L’intime au pouvoir : de la « photogénie électorale » à l’ère du storytelling

Abstract

How does private life have a direct influence on politics? In the era of storytelling, the art of narrative arranges the origin of a product or a person in order to make a commercial value out of it. This was the point of Christian Salmon’s book Storytelling, la machine à fabriquer des histoires et à formater les esprits (2007). Consumers and voters are considered the same way in this capitalistic “linguistic turn” denounced by Yves Citton in his essay Mythocratie. Storytelling et imaginaire de gauche (2010). In the media, the biographical mythology of a public man or woman has a lot to do with his or her political credibility: the stake is to build an ethos through a narrative and therefore convince the public opinion. Image and fiction surrounding private life participate to political life: in massmedia, books and on screens, the critical and esthetical deconstruction of these mythographical strategies help us reconsider the representation of intimacy as an active force in society.

Keywords

• intimacy
• storytelling
• photography
• mass-media
• cinema
• biopic