French Rhapsody by Antoine Laurain

Author:Antoine Laurain [Antoine Laurain]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910477380
Publisher: Gallic Books
Published: 2016-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

JBM took advantage of a break in proceedings to join Aurore in the sitting room, where she was watching Vaugan on BFM-TV promoting the rally that was being held that night. He had swapped his usual black T-shirt for a suit and tie which looked tailor-made.

‘I’ve got a message for the people of this country. I’m on a mission. I didn’t set up France République to line my own pockets.’

‘A party of the extreme right,’ the journalist immediately bounced back.

Vaugan brushed the comment aside and went on to dismiss the entire political establishment and the elite énarques who ran the country. He proposed that their Alma Mater, the École Nationale d’Administration, be abolished and why not knock the building down too, since ‘there aren’t enough green spaces in our cities’.

Many people considered Vaugan to be a ‘useful idiot’, but JBM did not share that view. Instead, he saw him as one of those prophets of doom who spring up before a catastrophe.

The internet had allowed all kinds of fanatics to build themselves a reputation, or construct an entire persona. Through social networks and other free platforms, they could spread their ideas among a not inconsiderable number of followers, whose identities were hard to uncover. Back in the other world – the world before the digital revolution of the late twentieth century – these false prophets simply could not have existed. They would have had to rely on countless connections in order to get a pamphlet put out secretly and read by almost no one, or perhaps have had to self-publish and distribute their writings among a small circle confined to a couple of bistros and associations. They would never have found their way into the newspapers, still less onto TV screens. The creation of a parallel space stretching right round the globe had allowed Andy Warhol’s prediction to come true: everyone really did have a chance at fifteen minutes of fame; singers, comedians and aspiring film stars had stepped into the breach, and ran their small businesses via paid websites and the various consumer products they offered for sale: CDs or DVDs, VOD, T-shirts, mugs, books, you name it. The lucky ones were picked up by producers and put to the test in front of an audience and cameras. Only a handful of them survived their emergence from the internet fishbowl and adapted to the oxygen of the real world, like fish emerging from Jurassic lakes with feet for walking on dry land. The best-case scenario was that one of them might go on to enjoy a career in pop for a few years. The worst would see a silly and narcissistic shampoo girl living the dream on reality TV shows and in celebrity magazines, before being spat out by the machine like a spent fuse.

And there was a darker element on the margins. Version 2.0 of the world had opened up to the new preachers. Whether religious or otherwise, they were all out to initiate a growing number of non-believers into the mysteries of modern life, to which they claimed to hold the key.

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