The journalist in a fake boomer, the YouTuber hallucinating in front of old reports from “Envoyé Spécial”… the show exacerbates the intergenerational gap. His goal? “Breaking down the barriers” between each other’s audiences.
Par Julia Vergely
Published on October 28, 2024 at 4:23 p.m.
Updated October 28, 2024 at 5:05 p.m.
SIn the thumbnail of the video, he bursts into full-throated laughter while she looks at him, all smiles, with mischievous kindness. For her first on YouTube, Élise Lucet teams up with the king of the platform, Squeezie. Others would not have dared to dream of such sponsorship. The very serious investigative journalist, 61 years old, to you and to you with her renowned guest, thus begins her career on the Internet by publishing this Sunday, October 27, what we call in the jargon a “react” video – and no reaction, it would have been a different story. For an hour, Squeezie is summoned to react, using a big buzzer, to the old (very old) reports ofSpecial correspondent… a flagship show from France Télévisions, created in 1990 and presented since 2016 – what a godsend! – Élise Lucet.
Comfortably seated in a cozy leather sofa, the journalist begins by asking advice from a jovial Squeezie, thus immediately passing herself off as boomer than she is. Is the tone okay? Doesn’t that sound too JT? “It’s very JT, but it’s you. Be yourself”, the seasoned YouTuber retorts affably. I've been a big fan of your work for years and I think it's great that you're coming to YouTube. » The idea of the format is interesting: the subjects ofSpecial correspondent dedicated to video games and webcams, broadcast in 1991 and 2001, have obviously taken a big hit – it is a question of a “virus from Asia” who does “havoc among young people”.
Squeezie looks at them, hallucinated, laughs – there's reason to be so – and the madeleine effect comes into full play. The archives allow us to implicitly address sexism on platforms and the place of women on the Internet, the eternal question of violence in video games and conflicts between generations… and, cleverly, the discussion changes little by little and without warning in an interview. This allows Squeezie to talk, for the first time, about his Instagram post against the National Rally at the time of the legislative elections last July and to discuss a game project for a (still mysterious) platform.
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The video is very clever. What is less so, on the other hand, is the somewhat overplayed complicity between one and the other, who never cease to congratulate each other. Elise is “super happy”, Lucas is “super happy to be there” (ad libitum). Elise « adore » his guest's videos. He adores his interviewer just as much. “I hope that if you didn’t know Élise you would go and see Special correspondent et Cash investigation. It's super important, and these are superb shows, beautifully embodied by you”, blurted the YouTuber in front of Élise Lucet melting with false modesty like a quarter of butter forgotten in the sun. “We need bridges. If under the pretext that we do not express ourselves in the same channels, young people do not come to see Special correspondent and there are old people who don’t come to see you… Stop! We have to break down these barriers,” follows the one that usually makes big bosses and politicians tremble with fear.
There are bridges. This was built hand in hand by France Télévisions (which is everywhere, in the thumbnail on the video, in the name of the channel and around one hundred and twenty-five mentions of Lucet's broadcasts) and the online media Brut , which provided producers, journalists, editors, directors and AD for this premiere. Élise Lucet, fake boomer, is not that new: we have already seen her in a video… by Squeezie, last May, and in the podcast of YouTuber and content creator Léna Situations; She recently launched a TikTok channel and an Instagram channel (which promises lots of exclusives and information on the making of her shows)… “Well yeah! “, as the interested party says repeatedly in this nice video but not without strategy.