"Plus belle la vie"?

“Plus belle la vie”?

“Plus belle la vie”, a popular fiction watched daily by millions of French people, presented from 8 October to 15 December 2008 (episodes 1063 to 1111) the storyline of a young woman (Mélanie) who progressively becomes the “victim of a cult” before finally being “freed” from it.

We have extracted and gathered a few short sequences illustrating the points of this article into a “clip”, the link to which you will find at the bottom of the page.

Course of the plot:

A young woman (Mélanie), left fragile by a romantic break-up, is offered help by an osteopath (Elisabeth). The latter offers her massages, then to wear a necklace whose stone is said to have soothing virtues. Elisabeth little by little becomes her “spiritual godmother”, guiding her towards a community living in a hotel she manages, called: “The paths of self-knowledge”. Their practice consists in applying the teaching of “Professor Müller” and his founding book, through talking groups, relaxation, seminars, etc.

Mélanie’s involvement in and enthusiasm for this “cult” worry those around her. Mélanie’s vocabulary and her life choices are more and more influenced by new ways of thinking, believing and acting. For example, she files her relationships under two categories: “toxic or non-toxic”.

Elisabeth turns out to be a manipulator and a swindler, who profits from Mélanie’s credulity.

Her relatives alert the courts. It turns out that the group in question is already under police surveillance and that a judge is trying to build a file so that the association may be “officially classified as a cult”.

Everyone tries to pull Mélanie out of this influence, which is making her lose her discernment, while she must pay ever larger sums to take part in the association’s activities (accommodation, seminars, etc.). She finds herself obliged to take a second job, and despite that runs up debts, stops paying her rent, etc.

The judge will come personally to the victim’s rescue. In the script, it is he who is the moral and pedagogical guarantor of what the notion of “cult” is. He explains how “it” acts in order to manipulate, and how the victim must be protected.

Finally, Mélanie realises that she is being “manipulated” and decides to leave her group.

Elisabeth prevents her from leaving by threatening to reveal to the police confidences she had asked her to write down in the framework of a seminar.

Finally, someone close to Mélanie traps Elisabeth in her turn, and she finds herself forced to let Mélanie go and to reimburse her for all the sums spent in the framework of the association’s activities.

As for Elisabeth, she will leave town precipitately.

The victim recovers her “freedom” and declares herself ready to testify to help the courts.

Comments and Analysis:

This plot, supposedly realistic, imposes on viewers the amalgams conveyed by the anti-cult campaigners, with abundant detail. It is a consensual bias which unfortunately has a redundant effect with the “cult hunt”. It is the bias of caricature, on the theme of the “cult”: breach of trust, fraud, against a backdrop of mental manipulation by a pseudo spiritual guide.

The threat of the cult is illustrated here by the osteopath offering charlatan’s treatments, who turns out to be the spiritual leader of a community of followers who are manipulated and stripped of their possessions.

The clichés dear to the “anti-cult” campaigners have become, in this fiction, “realistic” concepts…

It is legitimate for a scriptwriter to draw the viewer into an imaginary world, but this procedure becomes open to criticism when it passes the exception off as the general rule and thereby stigmatises a whole set of respectable practices and life choices.

The evocation of “The cult” suffices to rally the good against the wicked.

In the film, many totally unrealistic details are presented as plausible. For example, and contrary to what is described in the script, a judge cannot open a file of victims’ testimony with the aim of having an association recognised as a “cult”. Because the word “cult” has no legal definition, and the courts are supposed to use no “list of cults”.

The script reproduces the anti-cult archetypes to the point that one might believe in a form of propaganda that does not speak its name, in which culture ends up making itself the spokesman of the dominant ideology.

It is not rare to see at the beginning or end of certain films a preventive note: “Any resemblance to existing situations, or situations that have existed, can only be fortuitous.”

When we see with what preconceptions the scriptwriters of “Plus Belle La Vie” approach techniques of “personal development” or “self-knowledge”, we think that the least honesty would be to make that reminder at every episode.

Links to the clip: view adsl view 56k