Le Canard Enchaîné is a weekly satirical newspaper published every Wednesday and is very famous in France for bringing up political scams, scandals and discourse on a very wide range of topics in a very satirical way and by using puns (play on words). Politicians are mostly targeted. It’s a very respected newspaper. It is the oldest newspaper in France as it was founded in 1917 to fight military censorship and government brainwashing and propaganda. It has always refused advertising and financial backing from political parties or corporations; it is a way for them to keep their typical freedom of speech and thought.
By Daniel MORENO
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To understand the name “Le Canard Enchaîné” you need to know the following. In France the slang expression for “journal” (newspaper) is “Canard” (duck). Don’t ask me why duck, I do not have the faintest idea! “Enchaîné” means “Chained up”, but concerning press the best translation would be “Tamed”. So you could translate “Le Canard Enchaîné” into “The Tamed Duck”. “The Chained up Duck” is also a good translation. In fact it’s amazing to bear such a name knowing that the editors and journalists are very free and very well documented about the affairs they bring up to light.
Through my parody named “Le Bouliste Enchaîné”, I tried to keep the graphics, the presentation and fonts of the newspaper and the way they introduce their news to readers. Page by page is an explanation of the articles:
1st page:
- The 2 frames at the upper part presents news that will be developed, mainly, in pages 2 or 3. I did that by writing “EXCLUSIVE: a rheumatic is at the origin of the pétanque game” and “FANNY: the mayor is guilty”
- The text flanking the newspaper name is a pun (play on words). “Quintais” sounds like “Quinté”. « Quinté + » is a very well known horse race bet in France and quint means five and as Quintais has been 5 five time World Champ….
- Below the newspaper title there is another pun. Before explaining it, you must know that while playing petanque, if the ball you throw dislodges and takes the place of the one on the ground, this action is called in French “Faire un carreau”. “Carreau” means either “floor” or “windows”! The text says: “The Spanish women team is world champion for the second time in three years”, and I add, “Naturally! Spanish women are known for taking care of windows”. I agree! it’s a stupid pun, but being myself of Spanish origin I don’t mind…
- 2 caricatures. One says that a high speed train was once again stopped (guess why ??), and the other one under the title “Pétanque: an Olympic game!” makes a player say “Competitive sport does indeed ruin”
- 4 articles:
. “Chez les tireurs d’élites.. de rouge ». Another pun quite difficult to translate into English, so I won’t try. In short the article introduces the reader to our club.
. “La pétanque ça fait du bien ! ». explains with humour why pétanque is good for mental health and why it breaks social barriers.
. “En Espagne, pour qui les cornes et pour qui les boules » explains why Spanish women play with balls and why the husbands get the horns. Another pun that would be too long to explain…
. “Ah! Quel chameau” tells how, who and when our logo was created.
Page 2:
- “Le musée de la pétanque” is an informative article about the museum located in St Bonnet Le Chatau.
- There are 6 articles related to pétanque and world championships:
. “Ah les boules”: Obut makes 1 ball for every 15 French or 1 ball every 13 seconds
. “Plein de maths”: How to calculate the weight of a filled pétanque ball
. “Pierres qui…”: Tells how Mick Jagger swindled 2 young brits in Cannes
.”Effet retro 1”: from 91 to 96, France was 6 times in a row world champion. From 59 to 63, only three times but with the same team.
.”Effet rétro2”: in 1977, France succeeded in being the only country to win 1st, 2nd and 3rd spots.
.”Effet rétro3”: Tells that in 1986 and 1987 (years that saw a surge of right wing votes in rench elections), the 3 teams standing on the podium are French-speaking Arab countries.
- “Minimares” tells different stories about the petanque game.
- “De la Petanque, et des…” tells how and when petanque was created in La Ciotat.
- “Le Coq Hardi” is a humoristic reaction to the official logo of the FFPJP .
- 3 caricatures:
.one man asking to the other man: “So, dear friend! Rather petanque or boules!”.
.Man standing up and asking to a player to play. Title is “At pétanque one plays where its possible”
.”Tout le monde peut jouer à la pétanque » means « Everybody can play pétanque ». It depicts famous French politicians with one (Giscard d’Estaing) throwing his ball to another one (Jacques Chirac). The attendance is composed of French politicians.
Page 3:
- Half top page. “Fanny bien que Savoyarde…..” tells the story of Fanny and the village where we can trace back the real lady at the origin of the tradition, and how it all started.
- “Les boules ont failli virer à l’aigre” is a real story about a French minister who said that a pétanque ball and a tennis ball dropped from the same height would arrive together. And the article proves he is wrong. The caricature depicts the Minister (M. Claude ALLEGRE) and a famous tenniswoman player (Amélie MAURESMO) to whom the Minister asks “Amélie, would you mind carrying out an experiment for me?”
- “Vocabulaire d’un tireur” explains few typical expressions of the pétanque language. The associated caricature says “Don’t stand in front of a thrower.. He might miss the throw !!”
- 1 caricature titled “Anxiety among the Enarques”. Enarques are former students of the Ecole Nationale d’Administration (A very exclusive French school where all students are assured to get a high positioned post whether in the private sector or at government level). The caricature depicts people from the government where the seated one says : “Petanque promotes social behaviour and contributes to the abolition of social barriers” and the others reply “What an insolence”, “It’s unbearable”, “they think they can do anything they like”.
Page 4:
- The text flanking the newspaper name is a pun (play on words). Its related to the founder of pétanque: Jules Lenoir, in English Jules BLACK and the inventor of the modern boule: Jean Blanc in English Jean WHITE. The text says « The pétanque to Jules Black , the boules to Jules White, … colours on the cheeks to Fanny.”
- Two columns titles “VITE DIT” or “In short”. It explains the meaning of trivial look-alike expressions. It would very long to translate mainly because of puns and association of ideas almost impossible to translate into English.
- “Qui a inventé quoi” or “Who invented what” is about the inventors of the ball and the best known corporations in the business of petanque.
- The picture in the center explains how is made a pétanque ball.
- Crosswords. They absolutely have nothing to see with pétanque. Reserved for French or people who master perfectly our language.
- “REMERCIEMENTS”. Part where I thank everybody and give names and sites where I collected all information to make this parody. I end by saying that I strongly recommend to have a look at www.petanque.org, the best site so far and where the post card section is worth watching
Last night the regular boules (or petanque) players at the Rivonia Sports Club encountered over 1000 African National Congress Youth League (the ANC is the ruling party in South Africa)members who had congregated to register for their national general council at the sports club. The participants provided a noisy and crammed backdrop to our normal sedate afternoon's play.
This year's Pétanque tournament in Amelia Island Florida is going to be documented by an independent film production group called UBKStudios. They are a group of low budget independent film makers from Chicago. They first learned about the game while traveling to Cannes France as part of the Cannes Film Festival. The short documentary about Pétanque, "Ludo", won an award for best Cinematography at the Real Ideas Studio Festival.
Carter Ingram from Novato, California has an excellent hobby: He makes haind-painted Cochonnets. Have a look, and think: Would you risk one of these babies by throwing a boule at it?
petanque.org is actually one of the oldest user-driven websites on the internet today. When we started up in 1997 there was no plan, it all started with a group of web-designers and programmers that enjoyed drinking beer at the local pub. However we realized that drinking beer was not a good excuse to leave home at any given time, we needed a better plan. Or just simply a plan.
Every time you look at a webpage, the address of the page is remembered. Forever. And out most visited page in the last couple of months has not been about pastis, petanque, france or anything like that. Apparently you are all very interested in French fashion! And small furry animals..
Pétanque tournament Documentary on the wayThe story of petanque.orgWe know what's on your petanque mindNew book about PetanquePetnaque Forum updatedMicro loans from petanque players.Petanque on the moonWater PetanquePetanque America Open - Amelia Island - 14 & 15 November 2009SWINE FLU WARNING!!
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