The French Socialist party and its elephants

It's not that often a video for a political party creates a buzz.

Even though it's perhaps still a little early to say that the parties here in France have got into full campaigning swing for next year's regional elections, the Socialists have nonetheless managed to raise a perplexed eyebrow or two with their latest television spot.

"La France qu'on aime" (The France that we love) is beautifully filmed, and as the journalist Gérald Andrieu points out in the weekly news magazine, Marianne, there's definitely a touch of "Ensemble, tout devient possible" (Together everything becomes possible), the campaign slogan the president, Nicolas Sarkozy, used when he was running for office in 2007.

Expression directe - La France qu'on aime, version courte.
par PartiSocialiste

In the film, there's the stress on how much local Socialist party politicians do to make the everyday lives of their constituents that much better.

Smiling faces of good-looking people who are not too drop-dead gorgeous but just enough to remind us of how we should all really look.

On the whole they're a youthful bunch, although older generations aren't forgotten nor are the handicapped. Of course the environment is given a chunk of air time in terms of "clean" transport, "clean" energy, "clean" everything.

There's a nod to the arts, children, education, technology, the future. In fact the whole gamut of issues - political, social and economic - all packed into two minutes (short version) or just over five minutes (long version).

But wait. Do a double take. What was that at one minute and three seconds of running time?

Thanks goodness Andrieu draws viewers' attention to it, because otherwise it might slip past.

For there, just for a fleeting moment, is an elephant, albeit a mechanical one.

So what? You might ask.

Well, that's also the rather pejorative term used by many to refer to the party's "old guard"; those that have for some had their hands on the reins of power for too long.

Indeed just last week several of them were welcomed back into the fold of the national bureau as proof that the party is going through the final phase of - ahem - "renovating" itself.

So what's going on in the TV spot?

"A subliminal image perhaps?" asks Andrieu. As though the party is trying to say "We (the elephants) are still around. We've won. It's us that has the power, not you."

And as if that's not enough, there's that added extra to the message for the "more paranoid" among us says Andrieu.

"The elephant doesn't just come from 'nowhere'," he points out.

"But from a (marionette street) theatre company which carries the name 'Royal de Luxe'."

What a coincidence, you might think.

Surely some sort of sign although it should be noted that the Nantes-based company has nothing whatsoever to do with the woman who was the party's candidate during the 2007 presidential election campaign and was the proverbial thorn in the elephants' sides then and still is now....Ségolène.

Apart from sharing a name of course.

Maybe proof, suggests Andrieu, of a "Socialist elephant conspiracy not to share power!"

Surely not.