Before becoming prominent adolescents on social networks, some were filmed, Instagrammed or Youtubed by their parents. In his latest novel, Children are kings (ed. Gallimard, 352 p., € 21.90), Delphine de Vigan follows the fate of Sammy and Kimmy, two mini-influencers, exposed by Mélanie, a mother in search of popularity.
Mélanie was 17 when “Le Loft” hit our screens. Why did you build his character from his fascination with reality TV?
With The Loft This idea was born that anyone could have fans, overnight. It seems to me that it stems from a very adolescent fantasy that maybe we all had. Reality TV made it possible. You no longer need to be an artist to become a celebrity who causes crowds in the street. You just have to be yourself in front of the camera. A number of the grammar codes of YouTube and social networks come very clearly from this reality TV, such as the permanent confession in front of the camera or the address to viewers. For Mélanie, being famous is a goal in itself. In this, she embraces her time with full arms, without questioning. As another character puts it, maybe she’s just the sheer product of her time.
The part in which Mélanie teaches Kimmy to stand in front of the camera is dressage, isn’t it?
When I watched videos of child influencers, something struck me… My astonishment and amazement came from the repetition. When you understand that it’s not one but hundreds of videos, and you see them one after the other, there is something that becomes really terrifying. These are very codified videos that tend to copy each other, in which children engage inunboxing – unpacking of products sent by brands – or to challenges. My work as a novelist was to imagine behind the scenes, but I had only one weapon in relation to this reality: fiction. So I asked myself how we could teach a 2 year old child to look at the camera… There is undoubtedly a form, if not of conditioning, in any case of learning. From there was born this scene.
Confronted with a police officer, Mélanie keeps repeating that her family is famous. The man is on the verge of thinking that she has a psychiatric disorder… Is it possible to be both famous and unknown?
With the arrival of these new media, like YouTube and TikTok, people have become real stars for a generation, or at least for a certain audience who practice social networks, but have remained totally unknown to another part of population. It’s quite symptomatic of our time, where things are fragmented. There is this idea of community, by age, by center of interests, like so many hermetic islands … In the report that I saw on child influencers, we could clearly see that they aroused a kind of collective hysteria. in the shopping centers where they came to promote. Me, the arms fell to me. But who were these children?