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BAWDY TALK
Some fall victim to it; others resist it. A select few know how to work it, baby, like you wouldn’t believe. Today’s media circus isn’t for those with a fear of heights. First-time novelist Nelly Arcan knows more than she cares to admit about the subject.

Text: STÉPHANE BAILLARGEON

SHE MAY OR MAY NOT BE THE EPONYMOUS PROTAGONIST OF THE novel Putain ("Whore"). She is Nelly Arcan, a beautiful, young writer from Québec.

Her incantatory, incendiary book (which just happens to relate the rants of a beautiful, young... prostitute) has created a media firestorm in both France and Québec since it was published by Paris-based Seuil last fall. Now, it is well on its way to selling more than 50,000 copies – a major coup for a first novel.

Loaded title, raw language, sexy author – seems like a package tailor-made to titillate the media and fan the flames of controversy around the young Arcan. It didn’t take long before she was being labelled a media whore – a label she shrugs off. It was a classic case of media hijacking, with lit-crit types and journalists alike focusing on Arcan the "whore" at the expense of Arcan the writer.

She had expected, at best, a few notices in literary magazines. Instead, she found herself sucked into a maelstrom. "I didn’t go looking for it," she insists. "Before the book came out my publisher warned me not to expect it to be a success – that’s what they always tell beginning writers." But according to Johanne Paquette, head of media relations at Seuil and Arcan’s press agent, rave reviews in Libération, Le Monde and Le Nouvel Observateur, among others, changed all that in a hurry. Everybody wanted a piece of the young writer. The enthusiasm was immediate, and Québec media outlets quickly picked up on it. "I was completely thrilled," Arcan recalls. "And then everything turned upside down. I wanted to talk about my book and the issues it raises – femininity, the tyranny of fashion, gender relations, the family. But journalists were only interested in one thing: whether I myself had been a prostitute. The media went looking for a scandal – so much so that they created one."

It’s hard to imagine, however, how things could have gone any differently. The media machine simply won’t allow you to hide from its prying eyes once you’ve exposed yourself shamelessly in public – especially when you decide to call your novel Putain. No, that would be too easy. You have to make a choice. Or, at the very least, live with the consequences. And yet – ostensibly to protect her family and to distance herself from the character in the novel – Arcan has so far refused to separate the truths from the falsehoods in her "autobiographical fiction." She’s even gone so far as to lash out at her detractors and publicly blame the media – at the risk of becoming a victim of her own self-promotion. "Exposés of private lives are part of contemporary literature. Sex is a highly marketable commodity. I hope we’re not about to start criticizing writers for writing about the times they live in," says Arcan, who is buttoned all the way up to the neck for our interview.

Then there’s the other side. "Most artists these days are products, brand names. They sell, just like everything else," declares Claude Cossette, a Canadian marketing guru and professor of communications at Laval University. "Books are written according to formulas; titles are chosen for their shock value. Everything is very carefully calculated." We live in an age where talent and genius are more often than not measured in terms of the thickness of one’s press clippings. It is now nearly impossible to be an artistic, public or political figure without having a powerful press agent by your side – one who knows all the ins and outs of the advertising and media worlds. The publicists’ job is to get maximum exposure for their clients.

Ironically, it’s the artists’ agents who must come to the rescue of their clients when the media launches an attack, even though the PR people lured the media in the first place. "It makes you want to avoid getting caught under that distorting lens," Arcan says. "More than once I’ve requested that people stop asking about my past, so as to protect my parents. But journalists have been relentless. Why?"

The answer is simple, according to Francine Chaloult, Québec’s reigning queen of entertainment publicists (she has Céline Dion and Garou, among others, on her client roster): "Journalists have an amazing ability to get to the heart of a person. But they have a really hard time with ambiguity – they always interpret it as some sort of strategy." Cossette, whose biting critique La Publicité, déchet culturel ("Advertising as Cultural Trash") has just been published, agrees: "Even those who on the surface refuse to play the game are suspected of doing so out of commercial interest. There’s no escaping the vicious circle of advertising. It’s quite disturbing."

Promotional tours, endless press-junket interviews, inane talk shows, promises of exclusive pictures or quotes for the tabloid press – it is interesting to see just how far both agents and artists will go to manipulate the very media they profess to dislike. "A few artists, maybe one in five, just love playing the media game," admits Chaloult. "But I know from direct experience that the vast majority absolutely loathe it. Repeating the same spiel 10, 20, 100 times isn’t exactly thrilling when you’d rather be writing or performing on stage."

Some may claim to be able to pull the strings, to play the media like an instrument. But they’re mistaken. Unless they happen to be in that very select club of celebs who have what it takes to confront the media hordes day in and day out, with all the requisite smiling and ridiculous posing. Then there are those who freely admit that the media has the upper hand, and always will.

"Making the front pages, and making good use of that exposure, is a job unto itself," asserts Johanne Paquette. It would appear that job was tough on her protege Arcan, who turned out to be either too fragile or too naive and inexperienced to capitalize on the swirl of attention around Putain. Not that it has altered her career plans: Arcan, currently studying toward a master’s degree in French literature, has already started work on a new novel.

"The media will cash in on anything. They have this idea that relationships with them must be interesting. I’m not sure that’s true," concludes Arcan, who in spite of it all recently made an appearance as a guest panellist on Jamais sans mon livre, a highly rated literary review on television. With her steely blue gaze and well-honed wit, the writer gave a critical appraisal of Simone de Beauvoir’s work, with nary a question about her notorious "past." It looks like she’s finally learning to play the game.