The Macron shove is not a sign of a very French love story, but something more disturbing

Irish Times

a day ago

The moment last Monday evening when aeroplane doors opened at Hanoi airport to reveal the French president
being shoved in the face
by his wife was not the first red flag in their relationship.
The first red flag was the fact that, when they met,
Emmanuel Macron
was a 15-year-old schoolboy, and Brigitte a 39-year-old drama teacher directing a school production. For all they have waxed lyrical in interviews since about the special nature of their love ('when you're in love, you don't choose,' he says; 'little by little, I became completely subjugated by the intelligence of this young man,' she gushes); for all the media obligingly dance around their troubling origin story (note how often reports of this period in their lives refer to him not as a child but as 'the future president' and to her as his 'childhood sweetheart'); this was no mere age gap relationship, and only one of them was a child.
Now he is 47 and she is 72, the appropriate response may well be to shrug and say good on them both. But back when they met in 1993, she was an adult woman, and he was a boy. If a 15-year-old girl enters a sexual relationship with a teacher 25 years her senior, the usual and correct response is outrage.
When the genders are reversed, it's a very French love story.
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But the story of how the Macrons met has always seemed to inspire an uncharacteristic reticence in the media – particularly the kind of outlets that usually relish nothing more than deconstructing every aspect of a first lady's existence. This conspiracy of coyness may be why the incident on the tarmac in Vietnam earlier this week was met with such an odd response.
Sure, the split second of slightly blurred footage immediately went around the world and was thoroughly dissected: the force with which she shoved him in the face, using both of her hands. The way his head jerks back. His look of shock. The speed at which he recovered his composure and waved to the cameras. Her refusal to take his arm going down the aeroplane steps. Yet, for all the coverage, the reaction was weirdly muted. Much commentary opted for the strained, bemused tone you might use should you find yourself trapped at an uncomfortable dinner with a warring couple.
The moment when aeroplane doors opened at Hanoi airport to reveal the French president being shoved in the face by his wife was not the first red flag in their relationship.
The Elysée Palace responded at first by suggesting the video was a Russian deepfake, and then spun it as a 'moment of closeness', the couple 'decompressing'. Macron himself said they were 'bickering, or rather joking': 'The video becomes a sort of geoplanetary catastrophe. In the world we live in, we don't have a lot of time to lose. This is all a bit of nonsense,' he said, demonstrating himself to be not averse to spouting geoplanetary nonsense of his own. Those who thought otherwise were 'crazies', 'nuts' and clearly had 'sugar rushing to their heads'. So that's settled. Nothing to see here.
Except, of course, anyone with a smartphone and a social media account did see it. And yet, just as they have always done where the Macrons are concerned, the media seemed to largely acquiesce to being told that they did not see what they saw. Politico characterised it a 'spat'. The New York Times led with Macron's dismissal of it as 'nonsense'. USA Today went with a translation of his words as 'horsing around'. The Sun called it 'embarrassing'. One commentator decided that it was not 'just a shove [but] a symbol, a barometer of a world out of sorts, reflexively violent, perpetually on edge'.
Macron is, of course, entitled to his privacy and to our compassion – I can't imagine anyone looking at footage and not being struck, above all, by his humanity. But he is also a public figure, and his willingness to brush off a moment of aggressive physical contact from an intimate partner is, at best, a missed opportunity to address the stigma surrounding domestic abuse.
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Emmanuel Macron plays down video of shove from wife: 'It's nonsense'
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At worst, it sends a harmful message about what men are supposed to quietly put up with. The obvious question – and yet only a handful asked it – was whether we would be so willing to chalk this up as a moment of mild embarrassment if he was a woman and she was a man.
Of course we wouldn't. When advertising mogul Charles Saatchi was photographed grabbing his then wife Nigella Lawson by the throat in a London restaurant in 2013, the reaction was swift and unequivocal. It amounted to (with a handful of notable exceptions, mostly involving older men in the media with social connections to Saatchi) horror and revulsion. The images were more graphic and left little room for ambiguity, but the context was similar: an unguarded moment that hinted at something disturbing beneath the glossy surface of the lives of an apparently happy power couple.
Saatchi's
first reaction was that it was a 'playful tiff'
; Lawson's was to
pack up and leave with her children.
The editor of the Sunday People, which first published the images, later explained the rationale for it: 'Our debate kept coming back to what was going on behind closed doors if Saatchi was able to behave like this in public. We concluded that there was a genuine public interest ... We couldn't think of any circumstances in which his behaviour could be justified.'
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The pictures of Charles Saatchi and Nigella Lawson were disturbing. But so too was the public rush to judgment
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Those same considerations ought to apply here – yet many commentators seem to have no trouble coming up with circumstances to justify Brigitte Macron's behaviour. Perhaps it's just that many of us are incapable of reconciling the idea that a man in a position of power can also be someone vulnerable to the possibility of domestic abuse.
There are well-known reasons men underreport domestic violence – among them is the fear they won't be taken seriously. Based on events this week, they're probably right.