Rose Lamy's Essay Ascendant beauf (Ascendant Philistine, Seuil, 2025) addresses social contempt and class dominance in France, particularly through an analysis of the derogatory figure of the "beauf," the epitome of embarrassing, uncultured philistinism. Lamy introduces the concept of "cultural gentrification," in which dominant classes appropriate popular cultural "territories" (such as chansons or venues like PMU bars, i.e., bars with betting shops), obliterating their popular nature and redefining them through a bourgeois lens. She feels "hurt" by such processes, as they deny the authenticity of her cultural preferences and exclude her from the realm of "elegance." The author intertwines personal experiences of class humiliation—such as the devaluation of her musical taste in Joe Dassin—with a sociological investigation of the mechanisms that perpetuate this stigmatization. Lamy also criticizes parts of the left that, through elitism and "Parisianism," have contributed to alienation from the working classes and the establishment of the "Beauf" stereotype. She criticizes the contempt shown towards the French provinces and their inhabitants, who are often portrayed as "Ploucs" (hillbillies) or "Bouseux" (village idiots). She denounces films that depict rural characters as "caricatures, stupid, dirty" and set in a reality "without a state" or public services, thus reinforcing harmful stereotypes.
The term "Beauf" is most likely short for "beau-frère" (brother-in-law). It was invented as a comic character in 1972 by the comic artist Cabu (di Jean Cabut). Lamy describes the term "Beauf" as a tool used by the dominant classes to stigmatize and "dehumanize" the working classes. The "Beauf" is contrasted with the "Grand Duduche," the dreamy high school student, pacifist, and environmentalist, a character Cabu created as a self-portrait. The Duduche is idealistic, humanistic, educated, non-violent, open-minded, feminist, anti-racist, and votes left or far left. This highlights the dichotomous view. Cabu continued to use the Duduche in his drawings until his assassination in 2015. Gérard Mauger, a sociologist, suggests that the term could also derive from BOF (Beurres, Œufs, Fromages – butter, eggs, cheese), a term used for merchants during the occupation who had a dubious reputation for exploiting scarcity. According to Lamy, the "Beauf" is historically closely linked to the French left and the political events following May 1968. After the 1968 parliamentary elections, in which the French population voted overwhelmingly for the right-wing Gaullist party, resentment arose on the left against those voters who did not support the revolution. It was in this context that the figure of the "Beauf" emerged as the "enemy" of the left: the former ally, the worker who was supposed to bring about the revolution, became the "certain adversary." The left began to distinguish between "good poor" (who remained loyal to the left-wing project and, for example, read Marx) and "bad poor" who voted "wrong", watched too much television, gave their children "any old" names, and listened to "bourgeois" music.
Im Larousse The “Beauf” was originally defined in 1988 as “Beau-frère” and as “a type of average Frenchman, reactionary and racist, inspired by a comic book character.” The 2021 edition of the “Grand Larousse” and “Petit Larousse” describes him as “an average Frenchman with narrow and bigoted views, who generally behaves vulgarly.” From a sociological perspective, the “Beauf” does not exist as an objective category; he is an “aggregate of beliefs and stereotypes.” Gérard Mauger explains that the figure of the “Beauf” simultaneously produces a stigmatized representation of the popular classes and an idealized self-representation of those who see themselves as the opposite of this stigmatized group. It is a “tool of dominance” used to dehumanize and crush the popular classes.
His appearance and clothing are generally described as having a round, reddish face, often with a mustache, short hair, and a receding hairline. He wears plaid shirts, undershirts, and classic trousers or shorts. His attitude can be described as misogynistic, macho, homophobic, racist, xenophobic, anti-intellectual, fastidious, conservative, conformist, rude, dull-witted, and belligerent. His interests include hunting, pétanque, television, variety music, camping, horse racing (Tiercé), the Tour de France, and football. He enjoys driving and eating meat. Politically, he is a right-wing or far-right voter (often for Jean-Marie Le Pen in the 90s, and today for Marine Le Pen and the National Rally). His cultural preferences are associated with a lack of education, intelligence, and "good" cultural taste, for example, watching CNews and "Touche pas à mon poste" (Don't touch my post) instead of theater or reading. First names like Kevin, Jordan, Kimberley are described as "beauf" and come from mass culture.
The term "Beauf" encompasses all voices of oppression based on a hierarchy of economic, social, and cultural capital. The stigmatization associated with the term "Beauf" contributes to class violations that can have concrete consequences for living conditions, health, and life expectancy. Rose Lamy refuses to view "Beauf" as a negative image or to distance herself from her roots. She chooses to redefine the term positively. For her, "Beauf" means carrying "a familiar culture," liking "sensitive and captivating songs," and watching films that depict "characters from the working classes with agency." She emphasizes her pride in her heritage and wants to break through the "bourgeois gaze." The author observes that an independent female "Beauf" figure hardly exists in the media; instead, women are often reduced to mere appendages of their male counterparts or to stereotypical roles. They are perceived as “too much” (too vulgar, too masculine) or “not enough” (not beautiful, not feminine enough by bourgeois standards).
Rose Lamy analyzes in the chapter on the social cinema The text details how the figure of the "beauf" is exoticized in contemporary French cinema and brought under the control of "bourgeois culture." This portrayal is achieved particularly through the process of so-called "casting sauvage," which is structured in a specific way: This casting method is used almost exclusively for films in the field of... social cinema The films used depict poverty, violence, family breakdowns, or social neglect. The directors specifically seek out "authentic" bodies and lifestyles – young people from impoverished backgrounds, often of mixed race, blue-collar workers, or blue-collar workers. The aim is not to cast in a socially representative manner, but rather to embody clichés of a social class with real people.
According to Lamy, the search for authenticity leads to the exoticization of class affiliation: people from rural or impoverished backgrounds are discovered like curiosities – in dance halls, at lawnmower races, or stock car competitions. The "otherness" of the "beauf" (a derogatory term for someone from rural or impoverished backgrounds) is emphasized; their body, accent, clothing, and manner of speaking are considered "raw," "real," and "touching" – but never complex or articulate. The amateur actors in question are placed under the aesthetic and symbolic control of bourgeois filmmakers. In the film... La tete haute For example, director Emmanuelle Bercot was actually looking for a violent, uncouth teenager. When she found Rod Paradot – polite, quiet, friendly – she was disappointed, according to Lamy, because he didn't fit the desired "authentic" stereotype. Only through intensive work was he "adapted" to the desired role.
These discovered individuals are often celebrated as exotic trophies—for example, through César nominations—and then discarded. They remain outsiders in a world that only uses them briefly for their perceived “authenticity.” This reminds Lamy of “cultural tourism”: The bourgeois public consumes the social reality of others but quickly returns to its comfortable milieu. Rose Lamy uses the term “bourgeois gaze” (drawing on Laura Mulvey’s “male gaze”) to describe the structural direction of the bourgeois gaze: The film does not show the world of the poor from their perspective, but through the benevolent yet powerful gaze of a bourgeois institution that determines what is considered authentic, aesthetic, moving, or “true.” According to Lamy, these mechanisms lead to symbolic appropriation and alienation: The “poor” are only allowed to exist as types, never as subjects. Their world is turned into a museum piece, sentimentally glorified, or portrayed as a problem area – but always under the control of an authority that simultaneously presents itself as critical and benevolent.
Lamy's critique of the film Twenty Gods Lamy's criticism can be summarized in five key points: (1) She criticizes the film for its simplistic portrayal of the political and social reality of rural areas. The film reduces the theme of the rightward shift to a culturally emptied view of "the countryside," as mere territory devoid of social or political depth. This glorification of rurality without class analysis, according to Lamy, leads to a dead end. She therefore proposes an addition to the well-known left-wing slogans: "Promoting rurality without class struggle is rural tourism." Lamy, who herself comes from a rural working-class family and initially feels drawn to the film's subject matter, finds (2) the portrayal of the characters unrealistic, stereotypical, and dehumanizing. Totone, the young protagonist, comes across as a caricature of a crude, uncivilized country boy. The supporting characters also appear clichéd in their language, appearance (mullet hairstyle, tracksuit), and social isolation. Lamy finds scene (3) in particular, in which Totone buries his father alone, without the support of family, institutional structure, or social network, deeply improbable and hurtful. This scene exemplifies what she criticizes as the film's structural improbability: no state authorities concern themselves with the guardianship of the younger sister, Totone drives a tanker truck without a license, there is a complete lack of any institutional, familial, or communal support, and the village appears as a lawless, neglected space, which does not correspond to reality. (4) The landscape is portrayed in the film with tenderness and beauty – the people, on the other hand, appear degraded, flat, coarse, and unfeeling. Lamy criticizes this disproportionate perspective: “The animals also benefit from a gaze imbued with love […]. But the humans, they, are not filmed with the same tenderness.” This gap reminds her of bourgeois representations of the working class as described by Gramsci: as dull, instinctual, politically and morally underdeveloped beings. Lamy points (5.) to a more complex reality in rural areas: the majority of people in small towns and villages do not vote for the right. However, the film reinforces a common narrative of the far-right provinces without showing the presence of left-wing struggles, familial solidarity, and social responsibility in these regions. Lamy's personal story, especially the example of the family's supportive practices after a serious accident, serves as a positive counter-narrative: tenderness, dignity, and solidarity exist—even in the provinces. Lamy sees in the film Twenty Gods This is an example of a romanticized, yet simultaneously stigmatizing and apolitical portrayal of rural areas, which is neither authentic nor analytically convincing. The film misses the reality of rural class relations and reinforces clichés instead of questioning them.
Lamy adopts key concepts and theses of Bourdieu and integrates them directly into her analysis. For example, she uses the term "racisme de l'intelligence" (intellectual racism) to describe the new form of devaluation of "beauf" (the ability to express oneself). No longer is it solely cultural taste or lifestyle that leads to devaluation, but rather a lack of education and intellectual expressiveness. Lamy quotes, among others, from Bourdieu's work. La Distinctionto show how the education system legitimizes class differences as supposedly natural distinctions. She explains that, according to Bourdieu, the cultural preferences of the working classes are not a "choice" but an adaptation to economic necessity. Thus, for example, the preference for television over opera does not appear as an expression of "low taste" but as a result of structural distance from cultural capital. Lamy quotes Bourdieu and Luc Boltanski to show that the portrayal of the "beaufs" in media and culture is not self-representation but a projection from the outside. The dominant classes talk about the lower classes, determining their image and thus their social reality: "Les classes populaires ne parlent pas, elles sont parlées." In reflections on the social cinema Lamy quotes Bourdieu on the alienation of the dominated through the adoption of a foreign gaze: The dominant classes have control over the interpretation of themselves, while the lower classes must always view themselves objectified through foreign lenses.
What at first glance appears to be a cultural footnote—the stereotypical image of the dull, culturally backward working-class man—reveals itself in Lamy's study as the key to analyzing a deeply entrenched but often overlooked social mechanism: classist contempt, particularly within left-wing circles. This has led to a "bourgeoisification" of the left, which practices elitism and Parisianism, thus alienating the working classes it once represented. Lamy, himself a working-class man, recognizes in this derogatory treatment of the redneck A form of social violence that she is already very familiar with from her feminist work: It begins with mockery, continues with linguistic labeling, irony, jokes, and attributions, and ultimately leads to a breakdown of solidarity—to the dehumanization of the individual. When entire population groups are systematically equated with backwardness, sexism, or cultural incompetence, it becomes easy to indifferently accept their disadvantages in healthcare or their declining life expectancy, as Lamy stated in an interview with Caroline Pernes. Télérama (May 9, 2025).
Lamy is particularly critical of the behavior of a certain segment of the left: she demonstrates how those who present themselves as economically progressive remain blind to their own cultural arrogance. In her ironic detachment from this... French variety, in derogatory talk about certain TV formats or in the use of the term guilty pleasure According to Lamy, all of this contributes to maintaining a system that normalizes social degradation. At the same time, Lamy identifies a gap in this degradation: the femme beaufLamy, who appears in media and academic discourse at best as "the wife of"—anonymous, stereotypical, never as a subject. Her presence, she argues, is confined to the margins of public interest, such as the section on miscellaneous facts. The book challenges the myth of meritocratic advancement by demonstrating that success is often determined by "invisible capital" (social and cultural capital) and not solely by effort or talent. The author views her own success as a "chance" or a "tele-reality phenomenon" and refuses to be perceived as a "class defector" in order to remain true to her origins.
Ascendant beauf is not a nostalgic plea for authenticity or a naive attempt to... redneck to rehabilitate. Rather, Lamy reveals how much ridicule and cultural exclusion hinder political solidarity. Her central thesis: The anti-beauf contempt This is not a harmless vice of enlightened circles, but rather an expression of a profound, structurally effective contempt that sabotages social justice. A key argument of Lamy's is that "cultural gentrification" is a process in which dominant classes appropriate popular cultural expressions and strip them of their original, authentic nature. The book emphasizes that class affiliation has concrete, often drastic, effects on living conditions, health, and life expectancy, thus debunking the myth of meritocracy. Furthermore, Lamy sheds light on the often condescending portrayal of rural areas and the alienation and precariousness that characterize many jobs held by blue-collar and lower-middle-class people. Finally, Rose Lamy argues for a positive redefinition of the term "Beauf" (meaning "work" or "destruction") in order to restore pride and agency to the working classes and promote a more humane representation of their reality.
Lamy takes a sometimes disconcertingly worded approach to the sociology of distinction, the narrative of shame, and a critical juxtaposition of uneducated or anti-intellectual workers and the bourgeoisie with left-wing elites. However, the examples are so revealing, explosive, and insightful from a German perspective that they encourage a critical examination of cultural forms of social contempt in neighboring countries (and at least similar ones in one's own).
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
