Quote:
Originally Posted by MelleValetta
My brother is now a fan and is also studying French, and has had these same questions about the meaning of Gourmandises.
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Yes, the more your knowledge of the intricacies of French and common culture, slang, tropes from literature, poetry etc grow, the more you realise that pretty much every song on those first two albums can be read two different ways - the innocent, child appropriate way for her young fans, but also in a more adult sexual way for her older fans. However, with cultural understanding and context, its not as "perverse" as it may seem to native English speakers.
I wrote a little more about this in my reply to the "Has anyone here learned to speak French?" post explaining why this is less controversial in France and isn't exactly sexualising her in the way you may initially think.
These kinds of cultural differences in discussing of finding poetry and beauty in romanticising the memory of your own early sexual thoughts or explorations in the mind only before you were fully old enough to understand are a common theme in much French culture and not seen as dirty for an older person to reminisce fondly about those times, or think its cute when you see it happening to a young person. It does not mean you are sexualising them, more reminiscing about when you were young and naïve and appreciating the passage of time and beauty in nature. This is very difficult to explain in English and to people who have grown up with different attitudes around sexual discussion. It also sometimes causes controversy when French movies are released to the American or British markets. I can think of some famous examples that I could defend but that would be a long and controversial discussion.
The interesting thing for me is comparing the differences between how Alizée and Britney Spears were marketed in their first albums. The American star had squeaky clean lyrics and almost no sexual jokes, but extremely provocative music videos, dance routines, and highly sexualised photoshoots. Conversely, the French star had the opposite: very sexual lyrics, but her music videos, photoshoots and interviews were very tame and emphasising how young and pure and sweet she was. They didn't start with the more overtly "sexy" image til the second album and even then the marketing of her image was far less outwardly raunchy than Britney and a lot more appropriate.
The reason for this is that even though Alizée's lyrics were "sexual", they were about the early exploration of ideas in the mind of a young girl and were actually emphasising her youth and innocence - rather than directly inviting for her to be sexualised and objectified. In my opinion, Britney's innocent lyrics but highly sexualised magazine cover shoots in "jailbait" costumes and literal children's props (Barbie bikes, teletubbies, teddy bears, dolls) were FAR more creepy because they were instructing the audience to sexualise her specifically because of her youth. Mylene would have never allowed this for Alizée during her time managing her.