French cultural history: De Gaulle's cinematic legacy and 18th-century arachnology

An editorial discusses the cultural fascination with Charles de Gaulle in France, prompted by the success of Antonin Baudry’s two-part film, ‘Bataille De Gaulle’. The film has attracted nearly 5 million viewers, sparking debate over the historical rewriting of De Gaulle’s legacy and the French public's tendency to seek a ‘providential man’ to solve modern issues like public spending and economic depression. The piece notes that historically, De Gaulle was not always the consensus hero, as crowds in 1944 often rallied around Marshal Pétain.

In a separate cultural reflection, the history of Denis-Bernard Quatremère d’Isjonval is examined. A brother to the architect Quatremère de Quincy, d’Isjonval was a military officer under Napoleon Bonaparte who also became an enthusiast of arachnology. In his 1797 treatise, ‘De l’Aranéologie’, he famously anthropomorphized spiders, describing them through a hierarchy of human roles ranging from workers and officers to philosophers and even gods.