(Extra)Ordinary People and French National Identity in Xabi Molia’s Les Premiers: Une histoire des super-héros français

Abstract

Xabi Molia’s novel Les Premiers: Une histoire des super-héros français (2017) imagines a spectacular eruption of the fantastic in contemporary French society. After Hollande’s “président normal” and Macron’s desire to incarnate a “président jupitérien,” what does it mean for France—politically, socially, and emotionally—when seven ordinary citizens discover they have super powers straight out of a comic book? Although these superheroes do indeed battle jihadists and rescue endangered children, Molia’s novel is no typical Hollywood blockbuster. Leaping from the (super)heroic exploits of the group to the minutiae of the contracts they must sign with the French government to the various romantic, political, and personal problems that arise as the newfound superheroes navigate their sudden fame in the era of smartphones and social networks, Molia explores what France wants from and what France does to these extraordinary figures both celebrated and mistrusted for their sudden alterity. Just as the superheroes attempt to escape the strictures imposed upon them and resist the ways in which they are exploited by the French government and global media, so too does Molia’s novel resist easy classification and subvert expectations, demonstrating the novel’s enduring capacity to critique society while celebrating wild flights of imagination.