Darrieussecq's Pig Tales: Marianne's misfortunes at the turn of the millennium

Romanic Review, Nov 1999 by Lantelme, Michel

When Edgar reaches power, the return to Order anticipated by some takes place and the government reveals its true face, that of tyranny. Edgar may replace the Arch of Triumph with a cathedral but the new religion represented by the marabout is only a pretext, a facade or a new drug; it is "the Prozac of the people." (109) The champion of morality turns out to be himself an organizer of orgies during private parties at Aqualand.

Edgar's first decision, as soon as he is in power, is to get rid of immigrant workers by deporting them. "The policemen came to the hotel and arrested the cleaning man. I never saw him again, except once on TV: men with machine guns were making him get on a plane with some other people and he was crying." (87) As with all totalitarian regimes, women are also targeted. This time, we are not entitled to the traditional stance on motherhood: the idea that women belong in the home, where they should dedicate themselves to the sacred tasks of procreating and bringing up children. Instead, they must take on another mission. Their new duty appears when the government decides to shut down all the perfume stores for the sake of morality: "they told me the only public occupations that would be open to women from now on were those of personal assistant or traveling companion." (91) The sanitary campaign or social cleansing then reaches the homeless, rounded up by the Mobile Crisis Intervention Units ["SAMU-SDF"], which will be in turn forbidden. The government gets rid of the psychiatrists, while the asylum is "cleaned out" with a big dose of napalm. Then the period of the "Great Trials" starts. (124)

The English subtitle, "a story of lust and transformation", is misleading. More than lust is at stake, I am afraid. A short story published by Darrieussecq in Le Monde on March 28, 1999 sheds new light on Pig Tales. "A Great French Celebration" [" Une Grande Fete franfaise"] depicts the mobilization of children, under the watchful eye of members of the militia, around the year 2047. Young children of the Jean-Marie Le Pen School parade before the president, who stands on a high platform decorated in blue, white, and red: "They were about to hang women who had abortions, cut open the women who performed abortions, cut the throats of these traitor teachers, burn the journalists alive, impale the wogs, electrocute the little foreign shrimps in the bellies of the bitches, quarter the faggots and get rid of the last non-patriotic Frenchmen." ["On allait pendre les avortees, eventrer les avorteuses, egorger les professeurs traitres, brider vifs les journalistes vendus, empaler les bougnouls, electrocuter les avortons meteques dans le venue des salopes, ecarteler les pedes et faire rendre gorge aux derniers mauvais Francais."] The foreman of this Goya-like "great festival" is no one other than the leader of the Front National party. And just as a debate opposes a group of officials and a Committee on morality about the distance one should introduce between the children's eyes and the tortures, "Half-Ear" ["Mi-Oreille"] has a thought for his grand-mother, an enemy of the regime who, despite the prohibition, would read aloud to him the magazine Ecnarf-"France" turned backwards. No, definitely, the perspective of joining the "Youth Organizations" next summer, when he turns ten, does not appeal to him. A relative of our pig, the hero of this short story, bears in his very name the sign of resistance; "Half-Ear" was born in prison in 2038 and his mother had bitten his ear so that no one would want to adopt him.