PARIS – Say what you will about the internet age, it’s plusses and minuses, the ups and downs of social media and all that highfalutin crap. You can’t say it hasn’t changed the way we communicate or altered forever the ability of the common man to respond directly to the most elite members of society.
Today’s case in point is a fantastic Twitter exchange between the President of France, Pepé Le Pew Emmanuel Macron, and French porn performer Manuel Ferrara.
Here’s the exchange in its full, original form:
Macron: “La pornographie a franchi la porte des établissements scolaires. Nous ne pouvons ignorer ce genre qui fait de la femme un objet d’humiliation. #NeRienLeavePass”
Ferrara: “je suis dans ce business que vous essayez de diaboliser en faisant ce genre de remarque. Je suis prêt à m’asseoir avec vous et discuter d’un sujet qu’à priori vous ne connaissez pas. J’attends votre appel!”
Since I can’t speak French, when I first read these tweets, I initially assumed Macron and Ferrara were debating something food-related, but then I realized the first two words of Ferrara’s response were not “au jus.”
Luckily, these days we can rely on technology to accurately translate anything we read on the internet written in a language we can’t understand. According to some random app on my phone, here’s what each of these French luminaries tweeted:
Macron: “The pornography of Francine is a portal to scholarly establishments. We can’t ignore genres which fart on women like objects. #NoRhineLaserPasser”
Ferrara: “I dance businesslike on essays of the diabolical, with fancy remarks. We have a masseur with distemper who has prior connections to past connoisseurs. I attend voter apparel!”
Hmm. Somehow, I don’t that’s correct – except maybe the “No Rhein Laser-Passer” part, which seems potentially legit.
Let’s try using Google to translate this French tete-a-tweet, instead.
Macron: “Pornography has passed the door of schools. We cannot ignore the kind that makes women an object of humiliation. #DoNotLetAnythingPass”
Ferrara: “I am in this business that you are trying to demonize by making this kind of remark. I am ready to sit down with you and discuss a topic that you do not know. I’m waiting for your call!”
OK, that seems more like it (though I’ll admit I’m still concerned somebody might be installing lasers along the length of the Rhine).
While there’s a roughly 0-percent chance Macron is going to call Ferrara, in the old, pre-internet days, nobody would even know Ferrara had challenged him to do so. It would have been something Ferrara just muttered into his beer, or maybe yelled at his television set, leaving his English-speaking neighbors at the Los Angeles residential hotel of his choice to wonder what the hell the guy next door was yelling about.
In the social media age, Ferrara not only has an opportunity to respond directly to the president of France on the same platform from which Macron made his objectionable porn-remark, but Ferrara also can be seen doing it by a large audience, leading to opportunities to continue to express himself on other very modern platforms – like internet-based radio.
“He demonizes the porn industry and is jumping to conclusions,” Ferrara reportedly said in an interview with France Inter radio. “It’s the same with video games. It’s like saying a teenager who plays ‘Call of Duty’ is going to pick up a gun and kill everyone in his school.”
Holy shit! What school does this Call of Duty-playing, soon-to-be mass shooter kid attend? Does President Trump have a copy-and-paste condolence tweet ready to go to cover this pending tragedy, too?
Oh wait, I get it: Ferrara was merely being rhetorical, just making a point by analogizing inflated, hyperbolic concerns about porn to inflated, hyperbolic concerns about video games.
Ferrara’s point isn’t buttressed by Call of Duty-based straw soldiers alone, though; he also notes there’s more to the porn industry than gonzo videos in which he chokes the shit out of women using his penis, typically right after withdrawing said penis from those same women’s buttholes.
“There is a huge part of the porn industry that doesn’t humiliate women,” Ferrara added – although he offered no solutions as to what can be done about this renegade, non-women-humiliating part of the porn industry, or how it might be persuaded to get with the program.
Apparently, this all came up because Macron recently announced a plan to broaden the authority of France’s “Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel” (which translates to “Super-Duper Audiovirtual” or “Superior council of audio-visual,” depending on which technology I use) to cover porn videos, and because Macron wants to establish an “awareness campaign” about porn, targeting French secondary schools.
“The CSA plays an indispensable role in regulating audiovisual content everywhere and stopping the most undignified behavior becoming a form of tacit propaganda,” Macron said. “Today we do not regulate access to video games, internet content and pornographic content that is increasingly available.”
Personally, I’m guessing most French students know where and how to find pornography (even the rogue variety that doesn’t humiliate women), so I’m not sure why this “awareness campaign” of Macron’s is necessary in the first place.
On the other hand, if porn and video games in France are encouraging “undignified behavior” that is “becoming a form of tacit propaganda,” I clearly haven’t been watching enough French porn.
Image: Manuel Ferrara, left, © Glenn Francis; Emmanuel Macron © EU2017EE Estonian Presidency.
