How do Franco-Arab comedians manage to create spaces of national dialogue within French society? How does laughter manage to raise awareness on othering discourses and representations? In the 1990s onward, Franco-Arab comedians, notably including Gad Elmaleh and Jamel Debbouze, have made the Hexagon laugh-out-loud on stage and on TV. From their own individual stand-up specials to collaborative sketches on national networks, Debbouze and Elmaleh have brought their experiences of otherness to the mainstream. The dialogical spaces they create allow for a renegotiation of the rules of living together (les règles du vivre ensemble) between audience members and performer/s. Two major contexts for these exchanges will be studied:
- the “face-to-faces” in the theater where the comedian is on stage in front of the seated and usually silent audience members;
- and the “screen-to-viewer(s)”, the space of which can vary from the family TV in the living room to one’s smartphone in public transportation.
The main aspect of their identity that make them Other in the eyes of the hegemonic group is their hybridity, which clashes with the myth of a culturally unified French Republican universalism. Promoting a model of equality that remains in the realm of abstraction, Republican universalism tends to ignore socio-economic realities and enduring structural inequalities within French society. How has the comedy of Elmaleh and Debbouze managed to articulate their desire for experiential visibility without turning them into enemies of the Republic? On the contrary, how did their humor raise them to the status of largely French beloved public icons?. I argue that the artistic choices made by the two performers to comedically reframe their experiences of hybridity allow for an effective questioning of the limits of French Republican universalism. Additionally, I suggest that their approach vary purposefully with the audience they are targeting, showing a deep understanding of the challenges they face within French society.