#Pas touche meaning in english tv#

Politics as Entertainment, With a Right-Wing Twist Hanouna regularly boasts about ratings and viewers during the show itself. Panelists often comment on debates they’ve created or fueled themselves, and just about every #TPMP segment is designed to be shared for social media. The performance is peppered with references to itself. The panelists take sides, holding up placards reading “oui” and “non.” Usually they make jokes about the issue at hand. After some discussion with the guests, Hanouna kicks off a hot-button debate. The spectacle varies slightly night to night, but the basic dynamics of Touche Pas à Mon Poste! stay the same. (The more serious political discussions are reserved for Hanouna’s occasional spin-off show, Face à Baba, which has hosted guests like interior minister Gérald Darmanin and Jean-Luc Mélenchon.) The point is to avoid la rassrah: bad vibes, anxiety, negativity. Ultimately, it’s all about la darka: fun, laughter, having a good time. And to make sure things stay loose, this son of Sephardic immigrants regularly pulls from a bag of expressions from Tunisian Arabic. Hanouna frequently employs terms of endearment when addressing the panelists and audience alike: he refers to both groups as mes chéris (“my dears”). At the end of the day, everyone’s part of the same family - at least, that’s the idea. But while the debates can get heated, they’re never meant to be taken too seriously.

Sometimes the arguments degenerate into screaming matches refereed by Hanouna. The topics selected and the overcrowded studio make for a combustible mix, all but guaranteeing disagreements. The format is designed to generate sparks. While the show has been around since 2010, it’s soared to record heights in recent years by encouraging on-air clashes, leaning heavily into social media, and figuring out ways to be talked about - cultivating a style of self-referential clownery that doesn’t quite have an equivalent on French television. Among some of the recent visitors: the actors of a beloved soap opera wrapping up its final episode the head of a group that highlights cases of missing children to discuss the brutal killing of a fourteen-year-old girl the Instagram influencer Poupette two of the most visible leaders of the gilets jaunes protest movement and a supporter of far-right polemicist and presidential candidate Éric Zemmour. Instead, Touche Pas à Mon Poste! follows a standard French talk format: a variety-style show in which the main presenter - in this case, Hanouna - is joined by a cast of regular panelists and guests from the fields of politics, media, entertainment, sports, and culture. The #TPMP Styleįrance has never quite adopted the American-style late night talk format, where the star host conducts one-on-one interviews with a slew of guests. Touche Pas à Mon Poste! plays a vital role in the media ecosystem backed by ultraconservative billionaire Vincent Bolloré. Not only is Hanouna’s show degrading the quality of intellectual debate - it’s helping drag France’s political discourse to the right.

#Pas touche meaning in english tv#

Typically, these range from a potpourri of pop culture happenings and blood-curdling crimes to trends on TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram with just a smidge of political news: welcome to the world of Touche Pas à Mon Poste! (literally “Don’t Touch My TV Set!” in English, a pun on the anti-racist slogan Touche Pas à Mon Pote!, “Don’t Touch My Pal!”), hosted weeknights by the jovial forty-eight-year-old Cyril Hanouna. If you had to imagine what France’s most-watched TV talk show looks like, you might think of something resembling the high-brow discussions hosted on the nation’s public airwaves - a place where guests debate topics like the legacy of Chopin, the future of EU integration, or the shifting depictions of the American dream in the films of Paul Thomas Anderson.Īccording to ratings, France’s most popular talk show is a two-hour sludge of infotainment where topics are selected according to their traction on social media and their capacity for provocation.