“It smells like manure”: The Bodin’s despised, the duo is the perfect example of a huge gap between the French

In December 2021, our colleagues from the Express were interested in the Bodin’s, a famous duo of comedians (Vincent Dubois and Jean-Christian Fraiscinet) – to be found this Monday February 12 at 9:10 p.m. on M6 in a TV film in which they investigate in Corsica – and more precisely in their divisive side. Indeed, the magazine begins by emphasizing that the film Bodin’s in Thailand “was only seen by 30,000 spectators in the capital (Paris) even though it attracts more than 1.3 million in total in France.”

“A phenomenon revealing the gulf between two Frances, one urban and a big consumer of culture – and particularly arthouse cinema or original versions -, the other more rural and greedy for mainstream success. Two Frances who ignore each other, look at each other, sometimes despise each other” they add. They then collected certain testimonies, including that of Frédéric Forestier, the director of Bodin’s in Thailand: “For some Parisians, there is the idea that the toothless old woman (Maria Bodin) smells like manure and that, inevitably, she will not fly very high.“, regretted the latter.

“The Bodin’s send the middle classes back to a rurality that they fled, from which they tore themselves away, so that doesn’t make them laugh. They can’t make fun of their origins, they close the doors on an initial trauma that they want to forget. On the other hand, they make the success of Lost Illusionsstory of a provincial who goes to Paris“, added Jean Latreille for his part, associate professor of economics and social sciences and author of Cinema and society. The sociological intuitions of popular cinema (The Harmattan).

The Bodin’s victims of prejudice?

This cultural gap between Paris and the countryside is verified in many other works, as explained by Eric Marti, general director of Comscore, who studies box office data every week: “There are several types of films that do well outside Paris: the great popular comedies which rely on local success like Les Municipalaux or Les Bodin’s; major family films like Heidi which, in 2015, attracted 700,000 admissions, but 40,000 in Paris, Belle et Sébastien or even Polywith its 605,000 entries but 20,000 in Paris.“

It is therefore not directly the humor of Bodin’s which poses a problem and which is despised by big cities and in particular Paris. But more generally what many city dwellers would call “campaign humor“. A sad reality… We will now see if mentalities will change in the future!