WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.040 Welcome back to the deep dive. I'm your host. 00:00:02.100 --> 00:00:06.519 And today we are tackling a figure who is I mean, 00:00:06.519 --> 00:00:09.759 he's basically a walking, talking paradox. That's 00:00:09.759 --> 00:00:11.859 putting it lightly. We're looking at a man whose 00:00:11.859 --> 00:00:15.400 life really reads like a collision between a 00:00:15.400 --> 00:00:19.280 police blotter and a Ph .D. thesis. I mean, we're 00:00:19.280 --> 00:00:22.339 talking about a vagabond, a petty thief, a repeat 00:00:22.339 --> 00:00:25.120 offender facing a life sentence who just becomes 00:00:25.120 --> 00:00:28.320 this celebrated literary icon of the 20th century. 00:00:28.699 --> 00:00:30.699 Without even really changing. Exactly. That's 00:00:30.699 --> 00:00:32.500 the thing. There's no redemption arc, is there? 00:00:32.640 --> 00:00:34.579 No, not in the traditional sense. Usually you 00:00:34.579 --> 00:00:36.899 get the story of the criminal who sees the light, 00:00:37.020 --> 00:00:38.939 you know, and becomes a saint. Yeah. But our 00:00:38.939 --> 00:00:41.170 subject today, Jean Genet. He didn't do that. 00:00:41.229 --> 00:00:43.929 Not at all. He became a saint by doubling down 00:00:43.929 --> 00:00:46.689 on being a sinner. Yes. He's the man who wrote 00:00:46.689 --> 00:00:49.189 about the dazzling beauty of betrayal, yet he 00:00:49.189 --> 00:00:52.270 ends his life as this fiercely loyal political 00:00:52.270 --> 00:00:54.890 ally to marginalized groups. The Black Panthers, 00:00:54.950 --> 00:00:57.229 the Palestinians. It's a messy, complicated, 00:00:57.509 --> 00:00:59.929 and frankly, it's an explosive stack of sources 00:00:59.929 --> 00:01:02.450 we have today. It really is. We're pulling from 00:01:02.450 --> 00:01:05.849 several biographies, his own novels, which are 00:01:05.849 --> 00:01:08.390 incredibly dense, and then historical accounts 00:01:08.390 --> 00:01:11.180 of his activism. from the 40s all the way through 00:01:11.180 --> 00:01:14.280 the 80s, plus the literary criticism. Can't forget 00:01:14.280 --> 00:01:16.260 the heavy hitters. Oh yeah, John Paul Sartre 00:01:16.260 --> 00:01:18.780 especially. So our mission today is really to 00:01:18.780 --> 00:01:21.700 unpack this specific question. How did a self 00:01:21.700 --> 00:01:25.159 -proclaimed criminal child manage to dismantle 00:01:25.159 --> 00:01:28.500 societal values just by writing about them? And 00:01:28.500 --> 00:01:32.120 why does his work still feel so relevant? Why 00:01:32.120 --> 00:01:34.620 is he still the touchstone for understanding 00:01:34.620 --> 00:01:38.959 power? masks, the concept of the outsider. To 00:01:38.959 --> 00:01:41.000 get there, I think we have to look at the masks 00:01:41.000 --> 00:01:43.260 he wore. Absolutely. The thief, the writer, the 00:01:43.260 --> 00:01:45.920 activist. It's all performance in a way. Okay, 00:01:45.980 --> 00:01:47.939 so here's our roadmap for the steep dive. We're 00:01:47.939 --> 00:01:49.780 going to break his life into four distinct phases. 00:01:50.079 --> 00:01:52.920 Phase one, the biography of an outcast. You know 00:01:52.920 --> 00:01:55.140 how a foster kid becomes a career criminal. And 00:01:55.140 --> 00:01:57.599 why that was maybe a choice. Right. Then phase 00:01:57.599 --> 00:02:01.159 two. the literary explosion him writing these 00:02:01.159 --> 00:02:03.659 absolute masterpieces from a prison cell which 00:02:03.659 --> 00:02:06.780 is just an incredible story in itself then phase 00:02:06.780 --> 00:02:10.199 three the theater of illusion he moves to the 00:02:10.199 --> 00:02:12.419 stage and that's where he really starts to deconstruct 00:02:12.419 --> 00:02:15.360 power rituals and masks and finally phase four 00:02:15.360 --> 00:02:19.129 the radical activist his uh really surprising 00:02:19.129 --> 00:02:21.789 turn as a revolutionary figure in the U .S. and 00:02:21.789 --> 00:02:24.150 Middle East. It's a wild trajectory. He goes 00:02:24.150 --> 00:02:26.849 from solitary confinement to, I mean, the absolute 00:02:26.849 --> 00:02:29.349 center of global politics. It's an unbelievable 00:02:29.349 --> 00:02:31.770 life. So let's start at the very beginning. Paris, 00:02:32.030 --> 00:02:35.430 1910. Because the circumstances of his birth, 00:02:35.469 --> 00:02:37.490 really, they set the stage for everything that 00:02:37.490 --> 00:02:39.870 followed. They really do. December 19th, 1910, 00:02:40.030 --> 00:02:42.830 Jean Genet is born. And that theme of rejection 00:02:42.830 --> 00:02:46.900 is stamped on him. I mean... His mother was a 00:02:46.900 --> 00:02:49.479 prostitute. She keeps him for seven months and 00:02:49.479 --> 00:02:51.159 then she gives him up for adoption. He becomes 00:02:51.159 --> 00:02:53.120 a ward of the state. And usually when we hear 00:02:53.120 --> 00:02:56.199 abandoned child of a prostitute in early 1900s 00:02:56.199 --> 00:02:57.979 France, you know, we immediately picture this 00:02:57.979 --> 00:03:00.659 Dickensian nightmare. Oh, absolutely. Gruel, 00:03:00.699 --> 00:03:03.180 beatings, sleeping in a coal shed, that whole 00:03:03.180 --> 00:03:05.580 thing. Right. The tragic childhood trope. We 00:03:05.580 --> 00:03:08.000 want to believe that society failed him. So he 00:03:08.000 --> 00:03:11.460 failed society. It's a neat, clean story. But 00:03:11.460 --> 00:03:14.219 the sources, they paint a very different and 00:03:14.219 --> 00:03:17.520 I think a much more interesting picture. Genet 00:03:17.520 --> 00:03:20.259 was sent to a provincial town, a place called 00:03:20.259 --> 00:03:23.340 Elenion Morven. Okay. And his foster family, 00:03:23.520 --> 00:03:26.740 headed by a carpenter, was, well, they were fine. 00:03:26.879 --> 00:03:28.500 They were better than fine, weren't they? The 00:03:28.500 --> 00:03:30.159 sources say they were quite good to him. They 00:03:30.159 --> 00:03:33.139 were, by all accounts. And his main biographer, 00:03:33.240 --> 00:03:35.560 Edmund White, confirms this. They were loving 00:03:35.560 --> 00:03:38.139 and attentive. This wasn't a house of horrors. 00:03:38.319 --> 00:03:41.300 And not only that, Genet was a star pupil. He 00:03:41.300 --> 00:03:43.400 got excellent grades. Excellent grades. He was 00:03:43.400 --> 00:03:45.680 the altar boy. He was smart. He was supported. 00:03:45.960 --> 00:03:49.159 He was, you know, religious. The opposite of 00:03:49.159 --> 00:03:51.599 the cliche. This is the part I find so fascinating. 00:03:51.860 --> 00:03:53.520 If you have a loving home and you're getting 00:03:53.520 --> 00:03:56.020 straight A's, where does the thief come from? 00:03:56.060 --> 00:03:58.919 Why turn to crime? That is the million -dollar 00:03:58.919 --> 00:04:01.199 psychological question, isn't it? Because despite 00:04:01.199 --> 00:04:04.120 all that support, he started running away. He 00:04:04.120 --> 00:04:06.219 started stealing. Small things at first. Yeah, 00:04:06.280 --> 00:04:08.599 petty theft. Money from the house, items from 00:04:08.599 --> 00:04:11.180 local shops. And there's a strong argument to 00:04:11.180 --> 00:04:13.419 be made here that this was an existential choice. 00:04:13.620 --> 00:04:16.379 An existential choice. What do you mean by that? 00:04:16.399 --> 00:04:19.420 He decided to be bad. In a way, yeah. I mean, 00:04:19.420 --> 00:04:21.779 think about it. He knows he's a foundling. He 00:04:21.779 --> 00:04:24.620 knows his brave mother abandoned him. He feels 00:04:24.620 --> 00:04:27.939 that at his core, by birth, he is already outside 00:04:27.939 --> 00:04:30.360 the social order. OK, so he's already marked. 00:04:30.480 --> 00:04:33.560 He's already marked. So if society says be good 00:04:33.560 --> 00:04:36.160 and you feel society has already rejected you, 00:04:36.259 --> 00:04:39.420 compliance just feels fake, you know. But if 00:04:39.420 --> 00:04:42.779 you choose evil, if you choose to be the thief, 00:04:42.980 --> 00:04:46.480 you're taking control. You're not just a victim 00:04:46.480 --> 00:04:49.160 of abandonment anymore. You're the active villain 00:04:49.160 --> 00:04:52.160 in your own story. That is such a powerful reframe. 00:04:52.160 --> 00:04:53.860 It's almost like he's saying, you didn't cast 00:04:53.860 --> 00:04:56.800 me out. I walked out first. Precisely. He's taking 00:04:56.800 --> 00:04:59.519 ownership of his narrative. And boy, did he commit 00:04:59.519 --> 00:05:03.060 to it. By age 15, after repeated acts of vagrancy 00:05:03.060 --> 00:05:05.279 and misdemeanors, the system had finally had 00:05:05.279 --> 00:05:08.009 enough. And that's when he's sent to Metre. Metre 00:05:08.009 --> 00:05:10.110 Penal Colony. The name even sounds heavy. This 00:05:10.110 --> 00:05:12.769 wasn't just a juvenile hall, was it? No. Metre 00:05:12.769 --> 00:05:15.389 was infamous. It was a legendarily harsh place. 00:05:15.569 --> 00:05:18.629 He was there from 1926 to 1929, so for nearly 00:05:18.629 --> 00:05:21.410 three years. What was it like? It was a brutal 00:05:21.410 --> 00:05:24.470 military -style institution. Hard labor, really 00:05:24.470 --> 00:05:27.610 strict discipline. But, and here is that paradox 00:05:27.610 --> 00:05:30.149 again, for Genet, this wasn't just a prison. 00:05:30.509 --> 00:05:32.730 It was a university. The university of crime. 00:05:32.850 --> 00:05:35.509 The university of identity. This period is so 00:05:35.509 --> 00:05:38.470 crucial. It forms the entire basis of his later 00:05:38.470 --> 00:05:41.389 novel, Miracle of the Rose. He didn't look back 00:05:41.389 --> 00:05:44.209 on Maitre with horror. He mythologized it. He 00:05:44.209 --> 00:05:46.870 romanticized it. Completely. He saw the hierarchy 00:05:46.870 --> 00:05:49.149 of the tough older inmates and the younger weaker 00:05:49.149 --> 00:05:52.519 ones as a sort of royal court. He transformed 00:05:52.519 --> 00:05:55.139 the squalor and the violence into a hierarchy 00:05:55.139 --> 00:05:58.480 of saints and sinners. So he's, what, 15, 16 00:05:58.480 --> 00:06:00.220 years old, locked up in this terrible place. 00:06:00.360 --> 00:06:02.040 And instead of being broken by the experience, 00:06:02.300 --> 00:06:05.500 he's actively world building. He's turning the 00:06:05.500 --> 00:06:07.660 bullies into kings. It cemented his identity 00:06:07.660 --> 00:06:10.019 as a prisoner. He realized that this dark underworld 00:06:10.019 --> 00:06:12.800 had its own codes, its own beauty, its own aesthetic. 00:06:13.040 --> 00:06:14.899 And he wanted to be a part of it. He wanted to 00:06:14.899 --> 00:06:17.720 understand it. So he gets out at 18. He's young. 00:06:17.860 --> 00:06:20.319 He has a record. What's the next move for someone 00:06:20.319 --> 00:06:22.620 like that? Well, he tries to escape the penal 00:06:22.620 --> 00:06:24.899 system by joining the ultimate institution for 00:06:24.899 --> 00:06:28.040 lost souls. Let me guess. The Foreign Legion. 00:06:28.240 --> 00:06:30.660 The French Foreign Legion. The classic runaway 00:06:30.660 --> 00:06:33.699 and join the army move. How did that work out 00:06:33.699 --> 00:06:36.540 for a guy who clearly hates authority? About 00:06:36.540 --> 00:06:39.379 as well as you'd expect. He joined at 18, but 00:06:39.379 --> 00:06:41.600 it didn't last long. He was eventually given 00:06:41.600 --> 00:06:44.759 a dishonorable discharge. For what? The official 00:06:44.759 --> 00:06:48.459 reason was indecency. He was caught engaged in 00:06:48.459 --> 00:06:51.490 a homosexual act with another soldier. OK, so 00:06:51.490 --> 00:06:54.170 let's just recap here. He's maybe 18 or 19 years 00:06:54.170 --> 00:06:57.230 old. He has no family. He's a convicted juvenile 00:06:57.230 --> 00:06:59.670 delinquent. And now he's been kicked out of the 00:06:59.670 --> 00:07:03.689 army for being gay in the 1930s. He is like zero 00:07:03.689 --> 00:07:05.850 for three on the social acceptance scoreboard. 00:07:06.009 --> 00:07:07.889 And this is what kicks off what we can call the 00:07:07.889 --> 00:07:10.990 vagabond era. The next several years, he just 00:07:10.990 --> 00:07:13.649 wanders across Europe. Where to go? Spain, Italy, 00:07:13.910 --> 00:07:16.670 Poland, Czechoslovakia, all over. He's living 00:07:16.670 --> 00:07:18.910 the life of a drifter. He's a petty thief. He's 00:07:18.910 --> 00:07:21.189 a prostitute. He's a beggar. He's using false 00:07:21.189 --> 00:07:23.970 papers to cross borders. It sounds kind of adventurous 00:07:23.970 --> 00:07:26.170 in a movie sort of way, but the reality must 00:07:26.170 --> 00:07:28.769 have been incredibly grim. Just cold, hungry, 00:07:28.970 --> 00:07:31.149 constantly looking over your shoulder. It was 00:07:31.149 --> 00:07:33.329 absolutely grueling. But again, with Sinead, 00:07:33.449 --> 00:07:35.709 he isn't just suffering through this. He's observing 00:07:35.709 --> 00:07:38.810 it. He's taking notes. These experiences became 00:07:38.810 --> 00:07:41.290 the raw material for the Thies journal, which 00:07:41.290 --> 00:07:44.750 he published in 1949. And in that book, he recounts 00:07:44.750 --> 00:07:47.850 this life of wandering, not with shame, but with 00:07:47.850 --> 00:07:51.269 pride. With a kind of sacred pride. And that's 00:07:51.269 --> 00:07:53.110 a key distinction I really want to drill into. 00:07:53.350 --> 00:07:55.649 Most people, if they lived that life selling 00:07:55.649 --> 00:07:57.910 their body for a sandwich, stealing from churches, 00:07:58.189 --> 00:08:00.610 they would either hide it or they would write 00:08:00.610 --> 00:08:03.250 a misery memoir. Look how terrible my life was. 00:08:03.290 --> 00:08:06.170 Please pity me. Right. Genet does the absolute 00:08:06.170 --> 00:08:08.790 opposite. He refuses your pity. He wants your 00:08:08.790 --> 00:08:12.850 envy, or at least your awe. He actively mythologized 00:08:12.850 --> 00:08:15.339 his own degradation. He took the mud of his life, 00:08:15.420 --> 00:08:17.600 the theft, the prostitution, the lice -infested 00:08:17.600 --> 00:08:20.480 cells, and he sculpted it into something he considered 00:08:20.480 --> 00:08:23.000 beautiful. He calls it the splendor of the outcast. 00:08:23.339 --> 00:08:25.860 Which brings us perfectly into phase two, the 00:08:25.860 --> 00:08:29.300 literary explosion. He returns to Paris in 1937, 00:08:29.459 --> 00:08:31.980 and he's stuck in this revolving door of prison. 00:08:32.320 --> 00:08:34.960 Right. He's in and out constantly. Theft, false 00:08:34.960 --> 00:08:37.840 papers, lewd acts. He's a known nuisance to the 00:08:37.840 --> 00:08:40.019 Paris police at this point. But during one of 00:08:40.019 --> 00:08:41.980 these stints in prison, I believe it was Fransny 00:08:41.980 --> 00:08:44.460 Prison, something shifts. He doesn't just sit 00:08:44.460 --> 00:08:46.700 there and do his time. He starts writing. The 00:08:46.700 --> 00:08:49.620 creative spark ignites. It's an amazing moment. 00:08:49.799 --> 00:08:52.860 He writes his first poem, Le Condamné Amour, 00:08:52.980 --> 00:08:55.480 The Man Sentenced to Death. Yeah. And get this 00:08:55.480 --> 00:08:58.960 detail. He believed in it so much that he had 00:08:58.960 --> 00:09:01.360 it printed at his own cost. While in prison. 00:09:01.620 --> 00:09:04.600 While he was a penniless thief. He somehow finds 00:09:04.600 --> 00:09:07.200 the money to print his own poetry. That is some 00:09:07.200 --> 00:09:09.220 serious dedication. He's betting on himself. 00:09:09.580 --> 00:09:12.740 And then comes the big one. The novel. Our Lady 00:09:12.740 --> 00:09:15.519 of the Flowers, written in prison in 1944. I've 00:09:15.519 --> 00:09:18.360 read excerpts of this. Intense is not the word. 00:09:18.500 --> 00:09:21.120 It's not a standard linear story at all. It feels 00:09:21.120 --> 00:09:23.220 more like a fever dream. That's a great way to 00:09:23.220 --> 00:09:25.299 put it. It's a journey through the prison underworld, 00:09:25.519 --> 00:09:27.620 but it's filtered through this incredibly poetic, 00:09:27.720 --> 00:09:30.700 almost hallucinatory lens. And it has this fictional 00:09:30.700 --> 00:09:35.419 alter ego, right? Divine. Yes, divine. And divine 00:09:35.419 --> 00:09:38.220 is surrounded by these characters, other prisoners, 00:09:38.419 --> 00:09:42.340 drag queens, pimps. With names that are just 00:09:42.340 --> 00:09:44.620 fantastic. Give you some examples. Mimosa I, 00:09:44.799 --> 00:09:47.600 Mimosa II, First Communion, and my favorite, 00:09:47.700 --> 00:09:49.720 the Queen of Romania. The Queen of Romania. You 00:09:49.720 --> 00:09:51.919 have to love the campiness of it. It is camp, 00:09:52.059 --> 00:09:55.139 but it's gritty camp. It explores the specificity 00:09:55.139 --> 00:09:58.779 of homosexual gestures, the secret coding of 00:09:58.779 --> 00:10:01.019 that subculture, and the brutal hierarchy of 00:10:01.019 --> 00:10:04.220 the prison. He's describing a world that 99 % 00:10:04.220 --> 00:10:06.649 of the reading public knew nothing about. And 00:10:06.649 --> 00:10:09.090 he's describing it with the language of a cathedral. 00:10:09.490 --> 00:10:12.190 Precisely. The language of sainthood and martyrdom. 00:10:12.350 --> 00:10:14.509 So he's writing these masterpieces on, what, 00:10:14.590 --> 00:10:17.429 brown paper bags or whatever scraps he can find 00:10:17.429 --> 00:10:20.289 in jail. How does it get out? How does the sophisticated 00:10:20.289 --> 00:10:22.929 Parisian literary world find out about this, 00:10:23.070 --> 00:10:25.690 for lack of a better term, dirtbag genius? He 00:10:25.690 --> 00:10:28.330 sought out Jean Cocteau. The Jean Cocteau. The 00:10:28.330 --> 00:10:30.710 famous filmmaker, poet, the darling of the avant 00:10:30.710 --> 00:10:33.889 -garde. Very same. Genet somehow managed to get 00:10:33.889 --> 00:10:36.049 his work to Cocteau. And Cocteau was just... 00:10:36.539 --> 00:10:38.840 Blown away. He saw it right away. Immediately. 00:10:39.080 --> 00:10:42.000 He recognized that this wasn't just prison scribbles. 00:10:42.039 --> 00:10:45.840 This was high art. This was something new. So 00:10:45.840 --> 00:10:48.379 Cocteau used his massive network of contacts 00:10:48.379 --> 00:10:51.000 to get the novel published. So he has a champion. 00:10:51.100 --> 00:10:54.220 A very powerful champion. But there is a ticking 00:10:54.220 --> 00:10:56.519 clock here, right? Genet is still committing 00:10:56.519 --> 00:10:59.500 crimes he hasn't stopped. Exactly. The writing 00:10:59.500 --> 00:11:04.200 doesn't stop the thieving. By 1949, Genet had 00:11:04.200 --> 00:11:07.179 accumulated 10 convictions. And under an old 00:11:07.179 --> 00:11:09.519 French law at the time, once you hit that 10th 00:11:09.519 --> 00:11:12.179 conviction, you were automatically facing a life 00:11:12.179 --> 00:11:14.320 sentence of preventive detention. A life sentence. 00:11:14.399 --> 00:11:16.139 It's basically three strikes and you're out. 00:11:16.200 --> 00:11:19.120 But for France. Right. So the literary career 00:11:19.120 --> 00:11:21.460 he just started was about to be conducted entirely 00:11:21.460 --> 00:11:24.559 from a cell forever. But then this rescue mission 00:11:24.559 --> 00:11:26.580 happened. And this is honestly one of the most 00:11:26.580 --> 00:11:28.799 remarkable moments in all of literary history. 00:11:28.980 --> 00:11:31.220 A group of prominent figures got together. A 00:11:31.220 --> 00:11:33.879 supergroup. Jean Cocteau, Jean -Paul Sartre, 00:11:33.980 --> 00:11:36.200 and Pablo Picasso. Just pause on those names. 00:11:36.539 --> 00:11:40.500 Sartre, Cocteau, Picasso. That is the Mount Rushmore 00:11:40.500 --> 00:11:42.440 of European culture at the time. You couldn't 00:11:42.440 --> 00:11:45.399 assemble a more powerful cultural team. And they 00:11:45.399 --> 00:11:47.799 petitioned the president of the republic to set 00:11:47.799 --> 00:11:50.039 aside the sentence. And what was their argument? 00:11:50.360 --> 00:11:54.240 They argued that Genet's talent was so significant, 00:11:54.360 --> 00:11:57.059 so important to French culture, that he should 00:11:57.059 --> 00:12:00.159 be pardoned. that his art transcended his crimes. 00:12:00.360 --> 00:12:02.980 Imagine that happening today. Yes, Mr. President, 00:12:03.179 --> 00:12:05.740 this man is a habitual thief, but have you read 00:12:05.740 --> 00:12:08.720 his prose? It's magnificent. It really speaks 00:12:08.720 --> 00:12:11.039 to the immense power of the intellectual class 00:12:11.039 --> 00:12:13.259 in France at that time. And it worked. It worked. 00:12:13.460 --> 00:12:16.240 The president granted the pardon. Jean Genet 00:12:16.240 --> 00:12:18.519 never returned to prison after that moment. He's 00:12:18.519 --> 00:12:22.139 free. The thief is now a celebrated author. So 00:12:22.139 --> 00:12:23.840 let's talk about the content of these books that 00:12:23.840 --> 00:12:25.919 saved his life. We mentioned Our Lady of the 00:12:25.919 --> 00:12:28.620 Flowers, but there's also Funeral Rites and Corelle 00:12:28.620 --> 00:12:31.379 of Brest. Funeral Rites seems particularly shocking, 00:12:31.559 --> 00:12:33.860 even for him. Funeral Rites is a tough read for 00:12:33.860 --> 00:12:36.840 many people. It was written for his lover, Jean 00:12:36.840 --> 00:12:38.980 de Carnon, who was a resistance fighter killed 00:12:38.980 --> 00:12:41.700 by the Germans in World War II. So on the surface, 00:12:41.779 --> 00:12:44.899 it's a tragic love story, a tribute. Well, it's 00:12:44.899 --> 00:12:46.940 Genet, so it's never that simple. He grieves 00:12:46.940 --> 00:12:50.659 for his lover, yes. But the book explores love 00:12:50.659 --> 00:12:54.559 and betrayal across political divides in a way 00:12:54.559 --> 00:12:58.320 that is just jarring. He writes about the enemy 00:12:58.320 --> 00:13:00.659 with a strange kind of erotic charge. He does. 00:13:00.779 --> 00:13:02.580 And we have to address the elephant in the room 00:13:02.580 --> 00:13:04.700 here. Sinead's relationship with France and with 00:13:04.700 --> 00:13:06.700 the Nazis. Right. I saw in the notes that later 00:13:06.700 --> 00:13:08.799 in life he admitted to something pretty damning. 00:13:08.820 --> 00:13:12.330 He did. In a BBC interview in 1985, just a year 00:13:12.330 --> 00:13:14.990 before he died, he admitted that during the occupation 00:13:14.990 --> 00:13:17.470 of Paris, he was happy to see the French army 00:13:17.470 --> 00:13:20.250 defeated. He said he supported the Nazis when 00:13:20.250 --> 00:13:23.289 they invaded. Whoa. Okay. We need to parse this 00:13:23.289 --> 00:13:26.250 very carefully. Was he a fascist? Did he believe 00:13:26.250 --> 00:13:29.309 in the master race ideology? Most scholars and 00:13:29.309 --> 00:13:32.149 the evidence in his work would say no, not ideologically. 00:13:32.309 --> 00:13:34.450 It wasn't about anti -Semitism or Aryan supremacy 00:13:34.450 --> 00:13:36.649 for him. What was it about? It was about his 00:13:36.649 --> 00:13:38.309 hatred of the French state. Remember, the French 00:13:38.309 --> 00:13:40.409 state was the entity that took him from his mother, 00:13:40.490 --> 00:13:42.909 put him in Maitre, and threw him in prison repeatedly. 00:13:43.590 --> 00:13:45.950 So for him, he operated on the principle that 00:13:45.950 --> 00:13:48.809 the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Even if that 00:13:48.809 --> 00:13:51.629 enemy was the Third Reich? Even then. It's an 00:13:51.629 --> 00:13:54.879 extreme, almost pathological contrarianism. And 00:13:54.879 --> 00:13:57.220 that's the tension in funeral rites. Exactly. 00:13:57.340 --> 00:14:00.679 He elevates violent criminals, even Nazi collaborators, 00:14:01.000 --> 00:14:05.379 to the status of icons, of saints. He celebrates 00:14:05.379 --> 00:14:09.100 beauty and evil. He forces you, the reader, to 00:14:09.100 --> 00:14:12.360 confront your own morality. He's asking, if I 00:14:12.360 --> 00:14:14.399 can write a sentence so beautiful that it makes 00:14:14.399 --> 00:14:17.539 you admire a monster even for a second, what 00:14:17.539 --> 00:14:19.440 does that say about you? What does that say about 00:14:19.440 --> 00:14:21.940 art? It's a trap. He's trapping the reader in 00:14:21.940 --> 00:14:24.379 their own aesthetic appreciation. He's showing 00:14:24.379 --> 00:14:26.820 you that your sense of beauty can be weaponized 00:14:26.820 --> 00:14:29.779 against your sense of morality. Precisely. He's 00:14:29.779 --> 00:14:32.000 showing that beauty and morality are not synonyms. 00:14:32.019 --> 00:14:34.080 They are often at war with each other. So he 00:14:34.080 --> 00:14:36.220 becomes the bad boy of French literature. He's 00:14:36.220 --> 00:14:39.080 famous. He's free. And then something incredibly 00:14:39.080 --> 00:14:42.419 ironic happens. He gets Sartred. Ah, yes. The 00:14:42.419 --> 00:14:45.370 Sartre effect. In 1952, Jean -Paul Sartre, who 00:14:45.370 --> 00:14:47.649 was then the high priest of existentialism, wrote 00:14:47.649 --> 00:14:50.129 a massive analysis of Genet. It was called Saint 00:14:50.129 --> 00:14:52.350 -Genet. Saint -Genet. It sounds like a canonization, 00:14:52.350 --> 00:14:54.490 and in a way it was. How long was this book? 00:14:54.750 --> 00:14:58.009 It was a 600 -page philosophical tome. I mean, 00:14:58.029 --> 00:15:01.669 huge. Sartre analyzes Genet's every move, every 00:15:01.669 --> 00:15:04.730 word. He explains Genet's existential development 00:15:04.730 --> 00:15:08.529 from vagrant to writer. He basically takes Genet 00:15:08.529 --> 00:15:11.629 apart like a clock to show the world how he works. 00:15:12.110 --> 00:15:14.309 And how did Genet take that? I can't imagine 00:15:14.309 --> 00:15:16.789 having a genius explain you to yourself is a 00:15:16.789 --> 00:15:20.009 comfortable experience. He hated it. Or maybe 00:15:20.009 --> 00:15:21.789 it's more accurate to say it paralyzed him. He 00:15:21.789 --> 00:15:25.340 was so deeply affected by being explained. by 00:15:25.340 --> 00:15:27.440 being turned into a philosophical object, a case 00:15:27.440 --> 00:15:30.080 study, that he got severe writer's block. He 00:15:30.080 --> 00:15:31.700 stopped writing. He didn't write fiction for 00:15:31.700 --> 00:15:33.539 the next five years. That is the ultimate irony, 00:15:33.659 --> 00:15:35.659 isn't it? Sartre helps save him from a literal 00:15:35.659 --> 00:15:38.399 prison, but then imprisons him in a book. Genet 00:15:38.399 --> 00:15:40.539 himself said he felt stripped naked. He felt 00:15:40.539 --> 00:15:43.639 like he had been buried by Sartre. Once the mystery 00:15:43.639 --> 00:15:46.080 of the artist is dissected and explained, can 00:15:46.080 --> 00:15:48.419 you still create the illusion? He didn't think 00:15:48.419 --> 00:15:51.460 so for a while. So he goes quiet, but he doesn't 00:15:51.460 --> 00:15:54.230 stay quiet forever. When he comes back, he shifts 00:15:54.230 --> 00:15:56.669 gears entirely. He moves from novels to the stage. 00:15:57.009 --> 00:15:59.529 This brings us to phase three, the theater of 00:15:59.529 --> 00:16:01.990 illusion. Right. And if the novels were about 00:16:01.990 --> 00:16:04.950 excavating his own past, the plays were about 00:16:04.950 --> 00:16:07.850 the structures of power itself. He became obsessed 00:16:07.850 --> 00:16:11.269 with ritual, with mirrors, with masks. Let's 00:16:11.269 --> 00:16:12.889 talk about The Maids. This is one of his most 00:16:12.889 --> 00:16:14.669 famous plays, and he actually wrote it earlier 00:16:14.669 --> 00:16:17.110 in 1947, but it really gained traction later. 00:16:17.580 --> 00:16:19.679 The maids is a perfect example of this. It's 00:16:19.679 --> 00:16:22.620 an intense study in role play and identity. You 00:16:22.620 --> 00:16:26.159 have two maids, Solange and Claire. And when 00:16:26.159 --> 00:16:28.460 their mistress is away, they perform this elaborate 00:16:28.460 --> 00:16:30.940 ritual. What do they do? They take turns playing 00:16:30.940 --> 00:16:33.299 the mistress and the maid. They wear her clothes. 00:16:33.519 --> 00:16:35.820 They imitate her voice. They abuse each other 00:16:35.820 --> 00:16:38.720 in character. They fantasize about killing the 00:16:38.720 --> 00:16:40.820 real mistress. So it's like Downton Abbey on 00:16:40.820 --> 00:16:42.960 a heavy dose of acid. That's one way to put it. 00:16:43.019 --> 00:16:45.929 It's all about social identity. Who are you when 00:16:45.929 --> 00:16:47.610 you're wearing the uniform versus when you take 00:16:47.610 --> 00:16:49.870 it off? Is the mistress only powerful because 00:16:49.870 --> 00:16:52.350 the maids agree to play the role of the oppressed? 00:16:52.909 --> 00:16:54.970 It's about the performance of class. And then 00:16:54.970 --> 00:16:57.629 he follows that up with the balcony in 1957. 00:16:58.029 --> 00:17:00.549 This one sounds even more trippy. The balcony 00:17:00.549 --> 00:17:03.990 is a masterpiece of the absurd. And it's so politically 00:17:03.990 --> 00:17:07.069 sharp. It's set in a brothel. There's not a normal 00:17:07.069 --> 00:17:10.369 brothel. How so? It's a house of illusions. Clients 00:17:10.369 --> 00:17:13.089 don't come there for sex in the usual way. They 00:17:13.089 --> 00:17:15.920 come there. to simulate roles of power. So you 00:17:15.920 --> 00:17:18.180 go there to pretend to be important. Exactly. 00:17:18.259 --> 00:17:20.519 A gas man comes to pretend he's a bishop. He 00:17:20.519 --> 00:17:22.579 wears the robes. He hears confessions. He forgives 00:17:22.579 --> 00:17:25.619 sins. Another man comes to be a judge, a general. 00:17:26.019 --> 00:17:28.460 They're surrounded by mirrors, and they essentially 00:17:28.460 --> 00:17:31.059 rent authority by the hour. That feels incredibly 00:17:31.059 --> 00:17:33.599 relevant to the social media age, doesn't it? 00:17:33.680 --> 00:17:35.980 Curating an avatar of who you want to be. It's 00:17:35.980 --> 00:17:39.000 extremely prescient. But here's the brilliant 00:17:39.000 --> 00:17:42.880 twist in the play. Outside the brothel. A real 00:17:42.880 --> 00:17:46.039 revolution is happening. The regime falls. The 00:17:46.039 --> 00:17:48.519 real bishop, the real judge, and the real general 00:17:48.519 --> 00:17:50.839 are all killed or have fled. So there's a power 00:17:50.839 --> 00:17:53.599 vacuum. Total power vacuum. So the chief of police 00:17:53.599 --> 00:17:56.700 comes to the brothel and begs the clients, the 00:17:56.700 --> 00:17:59.200 fake bishop, the fake judge, to go out onto the 00:17:59.200 --> 00:18:01.619 balcony and face the crowd. They have to become 00:18:01.619 --> 00:18:03.880 the figures they were only pretending to be in 00:18:03.880 --> 00:18:05.680 order to save the system. That is brilliant. 00:18:05.819 --> 00:18:09.220 It completely blurs the line between fantasy 00:18:09.220 --> 00:18:11.839 and political reality. It suggests that power 00:18:11.839 --> 00:18:14.940 is just a costume that anyone can wear. Jeanette 00:18:14.940 --> 00:18:17.720 is saying that all authority is a performance. 00:18:18.319 --> 00:18:20.980 If you wear the robe and speak the lines convincingly 00:18:20.980 --> 00:18:22.759 enough, the crowd will bow. And then we get to 00:18:22.759 --> 00:18:25.400 the blacks in 1958. Now, this sounds like his 00:18:25.400 --> 00:18:27.859 most direct and maybe most controversial work 00:18:27.859 --> 00:18:30.819 regarding race. It is. It's a critical dramatization 00:18:30.819 --> 00:18:33.359 of negritude, which was the black identity movement. 00:18:33.779 --> 00:18:37.160 The play presents a group of black actors who 00:18:37.160 --> 00:18:40.059 are performing a ritualistic murder of a white 00:18:40.059 --> 00:18:42.460 woman. And they're doing this before a court 00:18:42.460 --> 00:18:45.170 of white authority figures. OK. But. And here's 00:18:45.170 --> 00:18:48.230 the classic Jeanette twist. The white court is 00:18:48.230 --> 00:18:50.869 played by black actors wearing white masks. So 00:18:50.869 --> 00:18:53.230 there are no white actors on stage? None. It's 00:18:53.230 --> 00:18:55.329 layers upon layers of performance. Yeah. He's 00:18:55.329 --> 00:18:57.410 exploring the mask that black people were forced 00:18:57.410 --> 00:18:59.569 to wear in a white -dominated society, but he's 00:18:59.569 --> 00:19:02.009 also deconstructing it from the inside. He wasn't 00:19:02.009 --> 00:19:03.630 trying to speak for black people so much as he 00:19:03.630 --> 00:19:05.990 was exposing the complete absurdity of the racial 00:19:05.990 --> 00:19:08.490 hierarchy itself. And I read that the production 00:19:08.490 --> 00:19:10.970 history of this was huge in New York. This wasn't 00:19:10.970 --> 00:19:14.250 some obscure arthouse play. It was massive. The 00:19:14.250 --> 00:19:19.069 1961 New York production ran for 1 ,408 performances. 00:19:19.509 --> 00:19:22.009 It was the longest -running off -Broadway non 00:19:22.009 --> 00:19:25.009 -musical of the entire decade. And the cast. 00:19:25.170 --> 00:19:28.089 My God, the cast. It was in it. James Earl Jones, 00:19:28.589 --> 00:19:32.450 Louis Gossett Jr., Cicely Tyson, Maya Angelou. 00:19:32.779 --> 00:19:35.259 Charles Gordon. That is a Hall of Fame lineup. 00:19:35.359 --> 00:19:37.400 That's unbelievable. It was a powerhouse production. 00:19:37.599 --> 00:19:39.859 And it shows that Genet's work, despite being 00:19:39.859 --> 00:19:42.160 very French and very avant -garde, resonated 00:19:42.160 --> 00:19:44.400 so deeply with the American civil rights struggle. 00:19:44.559 --> 00:19:46.839 Yeah. They saw their own fight reflected in his 00:19:46.839 --> 00:19:48.839 Hall of Mirrors. Which leads us perfectly into 00:19:48.839 --> 00:19:51.529 phase four. Because Genet didn't just write about 00:19:51.529 --> 00:19:53.809 these struggles from a cafe in Paris. He actually 00:19:53.809 --> 00:19:55.950 went to the front lines. This is the part of 00:19:55.950 --> 00:19:58.410 the story that always surprises people. The radical 00:19:58.410 --> 00:20:01.109 activists. The shift really happens after May 00:20:01.109 --> 00:20:03.710 1968. You know, the student uprisings in Paris. 00:20:04.230 --> 00:20:06.390 Genet, who had been relatively quiet for a while, 00:20:06.490 --> 00:20:08.990 suddenly woke up politically. He felt the energy 00:20:08.990 --> 00:20:11.329 of the moment. He did. He started with an homage 00:20:11.329 --> 00:20:14.880 to Daniel Cohn -Bendit, the student leader. He 00:20:14.880 --> 00:20:16.579 started looking at the terrible living conditions 00:20:16.579 --> 00:20:20.180 of immigrants in France. And then in 1970, he 00:20:20.180 --> 00:20:22.359 gets this really unexpected invitation. From 00:20:22.359 --> 00:20:24.059 the Black Panthers. From the Black Panthers, 00:20:24.099 --> 00:20:26.460 yes. The Revolutionary Black Power Organization 00:20:26.460 --> 00:20:30.519 in the U .S. invited this elderly white French 00:20:30.519 --> 00:20:33.559 gay writer to come and visit them. And he went. 00:20:33.700 --> 00:20:36.009 He didn't just go for a photo op. He stayed for 00:20:36.009 --> 00:20:38.369 three months. He toured the United States. He 00:20:38.369 --> 00:20:40.329 gave lectures at universities to raise money 00:20:40.329 --> 00:20:42.730 for their legal defense funds. He attended the 00:20:42.730 --> 00:20:45.309 trial of Huey Newton. He wrote articles for their 00:20:45.309 --> 00:20:48.529 journals like Here and Now for Bobby Seale. He 00:20:48.529 --> 00:20:50.710 was all in. I have to ask about the logistics 00:20:50.710 --> 00:20:53.710 here. He's a convicted criminal in France. The 00:20:53.710 --> 00:20:56.250 U .S. in 1970 wasn't exactly handing out visas 00:20:56.250 --> 00:20:58.789 to radical ex -cons who wanted to hang out with 00:20:58.789 --> 00:21:01.029 the Black Panthers. Oh, he was absolutely refused 00:21:01.029 --> 00:21:03.289 a visa. He had been expelled or refused entry 00:21:03.289 --> 00:21:07.579 back in 1968. So in 1970, he just ignored it. 00:21:07.640 --> 00:21:09.619 What do you mean he ignored it? He flew to Canada 00:21:09.619 --> 00:21:11.920 and crossed the border illegally. That is so 00:21:11.920 --> 00:21:15.000 perfectly Genet. The law says, no, I'll just 00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:17.819 find a backdoor. It's the thief's mentality applied 00:21:17.819 --> 00:21:20.700 to international travel. It's exactly that. And 00:21:20.700 --> 00:21:22.920 he felt this incredibly deep solidarity with 00:21:22.920 --> 00:21:25.420 the Panthers. He saw the police brutality against 00:21:25.420 --> 00:21:28.140 black Americans and recognized the exact same 00:21:28.140 --> 00:21:30.779 machinery of oppression that he had faced as 00:21:30.779 --> 00:21:33.640 a poor youth in France. He wrote very bluntly 00:21:33.640 --> 00:21:36.059 about it. He said the Americans kill off blacks. 00:21:36.660 --> 00:21:39.640 He saw it as a systemic extermination. And his 00:21:39.640 --> 00:21:41.960 activism didn't stop in the U .S. After this, 00:21:41.980 --> 00:21:43.900 he went to the Middle East. Later in that same 00:21:43.900 --> 00:21:47.339 year, 1970, he went to Jordan and he spent six 00:21:47.339 --> 00:21:50.099 months living in Palestinian refugee camps. Six 00:21:50.099 --> 00:21:52.559 months, not just a visit. He was living there, 00:21:52.680 --> 00:21:54.799 sleeping in tents. Living with the fedayeen, 00:21:54.920 --> 00:21:57.539 the fighters, learning their struggle from the 00:21:57.539 --> 00:22:00.559 inside. He even secretly met Yasser Arafat near 00:22:00.559 --> 00:22:03.269 Amman. He was totally immersed in that world. 00:22:03.470 --> 00:22:04.990 What was he looking for there? Was this just 00:22:04.990 --> 00:22:07.430 some kind of radical tourism? I don't think so. 00:22:07.670 --> 00:22:09.910 I really think he was looking for a new kind 00:22:09.910 --> 00:22:13.029 of outcast community. In the refugee camps, he 00:22:13.029 --> 00:22:15.990 found a people who were displaced, who were rejected 00:22:15.990 --> 00:22:18.730 by the world, living on the margins, just like 00:22:18.730 --> 00:22:20.369 the prisoners he used to live with. But with 00:22:20.369 --> 00:22:23.230 a key difference. A key difference. Unlike the 00:22:23.230 --> 00:22:25.269 prisoners, these people had a collective political 00:22:25.269 --> 00:22:27.890 purpose. They weren't just individuals surviving. 00:22:28.069 --> 00:22:31.140 They were a nation fighting for a homeland. And 00:22:31.140 --> 00:22:33.579 this commitment, it lasted until the end of his 00:22:33.579 --> 00:22:36.599 life, right? He was in Beirut in 1982 during 00:22:36.599 --> 00:22:40.740 a truly horrific event. September 1982. The Sabra 00:22:40.740 --> 00:22:43.480 and Shatila massacre. The Falangist militia, 00:22:43.480 --> 00:22:46.359 while the area was under Israeli control, massacred 00:22:46.359 --> 00:22:49.460 hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Palestinian Lebanese 00:22:49.460 --> 00:22:52.059 Shiite civilians in the refugee camps. And Jene 00:22:52.059 --> 00:22:53.859 was in Beirut when this happened. He was in the 00:22:53.859 --> 00:22:56.700 city. And he was one of the very first Westerners 00:22:56.700 --> 00:22:58.440 to enter the camp after the killing stopped. 00:22:58.700 --> 00:23:00.599 My God, that must have been a vision of hell. 00:23:00.779 --> 00:23:03.079 He described it that way. Walking through streets 00:23:03.079 --> 00:23:06.220 piled with bodies. Swollen corpses, flies everywhere. 00:23:06.460 --> 00:23:09.680 The smell. And he did what he does best. He bore 00:23:09.680 --> 00:23:12.500 witness. He wrote an essay called Four Hours 00:23:12.500 --> 00:23:15.200 in Chatila. And it's not journalism. It's not 00:23:15.200 --> 00:23:17.720 standard journalism at all. It's a poetic witnessing 00:23:17.720 --> 00:23:21.420 of horror. He describes the strange, almost theatrical 00:23:21.420 --> 00:23:24.619 positioning of the bodies, the smells, the textures 00:23:24.619 --> 00:23:26.900 of death. He forces you to look at the decay, 00:23:27.019 --> 00:23:30.259 at the abject. It's almost like his entire life, 00:23:30.359 --> 00:23:33.200 his entire artistic project prepared him for 00:23:33.200 --> 00:23:35.599 that moment. He had spent decades finding the 00:23:35.599 --> 00:23:38.740 humanity or the beauty in the abject, in the 00:23:38.740 --> 00:23:41.220 dark corners of life. And now he was applying 00:23:41.220 --> 00:23:45.420 that same unflinching gaze to a war crime. I 00:23:45.420 --> 00:23:47.099 think that's exactly right. He later read this 00:23:47.099 --> 00:23:50.430 text at a public event. in Vienna in 1983. It 00:23:50.430 --> 00:23:52.329 was one of his last major public appearances. 00:23:52.609 --> 00:23:54.309 And all of this culminated in his final book, 00:23:54.410 --> 00:23:56.569 right? Prisoner of Love. Published posthumously 00:23:56.569 --> 00:24:00.470 in 1986. Prisoner of Love is a memoir, but it 00:24:00.470 --> 00:24:03.150 has this very different documentary tone. It 00:24:03.150 --> 00:24:05.230 chronicles his time with both the Panthers and 00:24:05.230 --> 00:24:07.650 the Palestinians. He wasn't inventing Divine 00:24:07.650 --> 00:24:10.549 or the Queen of Romania anymore. He was documenting 00:24:10.549 --> 00:24:13.009 the real life saints of the revolution as he 00:24:13.009 --> 00:24:15.160 saw them. We should also mention he kept up the 00:24:15.160 --> 00:24:17.640 fight in Europe, too. He supported Angela Davis, 00:24:17.859 --> 00:24:20.000 wrote the intro to George Jackson's prison letters, 00:24:20.099 --> 00:24:22.940 Soledad Brother. And back in France, he worked 00:24:22.940 --> 00:24:26.059 with Michel Foucault and Sartre to protest police 00:24:26.059 --> 00:24:28.920 brutality against Algerians. This was deeply 00:24:28.920 --> 00:24:32.200 personal for him. He remembered the 1961 Paris 00:24:32.200 --> 00:24:34.819 Massacre, where Algerian protesters were beaten 00:24:34.819 --> 00:24:36.700 by police and their bodies thrown into the Seine 00:24:36.700 --> 00:24:40.440 River. Chenet never forgot that kind of state 00:24:40.440 --> 00:24:43.059 violence. He even expressed solidarity with the 00:24:43.059 --> 00:24:45.140 Boeder -Meinhof group, the Red Army faction in 00:24:45.140 --> 00:24:48.579 Germany, in 1977. Which again shows his consistency, 00:24:48.839 --> 00:24:51.960 as unsettling as it can be. If the state called 00:24:51.960 --> 00:24:54.140 them terrorists, Jeunet was immediately interested. 00:24:54.359 --> 00:24:57.000 He wrote an article called Violence and Brutality, 00:24:57.140 --> 00:24:59.059 arguing that the violence of the revolutionary 00:24:59.059 --> 00:25:01.839 is always a response to the pre -existing brutality 00:25:01.839 --> 00:25:04.559 of the state. OK, let's move into our final section, 00:25:04.720 --> 00:25:07.059 what we can call controversy, cinema and pop 00:25:07.059 --> 00:25:09.400 culture, because Jeunet didn't just exist in 00:25:09.400 --> 00:25:11.559 highbrow literature and radical politics. He 00:25:11.559 --> 00:25:14.660 bled into the, you know, the cool factor of pop 00:25:14.660 --> 00:25:16.819 culture. Absolutely. And we have to start with 00:25:16.819 --> 00:25:19.339 his own film, Ashonda Moore, A Song of Love, 00:25:19.519 --> 00:25:22.359 which he directed in 1950. I've heard of this. 00:25:22.440 --> 00:25:25.259 It was banned for decades, wasn't it? For a very 00:25:25.259 --> 00:25:27.980 long time. It's a 26 minute black and white silent 00:25:27.980 --> 00:25:31.450 film. It depicts two male prisoners in adjacent 00:25:31.450 --> 00:25:33.750 cells. They can't see each other, but they find 00:25:33.750 --> 00:25:36.230 ways to communicate. They share cigarette smoke 00:25:36.230 --> 00:25:37.930 through a straw pushed through a hole in the 00:25:37.930 --> 00:25:40.730 wall. They swing a garland of flowers on a string 00:25:40.730 --> 00:25:43.430 between their barred windows. It's incredibly 00:25:43.430 --> 00:25:47.369 erotic, very explicit for its time, and stylistically 00:25:47.369 --> 00:25:49.849 just gorgeous. It sounds like a music video before 00:25:49.849 --> 00:25:52.730 music videos even existed. It totally does. And 00:25:52.730 --> 00:25:54.829 it influenced a huge amount of queer cinema. 00:25:55.180 --> 00:25:57.579 Later, you have great directors adapting his 00:25:57.579 --> 00:26:00.420 work. Rainer Werner Fathbender's final film was 00:26:00.420 --> 00:26:03.799 Querelle, based on Genet's book Querelle of Breast. 00:26:03.940 --> 00:26:06.619 And Todd Haynes' first feature, Poison, from 00:26:06.619 --> 00:26:10.119 1991, is deeply based on Genet's writings. And 00:26:10.119 --> 00:26:12.980 speaking of music... We have to talk about David 00:26:12.980 --> 00:26:15.279 Bowie. It's a Jean Genie. I honestly never made 00:26:15.279 --> 00:26:16.880 the connection until I read these notes. Jean 00:26:16.880 --> 00:26:19.400 Genie? Jean Genet? It's so obvious now that you 00:26:19.400 --> 00:26:21.460 see it. Bowie confirmed it himself in his book 00:26:21.460 --> 00:26:24.200 Moonish Daydream. He called it a clumsy pun on 00:26:24.200 --> 00:26:26.500 Jean Genie. He was absolutely channeling that 00:26:26.500 --> 00:26:28.839 same androgynous pretty boy criminal energy. 00:26:29.099 --> 00:26:31.920 And it didn't stop there. The Libertines, Pete 00:26:31.920 --> 00:26:35.640 Doherty, that whole mid -2000s indie sleaze aesthetic. 00:26:35.900 --> 00:26:38.779 Oh, totally. Pete already cites Jene as a main 00:26:38.779 --> 00:26:41.140 influence. He references Miracle of the Rose 00:26:41.140 --> 00:26:43.660 directly in his lyrics. The cover of his collected 00:26:43.660 --> 00:26:46.059 journals is even inspired by the first edition 00:26:46.059 --> 00:26:49.359 of Our Lady of the Flowers. That whole romanticized, 00:26:49.359 --> 00:26:52.819 poetic, junkie -slash -criminal aesthetic is 00:26:52.819 --> 00:26:55.900 pure Jene. Even Dire Straits referenced him in 00:26:55.900 --> 00:26:58.619 their song Less Boys. He really became a symbol, 00:26:58.720 --> 00:27:01.440 a kind of shorthand for gritty, intellectual 00:27:01.440 --> 00:27:04.400 rebellion. He was the patron saint of the bad 00:27:04.400 --> 00:27:07.349 boy artist, the ultimate outlaw. Before we wrap 00:27:07.349 --> 00:27:09.250 up with his death and legacy, we have to touch 00:27:09.250 --> 00:27:11.390 on that BBC interview one last time, the one 00:27:11.390 --> 00:27:13.950 from 1985 with Nigel Williams. It's a fascinating 00:27:13.950 --> 00:27:15.970 watch. It was just a year before his death, and 00:27:15.970 --> 00:27:18.490 he's so combative. He completely refuses to play 00:27:18.490 --> 00:27:20.750 the role of the nice old writer looking back 00:27:20.750 --> 00:27:22.589 on his life. He compared the interview itself 00:27:22.589 --> 00:27:25.950 to a police interrogation. He did. He was provocative, 00:27:26.109 --> 00:27:28.849 difficult, and brilliant to the very end. So 00:27:28.849 --> 00:27:30.970 how does the story end for him? Well, Jeanne 00:27:30.970 --> 00:27:33.410 developed throat cancer. He was quite ill. And 00:27:33.410 --> 00:27:37.890 he was found dead on April 15, 1986. Where? In 00:27:37.890 --> 00:27:39.950 a hospital. A nice chateau in the countryside. 00:27:40.450 --> 00:27:44.190 No. At Jack's Hotel in Paris. A modest, simple, 00:27:44.390 --> 00:27:47.130 one -star hotel near the Gare de Lyon. There 00:27:47.130 --> 00:27:49.190 is something so poetic and fitting about that. 00:27:49.430 --> 00:27:52.289 He started his adult life as a vagabond, and 00:27:52.289 --> 00:27:55.230 he died in a transient hotel room. It seems he 00:27:55.230 --> 00:27:57.829 fell during the night and hit his head, which 00:27:57.829 --> 00:28:00.630 was likely the fatal injury. And the hotel, to 00:28:00.630 --> 00:28:02.710 this day, still keeps his photograph and books 00:28:02.710 --> 00:28:05.519 there. As a small shrine. And his burial. Did 00:28:05.519 --> 00:28:08.400 France finally claim him for the Pantheon alongside 00:28:08.400 --> 00:28:11.579 their other literary giants? Not a chance. This 00:28:11.579 --> 00:28:14.519 is his final act of rejection. He is buried in 00:28:14.519 --> 00:28:17.539 the La Roche Christian Cemetery in Morocco. Facing 00:28:17.539 --> 00:28:19.640 the sea. In a land that was once a French colony, 00:28:19.819 --> 00:28:22.000 surrounded by the marginalized people he spent 00:28:22.000 --> 00:28:24.740 his later years supporting. It was the only fitting 00:28:24.740 --> 00:28:26.900 resting place for a man who never felt at home 00:28:26.900 --> 00:28:29.279 in France. So let's try to land the plane here. 00:28:29.400 --> 00:28:31.299 We've covered the crimes, the books, the plays, 00:28:31.440 --> 00:28:33.640 the Panthers, the camps. What does it all mean? 00:28:33.700 --> 00:28:36.140 Why does Jean Genet still matter today? I think 00:28:36.140 --> 00:28:38.660 Genet matters because he forces us to confront 00:28:38.660 --> 00:28:41.480 the other. Not just the concept of it, but the 00:28:41.480 --> 00:28:44.279 reality of it. He doesn't just ask us to tolerate 00:28:44.279 --> 00:28:48.240 the outcast. He asks us to admire them, to find 00:28:48.240 --> 00:28:50.799 the sacred in them. He completely challenges 00:28:50.799 --> 00:28:53.380 the foundation of our moral compass. Completely. 00:28:53.460 --> 00:28:57.130 He suggests that in betrayal... In crime, in 00:28:57.130 --> 00:28:59.890 the absolute refusal to conform, there is a kind 00:28:59.890 --> 00:29:02.349 of holiness. Now, you don't have to agree with 00:29:02.349 --> 00:29:04.109 him. In fact, his statements about the Nazis 00:29:04.109 --> 00:29:06.190 make it very hard to agree with him wholesale. 00:29:06.690 --> 00:29:09.269 But you cannot ignore the mirror he holds up 00:29:09.269 --> 00:29:11.849 to society. He shows us that the people we lock 00:29:11.849 --> 00:29:14.470 away have voices. And that sometimes those voices 00:29:14.470 --> 00:29:16.650 are more eloquent, more profound, and more beautiful 00:29:16.650 --> 00:29:19.049 than our own. That's a powerful takeaway. He 00:29:19.049 --> 00:29:21.769 finds the saint in the sinner. And just as importantly, 00:29:21.990 --> 00:29:24.170 the sinner in the saint. I want to leave our 00:29:24.170 --> 00:29:26.289 listeners with one final provocative thought 00:29:26.289 --> 00:29:29.029 to chew on. You mentioned his essay on the sculptor 00:29:29.029 --> 00:29:31.829 Alberto Gicometti. And there's this incredible 00:29:31.829 --> 00:29:35.130 quote from Jeannette about Gicometti's thin spectral 00:29:35.130 --> 00:29:37.990 statues. He said they should be offered to the 00:29:37.990 --> 00:29:40.470 dead and that they should be buried. It's such 00:29:40.470 --> 00:29:42.569 a haunting idea. Art that isn't for the living, 00:29:42.609 --> 00:29:45.529 but for the dead. Kind of funerary offering. 00:29:45.769 --> 00:29:47.809 It makes me wonder about Jeannette's own work. 00:29:48.160 --> 00:29:50.819 Was he really writing for us, the living audience 00:29:50.819 --> 00:29:53.380 in the bookshops and theaters, or was he creating 00:29:53.380 --> 00:29:56.200 these monuments, these novels, these plays, to 00:29:56.200 --> 00:29:58.960 be buried alongside his own dead? Was funeral 00:29:58.960 --> 00:30:01.579 rites really for us, or was it a grave good for 00:30:01.579 --> 00:30:04.339 his lover, Jean de Carnon? Were all his books 00:30:04.339 --> 00:30:07.200 just monuments to the ghosts of Maitre? That 00:30:07.200 --> 00:30:09.480 is a beautiful and provocative thought. Perhaps 00:30:09.480 --> 00:30:12.299 we are just grave robbers reading texts that 00:30:12.299 --> 00:30:14.279 were meant for the ghosts. Something to mull 00:30:14.279 --> 00:30:16.940 over. Thank you for joining us on this deep dive 00:30:16.940 --> 00:30:19.380 into the complex, contradictory, and brilliant 00:30:19.380 --> 00:30:21.980 life of Jean Genet. My pleasure. It was a fascinating 00:30:21.980 --> 00:30:23.839 journey. And to our listeners, keep reading, 00:30:23.940 --> 00:30:26.059 keep questioning, and we'll see you on the next 00:30:26.059 --> 00:30:26.539 deep dive.