Introduction

This introduction will briefly discuss the ways in which the January 2015 attacks on the offices of Charlie Hebdo provoked debates about humour and freedom of expression, as well as the limits of humour. It will argue that debates surrounding Charlie Hebdo are symptomatic of tensions and contradictions within French society when it comes to exploring multiculturalism and humour. It will also show that it is necessary to take a wider view that traces the evolution of debates about humour and the career trajectories of leading humourists. The last decade is a period during which stand-up comedy has grown in stature in France, and differing ways of evoking socio-political issues about French society have emerged.

Islam and humour: more than just a debate about cartoons

This chapter will build on Chapter Three’s focus on comedians whose material that draws on their ethnic or racial origins by focusing on French comedians who draw on their Muslim roots when performing. This will demonstrate that that it is important to acknowledge that debates about Islam and humour need to go well beyond discussing cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. The presence of a growing number of comedians in France who evoke their Muslim roots challenges the perceived incompatibility of Islam and humour that is often evoked in debates about depictions of the Prophet. It will be shown that comedy is allowing Muslims in France, and elsewhere, to increasingly become tellers of jokes rather than merely the subject of jokes.

Jamel Comedy Club: stand-up comedy à la française?

This chapter will begin by arguing that the Jamel Comedy Club has played a significant role in boosting the visibility of up-and-coming young comedians from France’s banlieues (run-down suburbs) and/or ethnic minority backgrounds in the aftermath of the suburban unrest of autumn 2005. In effect, it created a space for identity negotiation that assessed what it meant to be French and from the banlieues and/or an ethnic minority. This chapter will argue that the way that many of the performers in the Jamel Comedy Club position themselves by using their ethnic or racial origins as the basis for their material is a relatively new development in French humour. Furthermore, it is an approach that becomes problematic when it comes to jokes about racial/ethnic groups that are not represented by performer within the Jamel Comedy Club.

Conclusions

After exploring the general impact of the 2015 terrorist attacks on French humour and humorists, this conclusion will focus on the perennial question of ‘peut-on rire de tout?’ (can one laugh about everything?) in order to assess contemporary attitudes to humour in France. It will then broaden its focus to consider what humour can achieve before focusing on what the four case studies examined here demonstrate about French humour and the ways in which if focuses on others and otherness. It will map out ways in which the four case studies constitute significant indicators of changes in contemporary French society during a turbulent period for the French nation.

Dieudonné: from anti-racist activism to allegations of anti-Semitism

This chapter will show that career trajectory of Dieudonné raises many important questions about the limits of freedom expression and the extent to which it is possible to police offensive humour. Despite being associated with anti-racist movements in the 1990s, he has more recently come to be associated with the far right at a time when his stage shows and public declarations have become ever more controversial. Indeed, he has been convicted of inciting racial hatred following both performances and public declarations in which he has made anti-Semitic comments. This chapter will argue that the way in which Dieudonné foregrounds many of his stage shows by alluding to controversies in which he has been involved makes it increasingly difficult to separate Dieudonné the on-stage comedian and Dieudonné the polemicist.

Charlie Hebdo: from controversy to consensus?

Due to the relative recentness of the fatal shootings that took place at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris at the start of 2015, the first chapter of this book will examine debates about the publication’s depiction of the Prophet Muhammad. This will involve discussing ways in which Islam and Muslims have been depicted in several key editions of Charlie Hebdo over the last decade and a half, and also analysing a court case brought against the publication by French Muslim groups. show that French Republicanism has become a contested terrain when it comes to debates about humour and multiculturalism in France.