She felt humiliated more than once on Thierry Ardisson’s show “Everybody talks about it”. The television host “received the Legion of Honor on April 11 from the President of the Republic. It’s a slap in the face,” writer Christine Angot reacted accordingly, in a column published in Libération on Saturday April 13.
“Humor-humiliation is the type of “public service” that French TV provided to society every Saturday evening for so many years, and which is today honored by the hands of the President.” denounces the author. Ms. Angot particularly mentions the laughter on the set when she came to talk about her books testifying to the incest of which she was the victim as a child by her father.
Before adding: “In a system where respectability is indexed to wealth, strength, power, those who hold them can only receive admiration, smiles, medals, the Legion of Honor. We have changed times. But they haven’t changed times.”
Several other artists, such as actresses Judith Godrèche and Sara Forestier, spoke out against this decoration, which they described as “shame”, recalling the controversial interviews conducted by Thierry Ardisson in his shows. “2006. I still live with my parents, in my teenage bedroom. I'm going on a TV set to promote my WORK. And then they ask me, giggling, if I've ever flirted with my father's friends. Or if I’ve already flirted with my father,” wrote Sara Forestier on Instagram.
“A character of total freedom” praised by Macron
During the decoration ceremony, which made Thierry Ardisson a knight of the Legion of Honor, Emmanuel Macron said he was honoring “50 years of television and creations”. “You are a character of total freedom, a provocateur and erudite (…) More than a television host, you are a pioneer of modernity with a thirst to create, a form of untimely anarchist who loves France,” said again declared the head of state.
The announcement of the upcoming award to Michel Sardou of the National Order of Merit by Emmanuel Macron also caused some feminist activists to jump, such as the environmentalist MP Sandrine Rousseau or Anne-Cécile Mailfert, president of the Women's Foundation.
In the context of the movement
