Paris Is Burning

Listen to their music - you don’t have to speak French to get the gist. Today on the ninth day the riots in the banlieues of Paris made page one of the New York Times above the fold. Like most English language reports the Times used the rather misleading translation of the word banlieue as suburb. Those are no suburbs. Those are massive Soviet style housing projects that the government erected for the mostly immigrant poor on the outskirts of town, so mainstream society woudn’t have to deal with what the French interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday called ‘scum’ and ‘troublemakers'.

In France the riots are seen as the worst civil unrest since 1968. The comparison doesn't quite work though. German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung called it a bit more poignantly an ‘intifada at the city gates’. Back in '68 it was the youth of a new middle class demanding their fair share of society in the form of education reform. Right now the rioters are the new members of European society who were never meant to be or stay there in the first place venting their frustration with the purest form of nihilism - burning down their own neighborhoods.

The riots didn’t come as a surprise though. In France the tensions of the banlieues are already so deeply embedded in the country’s fabric that they already rose to the very top of pop culture. Last year Luc Besson of 'Femme Nikita'-'Fifth Element'-'Transporter' fame produced the film 'Banlieue 13', which tells the story of gangs in a future, when the French government has erected walls between the ghetto projects and the communities of the affluent and rich. Being a Besson movie it's as authentic as if Joel Silver had produced a three-digit action movie about the L.A. riots, which is why the film is more ‚Escape From New York’ than ‚Boyz ‘n the Hood’. Still the soundtrack features some of the preeminent Hip Hop artists that came ouf of the banlieues and the song titles speak for themselves.

The so far best film about life in the banlieues came out ten years ago. Mathieu Kassovitz's ‚La Haine’ (The Hate) told the story of a skinhead, an Arab street kid and an African boxer trying to pursue some form of happiness in the projects near Paris, when a riot breaks out. It's not easy to track down the film, but the trailer gives a good glimpse of the atmosphere that lead to the events of last week.
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Film Trailer - Banlieue 13

Film Trailer - La Haine