Omar Sy, Le Nouveau « Y’a bon Banania » ou Le Symbole d’une France Hexagonale Post-Raciale ?

Abstract

The French population of the twenty-first century is becoming more colorized: to date, France has established itself as a multicolored, emblematic nation. It embraces cultural diversity. It becomes increasingly common to perceive French of African descent make the headlines of the big media as the French favorite celebrities. This painting seems to present a post-racial France. But is it really? This question will be the object of the present study. It will rest mainly in Pap Ndiaye’s theoretical work as it appears in La Condition noire: Essai sur une minorité française (2008). I will draw the definition of “race” and of “post-racial” from his conceptions. Thus, I will argue that French black personalities refer to and subtly reinforce the racial and racist stereotypes through the roles they play in films and on TV. They reveal the immortality of the racial problematic within the hexagonal landscape. To defend these arguments, I will mainly focus my analysis on characters portrayed by Omar Sy in his big-budget movies, and in particular on De l’autre côté du périph (2012) and Le Flic de Belleville (2018).