, who might abstain or cast a blank ballot because they intensely dislike both the centrist front-runner Emmanuel Macron and his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen.

The “Neither-Nor” impulse, as it’s called here, was a factor in past French elections, but greater discontent — with conventional political parties and the European Union — has been particularly strong this time.

“A lot of people don’t recognize themselves in either of these candidates,” said Sudhir Hazareesingh, a politics professor at Oxford University and the author of “How the French Think.” The backdrop is a French left that’s divided, especially over the big Cs: capitalism and communism — and the collapse of the governing Socialist party in this election.

Ms. Aram and others worry that this plague-on-both-your-houses sentiment is, in effect, a vote for Ms. Le Pen, the National Front’s candidate — whom they regard as xenophobic, divisive and authoritarian. And that has prompted a flurry of last-minute mobilizations among the cultural elite to rally left-leaning abstainers, including by the actor Mathieu Kassovitz and the directors Agnès Varda, Jacques Audiard and Bertrand Tavernier.

In writing her radio riff, Ms. Aram said she had listened to friends and young people. “What struck me is the irresponsibility of some of the ‘Neither-Nor’ supporters,” she wrote in an email. “I think that equating Le Pen and Macron and standing under a ‘Without Me May 7’ banner, hoping that other people are going to stop the National Front is totally irresponsible.”

But many on the left and right also see Mr. Macron as a continuation of the policies of President François Hollande and his Socialist government, which, for different reasons, they want to reject. (Mr. Macron left the government to form his own party, En Marche!, or Onward!) Supporters of the far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who received nearly 20 percent in the first round, view Mr. Macron as a protector of the status quo and disagree with his pro-Europe stance and his role in loosening French labor laws.

One of the most prominent intellectuals to say he will cast a blank ballot is the left-wing historian Emmanuel Todd. He is the author of “Who Is Charlie?” a controversial book that said the mass rallies of solidarity in France after the murder of journalists at the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in 2015 were a cover for Islamophobia.

“In terms of threats to liberal democracy, threat No. 1 is the National Front,” Mr. Todd said in an interview. “But the forces behind Macron, the people who are pro-Euro, pro-Europe, pro-Germany, are a major threat to democracy.”

He said he had voted for Mr. Mélenchon in the first round and didn’t believe Ms. Le Pen would win on Sunday, so he would sit out the vote. “It’s the usual French theater,” Mr. Todd said. “We’re not on the verge of falling into Nazism or fascism at all.”

Some see a deep French discomfort about money as part of the left’s — and right’s — disdain for Mr. Macron, who was an investment banker and later became economy minister under Mr. Hollande. “For French people, money and capitalism is a kind of curse,” said the intellectual Pascal Bruckner, whose 2015 book “The Wisdom of Money” explores French ambivalence about money, which he believes is rooted in Roman Catholic culture.

For his part, Mr. Bruckner compared Mr. Mélenchon’s refusal to back Mr. Macron to the German Communist party leader in 1933 urging Communists to vote against the Socialists rather than against the Nazis. “It’s catastrophic,” he said.

“The French are nostalgic for an ideological, utopian communism, which never existed,” he added.

Zeev Sternhell, the Polish-born, left-leaning Israeli political scientist and author of “Neither Left Nor Right,” a controversial book on the rise of fascism in France in the 1930s, said Mr. Macron’s leftist critics find his economic policies closer to the right than to the left. “His centrism is nothing more than a more economically liberal right, more respectful of human rights, more polished, less vulgar,” Mr. Sternhell said.

But he added that it was “a very serious political error” that some supporters of Mr. Mélenchon won’t support Mr. Macron, as it could propel a more dangerous politician into office.

Mindful of the possibility of Ms. Le Pen’s victory, cultural figures have ratcheted up their pro-Macron activities in recent days while organizations that normally don’t take sides in elections are weighing in.

Mr. Kassovitz, the star of “La Haine,” about France’s troubled suburbs, has been a vocal supporter of the right to cast a blank ballot. But he said this week that he would support Mr. Macron. “The risk is abstention, which can easily push the majority toward Le Pen,” he wrote on Twitter.

The director and producer Luc Besson (“The Fifth Element,” the “Taken” series) took to Facebook to urge people to vote against the far-right National Front, with its isolationism. “When and where in history has turning in on oneself had positive results?” he asked. “Never.”

The cartoonist Riad Sattouf, the author of the graphic novel memoirs “The Arab of the Future,” did a cartoon for Paris Match in which Esther, the 11-year-old character in his most recent graphic novels, says: “Le Pen in the Elysée? No way man. I’m voting for Macron.”

On Thursday, the Académie des Césars, which doles out France’s version of the Academy Awards, issued a statement offering its “unreserved support” for Mr. Macron.

And that same day, at a reception at France’s Culture Ministry to present the French films in competition in this month’s Cannes Film Festival, Audrey Azoulay, the outgoing culture minister, urged France’s film world to help defeat the National Front. “The far right’s imagery is very strong,” she said. “You need to show a different image” of France, she added, “to show its differences and complexities.”

But it’s unclear if the late-in-the-campaign mobilization is having its desired effect. A concert on Thursday aimed at rallying support against the National Front drew small crowds, and the vibe was more dutiful than boisterous, Le Monde reported. And the skepticism toward Mr. Macron was clear on Tuesday when members of 70 artist unions came together in the packed auditorium of Paris’s Cité de la Musique for a rally against Ms. Le Pen.

When a video was shown featuring the French artist Orlan, who lauded Mr. Macron for trying “to crossbreed the left and the right,” it was met with violent boos from the packed, left-leaning house.