INTERVIEW
Is the LGBT community underrepresented in French series? This question fed the thought of the editor of the magazine Têtu throughout an investigation he publishes Wednesday in the quarterly. Romain Burrel draws on the comparison between France and the United Kingdom, the United States or even Latin America. British or American productions and even telenovelas are indeed much more daring in this matter.
In France, it was not until 2018 to see for the first time a homosexual couple in a daily series. It is the Plus belle la vie series that made this choice, followed by a large number of positive and negative letters. However, for Romain Burrel, Philippe Vandel's guest on Europe 1 in Culture médias , "television represents society and when you see yourself represented, you feel legitimate".
French television has a "structural" problem
The investigation published by Têtu tells how a girl who sees a homosexual character in the Skam series feels at that moment that her life is as validated, that her issues do not concern her. Skam aired on Friday night on France 4 and is available online on the France Télévisions online platform, Slash.
For Guillaume Renouil, CEO of Elephant Story, the problem of French television is "structural". "The delay in France does not only concern the representation of the LGBT community but that of other communities as well," he explains. "It's been 20 years since the British or American channels made their revolution," adds Romain Burrel, "they stage quality characters with a real background."
Indeed, it is not enough to create a LGBT stamped character to enter the nails. "These characters have to have a real story, it's not just a name," said the head editor of Têtu . "You have to see them in their private lives, for example, or not to summarize them at the only coming-out, you have to make them exist with issues of adoption, surrogacy, homophobia at work ... That's it. real LGBT characters ", Romain Burrel gets carried away. Hard to give him wrong ...