Michel Houellebecq in "Quotidien": a perfectly well-trained media animal act

Bruno Donnet 09:47, May 30, 2023

Every day, Bruno Donnet observes the media factory. This morning, he returns to Michel Houellebecq's performance, very spectacular, last night, while he was in promo on the show Quotidien.

It had been eight years since Michel Houellebecq had not appeared, live, on television.

Moreover, just entered the set, he wanted to make a small point: "I was doing more TV because I know that I am not excellent in the exercise if you will. "

Michel Houllebecq believes that he is not good, not good in the exercise of the interview on television and he therefore immediately wanted to explain why: "In general when I do an interview, I always say to myself at the end: I did not say what I should have said, it is the spirit of the staircase, it is known. "

Moreover, in the middle of the interview, Houellebecq brutally gave a brief illustration of what he had mentioned in the preamble: "Uh, I don't know how to say. It's a shame I'd have to know because we're a little live but... »

Brno Donnet was very amused by this assumption, deliberately posed by Michel Houellebecq, because he thinks precisely the opposite, that Houellebecq is excellent on television and that he knows perfectly well what he does there.

He comes to play a role.

For example, almost at the end of the show, last night, the writer suddenly swayed a totally incongruous little sentence: "Yes, I wanted to talk about chickens, yes."

He surprised everyone by declaring that he really wanted to talk about chickens: "Chickens are animalistic."

Bruno Donnet really liked this story of chickens and animalist tropism because he saw a splendid allegory!

In truth, Michel Houellebecq plays with television. He physically cultivates the air of a small sparrow fallen from the nest. He throws a logorrhea that pretends to look like mush for cats: "These are two different life choices: to be delinquent and to be Muslim."

But here, Michel Houllebecq who is an immense writer and an intellectual, more than agile, who knows his role perfectly.

He is a luxury hen, whose releases, because they are rare, are golden eggs for television. That is why, when he goes there, he quietly tingles on the ridge line of provocation.

Because yes, THE trick of Michel Houellebecq, to make people talk about him, is to swing ever more peremptory remarks, hoping that they allow him to be stolen in the feathers: "As much as I am for prostitution, exhibitionism by making pay it drips me. "

Last night, for example, he tried to throw a hot potato at prostitution, at Muslims. It became his classic: "But I came to the conclusion that Muslims don't like delinquents any more than we do."

Then this very categorical point of view on the French democratic system: "So I'm not in a democracy, no!"

A little provoc' which, after the previous ones had left his interlocutor Yann Barthès, not very interested, finally aroused THE reaction he expected: "Here you are not in democracy? No! Isn't France a democracy? No + Silence + No way. »

An indignation, finally, which Michel Houllebecq, proud as a peacock, could not help but congratulate himself: "But it's good that I have the opportunity to say it on TV, that I recognize you, I'm in a prime-time show. "

Too happy to come and spin "in a prime-time show" a few small balloons, nauseating, on his nose.

And yes Houellebecq who had fled, for a time, the France, for Ireland, not for its climate but for its tax regime more than advantageous, has a new book to sell.

So he comes to do, on TV, a perfectly well-trained media animal act: that of the rabbit, falsely caught in the headlights of a car. That of the writer, more than clever, who comes to pretend to make the donkey so that we give him sound.

The real question is whether it is so urgent to offer it to him?