Examine strategies adopted by the directors studied on the course to depict marginality in modern French society.

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CONTEMPORARY FRENCH CINEMA                STUDENT NUMBER: 993167616

Examine strategies adopted by the directors studied on the course to depict marginality in modern French society.

Marginality within a society speaks of something or someone that is not important which results in them being excluded from society and leaves them feeling alienated.

 ‘La Haine’ and ‘Sans toit ni loi’ are two films developed around the period of ‘la fracture sociale’, the former centred on the community in particular and the later centred primarily on the individual.

The 1980’s saw the rise of civil unrest in inner cities, which similarly led to a rise in unemployment and educational problems.  There was also the perceived threat of national identity, and at the same time worries about Muslim integration had commenced.  It was at around this time that there was the ‘affaire du foulard,’ a very controversial period as the French republic separates the church and the state.  The difficulty of integration and threat of national identity, developed into the French media using the ‘la fracture sociale.’

‘La Haine,’ was brought out at a moment in France during the Mitterrand period, where serious questions were being asked about integration and immigration.  A controversial film, Mathieu Kassovitz’ film ‘La Haine,’ represents an account of ‘la fracture sociale,’ or rather divisions within a society.  Marginality is a result of divisions within a society, and in the case of ‘La Haine’, these divisions are due to social and racial conflict.  Because of such conflicts and divisions it results in certain social, as well as ethnic groups, being excluded from society as a whole.

‘La Haine,’ is set in Paris and more specifically in the ‘banlieu’s’ of Paris, the outskirts of Paris.  The fact that it is set on the outskirts of Paris already brings a long with it certain connotations, the fact that it is set a part from Paris itself, all of which are negative.  A term particularly used to describe the people within les banlieus is ‘les exclus.’  This term quite clearly depicts that they are excluded from the rest of Paris.  Kassovitz has translated this problem of exclusion by reinforcing its universal aspect, which represents a principally masculine world.

La Haine is centred on a group of friends, all three of a different race, religion and ethnicity.  They have been excluded by society and made to become the margins of society because of their accent, their geographical and economic isolation.  They are three characters that have not been accepted into society, even though they were born in France and are not immigrants.  

Almost all the characters in ‘La Haine’ are male and female characters; “underlining their disempowerment” (1) often boss the three main characters around.  The cité is divided along gender lines as well as lines dividing social class.  The interiors are home to the woman as is the middle to upper class, and the outside is masculine as well as working class.  This is quite clearly creating margins for division within the French society as a whole.  Paris is a tool that plays a part in upsetting spatial relations with the three friends, not only in the male-female sense, but it also causes them to be separated from Paris and the middle class of society.  They feel that presence is not accepted within certain places in Paris “the spaces become prisons of one kind or another.”2) In this case it is the banlieue that is their prison, it is this space that is excluding them from the rest of society and thus alienating them.  ‘La Haine is constructed around the opposition between Paris and the banlieue

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The exclusion and enclosure that this group of friends faces appears to have forced them to turn and adopt a different identity.  The influence of the American culture, via movies and gangster films, is evident from the use of the informal language and slang which convey a feeling of the ghetto.  They have practically been rejected by their own society/identity and they appear to have no other choice but to adopt certain American attributes.  This is not only emulated in their use of slang, but also in their clothes and the music that they listen to.  All of which are ...

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