The actress had read excerpts from “Satanic Verses” on the stage of the Caesars. For Paris Match, she reacts to the announcement of her attack.
When I heard the terrible news of Salman Rushdie’s assault, I was at the Lacoste Festival in the Luberon to perform “Le vertige Marilyn” on stage. Faced with tragedy, my first instinct is always silence, a certain confusion, a movement of recoil…
Around, fear and concern rumbled, then the amazement, and also a certain mistrust in front of this panic, the media frenzy, won me over. The event was global, so important, of course, but it seemed like some had been waiting for this for years. I don’t like pack phenomena, I hate opportunism of any kind. Now, it’s a question of stepping back and looking up, as much as possible… since we are all relieved to know that the worst has been avoided, that Salman Rushdie has survived and with him, the faculty of our thinking.
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Thinking of Salman Rushdie makes me think of Marilyn. On August 13, I was on the lands of the Marquis de Sade, one of the great philosophers of freedom, to interpret this woman, this actress, who fought so much (do we know enough?) against the oppression of men, studios, power in general. I can’t help telling myself that it is at the risk of one’s physical or mental life that one sometimes retains one’s freedom.
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Thinking about what happened to Salman Rushdie makes me think of Lady Gaga. She has just given a concert in Washington during which she challenged the public to defend the right to abortion and to gay marriage… This voice of a woman, a free and strong artist, which rises, is a response to stabbing of negative forces! I believe everything is connected.
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We must resist and make ourselves heard, artistically or politically
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The world is closing in, fear, wars are causing extremes to gain ground, all over the planet, in China, Africa, Russia, South America… Here we are saying to ourselves, once again, that we must resist and make ourselves heard, artistically or politically. Politics should not only be the strategy of compromise, it should, more than ever, be transformed into the art of making possible what is right, human and necessary.
Thinking of Salman Rushdie makes me think of Marguerite Duras. In his visionary text, “The right death”: “It will be too late, you will be part of a society that we no longer want to know, a society deprived of us: a society without truly and deeply intelligent men, without intellectuals, without authors, without poets, without novelists, without philosophers, without true believers, without true Christians, without Jews, a society without Jews, you hear? Without Arabs, without Blacks, without North Africans, without Guineans, without, let’s say the word, internationality, without Chileans, without Chinese, without Cambodians, without Palestinians, without Lebanese, without Afghans, without Nicaragua, without Argentina, without Brazil, without Colombia, without any America, without Germany, without Italy, without Poland, without black Africa, a regional society that will never take to the open sea, that will remain seated in front of its door waiting for death. »
Thinking about Salman Rushdie forces us to think in order to disarm the forces of death.