French weekly magazines review

From barbarians to baby-boomers, Joan of Arc to Marilyn Monroe, French magazines this week take a break from reporting and instead look to the past to make sense of what could be ahead in 2014.

And indeed, this week France is stuck in a debate about cultural assimilation that harks back to the previous century.

Left-leaning Le Nouvel Observateur picks apart the immigration row this week, giving a blow-by-blow account of the events that led the right as well as the left to lambast Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault.

Ayrault came under fire after the publication on the Prime Minister's website of the recommendations of a government-appointed study group on questions surrounding immigration. Among the most controversial was a possible end to the law which bans religious symbols from schools.

The group also suggested a re-examination of French  integration policies, criticized as invasive and potentially repressive, while favouring the idea of inclusion rather than assimilation.

French defenders of secularism, and there are many Le Nouvel Observateur observes, couldn’t have been happier. They pounced on the conclusions of the study groups, berating the government for abandoning Republican values and encouraging religious extremism.

Marianne, a satirical publication, is strident about France’s move towards what it tags as anglo-saxon multiculturalism. The left, it cries, has drifted off on exotic, liberal notions that will inevitably lead to US-style ghettos.

Satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné gleefully points out that the debate over integration has caused only disintegration until now. Not only is the right wing up in arms, but even within the Socialist Party, Ayrault is increasingly isolated.

Interior Minister Valls also declared the report to be unacceptable and only very vaguely related to the government’s actual plans.

To get out of the quagmire, the government has announced a round of talks, painful to be sure Nouvel Obs warns, to start at the beginning of next year.

Le Figaro Magazine has a cover story called "These Christians faced with Islam." The supplement draws up a tally of all the places in the world where Christians are being persecuted. With maps comparing 2010 and 2013, readers can reach their own conclusions: but if they don’t Le Figaro is here to spell it out for them. According to the weekly’s own calculations, three quarters of all religious persecution in the world is perpetrated against Christians, and the situation is going from bad to worse.

Meanwhile right- leaning L'Express goes behind the scenes at Hollande's residence, the Elysée Palace. The weekly paints the presidential palace as a dark place of power, whispers and secrecy, with increasingly venomous, petty rivalries. Hollande occasionally slips out incognito for fresh air, leaving his security to fret about his whereabouts, and his staff to fret about the job.

Le Canard Enchaîné also reports that the Louvre Museum, now backed by the Minister of Culture, does not want to send the iconic Delacroix painting, La Liberté, to China. You know the one I'm talking about, with a bare-breasted Marianne waving the French flag.

The government had been keen to send it to China for an exhibition on freedom, but the Louvre says it's in no condition to travel. And judging by China's definition of freedom, it might be undervalued, Le Canard Enchaîné adds.

L'Express warns that keeping any paintings, especially one called Liberty, locked away in a museum goes against the very spirit of the word. The weekly waxed lyrical at the idea of the "Chinese masses" touched to the very core, understanding the true sense of the word freedom.