Reification of the Woman in "Collé la petite" of the Cameroonian singer, Franco

"Reification" of the woman in Collé la Petite, a song by Franco, Cameroonian Singer

(La chosification de la femme dans “collé la petite du chanteur Camerounais Franco)

            "Reification" refers to the act of reifying or reducing the value and dignity of a human being to that of an object. It is a procedure that consists in transforming or better still, making a human being, an object. In short, it shows human being as an identifiable physical object, bereft of any sacred value; i.e, the act of dehumanizing a human being. The objective of this work is to understand the meaning behind the rhythm and words of Franco in collé la petite. Thus, what is the ultimate end of this piece of music? Is Franco not simply trying to show the nakedness of hermetic-based practices witnessed in some noisy environments? Or rather, what value does Franco attach to the woman? Of course, there is no reason and neither is there intent to judge this piece of music that exhilarates and boosts umpteen minds addicted to worldly music. From a pragmatic approach, we shall make use of paradigm and syntax-based analyses to decode what is said and entailed in this piece of music.

            Collé la petite, a bitter exigency which governs the minds of all the habitués of places where music is queen, confuses and identifies the Man (the woman) with any easily manipulated tool at will. Also, this piece of music dehumanizes, minimizes and devalues the woman and therefore, making her a thing that shines by its lack of value; in short, a whole object.

            First and foremost, Franco’s music confuses and identifies women with tangible and quantifiable thing despite its abundance. This may justify the use of phrases like beaucoup de in the sentence il y a beaucoup de petites. This undoubtedly confirms the emphasis laid on the paradigm collé, all through the track. This intensification may be due to the will of pressing (coller) the woman until she is dehumanised. In the same light, if we postulate that “android” means robot, it will be asserted that the woman is seen here as a robot and consequently, is a device or thing that acts like a human being. The instance of this noun phrase: “les filles androides” tells more. Chiming with this view of dehumanisation, Daniel Defoe in The life and Long adventures of Robinson Crusoe partitions races and believes that some races are deprived of history and culture. That is why to Crusoe, the black man he met on Friday was nameless and so he had to name him Friday to make him “somebody”. Is this not a metaphor of reification that makes the black man an animate thing? Andre Brink also portrays this situation in A Dry white Season where he strongly depicts and flays the abominable image of the reified black. By reference to the famous Ben du Toit booed and scorned in all the newspapers of the country for having warmly greeted and by a hug, a black woman; a dirty tiny and dangerous thing. The Cameroonian artist makes the adjective petite, a noun, to minimise the woman. By reading it, one realizes that it places at antipodes, two different realities: absolute hegemony of men in one hand and the absolute reification of women on the other. This is shown by the use of deictic like “tu, te, ta, tes” through imperatives like “montres-lui que tu dépasses même le superglue!, “ramènes tes potes, on va danser jusqu’au bout de la nuit”.

In Cameroon, all what glitters for a short while is said to be “choronko” or Chinese. This devaluation of the woman is done through the use of the apparent subject “il” in “il y a des filles choronko”. The author of collé la petite strongly stands again on this view as he distinguishes between forms of intimate parts of the woman, via this pejorative excerpt “il y a tout genre de lolos: les babouches et les pointus”. Moreover, the woman is valued down to a pair of shoes as it is in this hypothetical subordinating conjunction si: “meme si t u chausses le 80…” and this juxtaposition “…tu vas trouver ta pointure”. In this perspective, there is a comparison to make between food that human beings savor with appetite, and the woman. The woman in collé la petite is presented as the man’s favourite meal. To do this, he urges and appeals to them to eat it with appetite: “manges ta petite avec appétit”. Unlike him, Gaston Paul Effa asks women to be submissive, smooth, kind and respectful towards their husbands. He further establishes in “Mâ” the seven rules a woman should respect to be a good wife. However, Franco shows the domination of men on objects like “women”. This is why he claims that milk is a foodstuff which is not eaten by objects. Therefore, it should not be given to women: “ne lui donnes pas le lait ein”! Furthermore, the use of the scornful noun “bêtise” is an imagery that makes a woman, a stupidity regardless the relationship she has with someone. We can refer to rhetorical questions like “c’est ta soeur?C’est ta cousine?C’est tat tante?” and this imperative: “dis-donc, colles les bêtises”. Franco thus, creates a DJ that orchestrates and gives rhythms to manipulation of such a human-like stupidity. That is what finally shows from the beginning to the end of this track, that the woman is dehumanised and devalued.

            In a nutshell, it is obvious that Franco has a two-faceted objective as shown up here. He uncovers what has so far been taboo and likely to offend some sense of decency or modesty. Equally, the artist paves way in the despondency of classical music and bridges with daily social beliefs that monitor all the domains of social life. From politics to culture through economics, Franco successfully says loud and strong what people think and do in rear yards. After all, collé la petite unfortunately makes the woman, a malleable object even though, one of the most important aims of music is to console, soften sadness. In short, it should soothe the savage breast.

Sir Ngueutsa AKA (Also known as Phlegmatic Aesthete)