RLFR 206
Outsiders in French and Francophone Film: Cinematic Adaptations of Literary Texts
Last Offered Spring 2016
Division I Exploring Diversity Initiative
This course is not offered in the current catalog

The banlieue looms large in the French collective imagination. From its origins in medieval law, the term banlieue at the end of the 20th century has taken on multiple, at times overlapping but almost exclusively negative meanings. It designates a peripheral geographical space often in contrast to its city center, social exclusion, the “urban culture”–as in Hip Hop–produced within that space, and last but not least the symbolic bias through which its inhabitants are viewed (Vieillard-Baron). In this course, we will examine various constructions of the banlieue in French music, film, blogs, and literature to focus on the analytical, contestatory and affirmative dimensions of these narratives. Two decades after the landmark film La haine (1995) and ten years after the 2005 and 2007 riots, how are filmmakers, artists, authors, and scholars of the banlieue reimagining and reframing the banlieue? What do current depictions of banlieues in the French media tell us about the State, French politics, and the state of French politics? What do “banlieue films” and “banlieue lit” tell us about the banlieue?