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DYLAN

Dylan hate charge thrown out by French court

A court in Paris has thrown out a case against US singer Bob Dylan on charges of incitement to hatred filed after he was quoted allegedly comparing Croats to Nazis, his lawyer said on Tuesday.

Published: 16 April 2014 08:28 CEST
Dylan hate charge thrown out by French court
Hate charges against Bob Dylan over comments he allegedly said about Croats have been dismissed by a French court. Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP

The legendary American musician was preliminarily charged with the offence in November after comments made to Rolling Stone magazine in a 2012 interview sparked a complaint from the Council of Croats in France (CRICCF).

"If you got a slave master or Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that. That stuff lingers to this day. Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood," Dylan was quoted as saying in answer to a question about race relations in the United States.

The judge ruled the 72-year-old musician had not given his consent for his comments to be published in the French-language edition of Rolling Stone, which was the basis of CRICCF's complaint.

But she ordered the director of the magazine's French edition to stand trial over the charges.

"I'm very happy the justice system understood that Bob Dylan never intended to hurt or defame anyone," his lawyer Thierry Marembert told AFP.

The charge against him carried a maximum sentence of one year in prison and a fine of up to €45,000 ($62,000), although in practice penalties are usually far smaller.

The comment in the Rolling Stone interview had Dylan, a veteran supporter of the US civil rights movement, describing race relations in the United States as fraught.

He was informed of the hate charges in November while he was in Paris for three concerts – a visit during which the French government also awarded him its prestigious Legion d'Honneur.

Ethnic Croats and Serbs fought viciously in the 1991-1995 war that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia. Some 20,000 people died.

Today, Croatians remain highly sensitive when mentioned in a Nazi-related context.

Their previous stab at statehood came during World War II with the so-called Independent State of Croatia.

The Nazi-allied Ustasha regime killed hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croatians in their death camps.

Since Croatia declared independence in 1991, some groups have attempted to rehabilitate aspects of the Ustasha regime.

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FASHION

Son and daughters of stars are Paris catwalk’s new royalty

They are fashion's new celebrity aristocracy, the sons and daughters of stars who are themselves becoming the kings and queens of the catwalk shows.

Published: 21 January 2017 13:31 CET
Son and daughters of stars are Paris catwalk's new royalty
Paris Jackson
From Lily-Rose Depp and Will Smith's daughter Willow — the faces of Chanel — to the Beckham boys and Sylvester Stallone's two daughters modelling for Dolce & Gabbana, celebrity offspring are luxury labels' new not-so-secret weapon.
   
With their huge followings on social media and instant name-recognition, these millennials born in the limelight have become the perfect avatars for advertising campaigns.
   
British actor Jude Law's daughter Iris is the new face of Burberry having followed her brother Rafferty in modelling, while the daughters of singer Lionel Richie, Cindy Crawford and even Bob Dylan's grandson have all embarked
on catwalk careers.
 
Michael Jackson's daughter Paris turned up in the French capital this week for a photo shoot, adding her name to a bulging celebrity model roll call that includes the daughter of Oasis singer Noel Gallagher, the son of Isabelle Adjani and Daniel Day-Lewis, the daughter of Nastassja Kinski and Quincy Jones, and the sons of Sean Penn and Pierce Brosnan. 
 
The list is endless and seemingly inexhaustible, with marketing experts maintaining that young consumers cannot get enough of celebrity dynasties. You just have to look at the Kardashians, said Gachoucha Kretz, professor of fashion marketing at the HEC business school in Paris, to see how the model works.
 
They have converted their reality television fame into fashion hard currency, with Kim Kardashian and her half sister Kendall Jenner now established stars of the firmament, their every wardrobe choice scrutinised on social media.
   
Brands hope to piggyback on “the popular fascination with these tribes and families”, Kretz said.
   
With no problem about name recognition “there is much less marketing to do”, she added. “The associations are already created.”
   
With their Instagram or Twitter endorsements of their favoured brands, they become the ultimate “influencers” to help push demand. Aged only 17, Brooklyn Beckham has nine million followers on Instagram.
 
After two years as a model he has branched out into fashion photography, shooting an advertising campaign for Burberry this summer that made headlines around the world.
   
Even fashion's biggest players are happy to play along with the family fame game. Chanel's Karl Lagerfeld, for instance, has been a enthusiastic nepotist, hiring Depp, Smith and Jenner, and taking former supermodel Ines de la Fressange's daughter Violette d'Urso as his muse.
 
“The tabloids and celebrity magazines love these famous families and that assures media coverage,” said Aurore Gorius, co-author of a French book “Sons and Daughters of…”
   
The 2015 book casts a critical eye on the public's fascination with this “phenomenon of elites reproducing themselves and blocking social mobility.
   
“These children have grown up under the eyes of the media and we are curious what will become of them,” she said.
   
Trends expert Cecile Poignant, who teaches at the New School Parsons Paris, said there has been a gradual push towards the “starification of childhood” over the last 15 years.
   
She said it began with photographer Annie Leibovitz's famous front cover of a naked Demi Moore pregnant for Vanity Fair magazine.
   
“For a lot of models and celebrities, the child has become something of a fashion accessory, a must have,” Poignant told AFP.
   
But could the omnipresence of celebrity offspring now finally lead to a backlash.
   
Fashion student Marie Richaud said she found it irksome that their fame “is not based on merit but family links. It excludes”.
   
Even so the 25-year-old follows several second generation celebs on Instagram even if “she doesn't identify with them”.
   
“These children who seems to have had it all give people something to dream about. But at the same time they can just as easily annoy,” said Poignant. “Do any of them have any talent or is their name enough (to succeed)? We will have to wait and see,” she added.