So, something film-related from the weekend that shocked me and which has stayed with me, is that late on Friday night I dipped into the #Cesar2021 hashtag to see who had won prizes at France's top cinema awards, and was greeted by a torrent of reactionary/racist hate towards it.
People were annoyed at Fathia Youssouf and Jean-Pascal Zadi, two black actors, winning awards. They were pissed off with Fary, a black comedian. They were gleeful that Camélia Jordana, a French-Algerian actor, hadn't won an award. They were obsessed with Adama Traoré.
Perhaps above all, there seemed to be real disgust towards the perceived elitism and detachment of the event, towards Paris's "gauche caviar" (champagne socialists). It felt like a tidal wave of so-called "anti-woke" hatred. And all of this on the battleground of culture.
I was just fascinated, and dismayed, to see to what extent culture in France had become a crucible for an identitarian struggle, for a class-based swell of racially motivated anger. Looking through these tweets you could tell that the country is currently gripped by a disease.
Perhaps the difference is that cinema doesn't cut through here the way it does in France, but on BAFTA coverage you wouldn't get anything like that sort of vitriol. Maybe the equivalent here is TV - people fucked off at adverts featuring POC instead of "normal" families.
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