[English version] An open letter to Doris from "They Had A Dream"
As soon as I got wind of the filming occuring in Guadeloupe in 2016, I was really waiting for “They Had A Dream” [t/n: le Rêve français]. I was watching (more than usual) for Ambroise Michel's Instagram posts. I started to follow Yann Gaël more closely (I don't consider him to be an unproblematic bae but I’m very tempted to). In fact, I was mostly interested in Aïssa Maïga. As a lead actress, she had the heavy task of playing an Afrocaribbean in a French audiovisual landscape in which we don't exist. Even Firmine Richard at the beginning of her career played women who were just Black, without any specific origin. Anyway, so you understand that I was more than ready when I sat down in front of my computer (#watchingtvisoverrated) on March 21 and 28, 2018 to see the final result.
The goal was to highlight one of the dark times of French History
Like many Caribbean viewers, I think, I had low expectations. Despite the really catchy plot of the second episode, I still felt a slight relief during the ending credits because it wasn't catastrophic. Except for a few inconsistencies and themes treated far too briefly (colorism, homosexuality, homecoming etc), I’d even say that this TV film, as entertainment content, is better than most French productions for television. We can only welcome the fact that it highlights some aspects of the National History that are rarely treated like Mé 67, the BUMIDOM. Joe from RAK proposed a brief analysis that I share: “They Had A Dream” is committed to not reproducing the clichés of the exoticism but, as convincing as the acting of non-Caribbean actors can be, the characters lacked authenticity.
To be Afrocaribbean or not to be ?
It's not just about the accent and speaking Kreyol. These characters are also a testimony of the current state of the acting profession in France in 2018 when one is Afrocaribbean. Yann Gael and Aïssa Maïga are headliners whose reputation has undoubtedly boosted the promotion of the project. I salute their understanding of Afro-Caribbean issues. I salute their willingness to give a voice to an invisibilized Black French community (when Yann Gael talks about it, I have my heart-shaped eyes). Nevertheless, the question arises: in 2018, isn't there any Afrocaribbean actor capable of carrying a fiction taking place in the Caribbean? Why is the “La Baie des Flamboyants” TV series still the only French attempt to portray French Caribbean people on their island? Yes, we can say a lot of negative things about this content made in JLA Productions, but no French TV series has proposed a cast with so many Afrocaribbean/Indocaribbean actors and actresses, even eleven years after the first broadcast. No one will make me believe that there was no French Caribbean actors and actresses to play the lead roles in “They Had A Dream”. What’s at stake here goes beyond the simple representation of Black people in a French television context. A romantic comedy, a thriller can have a neutral script. With its plot drawing directly from historical facts, this TV film was an opportunity to give Afrocaribbean actors and actresses a chance to work. Having said that, my questioning didn't stop me from loving the couple Doris and Samuel, even if it took me a while to admit it to myself.
Black love is Love
For several days, I thought Samuel was the character I struggled to figure out. You can be idealistic without being naive. You can have ideals but be realistic. Tell me that I fall into essentialism, but how can an Afrocaribbean man who is victim of the justice system become a lawyer, therefore he becomes an expert of this system, and walk straight right into all the bad situations that explode before his eyes (no pun intended)? Just talking about it makes my blood pressure rise again. After thinking about it, I think I've turned my attention to Samuel because I was only critical of Doris. Too frivolous, too passive, too discreet, too silent... A Mary Sue, an ingenue whose existence only cared about when related to her male entourage, a female character falsely central and just standing on the side of what really matters. I kept thinking about it for several days, then I wrote her a letter to unravel the contradictory feelings she inspired in me.
Dear Doris,
You could have been my grandmother, my aunt, even my mother. As a teenager, you left Guadeloupe for Paris. The BUMIDOM whispered in your ear that it was the opportunity for a better life... Better than what? Better than the life of a young woman from the emerging Caribbean middle class in the 1960s? I'm sorry. I have no reference to know what life awaited you, the eldest daughter of a successful sugar cane factory foreman. And that's perhaps what frustrated me the most.
Doris, I know anything about you. Samuel, the love of your life, always dreamed of being a legendary sprinter like Roger Bambuck. But you, Doris, aside from the Champs-Elysées and department stores, what did you dream of? Did your pregnancy make you give up a specific ambition? And even after you got pregnant, did you still have dreams beyond being a mother and a wife?
I'm not gonna lie to you, Doris. It took me a long time to write to you because I was angry. I was frustrated that your teenage life was summed only as an unhappy love life. You gave up Samuel because of this Armand for whom you were just a fling. I was frustrated that your early years as a single mother in traditional Guadeloupe were overlooked. What courage you must have had to raise this biracial child born out of wedlock. I was frustrated that your experience as an Afrocaribbean woman in Paris consisted of metro-work-and-sleep and the occasional neighbourhood party. Frustrated that you were only the mother or the lover, but never a woman who questions her doubts and fears, who thinks of herself differently than through her ties to the men in her life. You helped your brother to seek treatment for his drug addiction, you put up with a husband who hated your biracial son... The same son who, as a teenager, disowned you in front of his white friend. You slapped him, and he apologized... But wasn't that gesture the climax of something you had refused to acknowledge for years? Your son was ashamed of you. How did you live it on a daily basis?
Luckily, you could count on Prisca. She didn’t have much lines, but her presence contributed to the diversity of representation of Afrocaribbean women. Your friendship, this relationship with no animosity but all about sharing and affection was beautiful and comforting. Doris, you were sweet, so calm, so reserved... Far, very far from the cliché of the angry Black woman, your potomitance was based on a form of resilience. I don't think the script did you justice. You played the perfect woman, you were a perfect woman... Your resilience is admirable, but it's your flaws, your shortcomings, your passions that I would have liked to know in order to understand why Samuel loved you so much even when you pushed him away. The purity of your love turned my heart upside down. It's the first time I've seen this feeling embodied by Black French characters. French Black AND dark skinned. Let it be said. The agony of your silences, the unspoken in your eyes... Do you realize that I wanted to write a fanfiction about a reunion between you and Samuel? Yes, I admit it, I was completely invested in your relationship.
It's when I thought about it that I realized that even though I thought you were too smooth, I liked you. You made me think about the invisibility of Afrocaribbean women, the difficulty of giving them the right to make mistakes, the refusal to see them with professional ambition, the refusal to see them reject what society expects of them. You have been imposed this status of Mary Sue as a self-tortured Mary Sue, or would the public have liked the real you? Would they have agreed to follow your quest to escape your condition without going through the men in your life? I want to believe so. What if it was your brother who had disappeared and not Samuel's? What if it was you who, like Gerty Archimede, had wanted a career as a lawyer and not Samuel? Would that have made your character too extraordinary to be realistic or at least credible?
Your daughter, the character of my generation, became a lawyer. She has experienced self-questioning different from yours, other issues to explore in the representation of this part of the diaspora that she herself calls negropolitans. Her image as a career woman is another form of injunction to perfection. Yet, her story reveals the complexity and beauty of the challenge in the representation of Afrocaribbean women from here and there. But this is another story to be told in a future that I hope is very close. The field of possibilities to be explored is unlimited.
With all my love,
Sunny