I was sitting today on a bench on
Place Garibaldi (Nice). I sat and watched a small girl chase pigeons. They ran before her and she shouted “Birdie! Birdie! Birdie!” She ran tirelessly after them and I had just started wondering what the point of all this exhausting activity was when I noticed that there were less and less pigeons walking around. They were all gathering, perched high on a statue right in the middle of a fountain. They were looking at the girl with indignant expressions, probably wondering what she meant to do once the place was all clear of them.
French people have a very interesting expression: “se faire prendre pour un pigeon”, and they even have a verb “pigeonner”. It is used when someone cheats you or when you are too naive and someone uses that to take all your money. I’m always tempted to translate it literally as “to take someone for a pigeon”, that is to believe that someone actually IS a pigeon... There is something genuinely amazing in the idea that some of those pigeons out there might actually be real people that we only take for pigeons. Soon, we are convinced they are birdies and we actually start seeing them as such. This is how some people end up disappearing from our lives and turn into flying fortresses with dangerously corrosive droppings for amunition.
In fact, the human world and its entire socio-political structure is based on a very peculiar binary opposition between people-pigeons and normal people. Who the pigeon-people are and who the normal ones are remains to be seen. However, this opposition becomes very clear if you attend any kind of collective protest.
Recent events around the ACTA treaty are a case in point. The two camps are clear: hacktivists, anonymous groups and other freedom-loving people against some elites (when one thinks of it, they do have a lot in common with those pumped-up and dangerously blood-thirsty World-of-Warcraft—beast of the same appellation!), governments, and the police. Pigeoning someone would suppose taking out all their feathers one by one. French people also have a verb for that one: plumer quelqu’un. It is a cruel image but, basically, that is how some artists and some luxury goods manufacturers and other more or less, let’s face it, rich people with villas, yachts, and no-one-knows how much money in no-one-knows which fiscal paradise see all of this. The nameless crowd, the filthy, ragged, unimaginative masses are only waiting for one thing – to steal what these classy people produce and replicate it. Thus, the normal people, that is the masses, take things from the pigeon-people, steal from them, ruthlessly spread their work around, pay no rights and enjoy their produce for free. But let’s face it, people need to know that something is of quality before they buy it… When it comes to luxury, well, it is more easy to decide. But when it comes to films… some of the Hollywood junk out there should not even have been filmed on the first place, let alone sold on the market – that is how worthless it is.
But imagine this little hacktivist in front of his computer. Is he hacking for fun or is he hacking because he has realised that some of his fundamental rights have been taken away? Maybe he has realised that he has no access to all information, information that might actually change his way of looking at things. The thing is, if that were true, then that little hacktivist is actually the pigeon-guy. Stripped down to essentials, this is also (and again!) about a good-versus-evil fight, in which freedom fighters engage in a combat for liberties. Hence, THEY are the pigeon-people, the free-flying, liberty-loving and, most importantly, the constantly running and hiding part of the population.
And they are constantly running because of the pigeon-chasers, naturally. As far as we know, pigeon chasers chase pigeons in order to get rid of them. There is no knowing what they shall do when the pigeons fly away or when no pigeons remain to be chased. I have a feeling that there will always be pigeons and there will always be pigeon chasers. The thing is, neither is the pigeons’ purpose clear (for no one knows what happens in the mind of a pigeon), nor is the aim of the pigeon-chasers clear (for no one knows why they chase them)…
Bonus:
