{"id":35,"date":"2003-07-14T15:33:30","date_gmt":"2003-07-14T06:33:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/archives\/2003\/07\/14\/french-tv\/"},"modified":"2010-12-30T11:28:05","modified_gmt":"2010-12-30T02:28:05","slug":"french-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/archives\/2003\/07\/14\/french-tv\/","title":{"rendered":"French TV"},"content":{"rendered":"

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One of the most popular show in France is Les Guignols de l’Info<\/i><\/a> (“News Puppets”)…
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\nThis show has been running for about 15 years and features muppets of famous personalities spoofing the news.
\nIronically: although they are rather left-leaning with a populist twist (for French politics… in the US they’d be labeled as dangerous subversive commies), they are also attributed a certain part in the surprise election of conservative French president Jacques Chirac in 1995: by becoming the butt of all their jokes, they established him as a stupid, goofy but nonetheless likeable guy, which arguably helped his campaign a lot.<\/p>\n

Despite the occasional preachy populist tone (even for my own taste), they are quite uniquely funny in their aggressive caricature of the world. They have reached a status of perfect immunity by now and afford to make fun of anything or anybody, by any means they deem fit, which can mean well beyond usual boundaries: I do remember a certain show mocking the French president’s wife fascination for old ladies’ purses by showing her masturbating to a handbag infomercial tape…<\/p>\n

Overall, they love to bash right-wing politics in France and throughout the world, which naturally includes heavily the US government these days. The depiction of Bush Jr. as a 5 year old autistic redneck with murderous tendencies who needs to be chaperoned by his staff is pretty hilarious.
\n But one of their biggest schtick is the “World Company”, a fictitious multi-national conglomerate, controlling the planet and making money by trashing and exploiting third world countries. The “World Company”, of course, stands for about any major companies and government acting throughout the world in total disrespect of cultures and human rights in order to increase their profits.
\n Even though the conspiracy theory is slightly alluded to, it has enough self-irony to come out as a heavy but not entirely unfounded caricature of the state of the world these days…<\/p>\n

Of course, all the employees of this symbol of culture streamlining and corporate greed are none other than perfect clones of Sylvester Stallone…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the most popular show in France is Les Guignols de l’Info” (“News Puppets”)…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3745,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions\/3745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}