La Haine

At our last meeting, the Fellow/as watched the movie La Haine (Hate), released in 1995 in French. Our own Lindsey West led the discussion following the film, and offered insight into a anthropological perspective of livable cities. She explained that La Haine was the first movie to talk about suburbs on outskirts of paris, although similar suburbs are outside other cities in France. The film offered a startling, terrifying portrait of life inside these suburbs, where hate and conflict with the police are ubiquitous. As Lindsey explained, these neighborhoods, or “venues”, were built to house Algerian guestworkers (after WW2 to supply labor for rebuilding after the war)… now, are essentially slums. Some are still state-run, although they suffer sever deficiencies in public services, such as a lack of public transit.

The violence in the neighborhoods is severe--Lindsey estimated that 80 cars/month are burned in France, and even more during periods of unrest. A substantial policy concern is the ghettoization of these immigrant neighborhoods. Frequently, the only people in charge of keeping peace in the neighborhoods are religious organizations, Lindsey mentioned. For anthropologists watching the film, the interactions between people and authority is especially interesting--for example, the youths in the film were treated very respectfully by police in Paris, but in their suburban community, they were treated contemptibly by the police. France has a "vibrant protest culture" which this film magnified to a very intimate level.

Much of our discussion explored immigration problems. In France, we talked about how not only immigrants face unemployment. Based on French legislation, it is very hard to fire employees, so fewer young people get jobs, resulting in a 20 to 30% unemployment rate for youth, and an 8% unemployment rate for country. We also expressed concern over continuing problems with antisemitism in France, and the confusion of anti-immigrant and anti-semitic feelings in France.

Several diverse thoughts about the movie were shared, including:

• The main characters were very young, but acted like men
• Perhaps the problems in the film are not so different than problems in other countries, even in the U.S. However, there didn’t seem to be so much violence between individuals in the suburbs [it was mostly with the police], compared to in U.S.
• There were many similarities between U.S. immigration issues and immigration issues in other countries, like France.
• After the movie was released, people felt empowered. For example, a dance group formed that gives profits to political groups that work on immigrant rights.
• Similarities and differences to the housing projects in the 1950s/1960s in the U.S. included:
• There is no movement in France to blow up housing buildings and change them, even though many seemed quite rundown.
• The French government built youth centers, which are no longer used for their intended purposes.
• France and the U.S. have very different justice systems. For example, Lindsey explained that you can be searched without a warrant in France. Does this perhaps imply that the French do not strive for absolute equal treatment of individuals?
  

We were all very interested in brainstorming ideas about what could be done to attempt to address the type of fundamental and violent problems that La Haine showcased. Perhaps any movement for change would necessitate bottom up action, or a politician from the immigrant community, or more representation of immigrant communities in the political system, or pressure from the European Union.