“One more day and phew! The Year of the Woman is over.” The title of Bernard Pivot’s show broadcast on December 30, 1975 on Antenne 2 sets the tone. The sequel, a television festival of misogyny, made feminists jump. Four angry directors will concoct a scathing response. “Sensitive Affairs” met two of these “Insoumuses”.
To conclude the Year of the Woman, Antenne 2 broadcast a special program on December 30, 1975, in the first part of the evening. Its title sets the tone: “One more day, and the Year of the Woman, phew! It’s over”. The show is presented by Bernard Pivot, the channel’s new star, who successfully launched “Apostrophes” a few months earlier. Her main guest: Secretary of State for the Status of Women Françoise Giroud. The minister finds herself in a minefield, and she is not unaware of it, according to her close collaborator Sylvie Pierre-Brossolette: She “agreed to take on the challenge, knowing full well that it was some kind of trap.”
Bernard Pivot brought together around Françoise Giroud a skewer of “fieffés misos”, as he presents them himself. “When we observe women, we tends to get a bit misogynistic” ; “ Women are becoming more and more masculinized… The guests parade, and it’s a festival of perfectly uninhibited phallocratic remarks. The prize undoubtedly goes to gastronomic critic Christian Guy. When Bernard Pivot asks him if women have talent in cooking, he cries: “Certainly not, let’s see, finally! We’d know!” Because “Women do ‘cooking’, they don’t do ‘cooking’.”
In front of their television sets, feminists are choking themselves. But what goes down the most is the attitude of Françoise Giroud, considered far too complacent with her opponents. “How does she not get up and leave?” protests Martine Storti, a figure of the MLF who evokes this episode in “Sensitive Affairs”: “I was ashamed for her! Get up and get out! And tell them ‘Chao guys!'”
A diversion of the show, arranged with a feminist twist
The response will come, scathing, three short months later, in the form of a film. “Maso and Miso go by boat” is a diversion from the Pivot show, arranged with a feminist twist. “Maso” is Françoise Giroud, reclassified as “Secretary of State for the Erotic Condition”, and “Miso”, Bernard Pivot and his guests.
This piracy is the work of the collective Les Insoumuses, four feminists who denounce with humor the sexism of the show: around Delphine Seyrig, committed actress, the directors Carole Roussopoulos and Ioana Wieder, and the sociologist Nadja Ringart. The last two testify in this extract: ” We laughed a lot together, but we knew we were tackling serious subjects. Serious, even.”
The four rebels cobbled together their right of reply with the means at hand: cardboard boxes displaying ironic comments in the form of demonstration slogans (“Men do: PROFITABLE cooking. Women do FREE cooking”, “The Year of the woman is not even a leap year”); freeze frames, comments repeated in a loop… A process “cruel, agrees Nadja Ringart, but very effective. “If you put yourself in the shoes of a viewer, who is at home, who is horrified by it but who cannot respond, she will listen, and she will hear badly. And we repeat. We rewind. Did you really hear what she dared to say, or what he dared to say?”
“Maso and Miso go by boat” quickly enjoyed a little public success, becoming over time a cult film of the feminist movement. Despite attempts by Françoise Giroud and Antenne 2 to prohibit its broadcast, it was programmed and seen in many cultural institutions in France. “There was a movement towards this film, testifies Ioana Wieder, and he didn’t stop.”
Excerpt from “1975, the year of the woman”, a document to be seen on October 22, 2023 in “Affaires Sensitives”, a France Télévisions, France TV presse, France Inter and INA co-production, adapted from a French broadcast Inter.
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