Free Brigitte Bardot!

Have you heard that Brigitte Bardot was convicted this week in France for “inciting racial hatred?” Here’s what the 73-year-old former sex goddess wrote about the Muslim population in France that landed her in hot water:

“I am fed up with being under the thumb of this population which is destroying us, destroying our country, and imposing its acts.”

Oy. In part she was protesting the ritual slaughtering of sheep by Muslims (without stunning them first) as part of the festival of Eid al-Adha. This was Bardot’s fifth conviction for racial issues and she was fined 15,000 Euros.

Do any young people today even know who Brigitte Bardot is? She was an international sensation in the 1950s and 60s, and almost single-handedly responsible for a resurgence of interest in French films in art houses all over this country, even if the films were often pitched as saucy “adults only” presentations. Bardot’s first huge hit in this country was “And God Created Woman” directed by her husband Roger Vadim, the man who would later marry Jane Fonda. Bardot started her relationship with Vadim when she was 15 years old and married him at 18. But that didn’t stop her from having an affair with her costar in “And God Created Woman,” Jean-Louis Trintignant, a dalliance that Vadim knew about and supported. Oh, those crazy frogs! When the film was released in December 1957, the Los Angeles Times called it “the most fabulous frolic of the year, starring the most fabulous wench of the decade.”

The most remarkable thing about Brigitte Bardot is that after one has seen the film, one comes out trying to remember if she can act. After a trying time of painfully enforced detachment, the conclusion arrives…yes, she can act—and rather well at that.

For someone who never really made it in American films, Bardot was a massive star on these shores, and reporters followed her every shocking move including several nervous breakdowns and suicide attempts.

My first exposure to Bardot was a very odd Jimmy Stewart film from 1965 called “Dear Brigitte.” I haven’t seen this film since I was a little kid but it made a huge impression on me. Stewart plays a professor who has a genius son named Erasmus played by Billy Mumy who would soon take on the iconic role of Will Robinson on the TV show “ Lost in Space.” In “Dear Brigitte,” young Erasmus has an over-the-top crush on Brigitte Bardot and writes her endless love letters. Because of his letters, the young boy is eventually invited by Bardot to France (along with his dad) where they meet the screen vixen. Was this film responsible for me becoming a major Francophile (I never thought about that until just now but I honestly think it may have been!) as well as my penchant for writing fan letters to celebrities at a very early age?

This was one of the only Bardot films I was allowed to see as a child but I was as transfixed by her beauty and sex appeal as the rest of the planet. Bardot retired from films just before she turned 40 and turned her attentions to animal rights activism. She brought a lot of awareness to the horrible way baby seals were being clubbed to death and did a lot of good work in that arena, even though with every passing year she seemed to be getting more conservative. It didn’t help matters that following two other marriages, including one to actor Jacques Charrier that produced a son named Nicholas, she ended up married to Bernard d’Ornale, a right-wing former advisor to the National Front party which was founded by vile anti-Semitic politician Jean-Marie Le Pen. Oh-la-la, Brigitte, qu’est-ce que tu fais, ma chérie?

After being accused of homophobia following some derogatory comments she made about gays in a book, Bardot wrote a letter to a gay magazine in France to defend herself:

Apart from my husband—who maybe will cross over one day as well—I am entirely surrounded by homos. For years, they have been my support, my friends, my adopted children, my confidants.

Interesting comment about her husband, no? Bardot is currently estranged from her son Nicholas and did not spend much time with him when he was growing up. When Nicholas was 13, she told a reporter that when she’s with her son, “we play poker and he tries on my things, to see if there is anything he likes. Thank God he is being raised by his father. A woman would make a homosexual out of him.”

In another frank interview from the early 70s, Bardot was asked if she’d like to have more children.

I think I’m not made to be a mother. I don’t know why this is because I adore animals and I adore children, too, but I’m not adult enough—and I know it’s horrible to have to admit that at 37 I’m not adult enough to take care of a child. I need somebody to take care of me! It’s such a big responsibility to have a baby. Life is so hard now, we don’t know what is going to happen to the world tomorrow or even in the next hour. I’m very sad to have had that baby—well, he is not a baby now. I don’t want him to be confused by seeing me too often…I don’t want him to have worries like: Where is my family? Where is my home?

Yikes. It’s hard to imagine any American superstar being so truthful in an interview. When asked how Bardot would describe her own soul, she answered:

Like a labyrinth. Dark—no light enough for me to find the door to escape, to freedom.

The former movie queen is hard to figure out. Her foundation continues to do good work, and all would be peachy if Bardot would just keep her big mouth shut. Her 2004 conviction for inciting racial hatred came after she wrote about “the underground and dangerous infiltration of Islam” in France. She also condemned the “mixing of genes” and compared her beliefs with previous generations who had “given their lives to push out invaders.”

Dear God. Does the troubled Brigitte Bardot sound like a misguided jackass? ABSOLUTELY. Should she be tried by a court of law for her views? ABSOLUTELY NOT. I’m grateful that for the most part we are still free to express our opinions in this country, no matter how idiotic they may be, without fearing prosecution. Or am I kidding myself?

Comments

[Dave]

Are you kidding yourself? I don't think so. But then again... I don't know.

We are lucky, in this counrty, to have free speech. We're also lucky that we didn't have Hitler or Mussolini. I think so much of the laws in Europe against inciting hatred are a direct result of their trying to protect themselves from repeating their own past.

Though I can't help but wonder if stifling someone's speech just drives it underground where it's even more difficult to guage.

I sometimes wish some of those boneheads on FOX "News" could be arrested for all the hate they spew....but that's a whole other comment.

[the communicatrix]

BB's comments about parenting remind me a lot of Ayelet Waldman's inflammatory remarks about love i.e., that she loved her husband more than her children. (Frankly, if my husband had written _The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay_, I might love him more than some as-yet untested lumps of flesh chiefly interested in video games and poop jokes, too.)

However, while I think Ms. Waldman made the statement to _be_ inflammatory, knowing exactly how much of the spotlight would be trained on her because of it, I get the idea that Ms. Bardot, to paraphrase you, has had a rather loose relationship with the cluestick for most of her life, and that things have gotten worse rather than better with age.

This is Jimmy the Greek out-of-touchness, not throw-the-monster-in-prison baseness.

And that people need to, you know, lighten the f*ck up.

[Liza Cowan]

I don't like what BB said but state intervention is so randomly applied it's hard to trust.

Just the other day a friend's 12 year old daughter was questioned by the police for an email she and her friend sent to a boy in their class who they were mad at. This boy regularly calls the girls in school "anorexic whores""sluts", and other gender based insults which school authorities have ignored.

The girls were fed up and wrote him, in effect,I wish you'd get lost in the jungle and be eaten by fat pigs.

At the boy's parents insistence the girls were called in for questioning by the school principal and the police for cyber bullying. They narrowly avoided having this "crime" entered into a permanent police record, mainly because their parents intervened with the right questions.

Hate speech is often dealt with lightly (Fox news, per Dave's comment ) while a sixth grade girl expressing anger almost becomes a criminal.

[Jane]

How many of us have relatives, especially from the old country, whose opinions just make us shrivel up in embarrassment? Bardot should not have been charged, I agree. Punishments don't sway people from their opinions.

I prefer when such comments are debated and tackled by those on all sides -- not hushed up or punished, which only causes issues to go underground.

[Melinda]

Communicatrix: "loose relationship with the cluestick"...I love that.

BTW, that recent picture answers the question, "Are you a Sinker or a Sagger?" Brigitte is definitely a Sagger, as am I. I have seen my future, and it is Bardot. Yikes...time to lose weight and get out the sunblock.

[cruisin-mom]

oy, aging can be cruel sometimes.

[Dave]

Not to go off topic but Liza's comment about her friend has me...well I don't know what it has me.

I honestly can't believe it. I mean I do believe it, but I can't believe writing that you wished someone would get lost in a jungle and eaten by fat pigs can get you a police visit.

Wow, some of the stuff I've written is far worse, and none of it I seriously meant. And speaking of not meaning what you say...c'mon, did the police really think these girls meant what they wrote? "eaten by fat pigs?" I mean it's comical. Well, it would be if it weren't so tragic.

[Liza Cowan]

Update, before this becomes an Urban Legend. The girls did not get any citation or have anything on any record, either with the police or the school. However, the officer in charge informed the parents that any email that invokes injury or harm is considered cyber bullying, which is an offense, and that the girls should be aware of this next time.

So, when I was in 6th grade, and told someone to take a long walk off a short pier, I guess I was lucky that there was no cyber space, nor laws to control it.

Thanks for your concern.

[churlita]

If anything, I feel sorry for her. Her looks and fame don't seem to have made her very happy. All that hatred seems to come from a very sad place.

[Jeff]

This story makes me think of a funny twist. We know the current administration is no fan of anything French, including even french fries. Now we learn that a French woman is fighting Islam with the same type of dangerous platitudes as the morons who lead us to war in Iraq. It's almost as if Bardot could have won an appointment to Bush's cabinet if she was an US citizen. And maybe if she lived in the US she would be among the 20% who still "approve" of Bush.

There is irony in there somewhere. What exactly makes in ironic, I can't quite put my finger on but it is in there, I'm sure.

[JENNIFER L]

MAYBE THROUGH HER DARK PLACE IN HER MIND THE EMPTINESS WAS ABLE TO BE FILLED WITH THE ROLES SHE TOOK ON AND IN TURN BECAME A PART OF HER EXPLAINING THE REALISM IN HER PERFORMANCES...

[Hasan]

She is completely right about muslims not conforming to french laws and soon they will impose their own on France. I absolutelty agree. She is talking about the laws in HER COUNTRY and if the muslims do not like it their, well, they can go back to their own country?? Can the americans go to Iran and impose their own laws???? No. If a french woman cheats on a man in Iran..she'll be stoned. no pardon. so why do muslims not obey the laws of other more civilized, might i add countries??? i only find one statement extremely dissapointing by BB. And that is, that she has not been able to find the mother in her towards the child she had. She is extremely SELFISH FOR SAYING SOMETHING SO STUPID.

[Sue Ingram]

A bit of an eye opener - I didn't quite realise how outspoken BB has been. However, I think we are heading for interesting times in the next few years as the 'depression' takes hold. Watch the power hungry and righteous come out to try and make all sorts of new rules for us all to abide by. Freedom of speech - I don't think we will be able to remember what that was all about in the next few years! However, I do hope I am wrong.

[rich]

73-year-old former sex goddess oh yes I would love to warm her bed!