Les Paravents (Screens): Une Cagoule

Leïla, a character in Genet's play, Les Paravents (Screens), wears "une cagoule" to hide her ugliness. Looking up "cagoule" in WordReference.com, you come up with the English equivalent: hood. Une cagoule is also used to describe a ski mask.

When you look at the character, Leïla on stage, she wears a black hood which is the equivalent of what a klan member wears to hide their identity. Yet, when I saw Leïla in her black hood, I immediately thought of what has been commonly termed a "terrorist" because it conceals an identity as they act in violence. The same person may also walk among you--could be a sister, friend, lover. Leïla is a subversive character in the play, rejected, a leper among her people, she is left to roam freely to be as ugly, as disgusting as possible. Therein lies her power. She is rejected by her society, yet she remains, though marginalized, as a reminder that she is not them. She steals their prize possessions, disturbing their world-- Later in the play, when she dies, as other characters in the play wait for her in the after-life, we find she never appears in their metaphysical world. Does she really need to? Has she been liberated in death? Finally free? Or does she continue to be marginalized even in death? Based on Kadidja's comments in the after-life, we might believe that her non-appearance is by Leïla's own choice--living in death as she lived in life. During the play, the actor removes la cagoule, behind a screen, so we never see her face. I imagined then that Leïla might have actually been painfully beautiful. Interestingly, the actor who played Leïla was a man. I liked that interpretation of the character as well. It reminded me that it was a play by Jean Genet (more on him later). That could lead to a discussion that would last hours. Non merci.

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Googling the word cagoule, I found this image: http://sbttacticalgear.free.fr/ht3t.jpg

My friends remember growing up having to wear their cagoule in the winter. Of course, they never wanted to wear it. Parents fought with their kids, insisted it was needed to keep them from catching cold. But as my friend the pharmacist explained, not because you catch cold because it's cold, but because your immune system is weakened as you body works to keep itself warm.

Here's what they may have worn:
http://abracadafil.free.fr/minilogi/cagoule.JPG

The memory is so powerful that there is a popular French rap single by Fatal Bazooka. It's pretty funny because in the song you hear some of the reasons French parents gave their kids for wearing the protective cagoule.
The song is entitled: "Fous ta cagoule". Using the imperative form of the a French expletive, one might translate it as "Put on your f.. hood." Now, thinking about it, I realize--oh, I really have to put this song in context before I discuss it in a French setting. The word in the title of the song is absolutely inappropriate! But fitting in our discussions of Artaud and Genet, and thus, I will allow myself the liberty. You can see the video for the song on You Tube by cutting an pasting the link below in a browser.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3I0ut10NoQ

At a certain point in the song, one of the performers articulates clearly: "Hey, you think we can understand what you're saying? We have a message here, and that message is..." Well, you know the rest.