INTERVIEW – The novelist, philosopher and film critic writes an essay about “gas lighting”, a concept that aims to discredit the words of the victims, both in the intimate and public spheres. Starting with women.
From the beginning there is a film. Gas light (StalkerFrench) George Cukor (Director: My beautiful lady), released in 1944 with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. A story about a man who manipulates his wife into discovering a treasure that she would inherit. And makes him believe that he is losing his mind by using various tricks; he moves or hides things, lies to her, or dims the gas lamps (known as “gas lights“) from their home, convincing him that his eyesight as well as his intellect were impaired. The film’s title evoked a concept: “gassing”. or how to convince others that their perception of reality is biased, invalid, to the point of questioning their own clarity.
Named “word of the year” for 2022 by the American online dictionary Merriam-Webster, because it polluted rich news; fake news Specifically, the Trump administration’s gaslighting is a weapon. Which can be fatal, especially for women, as Helen Frappat points out in her brilliant essay: Gaslight or the art of silencing women (1). Based on Cukor’s film, the philosopher, novelist and film critic lays out the mechanisms of gaslighting as it occurs in the intimate sphere as well as in society. And offers an infallible remedy. Interview:
Madame Figaro: What is gasification?
Helen Frappat: Gaslighting is an enterprise of manipulating others with the goal of dehumanizing them. This is mainly done through language. I think of Gerard Depardieu on Complement d’investigation when his agent defends him by saying “Be careful, they are only words, they are words, not actions.” But gaslighting allows us to understand that words are actions. Through language, it is about drowning out the voice of the other. In George Cukor’s film, the female character is also a singer. This is the woman whose voice will be silenced, assuming that what she says is complete nonsense, doesn’t make sense, or has nothing to say. It is a matter of slowly suspecting another through what makes him human, namely his intellectual capacity. This goes so far as to question the reality of facts and even its existence.
How does this strategy work in the public sphere?
Gassing is also a humiliation strategy. It is also the formula widely used by this reactionary current, which claims that “we can say nothing more”. “We can’t say anything anymore”, mostly always “we can’t be anti-Semitic anymore”, “we can’t be homophobic anymore”, “we can’t be bigots anymore”, “we can’t be racist anymore”. “… This is one of the gasification strategies, to respond to the accusation of aggression by saying, “Oh, anyway, you take everything too seriously, you have too much imagination. We cannot say more.”
How are sexual assault cases making the news like gaslighting?
Gaslighting is present in all manifestations of male violence. It always happens in two stages: aggression, then whining. It is about changing the status of the victim and even more, perverting the concept of victimhood. The aggressor becomes the attacker and talks about “media lynching”. It’s always the same words that come back. However, lynching in the history of the United States refers to the killing of black people, and today it refers to the killing of transgender people. Lynchings were part of the pogroms of which Jews were the victims. And gaslighting therefore consists of taking this word and applying it to someone who is on the victim’s side.
What can be small and large manipulations “gas lighter” ?
I remember reading a lengthy epidemiological investigation of Covid cases that would affect most women. This is a fact that I do not comment on, because I am not an epidemiologist or a doctor. However, I found it interesting that many patients who complained about it were sent home with anxiolytics or antidepressants. That is, with the diagnosis of exaggeration. In my book, I analyze this phenomenon under the name coined by the American cardiologist Bernadine Healy in 1991: Yentl’s syndrome, which is that the patient’s words do not have the same value as the patient’s words. We will more often say to women: “Madam, you are in over your head”, “Madam, you must be tired”, this is the equivalent of “You have a lot of imagination” in Cukor’s movie. Behind all this there is a genealogy based on hysteria, which is an invention that was never based on anything scientific, but on the prejudice that the female body consists of a “pathology”. I’m talking about medicine, but we can think of women politicians like Sandrine Rousseau, Margaret Thatcher or Greta Thunberg; childhood state.. Now I remember that etymologically the child.among fans“, is the one who does not know the Latin language.
Why are women more victims of gassing?
Gaslight literally means “to dim.” George Cukor’s film is about manipulating others by dimming their house lights; which amounts to the dimming of the light of ‘reason’. Historically, when it comes to women, reason and home have long been confused because we have long been confined to the domestic space. Dimming the lights is a way to muffle loud noises in the home and elsewhere. Then it’s about fighting a battle between darkness and light. In the book I give a “European” meaning to the term “Enlightenment” because the point is really to show that knowledge is always opposed to power. George Cukor’s film saw this. as early as 1948, some viewers took it to divorce, using the film as an argument in Florida courts. When I looked for the first origin of the word “gas light” in society, this is what I found. attorneys settled their client’s divorce by asking “gaslight treatment“.
In your opinion, how can we fight against gas lighting?
I’m begging for irony, a form of humor that’s already in the film. In the end, the victim turns to the assailant who tied him up, who begs him to release him, saying that he can’t because he is, of course, insane. To be a woman who has been told “you’re crazy and shut up” and who replies: It’s about turning the attacker’s weapon against him. This weapon of language and reason.
(1) Gaslight or the art of silencing women, by Helen Frappat, Ed. From the observatory, 288 pages, 21 euros.
Source: Le Figaro
