Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1503087
eration of French teenagers have been brought up playing (admittedly, very violent) vid- eo-games such as 'Grand Theft Auto'... with the result that: well, they all suddenly decided – just like that: from one mo- ment to the next - to take to the streets en masse, and turn their own tranquil neighbour- hoods into cut-scenes from the latest 'post-Apocalyptic Sur- vival-Horror RPG', released by studios such as 'Bethesda', or 'Obsidian Entertainment'... I mean, honestly. What's French for 'pull the other one', anyway? "Tirez l-autre?" (And if so: 'L'autre quoi? Jambe? Pied?' Oh well: I guess I should have paid more attention to my French homework, in the 1980s than to video-games such as 'Jet Pack Willy', or 'Hungry Horace Goes Ski- ing'...) But in any case. To be fair, I can almost understand – up to a point - why Emmanuel Ma- cron would be so keen to pin the blame for these riots on such a convenient scapegoat – which, today, happens to take the form of 'video-games' (but 40 years ago, it could just as easily have been 'violence in the movies': in the aftermath of Stanley Kubrick's A Clock- work Orange', among other examples.) After all, the only realis- tic alternative to 'blaming video-games', is to do what French academics such as Ar- iane Basthard-Bogain (a lec- turer in French and politics at Northumbria University, UK) are now calling on Emmanuel Macron to do: i.e., to start a serious national discussion, on the 'structural causes' of all this violence. "What we've seen over the past few days is a lot of dis- course about law and order, about restoring order, about how awful this violence is. What we haven't heard is a discussion of the structur- al causes of all of this, and a long-term solution from it by the authorities. "So it's very much framed as a violent uprising but what we really need to focus on is why it was created in the first place..." Ah, yes. The 'structural caus- es'. Now: that poses small problem, for a man in Ma- cron's position. Because in order to follow that advice, Macron would be forced to ac- knowledge the existence of a systemic issues, that have been simmering quietly (and som- times, very loudly) beneath the surface of France's otherwise peaceful suburbia, for literally decades now. And these include not just the most immediate cause of this latest episode of street-level unrest – i.e., unjustifiable po- lice brutality' but also, of all the historic injustices, inequal- ities, and latent racial tensions, that have (let's face it) always plagued France's poorer, more ethnically 'diverse' communi- ties: ever since the days when that nation still lorded over great parts of Africa, Asia, etc, at the height of its Colonial power. And if Macron were to ac- tually to do that: he would be left with no other possibility, but to conclude that the true blame of all this unrest, lies... not with 'video-games', obvi- ously; but rather, with his own failures - as French President – to ever actually acknowledge (still less, resolve) the sim- mering underlying tensions, that have so often resulted in street-violence, in the past... ...including, I might add, a past before such things as 'video games' even existed, to begin with (as I understand history, myself: there were no video games called 'Grand Theft Auto', or 'Fallout: New Vegas', during the French Rev- olution of 1789...) Now: what was it again, that Marie-Antoinette has so often (and so unfairly) been vilified for, over the past two and a half centuries? Because as far as I can see, that notorious quote – 'Let them eat cake' - looks an awful lot like Emma- nuel Macron's comment, last Friday. Then as now, it represents a blithe disregard for all the RE- AL causes of social unrest... in favour of an 'convenient ex- cuse', that comes directly from the world of fantasy. maltatoday | SUNDAY • 2 JULY 2023 OPINION 11 What was it again, that Marie- Antoinette has so often (and so unfairly) been vilified for, over the past two and a half centuries? Because as far as I can see, that notorious quote – 'Let them eat cake' - looks an awful lot like Emmanuel Macron's comment, last Friday