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School crucifixion music video shocks censors

A music video by French band Indochine, which features the staged crucifixion and shooting of a bullied schoolboy, has caused outrage in France. The country’s TV and radio regulator said on Thursday the "extremely violent” video should be censored.

French rock band Indochine have provoked an angry backlash with the graphic video for their new single ‘College Boy.’ It shows a bullied teenager being beaten, urinated on, crucified and shot in a schoolyard.

Regulators said on Thursday that the video was likely to face censorship in France.

“It shows images whose violence is immeasurable, and there's enough of this kind of violence already” Françoise Laborde, from the Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel  (CSA) told Europe 1 radio.

“Death is not stylish. Violence is not stylish. Torture is not stylish,” Laborde added, describing herself as 'outraged.'

“Since it is extremely violent, it can’t be broadcast on satellite TV. At a minimum, it should be banned for anyone under 16 years of age, and maybe even 18,” she said.

The six-minute video for ‘College Boy’ features black-and-white, slow-motion scenes from the troubled school day and unhappy home life of a bullied teenage boy.

The video shows him having paper and a basketball thrown at his face, and moody, stylistic shots of him looking upset.

However, the second half quickly descends into a disturbing cycle of violence and torture at the hands of a group of schoolyard bullies.

The video shows graphic images of the boy being thrown down a set of stairs, punched and kicked, urinated on and then nailed to a cross wrapped in fairy lights before bring shot.

All the while, fellow pupils are shown capturing the scene on their mobile phones.

Despite such imagery, those responsible for the video reject suggestions it will lead to copycat incidents in real life.

“To say that this encourages violence is completely stupid,” the video’s Canadian director, Xavier Dolan, told French daily Le Parisien on Thursday.

“Is it really any more violent than the movies that are constantly appearing on our screens?” he added.

Dolan reacted angrily to the prospect of the video being banned during daytime hours on music channels in France, .

“That really bothers me. On these kind of channels you see situations that are racist, violent and degrading – particularly to women.

“So it seems absurd to me that this video should be censored,” he added.

While French regulators may be shocked by the video, Dolan and Indochine have received significant support from French users of social networks. Radio and TV host Emilie Mazoyer summed up the view of many Twitter users, saying:

“Some people find Indochine's music video 'violent.' Yes, it does turn your stomach for six minutes. But bullied students go through that 300 days a year. Imagine that.”

Judge for yourself by watching the video. Warning: The clip features content
that some viewers might find highly disturbing and offensive.

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CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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