Genre, gender and the Republic: Televising the annual charity concert Les Enfoirés

Abstract

Les Enfoirés, the long-running televised benefit concert in aid of the Restos du Cœur charity, has been an annual fixture in the French schedules since 1992. Existing academic accounts of the concert have highlighted the diversity of its performers and a sense of solidarity, unanimity and consensus. Drawing on archive research carried out at the French broadcasting archives (Inathèque, Paris), this article shows how television coverage of the Enfoirés concerts over the last 25 years has reinforced and problematised the television variety genre, gender identities and the French Republican model.

The stink of the sacred: A Bataillean reading of Gainsbourg’s film Je t’aime moi non plus

“…Gainsbourg's posthumous rehabilitation, led by Birkin herself, has helped to expunge Gainsbarre from public memory, replacing his controversial antics with a nostalgic celebration of Gainsbourg's song-writing talents. Thus, his songs have been showcased at the mainstream charity concerts Les Enfoirés, including a performance of 'Aux armes et caetera' in 1999, a year after France won the football World Cup, in a celebration of supposed national unity and multiracial harmony (see Tinker, 2015). In this way, in the years after his death in 1991, Gainsbourg's memory has been, perhaps surprisingly, mobilised in the creation of 'shared emotional experiences' between celebrity performers and mainstream spectators, and in the construction of 'unity and consensus' (Tinker, 2015: 347, 350).…”