why are archive videos of “Take it or leave it” resurfacing?

The host and producer recently celebrated 30 years of television. The opportunity to celebrate his journey and his rise in the French audiovisual landscape. A special documentary program, “Arthur, the child of television”, was broadcast on December 26 on TF1. And if the latter should be to the glory of Arthur – with a review of his successes, testimonies of the personalities who crossed his path -, certain extracts have been diverted from their context.

A controversy arose around short videos taken from the entertainment show “Take it or leave it”, initially compiled by the Luxembourg feminist media The Effrontee. This compilation of archives points out the behavior of the host towards certain candidates. These sequences, filmed between 2004 and 2010, show the host stealing a kiss on the mouth of a woman, peeking under a candidate's dress or even growling in the hollow of an ear. These four minutes of video were then widely shared on social networks, making it viral.

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“Oh my, what a miniskirt! Get rid of the games room. Shorter after that it's a thong”, “I always liked women who resisted me, who spoke badly to me”, “You need a royal massage, a royal hug”we can hear in said video. “The more you resist me, the more I will tame you. I'll do a circus act with you.”Arthur said to another candidate while miming whipping. And to continue: “You are so my type of woman.”

Aware that his behavior could no longer fit into our current society, Arthur reacted to it during his anniversary show. “When I was asked to host this show, I didn't want to host it in a traditional way. I had these girls crying on set because they were so emotional. I was going to console them, take them in my arms. Today, you wouldn't be able to hold someone in your arms.”he declared. And to continue: “TF1 didn't want a 26-minute show but a 40-minute show. So I had a quarter of an hour to mess around.”

«We did 800 issues, with 6 million viewers. But it was a different time. I was quite close to the candidates. When they cried, men and women alike, I held them in my arms, like a family. Today, we could no longer animate in the same way”he declared lucidly to our colleagues at Parisian . And if Arthur defended himself by affirming that it was another era, other media and Internet users proclaimed “a trivialization of sexist and sexual attacks”. Since then, the presenter and producer has reportedly called on his lawyers to have this montage of selected pieces removed.