The designer Xavier Gorce ceases his collaboration with the newspaper "Le Monde"
View of the headquarters of the newspaper "Le Monde" in Paris.
© Siegfried Forster / RFI
Text by: Isabelle Chenu Follow
3 min
The designer of the newspaper "Le Monde, Xavier Gorce, has announced to cease his collaboration with the title where he worked for 18 years.
The evening daily had decided to apologize for the publication of one of its cartoons around an incest scandal that is shaking France.
Publicity
Read more
The penguins have been the cult characters of the series "Les indégivrables", created by the cartoonist Xavier Gorce for nearly 15 years.
His latest drawing, published Tuesday, January 19 on lemonde.fr, set the pack ice on fire.
Cartoonist Xavier Gorce: “I have no score to settle.
"
I have no score to settle.
I say what I think is right, I take the liberty to say it, without hindrance, without constraint.
And if there is any constraint, I will draw elsewhere.
Without hate.
Everything is very simple.
I am a freelance designer
- Xavier Gorce (@XavierGorce) January 20, 2021
Xavier Gorce draws a little penguin who asks an apparently absurd question to an adult congener: "
If I have been abused by the adoptive half-brother of the companion of my transgender father who has become my mother, is it incest
?"
"In the midst of the #metooincest wave, after the resignation of political scientist Olivier Duhamel accused of incest on his stepson in a book written by his stepdaughter Camille Kouchner and entitled
La Familia grande
, the irony of Xavier Gorce has ignited the networks social.
"Freedom cannot be negotiated"
The designer is accused of attacking the dignity of transgender people, of mocking victims of incest ... to the point that the management of
Le Monde
apologized to its readers, believing that the drawing would not have not to be published ...
“
Freedom cannot be negotiated
,” said the cartoonist, for his part, who decided to cease all collaboration with the newspaper where he has worked for 18 years.
"
It is a total misunderstanding to imagine that my drawing would be any legitimation for these crimes of incest
", defends Xavier Gorce
in an interview with
Le Point
.
Since the attacks against
Charlie Hebdo
, many titles give up publishing caricatures that could offend their readers.
The
New York Times
stopped publishing cartoons in its international edition in June 2019, as has long been the case in its American edition.
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Media
Freedom of press
France
Culture