2023-10-30 22:36:10
Asterix and Obelix, on a scooter, or rather, on a cartavoiding the traffic jams of the city of Lutecia (future Paris) and trying unmask a self-help guru sent by Caesar, Viciovirtus. This villain will use the new current of the positive thinking -read good vibes and empathy, diet and healthy living- to deceive and bewitch both the unmotivated Roman legions and the inhabitants of the village of the irreducible Gauls created in 1959 by Goscinny and Uderzo and to this day they have been sold 393 million albums. It is the axis around which the cartoonist Didier Conrad and the screenwriter Fabcaro (Fabrice Caro) have built ‘The white lily’ (Saved), the comic number 40 of Asterix, which has just arrived in bookstores with an initial circulation of five million copies in 20 languagesamong them in Spanish, Catalan, Asturian, Galician and Basque.
Both speak in an interview in Barcelona about Viciovirtus, inspired only visually, they emphasize, for “its charisma and influence”, in the “controversial” figures of the French politician Dominique de Villepin and the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy. He is a guy who, Asterix ‘dixit’, “talks wildly so as not to say anything” and “says nice but inconsequential words.” “Is a manipulative and two-faced villain, apparently sweet, but he manages a hidden strategy – says Conrad -. “The comic is not a criticism of positive thinking and personal development but of the gurus who abuse these philosophies and use these messages to trap and manipulate fragile and vulnerable people for their own benefit.”
Conrad (1959) and screenwriter Jean Yves Ferri accepted the challenge in 2013 to continue the adventures of Asterix with the blessing of Uderzo (1927 – 2020), who had lost his mythical comic companion, Goscinny, in 1977. After five albums – ‘Asterix and the Picts’, ‘The Caesar Papyrus’, ‘Asterix in Italy’, ‘The Daughter of Vercingetorix’ and ‘In the Traces of the Griffin’ – in ‘The white lily’ who has temporarily replaced Ferri is Fabcaro (1973), grandson of a communist grandfather exiled after the Civil War and who as a child spent summers in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, where his mother was born.
To some readers it may seem that this Asterix advocates confrontation over dialogue. “The balance in the village is based on conflict and chaos. They resolve everything with fights. Unlike a place where there was peace and a character came to sow war and tares, here it happens the other way around. That character comes to lull them and calming them down, brings them serenity, but that breaks the unity of the people -argues the scriptwriter-. It also unbalances them, encouraging them to change their diet.” But let’s see who tells Obélix, accustomed to feasts of greasy wild boar meat, to settle for some fresh fish and vegetables or, as happens in a restaurant, with the giant plate with a tiny portion of ‘nouvelle couisine’ What does the chef serve you? Macrobiotix.
Conrad believes that “to survive in any environment you must have a level of resistance to any attack or danger, be it a plague, animals… In a society there is always violence and you should not protect your child from everything because then you do not give him the tools to defend himself.” itself”.
Viciovirtus almost managed to make the village lose its rebellion, to make the people not think for themselves. “That is catastrophic,” cries the cartoonist. “To survive it is necessary to have a critical spirit. It is not good for all of us to follow a current of opinion as the only truth and without understanding it thoroughly. Making decisions is a personal responsibility. The question is: Do we have free will? Scientist Robert Sapolsky assures in an article in the ‘Los Angeles Times’ that Today’s society has no decision-making power and that leaves us unable to do anything because as a society we do not control anything. “It’s catastrophic, depressing.”
One of the characters who “is most fooled by the philosophy of the white lily” of Viciovirtus is Karabella, the wife of chief Abraracúrcix. He sees her relationship as an “old-fashioned couple” in crisis, based on an ‘equitable distribution’ in which she is in charge of the housework and the kitchen and he is in charge of eating and having fun with her friends.” . “It’s a criticism of his machismo,” the screenwriter emphasizes. “An attempt to open his eyes to his own machismo and to that patriarchal culture that many people are still not aware of, but luckily little by little it’s changing. This couple always makes me happy.” “I liked it. Although they always fought and she reproached him, I noticed a lot of love between them. That’s why I wanted to influence that more affective and emotional tone.”
Fabcaro, who learned to read with Asterix, seeks different levels of reading to reach young people and adults and sprinkles the comic with “anachronisms, like Goscinny did.” There are scooters, RENFE CAVEs (high-speed cars), demonstrations, traffic jams… “We have fun with the clichés,” he concludes. “I parody the stereotypes of Paris as a bourgeois bohemian capital, snobs who look down on those from the provinces. Therefore “When Karabella arrives in Lutecia she is surrounded by pijería that goes to museums where there are works by Bánksix or Andiguárjolos.”
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