Mouchette

Profile :
Who : Educator for a “learning through arts” preschool
Where : The preschool
With : Nine children
When : The afternoon, during nap time
Doing : Taking advantage of a quiet moment to enrich her cultural knowledge
Laughing type : Forced laugh

Kids are noisy. Of course, I love them. I’m glad to teach them arts and crafts. I'm amazed by how creative they are. I learn so much from them. Not all kids have an access to all this artistic material and education. I’m convinced that creativity increases their confidence, just as I know that nap time will increase my level of energy.

I still thought of these children related inequalities and this reminded me a very famous French movie entitled Mouchette directed by Robert Bresson. Poor Mouchette! The character really embodies the infantile misery. I googled “Mouchette” just to make the memory more vivid. I clicked on the first link. I was surprised to find myself browsing a 13 year-old artist’s website. The scrolling window contained links entitled “triple x” or “stripped penis”. I was quite shocked and I almost felt bad to look at the website in the environment where I was standing. Being too curious to get off the site, I clicked on the “suicide” link. A suicide kit? She asks for a suicide kit? Is this a bad joke? I don’t want to think about “the best way to kill yourself when you are under 13”, why would I? I don’t want to be implicated in any way with this Mouchette. I then clicked on the “kill that cat” link. There was this cat moving crazy on the screen and making lots of noise. It was very aggressing and my first thought was : it will wake up the kids and, therefore, spoil my break. There was a link saying “kill that cat” so I clicked on it immediately because I really wanted to have my rest. Then Mouchette asked me why I killed her cat. I felt really guilty to answer : “I wanted my rest”, is this a good reason to kill? I felt strange about the fact that this virtual and fictionnal Mouchette was to concrete for me.