If Roland Barthes still lived, news Mythologies would certainly have seen the light of day. The microphone could have been part of it, this very singular object, carrying a language in itself, reflecting the personalities it makes speak. Without taking ourselves for the indestructible semiologist, let us observe that first of all there are those who grip the microphone with an almost obstinate fervor, a grip so firm, so rigid that their hand sweats under the effort, gripping the object until numbness.
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And when chance places us in the unfortunate situation of having to take back this sticky micro left by such a relentless person, we must deploy a range of strategies to recover it. Some, in an emergency, adopt the same gesture as the one they do mechanically for a metro bar: they resolutely grab it, with both hands, accepting microbes and the vagaries of life with a certain virility. Others, less intrepid – including myself – prefer to grasp it with their fingertips, palm open, hoping to dry it out, as if to erase this stubborn dampness of energy.
Opposite to those who are gripped, there are those who are stunned. They begin their speech with the microphone carefully held at a good distance from the mouth, but, little by little, their arm abandons itself, sliding slowly as the presentation progresses. A kind colleague tries to remind them, by gently raising their elbow, that they must (oh surprise!) speak into the microphone, but this obviousness dissipates despite everything. The arm comes back down like a drawbridge, the audience, annoyed, struggles to understand the point, the performance is a failure.
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To overcome these natural clumsiness and tame the handling of the microphone, some speaking coaches provide tips and tricks. The most common of these involves placing the microphone against the chin. Behind this supposedly unstoppable technique, a weakness nevertheless persists insidiously: we restrict the body by failing to learn how to manage it. We constrain it instead of training it, we repress it without exercising it. Ease and “naturalness”, which can only be acquired through repeated exercise, give way to a sort of imaginary glue. But the microphone stuck on is like a pacifier on a chain, or a telephone hanging on a necklace, it's an attachment that is taken for deliverance.
The microphone does not just transmit a voice
Faced with the challenges of handling the microphone, one last solution is available to us: the so-called Madonna headset microphone. It is the instrument of stars, singers and dancers, whose stage movements prevent the use of a hand microphone. But, to present the budget for the first quarter of 2025 in Auditorium B of Tower C, the choreography, as we know, hardly promises spectacular flights. This doesn't stop stage managers from systematically asking this absurd question before going on stage: “Are you more of a hand or Madonna?”
In short, the microphone does not just transmit a voice; he himself is the bearer of speeches. It is not just an amplifier, it is a significant object, an autonomous interpreter. Everything in us mimics being: the voice, the intonation, the gesture, even the way of apprehending an object. As Victor Hugo said, “the form is the expression of the substance”. Marcel Proust added that expressiveness is a reflection of the quality of the soul. So in A the search for lost time, the character of Saniette speaks in half-words, barely caressing the syllables: “We felt that her articulation betrayed less a defect of the language than a quality of the soul […] all the consonants he could not pronounce appeared as so many harshnesses of which he was incapable.”
Let's not just focus on exteriority, nor on intonation alone, nor even on how to grip a microphone, because sticking to these cues would of course be superficial and reductive. It is nevertheless undeniable that every detail is revealing, that every gesture, no matter how innocuous, points towards the intimacy of being. If exteriority mimics interiority, if form mirrors the substance, it is because the authenticity of an individual is revealed less by what he voluntarily says about himself than by what his body unintentionally lets it shine through. The body in its uncontrolled language reveals many hidden truths to us.
* Julia de Funès is a doctor of philosophy.
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