What is particularly upsetting about this scenario is the fact that, as the OP recognized, the French New Wave’s intention was to challenge its audience, operate as non-commercially as possible, and always deal with the world with a truckload of irony. It’s a bit like reducing another famous French movement, the Existentialist movement, down to being a snooty thing to do with your smokes and your café friends.
It hardly needs to be said, when a movement or an idea is deliberately undermined, there’s usually a way someone is profiting from that. In this case, Icona Pop is benefitting from utilizing the movement’s reputation for sophistication and timelessness— but more importantly, the media industry is benefiting from these associations without actually honoring the philosophies of the movement. When things are parsed to their smallest components, it is easier to remove the parts that make it a threat. Here, this homage to the FNW heavily romanticized the sixties and removed the techniques of the movement from their context. Existentialism has become a caricature of itself, interchangeable with nihilism in the public eye. When someone, especially a politician, is having an existential crisis, it is an idea played up for amusement or scorn; the Republican Party doesn’t know what to do now that the debt relief budget has passed, they’re having an existential crisis.
In their original form, the FNW and the existentialists presented a problem to the powers that be, in that both were created to challenge the colonialist, moralistic narrative we keep today. Without second-guessing our identities— what we must do in life, who we must be— and/or how we identify with the characters meant to represent us onscreen— the female character’s narrative versus the male’s narrative versus the person of color’s narrative and the roles they assign us— then we fall into a trap. Both French movements were created to make us question our roles in life. But as they are now, they are neutered versions of their revolutionary roots.
In a world where our self-identity continues to be shaped around who we sympathize with on the screen, using FNW techniques to separate ourselves from the image and be aware of what’s happening behind the camera is even more important. We’re surrounded by media input, all of which continues to tell the same hero’s journey. In fact, there was a very interesting TEDx about rising trend of “epic violence” in teen and young adult films. These stories, more often than not, focus on young people, destined to overthrow some Big Bad in the style of Star Wars and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Which isn’t to say that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it teaches something marketable rather than something radical. People expect to find their destined love or their destined purpose and they expect their evils to be large and violent and incomprehensible. But evils usually come from the idea that… you are destined to do something, that you’re untouchable and on solid moral ground. That you’re a hero. The people who have been most assured in their worst actions are the people who felt their purpose was clear and just (and that they were like the heroes of legend, too! a Percival or a Galahad…). It’s where the cult of the personality/messiah figure comes from as well, which has given people the unquestioned power they need to commit atrocities.
Real revolution comes from questions. The FNW and the existentialists understood that everything must be questioned, exposed to inquiry, and investigated. Between the decentering techniques and the political messages embedded in deconstructing film/narratives/characters, the FNW revolutionized sixties’ cinema. As in, brought the revolution to the world of film; they made you question the structure of the movie itself, what it was teaching you, who you were in it. It’s still important to do this and not lose the message of doubting and questioning in “homages” like this one, full of romanticized, neutered images. It’s not that FNW film is purposeless— they weren’t nihilists— but it is film that questions its own existence.
