Culture and Activism by Elizabeth Cherry

Author:Elizabeth Cherry [Cherry, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781317156161
Google: 618RDAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-04-28T05:08:54+00:00

French Media Coverage

Just as in the United States, French media often portrayed activists in a negative light. But unlike the U.S. movement, which mitigated such negative portrayals with more sympathetic media images, the French movement endured predominately negative media depictions. French activist organizations did not have the money to purchase advertisements in major newspapers or on television networks, and those organizations who may have had the money did not do so. Given the paltry, and mostly negative, reporting on the movement, French activists saw media as a major challenge to their work, and not as a cultural resource they could use. As Elsa put it: “The media says, ‘animal rights activists are crazy, they’re dangerous,’ and the French believe it. They believe it. So us, with our little flyers, it’s difficult to work against that. We’re not equal, in the face of the media.”

Indeed, of the few newspaper articles that focused on animal rights, the vast majority focused on three specific subjects, two of which portrayed animal rights activists as “crazy” and “dangerous,” as Elsa put it, by focusing on death at the hands of animal rights activists. The only one of these three main topics that actually focused on French activists described various anti-fur protests at fashion events. I attended one such event, organized by PETA France, at Jean-Paul Gaultier’s thirtieth anniversary party. PETA had recently stepped up their anti-fur campaign aimed at the designer, resorting to protests since he would not engage in discussion with PETA France on the issue of his continued use of fur in his fashion line. A dozen activists swarmed the gala opening of Gaultier’s party, held at a famous nightclub near the Paris Opera. As the security guards tried to push the activists away, a young woman in the crowd waiting to get into the club fainted. When security asked for a doctor, one of the activists came to the rescue: Jérôme, the main organizer for PETA France, is also a medical doctor. After the protest, as I walked to the metro with Tali and Rob, two of the activists, I said I thought it was good that it was Jérôme who went to help the young woman, because that could only look good in the media. Tali said she disagreed, because the media would simply blame whatever happened on the protesters. Even when such a fortuitous event occurred, activists still feared the media would turn it against them.

The second major animal rights topic covered by the French media was the hunger strikes and death of Barry Horne. Horne was an English animal rights activist serving an 18-year sentence for planting incendiary devices in stores profiting from animal exploitation, such as leather goods stores and stores that tested their products on animals. Horne went on two hunger strikes in 1997 and 1998 and, after a series of subsequent hunger strikes, he died from liver failure. Media reports were not sympathetic, calling Horne a “terrorist” in articles such as “The Terrorist Delirium of the Friends of the Beasts” (Revol 1998).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.