Threats from Muslim youths have forced a Paris suburban council to cancel a screening of the film Barbie, prompting an outcry and a criminal complaint by the government.
The incident in Noisy-le-Sec, in the heart of the ethnically mixed Seine-Saint-Denis département, has played into widespread anxiety about attempts by activist members of the country’s six million Muslim population to impose their traditions on French life.
The 2023 film, directed by Greta Gerwig and starring Margot Robbie, was to be shown as part of a council-organised free outdoor cinema for people in poor districts during the summer holidays.
Margot Robbie in Barbie
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Olivier Sarrabeyrouse, the mayor, said that he halted the screening on Saturday after about 15 youths objected to the film, threatened council workers, and moved to smash the equipment.
“They said the film promoted homosexuality and insulted the image of women,” the mayor said. Sarrabeyrouse, a communist party member, deplored the youths’ action but also accused right-wing politicians of exploiting the row.
He has filed a criminal complaint and rescheduled the film, which he said had been requested by residents. “There is no cultural no-go zone in Noisy-le-Sec,” he said.
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Rachida Dati, the culture minister, a conservative who is also Muslim, said that she was reporting the incident to prosecutors. “Yet another serious attack depriving children and families of cultural activity,” she said. “For the past year, I have been taking firm measures against this new form of lawbreaking.”
Aurore Bergé
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Aurore Bergé, minister for gender equality, said that the incident was “not insignificant” because it comes in the context of what the government sees as a spreading campaign by hardline Muslims to influence social behaviour in districts with immigrant populations. France must be alert to “these attempts to infiltrate”, Bergé said. “They must be denounced systematically for what they are.”
Last month President Macron, a centrist, presented measures to stop radical Muslims undermining French society, two months after he rebuked the government for being too feeble over what he called a serious threat. A report by two senior civil servants concluded that the Muslim Brotherhood and other organisations were setting up “ecosystems at the local level to structure the lives of Muslims from birth till death”.
Bruno Retailleau, the interior minister and leader of the conservative Republicans, said that “below-the-radar Islamism is trying to infiltrate institutions, whose ultimate aim is to tip the whole of French society under sharia law”.
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The left-wing opposition is accusing Macron and the centre-right minority government of pandering to Islamophobia and the electorate of the hard-right National Rally.
Sarrabeyrouse voiced anger at the way the Barbie incident had been “hijacked by the right”. “Let’s not be fooled,” he said. “This is a dirty political manoeuvre … An incident at Noisy has been taken over by the far-right fringe to stigmatise a neighbourhood.”
Noisy-le-Sec, which is in the heart of the ethnically mixed Seine-Saint-Denis département
CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
The mayor pointed out that he had not mentioned the religion of the youths.
Supporters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the radial left Unbowed France party, were vocal on social media condemning what they called exploitation by Islamophobes.
Les Inrockuptibles, an influential left-leaning culture weekly, said “politicians of the right and far-right have leapt on the news to exploit it and use it for their games”.
Barbie, which has the equivalent of a PG rating in France, was banned by Kuwait, Algeria, Lebanon and Vietnam as offensive to public morals.
Films, books and other entertainment have often been deemed offensive by stricter French Muslims, but no recent incidents have involved a Hollywood blockbuster.
In by far the worst case in the cultural conflict, in January 2015, terrorists murdered 12 people in an attack on the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical weekly magazine. It had caused offence by publishing “blasphemous” caricatures of the prophet Muhammad.