Friday February 2, 2024, Anne-Élisabeth Lemoine presented a new number of C à vous, on France 5. During the show, the host broadcast a very embarrassing sequence from L’école de fan, which does not pay homage to Jacques Martin.
An unbearable sequence… Friday February 2, 2024, Emilie Tran Nguyen was present on the set of C à vous, on France 5, to talk about the documentary Je ne suis pas Chinetoque. Of Vietnamese origin, the journalist has already been the victim of anti-Asian racism. Anne-Élisabeth Lemoine spoke about the “ordinary racism in cartoons, but also in television shows in which all children of the 80s dream of participating”. Taking the example of L’école des fans, it deplored: “I saw these images again and I couldn’t believe what we were trying to make this little boy say”. In it, Jacques Martin asks him what he likes to eat. While he replied that he likes fries, the host replied: “Do you eat rice? With chopsticks? You will give him a pair of chopsticks because it is very good!“
In the documentary, Isabelle Lee, communications director, said: “Here is a concentration of clichés. It’s this famous ordinary racism that we don’t want to name. That is to say, referring to clichés because we are Asian, obviously soy, chopsticks, it’s innate…“ Another interviewee added: “I find this sequence very funny where the host absolutely wants to make the child say something. In fact, the child, without knowing it, thwarts the imagination which is set in motion by this adult”. On the set, Emilie Tran Nguyen deplored: “He doesn’t give the answers Jacques Martin expects to these questions. He’s a little Asian boy, everyone sees him, so Jacques Martin wants him to say that he eats rice, that he eats with chopsticks and maybe he lives in a bamboo house, but no, This little boy is above all a French boy! So he eats fries with a fork like almost everyone else!“
Anne-Élisabeth Lemoine: “This image is astonishing!”
After reviewing these images, the journalist declared: “What is terrible about this archive and that’s why it is shocking, is that Fan School was a very popular show, which we watched as a family… The parents are very proud that their little boy was selected by Jacques Martin to go on stage. I also read in their behavior and in their ways of sinking further and further into their seats when they heard these questions, a certain discomfort, a certain guilt. To say to yourself: ‘What are we putting him through?'” For her part, Anne-Élisabeth Lemoine slipped: “This image is astonishing!“