From ImpersoNation to ImPosture: (Sub)urban Fantasy in Fanny Herrero’s Dix pour cent and Drôle

Abstract

AbstractExpanding on the Introduction’s conceptualisations of postnational screen fiction, this chapter examines two Netflix series, Dix pour cent/Call My Agent! and Drôle/Standing Up, to suggest that postnational French television exploits similar strategies of ImpersoNation (Elsaesser, European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Ebook, 2005; ‘ImpersoNations: National Cinema, Historical Imaginaries and New Cinema Europe.’ Mise au point 5. https://map.revues.org/1480, 2013) to those found in the cinema from which it partially descends. It further argues that at times the type of ImpersoNation in evidence in these audiovisual fictions can be productively dubbed ImPosture, since it articulates a fictionalised version of Frenchness for external consumption that fairly directly contravenes observable realities. Yet instead of seeing such a commercially embedded gesture merely in terms of cynical self-promotion, the author asserts that the potential to generate new psycho-social possibilities by widening legitimised representations of French identities emerges from reading for Frenchness as ImPosture.