Caught It's Hard Being Loved by Jerks (C'est dur d'etre aime par des cons) at Cinefranco on Sunday night.
From the March 27 Toronto Star blurb:
It's Hard Being Loved by Jerks (C'est dur d'etre aime par des cons)
This fast-moving documentary by Daniel Leconte follows a controversial lawsuit brought against Parisian trashy-satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo after it published cartoons lampooning Muslim fundamentalism.
Defending the right to poke fun at the world is charismatic Philippe Val, editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo, whose case gets an unexpected boost when he gets a letter of support from French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
This doc, although specifically French, forces to ask questions on tolerance that we usually prefer to politely brush aside. (118 minutes, April 5, 7:30 p.m.)
The genesis of the documentary is rooted in the Muhammad cartoons published by Jyllands-Posten, a centre-right newspaper in Denmark, in September 2005 (here's a BBC timeline of events to Feb. 19, 2006).
As the documentary notes, some Islamic clerics in Denmark decided to spice things up by doing a road show not only with the cartoons, but with other images. Those images included a man in a pig mask and a Photoshopped dog mounting a Muslim kneeling in prayer.
If you're a longtime visitor to this blog, you may remember that Muslims in certain repressive nations went apeshit over this, with some very violent protests. There were protests by the Canadian Muslim community, but those were conducted within the norms of Canadian society.
Anyways, here is an archived search link for 'Muhammad cartoons.'
Enter Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical rag published on a weekly basis.
On Feb. 8, 2006, the magazine published a cover with the headline, "Muhammad overwhelmed by fundamentalists." The cover art was a drawing of Muhammad weeping in frustration with the caption, "It's hard to be loved by jerks." It also reprinted the Jyllands-Posten cartoons and added a few of its own.
This didn't go over well. France's President Jacques Chirac felt compelled to condemn publication of the cartoons as "overt provocation." But France, like Canada, saw relatively muted protests.
Everyone at Charlie Hebdo kept their jobs. Not all French journalists were so fortunate. On Feb. 2, 2006, the editor of France Soir got sacked for reprinting the cartoons.
On March 1, 2006, Charlie Hebdo published a statement decrying Islamic totalitarianism. The signatories included Charlie Hebdo editor Philippe Val, journalist Caroline Fourest (also of Charlie Hebdo), writer Salman Rushdie and Canada's own Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble with Islam. Another prominent signator was philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy, who wrote Who Killed Daniel Pearl?, an exploration of the 2002 death of the Wall Street Journal reporter in Pakistan at the hands of his Islamist captors.
The upshot is that three Islamic groups in France launched a lawsuit against the paper.
The trial happened in February 2007.
On Day 1 of the trial, the paper got a fax from an unexpected supporter - Nicolas Sarkozy, now France's president but then the country's interior minister.
Val recounted during the film that he got a text message from Segolene Royal of the Socialist Party. Keep in mind that Sarkozy is a conservative and Charlie Hebdo is considered to be left-leaning. Val would say that the muted support of the left during the trial was a disappointment for him.
The meat of the film deals with the two-day trial itself and the events surrounding it.
Cameras aren't allowed into French courts, so director Daniel Leconte has to make do with film shot in the courthouse lobby and interviews with the principals, some of whom are quite engaging.
Ultimately, Charlie Hebdo won.
In closing arguments, the paper's lawyer responded to arguments from the plaintiff's claim they merely want "equal and fair treatment" by showing some of the take-no-prisoners attacks they've made on other faiths, such as cartoons showing the Pope work the back rooms of a gay bar. They even mocked Buddha, for crying out loud! :)
The lawyer's point is that the plaintiffs actually want special treatment -- they want the prophet of their religion to be treated as sacrosanct in a secular society with a tradition of freedom of expression.
I would describe the film as a solid but unspectacular documentary. As with so many docs, it's edited with all the care and fluidity you would expect in a two-minute TV news report.
It's also a French movie made for a French audience. Some people who appear on screen are undoubtedly familiar to people living in that country, but would be unknown to all but the most ardent francophiles outside of France.
Leconte is clearly on the side of Charlie Hebdo, and he has subjects talk about the denial that exists in Islamic culture.
Fine, but the fall of 2005 also saw the Paris suburbs riots. There was much talk at that time about how Arab and North African youth felt alienated from French society (their unemployment rate is much higher than the general population's). Sarkozy, the great defender of freedom of expression, referred to the rioters as racaille, or "scum" -- although in France, the word is very close to our own N-word in visceral impact.
The headscarf ban in France also resolved itself in 2005.
That background is missing from the film.
My position is that while I'm resolutely for freedom of expression -- and an integral part of that is the right to be offensive -- and against any move to turn back the Enlightenment, that has to be tempered with the dominant society's ability to look clearly at how it is treating its minorities.
While several strains of Islam are undoubtedly very theocratic in nature, even more moderate Muslims could be forgiven for being angry if they see the dominant society painting them all in one way (this was less than five years after 9/11) and they have very limited means of response.
I'll revisit this film on DVD (I was at the screening as a civilian and didn't take notes). Ultimately, if you're interested in the freedom-of-expression issues at its core, It's Hard Being Loved by Jerks is (grudgingly) worth seeing. The audience applauded at the end, but personally, I cannot call it a must-see or an instant classic.
Addendum
A related post is 'Too old to be afraid,' which is about Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard. He drew the Muhammad/turban/bomb that got this issue started.