‘Misogynist’ Serge Gainsbourg shouldn’t have station named after him, Parisians demand
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Parisians have demanded plans to name a new Metro station after Serge Gainsbourg be scrapped over allegations the crooner was a violent “misogynist” who “sang the praises of incest”.
Thousands of people have signed a petition calling for authorities to reverse their decision to honour the singer at the stop in the French capital’s north-eastern suburbs.
Gainsbourg was famed for a string of hits with British wife Jane Birkin, notably the 1969 scandal-struck Je t’aime, moi non plus, which was denounced by the Pope and banned by the BBC for including a simulated female orgasm.
He also wrote Le poinçonneur des Lilas, a song about a depressed Metro ticket collector who dreamed of light at the end of the tunnel.
As a result, Paris public transport opted to name the new Metro stop near Les Lilas after him.
However, the decision has appalled a group of feminists, who say it is tantamount to “spitting in the face” of victims of incest and sexual abuse.
“Serge Gainsbourg’s violence towards women and his paedo-criminal and even incestuous tendencies (to name but a few) are public knowledge, and we are outraged that he should be honoured in the Paris Metro,” reads the petition, which has so far been signed by 3,500 people.
Critics have in particular taken umbrage with his 1984 hit Lemon Incest, a duet with his daughter Charlotte when she was just 13.
In the video, both are sprawled on a double bed, he shirtless and she wearing only a shirt and knickers. Two years later, Gainsbourg starred in Charlotte Forever, a film which explored similar themes.
While it seemed to celebrate both incest and paedophilia, Charlotte has always defended the song as “pure”.
“It’s really the love of a father and daughter. It says in the song – the love that will never do together,” she said.
But she has also said: “He made me go too far, do things that bothered me. It was difficult.”
Regardless, the petition says the “work helps to create a climate in which incest is presented as a loving, sensual and desirable relationship”.
It goes on to cite passages from Jane Birkin’s memoirs, The Munkey Diaries, in which Gainsbourg’s erstwhile muse, who died in July, recounted being dragged by her hair and hit in violent rows and how she felt she was his “puppet”.
It also cites Love on the Beat, a 1984 song dubbed a “pornographic poem” which includes audio footage of his then partner Caroline Paulus, aka Bambou, having sex and which he allegedly added without her consent.
‘A sort of French royal family’
“What message does this decision to put his name in the public space send? That it is acceptable, even encouraged, to be violent towards women and children if you do it in the name of art and you are a man,” reads the petition.
Paris public transport should know better than to immortalise a “violent, notorious misogynist who sang the praises of incest”, it adds.
Gainsbourg, who died in 1991, has been the subject of renewed focus of late after Charlotte opened the Paris flat where he lived to the public in September.
Visitors are invited to tour the home where she grew up and tour the museum across the street, where a collection of objects belonging to the musician is displayed.
While a notorious provocateur who drank himself to death, Gainsbourg is feted in France and beyond as a deeply gifted singer-songwriter and poet.
Le Monde recently called the Gainsbourgs “a sort of French royal family whose wounds seem to heal in public”.
