The “Retronews” magazine in explorer mode

The Journal of Journals. A wind of adventure and heroism is blowing through the pages of the new issue of retronews, haloed with movie stars – Cannes oblige – and big names in literature, including Proust and Colette. For this third issue, the review of the press site of the National Library of France (BNF) is in tune with the institution, which this year celebrates the 200th anniversary of the Geographical Society through an exhibition devoted to the “Faces of exploration in the 19th centuryand century” (until August 21).

The choice of period is not insignificant, since it coincides, between scientific expedition and military occupation, with a new phase of colonization where knowledge is mobilized to formalize domination through the concept of race. Two contributions perfectly depict this pivotal moment between exploration and exploitation: that of Camille Lefebvre, questioned on colonization in Niger – the historian underlines the unpreparedness of the missions, even their side “wobbly”, and analyzes the way people look at the colonizers; and that of Aurélia Michel on the “Journey to the East” which attracted, in the 1830s, following the stories of Byron and Chateaubriand, the younger generations of the French bourgeoisie. “Scientific or archaeological discoveries, military or literary adventures, travels in the East are also the field of investigation of this racial knowledge; they are a confrontation with the otherness of civilizations as much as a construction of the self”explains the historian, summoning Flaubert, Rimbaud or Maupassant, of whom we find at the end of the volume one of the articles published in Gallic in 1881, while he was staying in Algeria.

Development of stardom

At a time when the cancel culture revives the debate on the relationship between memory and history, we will read with interest the contribution of Jean-Paul Demoule on the “national novel” torn between the tradition of the left and republican and that of the Catholic right. Contribution which opens with a file dedicated to some heroic figures of this “novel”, including Joan of Arc, the Unknown Soldier or Charles Martel, object of controversy during the Belle Epoque.

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Finally, to celebrate the 75and edition of the Cannes Film Festival, retronews plunges us with delicious nostalgia into the golden age of popular cinema of the 1930s. Between the analysis of the critical reception of King Kong by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, who dazzled as much as he divided by his technical prowess, Westerns by John Ford or, more politically, Raven, by Henri-Georges Clouzot, Myriam Jean looks back on the development of stardom in the interwar period and the role played by the magazine press, which was already using intimate resources. Like the article “En flirtant avec Jean Gabin” published in The image in 1932, delivering a tasty slang lesson.

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