The Secret Life of France

by Lucy Wadham

  The remarkable thing about Nicolas Sarkozy is that he managed to get elected without the media. Sarkozy, who has long denounced the media’s lack of objectivity, managed to ride out its powerful opposition to him and appeal directly to voters. Over the years he has gathered around him a heterogeneous array of supporters from right across the political spectrum and from all walks of life, thereby gaining a reputation as a freethinker. It was no doubt this image that appealed to many of his younger supporters (including my own son, Jack), who were bored by the ideological stranglehold of the post-’68 generation.

  It has long been Sarkozy’s wish to annex the moral high ground from the left, which has held it firmly ever since the Occupation. Indeed, Nicolas Sarkozy is the first French politician since Pétain to dare to invoke the values of order, work, merit and reward, claiming that these are the values of common sense, not of ideology. The recent political demise of Jean-Marie Le Pen (who lost many of his voters to Sarkozy) indicates that the president has had a measure of success in reclaiming the moral high ground for the right. With Le Pen, the left lost a very useful bogeyman, one which had long enabled them to stifle any serious debate.

  Since becoming president, it has become clear that Sarkozy’s offer of rupture was above all the offer of a break with ideology. For half the nation, the prospect of no longer having to take sides in endless and fruitless political debate is a welcome relief. For the other half, it means the end of life as they know it. All the reforms that Sarkozy managed to slip past the Assembly during the torpor of the first Grandes Vacances of his presidency threaten to put an end to the reign of ideology. But the most important of these reforms, the one that targets the beating heart of received ideas in France, is the reform of the university system.

  Here, Sarkozy relied heavily on support from that element of French youth that is fed up with the legacy of May ’68. Much has been written in recent years about the generation of bourgeois intellectuals, known as les soixante-huitards (sixty-eighters), who led the student uprisings against de Gaulle’s stultified order. This is the generation that has fashioned the French political landscape, runs the mainstream media, has lived off the fat of the land and squandered a thriving economy in the process. Once the heroes of a glamorous revolution, the soixante-huitard is perceived, increasingly, as a selfish, hypocritical champagne socialist (gauche caviar).

  For the hitherto silent majority that voted for him, Sarkozy is a self-made man who was not fashioned by the dominant ideology of his generation. On the wrong side of May ’68, Sarkozy was never a member of the gauche caviar that lost its soul in the financial corruption scandals of Mitterrand’s reign. Nor did he go to one of the Grandes Ecoles, those hot-houses of the French Republic that have, for centuries, churned out generations of politicians, both left and right, branding them with that special self-importance common to all members of France’s elite. He is a truculent upstart and as such detested by a large portion of the bourgeoisie. At least, he must appear to be detested. For as one friend put it, ‘The Sarkozy vote is a guilty vote [vote honteuse],’ and the many millions of bourgeois who did vote for him do not admit to it.

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  To echo my son Jack’s theory, the upstart Sarkozy is the conquering hero, the Nietzschean superman, whose extraordinary will to power, for a time, set him above the constraints of conventional French morality. This profile, for Jack, explains his election and his massive, though short-lived, popularity, as well as his ability, where all others have failed, to push through unwelcome reforms. It was Sarkozy’s will to power combined with his conquering libido which, more than his policies, won the hearts, if momentarily, of the French people. His conquest of Carla Bruni, known as ‘The Predator’ for her voracious sexual appetite, only confirmed this popularity.

  I would go one step further than Jack, however, and – borrowing from my sisters’ rich vocabulary when it comes to the categorising of male sexual stereotypes – describe Nicolas Sarkozy as a sex dwarf. To my mind, what defines France’s little president and explains his magnetism is not simply his ‘will to power’, but the particular circumstances that drive it: his small stature and his large sex drive.

  In a culture unreconstructed by either of the great movements that have fashioned Anglo-Saxon society (Protestantism and feminism), the libido is still a force to be reckoned with, and the strange currents that brought Sarkozy to power would suggest that Dominique de Villepin was right: France did indeed wish to be taken by force.

  It was widely observed that the last presidential elections were not a battle between left and right but rather a contest between two ‘styles’ – one gentle, the other tough; one consensual, the other coercive; one feminine, the other masculine. In the end, the French opted, not for the reassuring arms of Ségolène Royal and her ‘gentle revolution’, but for Nicolas Sarkozy, the libidinous sex dwarf, and his promise of ‘rupture’.

  All the iconography of the presidential campaign pointed to the subliminal forces that were dominating the battleground. Picture Ségolène Royal on the eve of the second round of the elections, dressed all in white, as if in homage to that alliance of virginity and female power embodied in such icons as Elizabeth I and Joan of Arc. Now picture Sarkozy, short and strutting in an oversized and sweat-stained suit, like France’s favourite dictator, the potent and charismatic Napoleon Bonaparte.

  Sarkozy, like Bonaparte, has all the characteristics of the sex dwarf: he is short, shamelessly flirtatious and tireless in his pursuit of women. Despite the fact that no record of his sexual conquests has ever been allowed to see the light of day, I don’t need documentary evidence to prove that Sarko is a sex dwarf. I sensed it myself in 1996 when I was writing an article about French Protestants. As mayor of Neuilly he attended a fête being held by the Protestant community and somebody introduced us. I noticed as he shook my hand that he had the disquieting quirk common to many sex dwarves, which is that they look at your mouth when they’re talking to you. His sexual magnetism has been broadly discussed, and his conquest of Cécilia, when, also as mayor of Neuilly, he officiated at her marriage to one of his closest friends, has become legend. It has been suggested that their affair began in that moment and that Cécilia’s first husband ‘had horns’ even as they were exchanging their vows.

  The next time I encountered Nicolas Sarkozy was in 2006 at a press conference that he gave as minister of the interior in order to trumpet the successes of the police forces under his command. I thought I had grown out of my tendency to blush, but throughout the event I thought, Either I’m pre-menopausal or this person is going out of his way to embarrass me. Hard as it is for me to admit, sitting in the tiny minister’s line of vision for two hours was among the most erotically charged experiences I have had, and when he ended the conference and swept out of the room with his aides running behind him, I was left in a state of Victorian agitation. (If I had had a fan, I would have been waving it furiously.)

  Afterwards, I asked a female colleague from French radio if she had noticed the minister’s behaviour.

  ‘Oh,’ she said with a smile. ‘He always does that. He finds a woman in the crowd and then undresses her with his eyes.’

  My own feelings of attraction–repulsion during that press conference left me in no doubt: France’s diminutive president is unquestionably a sex dwarf.

  There is something baffling about Nicolas Sarkozy’s meteoric rise to power, not only to the millions of people who didn’t vote for him, but for many of the millions who did and who now, like my own children, regret it. His success can only really be explained in psychosocial terms. I suggest that it was the collective desire of the French people to be represented by a dominant and libidinous male, rather than a dominant and matriarchal female. This particular fantasy could only have found an outlet in a society unreconstructed by feminist ideology; in short, a Patriarchy. France, despite her many powerful women, is resolutely still a Patriarchy. The story of Ségolène Royal’s political rise and fall is a perfect illustration o
f this.

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  When it became clear that a woman was emerging as the Socialist Party’s candidate for the presidency, there was a ripple of excitement. Journalists, in particular, foresaw a more diverting contest than the uninspired locking of antlers they had come to expect; for many voters, either for or against her, the presence of a female candidate seemed to herald a new era in politics, a fresh start. It appears, however, that France was not quite ready for a female head of State.

  Once the novelty had worn off, the matter of Royal’s femininity began to undo her. Throughout, it was the leitmotif of her campaign, though not one of which she was always in control. Her gender was used as a weapon by both camps, either to aid or to hinder her rise to power. Her supporters brandished her feminine credentials, alternately championing the nurturing mother of four or the powerful and independent working woman, her opponents often attacking her for the same attributes. The most shocking assaults, however, came from her own camp. Jean-Luc Mélanchon, a colleague from the Socialist Party, on hearing of her triumph in the primaries said, ‘The presidency of the Republic is not a beauty contest.’

  And Laurent Fabius, her rival in the leadership contest, asked, ‘Who will look after the children?’

  As testimony to the confusion surrounding the issue of Royal’s gender, Libération – which has always been resolutely anti-Sarkozy – referred to Royal, in as early as October 2005, as La Maman de Fer (the Iron Mother).

  This kind of gender stereotyping would be unthinkable in Britain or America. In France it is routine. Too busy emancipating herself from her symbolic patriarch de Gaulle, France never actually took on the patriarchy itself.

  When the time came in the Anglo-Saxon world for the roles men and women play to change, there was an unspoken agreement in France for them to stay the same. In the public sphere, things have advanced (France is only a little way behind Britain when it comes to the number of women in parliament), but in private, nothing much has moved. Men still feel they can accost women in the street to compliment them on their beauty and, as my own daughter has shown me, most women wait for the man to make the first move. Few people, even those who have fought for women’s rights, refer to themselves as feminists, and the word sexist as a term of abuse is rarely used.

  Women in patriarchies are tough on each other. A measure of this lies in the fact that the most misogynistic comments came from Ségolène Royal’s own gender. Michèle Alliot-Marie, the Chirac government’s defence minister, said of Royal’s performance in a televised debate with Sarkozy: ‘Being vague is fine for fashion, not for politics.’

  Another left-leaning publication, the news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, conducted a survey in which one hundred famous women were questioned on their feelings about the socialist candidate. The majority of them disliked her – their principal objection having something to do with her being the mother of four. Their grievance was summed up by a comment made by the former porn star Brigitte Lahaie: ‘For her [Royal], the image of the mother overrides the image of the woman.’

  Or as Virginie Despentes, controversial author of the novel Baise-Moi (Fuck Me), said, ‘When Royal calls for the army in the suburbs, it is not the virile figure of the law … but the extension of the absolute power of the mother.’

  It is both odd and telling that porn star and feminist alike express this culture’s entrenched mistrust of the overbearing mother. In the end, the women of France were Royal’s harshest judges, expressing an eloquent and varied misogyny and relaying the deepest fears of the male psyche. Catherine Millet, author of The Sex Life of Catherine M, said of her: ‘She’s a Robespierrette. This country doesn’t need a “Mummy” to give it moral lectures.’

  As a national poll revealed, in the first round of the elections even Royal’s own voters were in some doubt as to her suitability for supreme office, only 16 per cent of them believing that she had the ‘stature’ of a president. As is often the case with this extremely idealistic and at the same time conservative nation, the idea – in this instance, of a woman as president – was considerably more appealing than the reality.

  Throughout her campaign, Royal herself vacillated on the matter of whether or not to exploit her femininity, sometimes castigating people for alluding to her gender and sometimes brandishing it as her main argument: ‘I know that certain electors, male and female, ask themselves if it isn’t too revolutionary to vote for a woman. Well I say to them: be that audacious because France will feel a wonderful breath of innovation and you won’t regret it.’*

  Royal sometimes even fell prey to the very stereotyping she denounced by identifying her values as essentially feminine: ‘The time for women has come so that the House of France can be rebuilt on good foundations: the family, education, employment, ecology …’

  France has a long way to go when it comes to challenging sexual stereotypes. It was telling that TV journalists commenting on the debate between the two finalists repeatedly called the socialist candidate ‘Ségolène’ but never once used Sarkozy’s Christian name. A cartoon in the left-wing satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo pictured Royal as a housewife, rifling through a bargain bin marked ‘SALE’ with the caption, ‘The socialist programme at –50%. It’s unbelievable!’

  Royal’s relationship with her domineering father has often been cited as the motor for her career, just as Sarkozy’s philandering and absent father has been seen as the driving force behind his will to power. Unlike Sarkozy, however, Royal has had to struggle, not only against a single patriarch, but against the entire patriarchy. When she appeared on the balcony of the Socialist Party headquarters on the night of her defeat, the radiance of her smile spoke of the relief of the natural runner-up. It was as if she had never really envisioned herself as the victor, as if on some subliminal level she had ingested the rules of the patriarchy and not allowed herself to imagine her own victory. Her face did not express disappointment, even as she mouthed the words: ‘From the bottom of my heart I thank the 13 to 17 million voters who had confidence in me and I take the measure of their disappointment and their pain.’

  It was their disappointment and pain, not hers, for as the air filled with the poignant, enraptured cry of her supporters – ‘Merci Ségolène! Merci Ségolène!’ – the face of this defeated woman expressed pure joy.

  The Society of the Spectacle and the End of the Secret Garden

  What most people seem to regret about the rise to power of Nicolas Sarkozy are the changes he has brought, not so much to the machinery of French society, but to its ethos. The most profound of these is the slow but steady invasion of celebrity culture and with it the very Anglo-Saxon fascination for the lives of other people: our Protestant taste for transparency and the concomitant tendency towards the witch-hunt; our snooping tabloids; our intrusive, fly-on-the-wall documentaries; our fixation with the sex lives of our politicians, celebrities and even next-door neighbours – all seem finally to be taking root in France.

  Even Sarkozy’s decision to divorce his wife was a signal of a profound mutation. In the past, the D word was simply not an option for a French president. In the French Catholic spirit of compromise, all presidents since the war – with the exception of the dour de Gaulle – were known, even expected to be unfaithful, and their wives either suffered in silence, or, as in the case of Danielle Mitterrand, cultivated their own jardin secret. But French opinion on the extramarital shenanigans of Nicolas and Cécilia Sarkozy has undergone a subtle shift. The public processing of misdemeanours, common to Protestant cultures, and the taste for smut that comes with it are seeping into French society.

  In recent years, French celebrity magazines, modelling themselves on publications like Hello! and OK!, have dramatically increased their sales. Closer (pronounced ‘Closoeur’), introduced to this country in 2005 by the British magazine publisher Emap, is now the most popular magazine in France. In a single year, between July 2006 and July 2007, Closer saw its circulation rise by 55 per cent. This was due, in large part, to th
e magazine’s decision to print photographs of the presidential candidate Ségolène Royal in her bikini while on holiday with her family, an intrusion that would never have happened in the more austere days of the Fifth Republic. The photos caused outrage among the chattering classes, who protested that French politics was becoming contaminated by Anglo-Saxon prurience.

  Celebrity culture has been slow to arrive, but it appears to be here. For many, President Sarkozy is to blame for breaking the taboo that had kept it at bay for so long. With his Rolex, his reflective Ray-Bans, his Dior suits, his glamorous, peripatetic ex and his supermodel/pop star wife, France’s president is sending out a powerful and radical message: It is OK to live the high life. In other words, France seems to have reached that pivotal moment in the evolution of capitalist societies when, as Guy Debord put it in his book La Société du Spectacle, ‘the commodity completes its colonisation of life’.

  France’s old guard – paradoxically embodied now in the May ’68 generation – despises Sarkozy and his family for what it calls the Hollywoodisation of the French presidency. Cécilia and Nicolas chose to live their lives in the public eye, inviting Paris Match into the Elysée and putting their children on display. Sarkozy’s very public mediation of his marital difficulties were a far cry from the discretion of Mitterrand – who for years managed to shame the French press into silence not only over his numerous infidelities but also his ‘secret family’ with Anne Pingeot.

  Unlike the private Mitterrand, the fifty-four-year-old Sarkozy is a perfect product of Debord’s ‘society of the spectacle’ – a symptom of end-stage capitalism in which ‘the social relation between people is mediated by images’.