The French author, who experienced moments of “humiliation” on the set of Thierry Ardisson, protests against the distinction awarded to the man in black.
The Legion of Honor awarded Thursday April 11 to Thierry Ardisson displeased Christine Angot. In a column published by Releasethe author looks back on her painful experiences on the host’s set, between the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s. The one who came to defend works recounting the rapes that her father made her suffer at the adolescence remembers the “humor-humiliation” of the presenter, and regrets that he is “honored by the hands of the President.”
She first recounts her first appearance on the show Everybody talks about itin 1999, for the promotion of his book Incest: “When Thierry Ardisson reads what he calls the pitch, ‘her father forced her to eat clementines on her penis’, people laugh, David Hallyday, Clémentine Célarié… Him: ‘It’s incest eh! He sodomized her.”
“There was always a beautiful girl who punctuated the words of Ardisson and Baffie (program columnist, Editor’s note). That year, it was Linda Hardy, who asked me why I wasn’t smiling,” she continues.
“You listen to me otherwise I’ll slap you”
The following year, the author returned to the set to defend her book Leave the city, commercial and critical failure: “They read insulting sentences that were in the press, about me, and with sexual connotations. I try to respond. Baffie screams: ‘I’m talking Christine: you listen to me otherwise I’ll slap you.”, she wrote. Before adding: “The scene is in my film. Everyone can check”, a reference to his documentary A familycurrently in theaters.
“When the beautiful girl of that year, Sarah Marshall, says: ‘There may not be a next book’, that’s too much for me. I’m leaving,” she writes again.
“They haven’t changed eras”
Christine Angot then returns to the Legion of Honor awarded to Thierry Ardisson: “Humor-humiliation is the type of ‘public service’ that French TV has provided to society every Saturday evening for so many years , and who is today honored by the hands of the President.”
“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, they have not changed times.”
“It’s a slap in the face (…) Baffie announced it: ‘I’m talking, Christine, you listen to me, otherwise I’ll slap you.’ Macron gives it, slaps it.”