Comedian tries to get around ban
Print Edition
French comedian Dieudonne sought yesterday to circumvent a ban imposed on his controversial show over its “anti-Semitic” slant, replacing it with a new performance complete with “a few tai chi moves.”
Earlier in the day he had announced his intention to go ahead with four performances in Paris, despite the Friday-to-Wednesday ban on the show titled “The Wall.”
Dieudonne M’Bala M’Bala will instead present an alternate performance called “Asu Zoa” on a “different theme,” his lawyer Jacques Verdier said, noting the ban was specifically on “The Wall” and not the new show.
The comedian had also canceled a scheduled show in the central French city of Orleans after losing a legal challenge to get the ban lifted, Verdier said.
Outside the Main d’Or theater in Paris, the police decree was pasted on the door, and a handwritten poster beside it announced Dieudonne’s “new show.”
It will include dance, music, mime “and a few tai chi moves,” the 47-year-old Dieudonne said on his Facebook page, adding he had written the show in three nights.
The French government branded the comedian a “peddlar of hate” because of his diatribes against Jews.
The comedian earlier was defiant, calling on his supporters in a video to buy DVDs of his show “in massive numbers.”
“The more of you there is, the more I can continue this fight,” he said, adding that French Interior Minister Manuel “Valls has declared war against me.”
Preview performances of his “The Wall” tour in Paris included a sketch in which the comedian mimed urinating against a wall. He then reveals it was the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.
Amid the legal tussles over the show, Dieudonne announced in the same video he has come up with “Asu Zoa.”
Dieudonne’s supporters, and even some who reject his brand of humor but defend his right to express himself, have displayed concern over the clampdown, saying it is a troubling breach of freedom of speech.
But French government lawyers argue the comedian’s act is fundamentally racist and thus cannot be afforded protection under France’s constitutional provisions on freedom of speech.
Valls vowed yesterday he would “never allow words that divide the French.”
Dieudonne has been fined several times for defamation, using insulting language, hate speech and racial discrimination.
But the comedian argues the horrors of the Holocaust are given too much focus to the exclusion of other crimes, like slavery and racism.
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