Paris, April 20 (AFP\/APP): French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent public appearances have been met with a clamour of pot clanging by demonstrators furious over his decision to hike the retirement age.<\/p>\n
As authorities try to put the lid on the protests, we look at how the humble kitchen utensil became a global symbol of resistance.<\/p>\n
– Bashing the French king –<\/p>\n
The saucepan’s second life as a symbol of politically charged protest began in 1830s France after the July Revolution that led to the abdication of Charles X.<\/p>\n
Republicans opposed to the new king, Louis Philippe, “sought to make their voices heard by borrowing from reality a customary ritual” known as charivari, or making loud noise, French historian Emmanuel Fureix explained to France Culture radio in 2017.<\/p>\n
The ritual dated from the middle Ages when villagers sought to humiliate an ill-matched marriage — generally a widower to a much younger bride — with a thundering concert of c, known in French as “casseroles”.<\/p>\n
– Hullabaloo in Latin America –<\/p>\n
The saucepan’s leap to global usage came in the 20th century.<\/p>\n
In the 1950s and 1960s, there was pot-bashing in Algeria during the country’s war of independence, by supporters of the French far-right paramilitary group OAS who wanted to keep the country, French.<\/p>\n
But the pot only really began to make a racket when it crossed the Atlantic to Latin America, where the ear-splitting tradition of mass “cacerolazos” — banging pots with wooden spoons or bashing them together like cymbals — was born.<\/p>\n
The first major breakout came in 1971 in Chile against food shortages during the regime of Salvador Allende.<\/p>\n
Forty years later, tens of thousands of pot bangers took to the streets of
\nBuenos Aires after finding themselves cut off from their bank savings in the midst of a severe economic crisis.<\/p>\n
Since then the saucepan has been a tool of protest across the globe, from Myanmar to Canada.<\/p>\n
– Pots in the closet –<\/p>\n
Clanging pots have returned loudly in France in recent decades to express discontent with politicians and policies.<\/p>\n
In 2017, the campaign rallies of conservative presidential candidate Francois Fillon drew sporadic saucepan protests, in a play on the French expression “trainer des casseroles” (skeletons in the closet).<\/p>\n
Fillon’s “saucepans” related to a scandal that would scupper his candidacy and land him with a jail sentence, when it was revealed he had given his wife a fake job as a parliamentary assistant.<\/p>\n
– From street to smartphone –<\/p>\n
Six years later, President Emmanuel Macron’s widely unpopular pension reforms have elicited a new chorus of pot-banging.<\/p>\n
Pot concerts were organised countrywide on Monday evening to drown out the president when he addressed the nation after signing into law a bill that raises the retirement age from 62 to 64.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, authorities in the southern Herault region announced a ban on “portable sound equipment” ahead of the president’s visit to the area.<\/p>\n
While the move may force protesters to shelve their pots, smartphone apps such as “iCacerolazo” and “Cassolada 2.0” that reproduce the metal clanging suggest they won’t be easily silenced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Paris, April 20 (AFP\/APP): French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent public appearances have been met with a clamour of pot clanging by demonstrators furious over his decision to hike the retirement age. As authorities try to put the lid on the protests, we look at how […]<\/p>\n
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