[girapvjq] Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons

Create art depicting or inspired by the vivid and disturbingly violent lyrics of La Marseillaise, the French national anthem: fertilize our fields with the blood of our impure enemies.  Perhaps invoke existing racial tensions in France between whites ("purity") and Arabs.

One radical possibility: somehow, collect some blood spilled in a relevant act of violence.  Grow some plants, using the blood as fertilizer.  Collect seeds of the grown plants.  Distribute the seeds as art.

Or, art could expose "they are coming to kill our children and rape our women, so any amount of preemptive violence against them is justified" as a standard propaganda tactic.

The performance of La Marseillaise in the opening ceremony of the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France is the most "metal" musical performance (of any song) I have ever seen: it juxtaposes the symbolic innocence of the young girl and the symbolism of peace in releasing a dove with the monstruously gruesome lyrics of the anthem, and does it on the largest stage possible (a world-wide audience).

I do wonder how long the above-linked YouTube video will stay up.  Someone will find an excuse to censor that which makes them uncomfortable.  Currently, the top comment is, "Gotta love a little kid singing a song about plowing your field with the blood of your enemies."

Perhaps its irony, its cognitive dissonance, was lost on practically everybody.  For most French and Francophiles, the words of the song no longer have their literal meaning; it simply is abstractly a song that represents their country: it might as well be instrumental.  For most others, they don't understand the language and were unaware of the violent lyrics being contrasted with the staging.

Albertville did inspire a movement in France to modify the lyrics.  It almost worked.  Or cynically, it -- the artistic staging at Albertville -- did work: inasmuch as the subsequent movement failed, it revealed France's true identity, bloodthirsty, racist, and unwilling to change that.

(Though such an identity is probably common in many countries.)