It’s the end of a world, and it comes through the opening of the “balls box”.
Testosterror, by the French cartoonist Luz, a large cartoon of more than 300 pages just published by Albin Michel, recounts the profound transformative effects of a global epidemic triggered by rubula 12, a testosterone-eating virus. The group portrait with a male at half-mast covers a year in the life of an antihero, Jean-Pat Boulard, a chubby father with glasses, an SUV salesman, a great barbecue lover, surrounded by examples not to be followed.
This topic of the toxic male subject is in the air of our bad times. The film I salute you bitch. Misogyny in the digital age re-emphasized the extent of harassment 2.0. The Press noted in the headlines last week that masculinist Andrew Tate was gaining popularity among certain Quebec teenagers. Quebecor columnist Mathieu Bock-Côté responded by placing the blame partly on neo-feminism and gender theory, which constantly seek to deconstruct masculine identity…
Testosterror takes on the torrid theme in a different way. The very vast portrait of males with low libido leads to a panorama of society where conspiracists and extremists of all stripes are active. While a guru proclaiming “you are born a man and you become one” attracts Jean-Pat and his son, rapes, sexual harassment and road accidents decline and the number of women in the police increases. And long live the virus?
“Above all, I wanted to laugh more than say,” explains Luz on the objective of this strange hormonal, comic and satirical thriller, in any case unlike any other. “Above all, I wanted to laugh at all these alpha males that I have encountered in my life and that I still encounter. I also perhaps wanted to mentally unload the feminist activists. »
That’s to say ? “In bookstores, the feminist sections are quite well stocked – and generally with works by women, even though feminism concerns both men and women. Few men tackle this subject. I wanted to address it because I am very linked to feminist networks and I have always wondered about my place in the male world, while around me very few men feel challenged. »
He is still Charlie
The designer called from Europe on a borrowed phone, without giving his precise location. He therefore still does not mess around with security, a decade after the attack on Charlie Hebdo, which he escaped by a salutary stroke of chance, which made him miss the editorial meeting targeted by a very deadly terrorist attack. The publicist had asked not to talk about this tragedy. OK.
The book arrives in Quebec this week. The French tour is already underway. “I am very happy to reconnect with people after so many years of not seeing each other. Every book release is an invitation to dialogue, and for almost a decade, that dialogue was confiscated from me. I find readers who I see again as if almost nothing had happened. After the initial emotion – we cried in each other’s arms – we continue to say stupid things like when I did signings before. »
Luz also noticed that men dedicate it for themselves, while women do it to give it to a man. “This is not a book for boys. But it’s a book that women use as an activist tool to deconstruct the boys they know. »
Post-COVID, post-#MeToo
The initial argument (a virus, a pandemic, confinement) obviously evokes the recent global health crisis. “There were connections between my writing desire and COVID-19, if only through the warlike discourse we had in France against the virus,” says Luz, speaking in masculine terms about the coronavirus disease. “I’ve also seen alpha males who normally hold back their emotions panic. I saw a man who had never shopped in his life put on three or four masks and go to the hypermarket for the first time to buy anything for his family — in fact, just what he liked. him. »
A page from the album repeats this anecdote. The shadow of the #MoiAussi movement also passes over Luzian’s new creation. The author cites the passage to the American presidency of Donald Trump, a misogynist and aggressor in words and gestures, and the candidacy of the extremist Éric Zemmour in his own country.
“I consider that what happens in the United States happens here twenty years later – and maybe after five years here, I don’t know,” said the cartoonist. “We, in any case, are very late, and we must therefore try to speed up the process a little. Making a comic about masculinists with a lot of humor seen from a progressive male point of view is perhaps something that was missing – at least in France, where reflection on the place of men in society is rather occupied by the extreme right. »
And if Monia Chokri…
Before diving in, Luz produced the comic adaptation of the trilogy Vernon Subutex, by Virginie Despentes, feminist author trash and radical marked by sex and violence, but also by humor and irony. Something remained in Testosterror.
“Working on a text written by the popess of feminism influenced my outlook,” says the cartoonist. “But Virginie Despentes also influenced me for the empathy shown to the characters. She can talk about the worst bastard and give him space to try to be something else. With Vernon Subutex, I understood that I could embark on a graphic novel about people who don’t look like me by going as far as possible in the humorous treatment of this serious subject of toxic masculinity. My men are violent and mean, but in the end, we can afford to laugh about it, which is no easy feat. »
In this sense, he returns to the case of Andrew Tate, a living caricature of the masculinist influencer. “When I saw his videos, I burst out laughing. Guys like him seem to be nourished by films like Gladiator Or Predator. In fact, I would like that when we look at these guys, we will first detect the ridiculousness. The first thing to do is to make fun of it, which does not take away from the fact that this toxic masculinity causes damage and victims. »
Speaking of film, the cartoonist ends the interview with a well-felt tribute to Simple like Sylvain, by Quebecer Monia Chokri, who deals with gender relations and cultural class relationships as well. “The relationship with the masculine interests a lot of people,” he says. “I saw this film by Monia Chokri as a kind of comic connection, but not necessarily satirical, with Testosterror. I said to myself that man is definitely a great comic space to explore. Monia Chokri is perhaps the right director to make an adaptation of my work. »
In the meantime, the designer of the great sociocritical fresco announces that he has started work on degenerate art, this modern art hated, hunted down and destroyed by the Nazis. “Maybe, in a way, with this topic, I continue my work on toxic masculinity…” Luz said with a laugh.