“Lé Vérité sur l'affaires Vivès” is an album signed Bastien Vivès himself, a contribution, or a side step – that is the whole question – to the affair in question. It is in any case a necessarily sensitive album, moreover, it is not published by its historical publisher, but by a new house, Charlotte Editions. An album which finds the right position, which allows it to dodge with a certain elegance the big pitfalls of the exercise, and this perhaps precisely because it is a real new album by Bastien Vivès.
So, it is necessary to take a brief look at this matter which is in fact multiple. We are dealing with a very young recognized author, for great albums, Polina in particular, and also a satirical work often quite focused on sexual matters. In 2018, the publication of a new book entitled Little Paulthe story of a little boy with excessive sex, is forced to appear with a specific blindfold after a petition accused him of distributing child pornography content. The affair gained momentum a few years later when the Angoulême festival announced an exhibition dedicated to Bastien Vivès. Insults that he published on social networks years earlier, notably against the feminist comic book author Emma, are then unearthed. The question of the representation of women and children in his work is increasingly commented on, as well as certain of his statements, several associations are stepping up to the plate, leading to legal proceedings which are still ongoing. In this tangled knot, it seems to me that reality, fantasy, and representation have been confused from the start, and that the very concept of reception is totally misguided: as if the adult readership to whom these albums are aimed Wasn't able to understand the difference between the three.
“Doing autobio, what a horror”
He portrays himself, in an opening interview scene which he concludes thus: “doing autobio, what a horror”: a small pact with the very clever reader, which serves as a warning. Because obviously, this is not a question of repentance or pleading. Everything is offbeat, outrageous, flawed, when for example, he has to follow an anti-pedophilia course where he finds himself alone with an examiner, all the chairs are empty; while he is surprised, the guy opposite retorts “do you think that there are not enough pedophiles in France?”. Later, he attended a course on comics at the university where the students' interventions interrupted any possibility of discussing the 9th art, a course that the police suggested he join to track down ultra-left identitarians. Until this absurd scene where a group of Japanese come en masse to ring his doorbell to offer to make him a great manga author, because I quote “in Japan, no woke, you walk peacefully in the street”.
It's a sort of Kafkaesque tale in black and white comics, in which the protagonist is withdrawn – something which oscillates between passivity and resignation, and where the question is less that of defending one's case, than that of using this situation as a satirist, and to stage this famous triangle of concepts which has begun to dysfunction: between reality, fantasy and representation. In fact, Vivès continues his work, in the continuity of small black and white albums that he had already published on family or football. Sometimes, it is less successful, not so much because it is “anti-woke worthy of the CNews type” as an article from Libération says for example, but because its attack system is more banal, and his jokes expected and therefore less funny.
In fact Vivès with this album contributes less to the Vivès affair than he publishes a new Vivès album, without overdoing or attenuating the tone which is his: this look of formidable acuity, this very particular sense of absurd, but also a certain form of tenderness, there is a lot of sweetness and there is no complacency in this album. It is undoubtedly at the intersection of all these elements which come into conflict with each other, as in any good work ultimately, that the truth about the Vivès manner lies.
