Literature

34 | When a comic book warns us about this state that wants to do us good

5 reading minutes

écrit par Jonas Follonier · May 18, 2021 · 1 commentaire

While it's clear that we don't live in a dictatorship, and therefore that the expression «health dictatorship» is unfortunate, questions of state surveillance or constraints enacted «for our own good» must always be approached with the utmost seriousness, as democracy must always remind itself. It's a good thing that, a few decades ago, a comic strip had already illustrated this need for vigilance.

For once, the weekly rendezvous of the Regard Libre dedicated to literary news, welcomes with this column a work whose link to the present is not linked to its publication date, but to its subject matter. S.O.S. Happiness, by cartoonist Griffo and screenwriter Jean Van Hamme (author of the hugely popular Largo Winch, Thorgal) published in the 80's, declines a kind of 1984 recreated as a comic book series. The drawings and texts of this dystopia, in which the state is pushed to its logical limits by the illegitimate power it seizes over its citizens, create a playful atmosphere for a terrifying scenario, originally intended for television.

Pulling the Orwellian thread through six independent episodes, «Career Plan», «To Your Health», «Long Live Vacation», «Public Safety», «Family Planning», «Protected Profession», each narrating the concrete situation of an individual grappling with one of the facets of a totalitarian state (corporate labor, health care, vacation, security arrangements, demographic policy and culture) directed by who knows who, and following a period of insecurity, mass unemployment and overpopulation, S.O.S. Happiness concludes with a long seventh episode devoted to a finely imagined «Revolution», featuring all the main characters.

Johnny, an illegal child, is the third of the flock, even though the law forbids a couple to have more than two children. The resourceful kid manages to get into the President's office to ask him to change the law.

You can navigate between squares, following the itinerary of the illegs, children born illegally under a birth control policy, children born illegally under a birth control policy, children born illegally under a birth control policy, children born illegally under a birth control policy. regs, rebels condemned to civil death, or even irregs, These are people in an irregular situation because they are not enrolled in the national health program, which collects both good and bad points. As readers of 2021, we can't help but notice the presence of a single digital passport, a large central register and the generalized wearing of masks. The texts are less evocative than the overall atmosphere. The drawing, rather raw, with a strong singularity, immediately draws us in. The rather tight division of the panels allows us to follow the story in real time.

Julie and Quentin, two teenagers on a national vacation. Members of two different groups, they're not allowed to be together. However, the love that drives them towards each other will take them beyond the rules of the state, to the point of taking to the sea.

If the story itself is gripping, the subject and its stakes are fairly well known. But are they known to everyone, including the very young, in a country where we're all told we're serene? In a free society, nothing is perceived as less old-fashioned than freedom. That's the whole point of the comic-book format, with its colors, facilities and guidelines: it lends itself wonderfully to children, but why not to others too? Admittedly, there's less room for the imagination than in a novel. But this concrete representation reminds us that the prospect of the coercive slide of a state from which we expect too many benefits is not all that fictional.

Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com

Illustration from S.O.S. Bonheur (Unabridged) by Jean Van Hamme (scriptwriter) and Griffo (illustrator)