One of my favorite students is in France right now and I asked her to send me some French hip-hop.
This is what she dropped on me. I wonder if the man in the video is a stand-in for Sarkozy (or a supporter at any rate)?
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/-Gnddk9ouoc" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
French is not my best language, but I follow. I don’t get most of French folks’ names or French pop-culture allusions though. I do get that this is straight up social and political philosophy. I’m going to have to buy her album and brush up on my French speaking skills.
What would it take to make the message in “Ma France a Moi” stick with the teenaged and young twenty-something folks when they begin to transform into middle-class laborer-parents and settle into their social class fates? Can this message stick once they begin to feel bogged-down by jobs they won’t really like but won’t be able to afford to quit, once they indebt themselves with mortgages that take decades to pay off, once they max-out a few credit cards, and once they begin to start worrying about where their kids will go to college and how they will pay for it?
What will happen when Diam’s’s fans begin to taste the sobering fruits of labor, debt, and family life? Whose France will it be then?
I suspect many of the older folks she criticizes for being hypocrites and stuffed-shirts were once liberal, idealistic, culture-respecting youth too before their daily grinds and mortgages converted them into conservatives. 🙂
My sister is on her way to Paris as we speak. Let me know what kinda stuff you want and I’ll make sure she picks some up.