“ <i>Sans la liberté de flatter</i> , <i>il n’est pas d’éloge blâmeur</i> ”: Jacques Martin and French television satire in the 1960s and 1970s

The comedian and television presenter Jacques Martin (1933–2007) is well-known to the French public even a quarter century after his disappearance from their screens. Despite having been the author/originator of many of the most watched and influential shows on French television in the 1960s, 1970s, and beyond, Martin is curiously little studied in academic literature, even though much of his work can be seen to prefigure later trends in television programming. Focusing on his satirical comedy shows of the 1960s and 1970s (at the expense of his extensive other work presenting popular culture on the petit écran during the period) this article examines his satirical project and suggests that the surprising lack of interest in his work is due to the subaltern status of the popular culture that inspired and infused his programs.