2024-01-13 10:25:00
Trash, funny but above all disturbing, “Accident of Person” (published by Florent Massot, first publisher of the sulphurous Virginie Despentes) tells the story of Daphné who wants to die but is incapable of ending her life… She then meets of Martin, serial killer, to help him. They agree that he will push her under a subway but on the big day, he makes a mistake and pushes the wrong girl under the subway… “Personal accident is the formula when someone has been hit by a bus and we are all complaining because the bus is late and the guy has just lost his life, explains feminist comedian Florence Mendez, known for having “complete intolerance on sexism, racism, homophobia and company”, regarding his first novel. Personal accident, too, because my heroine feels a little out of place, a little failure, like my hero. It’s all these people who don’t feel normal, when in fact it’s society that’s twisted!”
Personal accident of Florence Mendez at Massot ©Massot Editions
Is this 100% fiction?
”Fortunately, I have never had to deal with serial killers, so I want to make this clear to readers and the law (smile)! Obviously, it’s fiction, but in certain characters, there is a lot of me. In the three main characters, I looked for things that resembled me and that spoke to me. Areas that I know well like mental health or neuro atypia. So I reassure everyone, including my parents (she traumatized her mother, Editor’s note), it is indeed a fiction!”
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With trashy moments…
”Indeed, but never for free. With a message behind it. There is violence at fairly high levels, but there is also a lot of ordinary violence. Moments that are violent in everyday life, in everyday life like basic domestic violence that we wouldn’t even recognize as violence and yet it is. So yes, it still serves a purpose here. The goal is not to do something trashy for the sake of doing something trashy. It’s not my type.”
“The Covid crisis has accentuated mental health problems”
The main theme, however, remains suicide.
Yes, and I know that suicide remains a taboo subject. But before the Covid crisis, mental health was already not great for everyone. And we know that the Covid crisis has accentuated mental health problems. Is the issue of suicide really important when we talk regarding mental health? So yes, it’s a taboo subject. I am well aware of it but a subject that needs to be addressed and I am not the first to do so. The film Emma Peeters, the story of a young woman who prepares her funeral because she intends to commit suicide. Or the extraordinary Magasin des suicides by Jean Teulé. So suicide is still a subject that fascinates because, ultimately, the question of one’s own death is one of the only ones on which we retain this free will. I wanted suicide to stop seeming like a way out. I wanted to show that there was another solution to despair than going out the window.”
Was putting it all down on paper a kind of therapy then?
This is what I already say in my show Délicate. I think that art should not replace real therapy. So it makes me feel good to write it. I think it does other people good to read me or hear me on stage. But I want it to push people to follow real therapy. For me, my therapy was my therapy. I followed one with health professionals, I treated myself, I went to see a psychiatrist, I took the necessary medication, etc. So I think it’s dangerous when you’re an artist to say to yourself: I’ve done a show, a film, a book or a record and I’m better. No that’s not true. Precisely, on the contrary, I believe that if we don’t get better, it leads to very dark and very dangerous things for ourselves because it requires us to reopen wounds. Rather, this book is the result of everything I learned regarding my mental state when it was not good and the healing that followed. Rather, it is the result of my healing.”
Because you have already had dark thoughts as we learn in your show…
“Yes of course. I talk regarding it without taboo. I almost committed suicide. I had a suicide attempt in 2017 where I almost threw myself from the fourth floor because my mental health was not doing well at all. So I am proof that we can, at some point, hit rock bottom. And then still have a great life followingwards. We just have to admit that we are sick because depression, anxiety, etc., are illnesses in the same way as the flu, gastro, etc. You have to accept it and you have to take care of yourself. You have a toothache, you go to the dentist. Your soul hurts, you go to the shrink.”
“When I was regarding to throw myself off the balcony, he called me…”
What was the trigger then?
“My son. When I was regarding to throw myself off the balcony, just as I was going there, at the exact moment, he called me… Well, I turned around obviously! There’s this little thing on the phone, to tell me some stupid things regarding the evolution of Pokémon as well. He was five, six years old, he was on vacation and he called me at that time. And then, suddenly, hearing his voice brought me back to reality. Because by the time I was on the other side of the balcony, I wasn’t actually myself anymore. I was empty like that. I was a zombie. It’s as if someone else had taken control of my body with a remote control: come on, it’s going to be fun! I was no longer myself. And suddenly, when I had my son on the phone, the moment I heard his voice, I felt dizzy, I said: Damn, what am I doing here ? And there, I went to the other side of my balcony. I increased his pocket money following that (smile)!”
You also cite a passage from Stromae’s Inferno (“I’m not all alone being all alone, that’s already less in my head”) which also evokes this…
”I think, artist or not, no one is really doing very well. We all have dark thoughts at some point. Because that’s how life is, it’s ups and downs. And even the happiest person in the world, even sometimes the Dalai Lama, I’m sure he must say to himself: damn, I can’t take this life anymore, it’s shit! We all have these moments. Afterwards, artists, we have a means of expression which is our art. And when you’re a public person where there are people who listen to you, it’s important to say things that are of interest. And if you can, as a public figure, use your voice to ensure that taboo subjects are no longer taboo, you should do it! The mental health taboo is a taboo that kills. Taboos, whether on sexuality, porn or mental health, lead to complete disasters. So I am for breaking taboos.”
“If you have shit and shenanigans swept under the rug, I’m not going to act like I didn’t see anything…”
Florence Mendez, born January 24, 1987 in Etterbeek, is a Belgian actress, humorist and columnist. ©cameriere ennio
Due to your commitment and positions (his new 2024 game: “anger the fascists”), wouldn’t the next step be to enter politics?
”It’s a question that I’ve asked myself quite a bit and as long as I can avoid it, as long as I can continue to express myself through art and I’ll be followed, etc., I don’t think so. Because I want it to be a project that is compatible between art and politics. Since for the moment, it is not, no. But maybe one day! I think people won’t work because for now, everyone knows I’m just not tameable. People know that to approach me, you have to be impeccable. If you have shit and shenanigans swept under the carpet, I’m not going to act like I didn’t see anything… So the PS is screwed. The MR with GLB or Marc Ysaye, are we serious? Plus, he likes horrible things! No, but the party I feel closest to is green. They are the only ones to have a real ecological project even if there are also things that I don’t like regarding them. I’m going to wait a little before being harassed by a new category of the population, those who hate female politicians (smile).”
In Spicy! on M6, you did a bit of political humor.
”I make socially conscious art so it’s a bit political too. Politics not in the sense that it serves the purposes of a party but we are trying to change a society. To advance a society. What makes me laugh regarding the reactions, the people of the old world is that they do not realize that they themselves are the product of people like me who, 100 years ago, shouted to move the things. They are there for this absolute maintenance of the language, without realizing that the terms they use have been criticized by people like them. And these people, ultimately, are the death of society. Because it is a society that is no longer moving. I mean a society which no longer advances, which no longer progresses, which takes no input from anywhere. And that’s how you die.”
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