A petition has been launched so that the name Serge Gainsbourg is not given to a Paris metro station.
“’Serge Gainsbourg’ in the metro is no”: here is the name of a petition launched on November 26 on the Change.org platform. The starting point of this controversy? The decision taken by RATP and Île de France Mobilités to give the name of Serge Gainsbourg to one of the new stations of the Paris metro, which will be located on the extension of line 11, after “Mairie des Lilas”, a nod to look at the famous song Le poinçonneur des Lilas, published in 1958. Six new stations should see the light of day at the end of the work, started in 2016. The first of them should therefore inherit the name of the singer, as a tribute .
An initiative that is controversial, the petition against this baptism totaling more than 4,000 signatures to date. Its creators denounce the tribute paid to a singer whose songs and behavior today raise a number of questions. “The violence against women and the paedocriminal and even incestuous tendencies of Serge Gainsbourg (to name but a few) are nevertheless public knowledge, and we are outraged that his person is put in the spotlight in the Paris metro” , it is detailed in the petition.
According to this petition and the detractors of a metro station in his name, Serge Gainsbourg is in fact accused of having trivialized sexual violence against minors, sometimes incestuous, in different releases, but also in two of his songs: Titicaca and La doll that does. In the first, he sings about wanting to “drown a “girl” in Titicaca, then “take her corpse on board”; in the second, he details: “It’s a little doll that goes… A little doll that says daddy. And I’m careful with my hips. Not to jostle her too much. It’s so easy to make her cry. Yes, I’m careful with my hips. Not to jostle her too much. Because I’m afraid of tearing my doll.”
Another song singled out, the hit Lemon Incest, released in 1984 and in which, according to the creators of the petition, “Gainsbourg sings and makes her daughter Charlotte, then 12 years old, sing her incestuous fantasy.” Overall, the sulphurous singer is accused of having trivialized violence against women under the cover, among other things, of passion. “This decision to pay tribute to Gainsbourg is a spit in the face of the victims” of violence, it is summarized in the petition.
