Imaginary interview with Reiser
by Charactorium · Reiser (1941 — 1983) · Visual Arts · Society · Performing Arts · 7 min read
Paris, an afternoon in the 1970s. In an apartment cluttered with papers, India ink is still drying on a drawing board placed askew. Reiser, shirt unbuttoned, cigarette dangling from his lips, pushes aside a pile of newspapers to make room. He talks fast, the way he draws.
—How does a kid who leaves school at fifteen become a press cartoonist?
School and I parted ways early, at fifteen, with no regrets on either side. After that, I did whatever came along: delivery boy, clerk, I even daubed labels to earn a few francs. Drawing was the only thing I knew how to do without being taught. I ended up sending some to a newspaper, a bit cheekily, and that's when a guy fell on me: Georges Bernier, who would become Professor Choron. I was eighteen. He didn't look at my diplomas—there weren't any. He looked at the line. From that came the whole gang, that strange tribe that would create Hara-Kiri. I think I owe more to my odd jobs than to any art school: they taught me to see people as they are, ugly and alive.
He didn't look at my diplomas—there weren't any. He looked at the line.
—What did that Hara-Kiri gang mean to you in its early days?
It was a family of brats, that's what it was. Choron, Cavanna, and the rest of us around them, we had a motto that sums it all up: “bête et méchant” [dumb and nasty]. People thought it was an insult; for us it was a flag. We rejected hypocritical politeness, conventions, all that veneer that the society of the Trente Glorieuses [Glorious Thirty] slathered on while chasing cars and fridges. In the evening at the editorial office, we shouted, we rehashed the world, we prepared the next issue amid smoke and red wine. It wasn't a job in the proper sense; it was organized insolence. I arrived from Réhon, a corner of factories in the east, and I landed among these guys who had decided nothing was sacred. For a nonconformist, it was paradise—a paradise that went to press every week in a rush.
People thought “bête et méchant” was an insult; for us it was a flag.
—Your line is often described as fast, almost slapdash. Does that annoy or flatter you?
It doesn't annoy me, it's true. I draw fast, without regrets, a pen dipped in India ink and off it goes. I never go back over a line; if it's botched, the panel is botched, too bad, I start over or leave it crooked. In the afternoon, hunched over the drawing board, I churn them out, because a newspaper doesn't wait: you have to be ready for the deadline. What people take for carelessness is energy. A nervous line sweats anger or laughter better than a pretty, polished drawing that's had time to cool down. I like it to bleed a bit on the page. When I switch to felt-tip or pen, it's to go even faster. Save the nice clean drawing for the calendar illustrators. I want to strike before the reader finishes his coffee.
A nervous line sweats anger or laughter better than a pretty, polished drawing that's cooled down.
—You talk about energy. What does one of your workdays concretely look like?
It starts with the newspapers. In the morning, I scour the news, the crime reports, the little absurdities that life produces on its own—a stupid headline, a grotesque ad, a ministerial blunder. That's where I pick my material; I don't invent it, I gather it. The afternoon is spent at the drawing board, bent over, back aching, churning out gags one after another to meet the tight deadlines at the office. And in the evening, often we carry on at the office with Cavanna and the others, in an atmosphere of camaraderie and joyful provocation. I'm not a studio artist waiting for inspiration; I'm a drawing worker who has to turn in his copy. The constraint of the newsstand, the looming date, that's what keeps me going. Without the weekly urgency, I think I'd draw nothing at all.
I'm not a studio artist waiting for inspiration; I'm a drawing worker.
—Do you remember the affair of the headline about Colombey, in November 1970?
How could I forget it. De Gaulle dies in his village, at Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, and a few days earlier a fire in a dance hall had killed people, a real news story that had moved the whole country. So Hara-Kiri Hebdo runs its front page: “Bal tragique à Colombey : 1 mort” [Tragic ball at Colombey: 1 dead]. One dead, you see the calculation. It was November 1970. The authorities didn't laugh. The paper was banned, pure and simple. We could have given up; instead, we changed the name overnight and relaunched as Charlie Hebdo. That's what I like about this story: they tried to muzzle us, and the ban gave birth to the paper that would become our home. Censorship, when it hits people with nothing to lose, shoots itself in the foot.
They tried to muzzle us, and the ban gave birth to the home that would become ours.
—Did you experience that ban as a threat or a victory?
Both, inevitably. When a minister decides that a rag like ours must disappear, it's a little scary: we have no fortune behind us, just pens and cheap paper. But very quickly, we understood we had hit a nerve. If the headline about Colombey had been harmless, no one would have moved. We were banned because we put our finger exactly where it hurt: the obligatory respect due to great men, France weeping in ranks. Satirical press lives on that, on cutting into the fabric of decorum. Being reborn as Charlie Hebdo eight days later was our way of saying we wouldn't shut up. A victory, yes, but a victory of insolent people who knew the next slap from the authorities could come anytime.
We were banned because we put our finger exactly where it hurt.
—How do you defend a character as repulsive as Gros Dégueulasse?
I don't defend him, I show him. Gros Dégueulasse, in 1982, is a foul, vulgar guy, an outrageous caricature of everything swept under the rug. People are shocked, good, that's the point. But the real question isn't “why is he so disgusting?”; it's “why do you recognize him?”. Behind the filth and crudeness, I aim at hypocrisy, moral misery, all those taboos that polite society pretends not to see. A clean-cut character wouldn't have denounced anything. He had to be repulsive so that the reader feels dirty too. It's the same logic as in Ils sont moches [They're Ugly]: I depict flaws without concession, not to dirty mankind, but because the lie of beautiful appearances disgusts me far more than assumed ugliness. Provocation, for me, is a knife, not a toy.
A clean-cut character wouldn't have denounced anything. He had to be repulsive.
—Your collections like On vit une époque formidable mock consumer society. What exasperates you so much?
On vit une époque formidable [We Live in a Wonderful Era], from 1975, the title is ironic to the bone. They sell us happiness at the supermarket: the car, the TV, package holidays, the little house. That's the Trente Glorieuses seen from the newsstand—a huge fair where you chase after objects thinking you're chasing freedom. I sketch all that: the father in swim trunks in La Vie au grand air [Life in the Great Outdoors], stuck between his caravan and his boredom, the housewife hypnotized by ads. I don't moralize, I hold up a slightly dirty mirror. What exasperates me isn't comfort, it's the smug stupidity that goes with it, that way of finding the era “wonderful” without ever wondering what we lose. Press cartoons are for that: scratching the veneer while everyone admires the paintwork.
A huge fair where you chase after objects thinking you're chasing freedom.
—You keep drawing even as the disease consumes you. Where does that stubbornness come from?
A bone cancer, you don't argue with it, it wins in the end. But as long as my hand holds the pen, I draw, even my own illness, even my own body giving out. It shocks people, they say, that you laugh at that. I don't know any other way to stay upright. All my life I've sketched the misery and stupidity of others; the day it's my turn to be diminished, why would I exempt myself? That would be cowardice. The drawing board is my last terrain where I still decide something. My body gives up, my humor doesn't. So I turn hospital rooms, treatments, fear, into drawings. It's not courage, it's stubbornness, almost a worker's mania for not knowing when to stop. As long as there's a blank panel in front of me, I'm not quite dead.
My body gives up, my humor doesn't. As long as there's a blank panel, I'm not dead.
—If you imagined being read a century from now, what would you like to be remembered for?
Funny question to ask a guy who lives by the weekly deadline—for me, the future is next week's issue, not the next century. But if I had to dream that a kid flips through my work long after my death, in Paris or elsewhere, I'd like him to first find the energy of the line, that pen running without regrets, and think: this guy wasn't afraid of anything. Not my name, not a museum—I'd hate to end up hung on a wall, all neat, between two ropes. Let them remember instead that you can come from nothing, leave school, shovel the world's stupidity and throw it back in people's faces. If my panels still make people laugh and grit their teeth in a hundred years, it means hypocrisy hasn't changed—and then, frankly, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
I'd hate to end up hung on a wall, all neat, between two ropes.
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Reiser's profile. It dramatises what the figure might have said based on what we know about them, but does not constitute attested historical testimony. For primary sources and factual documentation, refer to the full profile.