Here at Nature & Cultures and its sister website Waters of the Globe , where many of our activities were inspired by such quality nature programs, we are deeply saddened by the news of the passing of Georges Pernoud, creator and decades-long host on French national television of Thalassa "the magazine of the sea", the floating headquarters of which were docked within walking distance of our American University of Paris. Unless you compare him to David Attenborough, it is extremely difficult, outside the French speaking world, to explain the impact of Georges Pernoud (Aug. 11, 1947-Jan. 11, 2021) and his TV show "Thalassa" (created in 1975, still on the air) on the geography and ecology of the oceans and the lives of the people of the seas.
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Do not miss these feature stories in this Issue 5 (Winter-Spring 2021) of N&C Nature & Cultures:
"Thalassa's" Georges Pernoud (1947 - 2021)” a tribute to one of France's icons of travel journalism; “Borders and identities - Let us change our way of thinking” by Dr. by Katja Banik; "An emblematic geopolitical journal in Germany: the Zeitschrift für Geopolitik (1924-1944) and its newsworthiness"
by Prof. Goran Sekulovski; "The Chernobyl effect: did ecological damage bring down the Soviet-model régimes of Central and Eastern Europe?" by Colin Hardage; "The Chinese Communist Party and the Environment" by Caleb Lemke. Plus our permanent features: The Nature & Cultures electronic library, and our mini-encyclopedia of constitutional systems country by country: The Comparative Government Project
"Thalassa's" Georges Pernoud (1947 - 2021)” a tribute to one of France's icons of travel journalism; “Borders and identities - Let us change our way of thinking” by Dr. by Katja Banik; "An emblematic geopolitical journal in Germany: the Zeitschrift für Geopolitik (1924-1944) and its newsworthiness"
by Prof. Goran Sekulovski; "The Chernobyl effect: did ecological damage bring down the Soviet-model régimes of Central and Eastern Europe?" by Colin Hardage; "The Chinese Communist Party and the Environment" by Caleb Lemke. Plus our permanent features: The Nature & Cultures electronic library, and our mini-encyclopedia of constitutional systems country by country: The Comparative Government Project
ast month, on January 10th, the French speaking world of media lost one of the most significant journalists and Television show runners of the past six decades, Georges Pernoud. He was, above all, the creator and decades-long host on French national television of Thalassa "the Magazine of the Sea". Unless you compare him to David Attenborough, it is extremely difficult, outside the French speaking world, to explain the impact of Georges Pernoud and his TV show "Thalassa" created in 1975, and still on the air. He belongs to the generation of media influencers who rose awareness on the geography and ecology of the oceans and the lives of the people of the seas. The French Ministry of the Sea on its official account summarized what Georges Pernoud had meant for French culture and expressed what it was grateful for: “For his love for the sea, for his passion for landscapes, and for having awakened our awareness”.
Born in 1947 in Rabbat, Morocco when that country was still a French protectorate, Georges Alexis Pernoud grew up in a family well established in the media; his father, Jean Pernoud (1906-1990), was a reputed local journalist, as well as his uncle and namesake Georges Pernoud (1914-1976) who would become the editor-in-chief of Paris Match (the French equivalent of Life magazine) and was married to Laurence Pernoud, born Secretan (1918-2009), who best-selling essays on maternity and education, and Régine Pernoud (1909-1998), a illustrious historian.
Born in 1947 in Rabbat, Morocco when that country was still a French protectorate, Georges Alexis Pernoud grew up in a family well established in the media; his father, Jean Pernoud (1906-1990), was a reputed local journalist, as well as his uncle and namesake Georges Pernoud (1914-1976) who would become the editor-in-chief of Paris Match (the French equivalent of Life magazine) and was married to Laurence Pernoud, born Secretan (1918-2009), who best-selling essays on maternity and education, and Régine Pernoud (1909-1998), a illustrious historian.
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Haroun (or Harun) Tazieff: one of the great influencers who rose awareness of environmental issues in French speaking countries thanks to the media
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In 1968, he was hired as a cameraman for ORTF, the French television broadcasting company. One of his earliest assignments made him immediately part of the world of France’s media explorers and nature heroes when he was sent to cover field work by volcanologist Harun Tazieff.
Tazieff, a Franco-Belgian geologist, born in a very ethnically diverse family in Warsaw, had become a household name in French speaking countries not so much because of his pioneering new methods of observation of volcanoes (descending into craters of erupting volcabnoes with special equipment) but mainly because his communication strategy. Like his friend’s Captain Cousteau’s Silent World, his autobiographical documentary Les Rendez-Vous du Diable (The Devil’s Appointments), propelled him to a stardom sustained by his books, richly illustrated magazine features written by him or about him, numerous other appearances in the media, even in comic strips, and finally television shows. This was the adventurous mediatic universe Pernoud became immersed during the two expeditions he j oined to film Tazieff in the African wilderness. |
In the 1950s and 1960s when sometimes , in a rural village or urban community there was only one television set for several families, children and teenagers and sometimes their parents would gather together on a school holiday, a dozen or more at a time, or adults would gather in a café to watch images of unexplored worlds made available for the first time. Nature documentaries would also become a family event when they were shown on prime time. Tazieff was one of several celebrities whose spectacular outdoors activities became favorite material for television programmers documenting the last of the adventurers mapping parts of the planet that were still unexplored: Paul-Emile Victor (one of the first to cross Greenland and probably the last member of an expedition travelling aboard a traditional sail ship, also an illustrious explorer of Antarctica), pioneer speleologist Norbert Casteret, mountain climber Maurice Herzog (first on a summit of over 8000 meters, the Annapurna), sailing champion Eric Tabarly, biologist and specialist in survival techniques Alain Bombard, and many other icons of outdoors exploits, including of course Captain Cousteau who's connection to American broadcast media made him famous worldwide.
6 icons of French adventure travel, exploration and/or geography were chosen by the French postal service to represent France's special relations to geography. Born in the 19th century, anthropologist, orientalist and author Alexandra David-Néel, who accomplished exceptionally adventurous travel to Tibet and many other parts of Asia as a middle-aged woman and died at 101, and Norbert Casteret, pioneer speleologist, were rather known through the printed press, although they appeared in the broadcast media. So was sailing champion and inventor of marine technologies Eric Tabarly whose television appearances were more frequent since his sporting heroics were often a subject of newscasts. Paul-Emile Victor, one of the greatest Polar explorers of all times, oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau and volcanologist Haroun Tazieff were not only famous subjects of books, magazine articles and documentaries, they were stars of television programs and militant environmentalists. Georges Pernoud began his career by covering the work of Tazieff and had often crossed paths with Cousteau, Victor and especially Tabarly whose many racing teammates and disciples had become his close friends.
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Biologist and inventor of survival techniques Alain Bombard was yet another of many icons of French environmental culture and a famous media figure. Christian Zuber's "Caméra au poing " ("Grasping a Camera") and François de La Grange's Les Animaux Du Monde ("Animals of the World") were among the many popular nature programs that in the 1960s played the role in France of shows like those hosted by David Attenborough on BBC, Marlin Perkins in the US or Bernhard Grzimek on German television. Georges Pernoud's creation "Thalassa" , created in 1975, was not only the worthy successor of these "outdoorsy" shows but reached cult status and, still on the air at present, is the fourth longest running regular show in the history of French television.
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After his expeditions with Tazieff, Pernoud’s career took a completely different turn in 1973 while putting him further in touch with the wilderness, this time, a dangerous maritime wilderness. He was accepted aboard 33 Export to cover the first leg (Portsmouth England to Cape Town South Africa) of the sailing ship’s participation in the first Whitbread Round the World Race (called The Ocean Race since 2019). Seasick at first and with no experience whatsoever of ocean traveling, especially in an extreme environment, Pernoud considered this great adventure as a revelation and the birth of his lifelong passion. After publishing a book on this experience, his next initiative was going to forever associate his name with the sea. The young journalist presented to his bosses at ORTF a project in which he would produce Thalassa, a broadcast “magazine of the sea”.
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At first it was a very modest half-hour show with only four or five feature stories filmed with a shaky 16 millimeter camera. But that was enough to bring pleasure to TV viewers in those mid-seventies. Indeed, while each French, Belgian, Luxembourgian and Swiss household possessed by then a television set, the number of available channels was minimal. France had only three. Also, at a time when cable was still in a distant future and video games were almost inexistant, cinema was in crisis: a golden age for mature educated spectators who appreciated Five Easy Pieces, The Godfather, or Pier Paolo Pasolini’s masterpieces, it was also the period when most theaters were either shutting down by the dozens in the same town or trying to survive by projecting scratched copies of karate movies, old spaghetti westerns or porn, which seriously limited the choices of kids and families on a week-end night in this pre-Star Wars era. Therefore, in Europe, television, although no longer the fascinating novelty of the earlier two decades, now suddenly being viewed in color, remained an essential feature of entertainment. So were nature programs. In addition, they had gained a new appeal : with the democratization of travel plus a growing awareness of environmental issues, the new French “outdoorsy” shows of the late to mid-1970s like Les Carnets de l’Aventure (Adventure Notebooks), La Course Autour du Monde (The Race Around the World), and especially the new seasons of Cousteau’s series, were showing a new generation of armchair travelers or genuine backpackers fascinating wilderness areas which they could realistically dream of visiting someday. This second wave of television programs – those of the 1970s and 1980s, a forum for a new generation of journalists and show hosts – were also voicing the growing environmentalist concerns of those who were entering adulthood and had been educated in the sixties not only by all the shows mentioned before but also by kiddie animal shows with conservation messages such as the numerous Anglo-Saxon imports – Flipper, Gentle Ben, Daktari, and Skippy the Kangaroo – or the home-grown and more educational Les Animaux du Monde (Animals of the World) and Caméra au Poing (Gripping a Camera) by militant environmentalist Christian Zuber. Although not as militant as the colleagues of his generation such as Brice Lalonde, Jean-Loup Etienne, Nicolas Hulot (which he will be criticized for), Georges Pernoud, through his success with the public became a star of this second wave of nature and geographic journalism.
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Pernoud began hosting Thalassa: le Magazine de la Mer himself in 1980, which is when he started gaining popularity thanks to his charming and quiet charisma. In the 1980s, at a time when lavishly illustrated geographic, nature and travel magazines such as the now popular French versions of National Geographic or numerous equivalent French publications had yet to come into existence (the French version of the German Geo was only in its infancy), Thalassa’s production value had risen to the highest international standards of broadcasting. Content, sound and image recording (now in high quality film or video) could compete with the best BBC or US nature shows. Thalassa's staff roster would eventually reach nearly 50 journalists, researchers and technicians.
< One of the earliest boradcasts of Thalassa. Modest technical means but not one of the earliest examples of CGI in the credits.
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Also, The Magazine of the Sea had evolved into a prime-time Friday evening 60 minute format during which Pernoud and a panel of co-hosts and reporters presented the magazine in a talk-show format, live from their studio aboard a barge docked along the Seine river near the Eiffel Tower, where all the offices, archives and infrastructures of the production remained until he retired. The host and his panelists, first discussed maritime news items, then introduced the subject of the next filmed featured story and finally commented on them, after which Pernoud almost always concluded the feature with a simple “Voilà!” (“There!”). He also got into the habit of concluding each show with a few words followed by “Bon vent!” (“Wishing you favorable winds” - “Good luck!”) which became his trademark send-off.
"Thalassa's" new mooring in the 15th district of Paris near the smaller version of Lady Liberty.
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The barge Thalassa named after the show, was its studio and full production faciltity. Now operated as a restaurant by a charity, it is docked only further East but only a mile away from its original mooring.
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At the height of its popularity in the 1980s, for anyone aged above 12, a highly enjoyable Friday evening at home meant watching Thalassa immediately after the evening news, and for older generations, continuing with Bernard Pivot's Apostrophes (a live litterary talk show and another legend of French language broadcasting history with guests such as Nabokov, Charles Bukowski, Umberto Eco, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and all the imaginable greatest living writers of the 20th Century) and the "Ciné Club" (the greatest classical movies in their original non-dubbed language version). “Who has never seen Thalassa? All generations combined, in my opinion no one! " said Loïck Peyron, one of the globe's most reknowned skippers in the world of sailing, when he was on the show for its fortieth anniversary.[i]
< The evolution of opening credits of Thalassa during its 46 year-old history
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"In the 1980s Thalassa had evolved into a prime-time Friday evening 60 minute format presented by during Pernoud and a panel of co-hosts and reporters in a talk-show format, on prime time live from their studio aboard a barge docked along the Seine river near the Eiffel Tower. The host and his panelists, first discussed maritime news items, then introduced the subject of the next filmed featured story and finally commented on them after which Pernoud almost always concluded the feature with a simple “Voilà!” (“There!”)"
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The tv viewers definitely felt a warm atmosphere that radiated live from the studio. Stéphanie Brabant, one of the most acclaimed writers of Thalassa’s editorial staff remembers:
"He announced the births of our children on the air, celebrated our birthdays ... And when the lights went out after the live shows, like a patriarch, he would invite everyone to his table for drinks and oysters. "[ii] Many of his colleagues remember Georges Pernoud as someone who did not behave like a diva, as so many hosts and who are also the show-runner. He is said to have always been around to help carrying equipment, putting cables away, and helping to install a camera.
In the 42 years of Pernoud's work as its showrunner, Thalassa's extended team of journalists reported on a great variety of subjects that could include stories about sports events and personalities in the world of sailing (a favorite of the show), shipbuilding, technological advances in the French Navy, vacation destinations, marine biology, fish markets, coast guard operations, marine painting or photography, the research and expeditions of oceanographers and hydrographers, docking facilities all over the world and the daily lives of the "laborer’s of the sea" – fishermen, oyster farmers, professional deep-sea divers, harbor masters, pilots, dockers and other seaport worker, rescuers at sea, nautical sports instructors, sailmakers, chandlers, shipwrights, restorers of antique vessels, indigenous islanders in the Arctic or on the shores of tropical oceans, marine archeologists, or bar and restaurant owners popular with sailors. Numerous other topics were explored by the reporters of “The Magazine of the Sea”:
“Isabelle Moeglin was enthusiastic about the Aral Sea which had become a desert of sand, Lise Blanchet wanted to go to Venice, and Loic Etevenard amused the gang with an anecdote collected on a pontoon in South Africa. With his beautiful deep voice, Yves Pellissier evoked a lighthouse at the end of the world and Sophie Bontemps wanted to follow in the footsteps of the coelacanth, a fossil fish spotted not far from the Comoros." writes Thalassa's staff writer Véronique Veber in her obituary "Georges Pernoud, the man who loved the sea"[iii]
"He announced the births of our children on the air, celebrated our birthdays ... And when the lights went out after the live shows, like a patriarch, he would invite everyone to his table for drinks and oysters. "[ii] Many of his colleagues remember Georges Pernoud as someone who did not behave like a diva, as so many hosts and who are also the show-runner. He is said to have always been around to help carrying equipment, putting cables away, and helping to install a camera.
In the 42 years of Pernoud's work as its showrunner, Thalassa's extended team of journalists reported on a great variety of subjects that could include stories about sports events and personalities in the world of sailing (a favorite of the show), shipbuilding, technological advances in the French Navy, vacation destinations, marine biology, fish markets, coast guard operations, marine painting or photography, the research and expeditions of oceanographers and hydrographers, docking facilities all over the world and the daily lives of the "laborer’s of the sea" – fishermen, oyster farmers, professional deep-sea divers, harbor masters, pilots, dockers and other seaport worker, rescuers at sea, nautical sports instructors, sailmakers, chandlers, shipwrights, restorers of antique vessels, indigenous islanders in the Arctic or on the shores of tropical oceans, marine archeologists, or bar and restaurant owners popular with sailors. Numerous other topics were explored by the reporters of “The Magazine of the Sea”:
“Isabelle Moeglin was enthusiastic about the Aral Sea which had become a desert of sand, Lise Blanchet wanted to go to Venice, and Loic Etevenard amused the gang with an anecdote collected on a pontoon in South Africa. With his beautiful deep voice, Yves Pellissier evoked a lighthouse at the end of the world and Sophie Bontemps wanted to follow in the footsteps of the coelacanth, a fossil fish spotted not far from the Comoros." writes Thalassa's staff writer Véronique Veber in her obituary "Georges Pernoud, the man who loved the sea"[iii]
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< Georges Pernoud's last broadcast aa host of Thalassa (unabridged)
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What could be seen in retrospective as Georges Pernoud's swan song, was the 2014-2015 series of shows broadcast live aboard a vintage sail ship docking in a different French seaport every Friday evening. As the show's new floating studio slowly navigated along the entire shoreline of France during those two years, at each weekly stopover, the team of Thalassa was greeted with crowds that could be as large and enthusiastic as the spectators along the roads of the Tour de France bicycle race. "Telling us about the sea (...)", explains Michel Desjoyeaux, the only skipper to win the Vendée Globe race around the World twice, "Georges Pernoud brought this wonderful world away from the shoreline inside all homes. For everyone from 7 to 77 years old. When you say that you are a sailor, a lot of people talk to us about Thalassa. As soon as you move away from the seaside, the reference is Thalassa ».[iv] |
In 2017 after 1704 issues of Thalassa, Georges Pernoud, calm, smiling and debonair as usual, pronounced his last "Bon Vent!". He passed away on January 10, 2021, from what appears to be complications resulting from Alzheimer’s disease.
"With Thalassa, which he created and presented for nearly 40 years, Georges Pernoud transmitted to the French his love of the sea and landscapes. It is up to our generation today to protect this nature that we have learned to know." Announced France's President Emmanuel Macron in a January 11 Tweet
Other than maybe the first signs of health issues that would end his life four years later, Pernoud had been apparently frustrated with attempts to reduce the show's visibility by the new style of management of his television channel. Thalassa lost its prime time scheduling and was reduced to a monthly programming squeezed into frequently changing time slots.
"With Thalassa, which he created and presented for nearly 40 years, Georges Pernoud transmitted to the French his love of the sea and landscapes. It is up to our generation today to protect this nature that we have learned to know." Announced France's President Emmanuel Macron in a January 11 Tweet
Other than maybe the first signs of health issues that would end his life four years later, Pernoud had been apparently frustrated with attempts to reduce the show's visibility by the new style of management of his television channel. Thalassa lost its prime time scheduling and was reduced to a monthly programming squeezed into frequently changing time slots.
The problem was that the era of European public broadcasting that viewed its role as essentially educational and in which channel managers considered their work as a mission, like editors of reputable publishing houses who decided what was good for the public, was already on its way out when Thalassa reached the peak of its popularity at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s. Once private commercial channels were allowed to broadcast on the French airways and advertising was allowed on the French public channels in the 1980s, marketing experts and advertisers began deciding what tv viewers supposedly wanted to watch.
But Georges Pernoud was also facing criticism himself for the decline of the show. The management of the channel was accused of putting pressure on the production to outsource the stories to news agencies. A serious threat to the jobs of journalists this is a trend that has become typical today in modern editorial practices which prefer to replace seasoned reporters with cheaper interns and inexperienced freelancers who accept any compromise – financial and editorial -- to add a line to their résumé. studies from Think Out, a consulting agency hired by France Télévision, the French public broadcasting system, recommended privatization, outsourcing and what the new editorial line should be in the 21st century: “avoid showing characters who are too unfriendly, who do not make you want to travel”, also avoid “adopting a continuous negative tone" and "tackle delicate subjects from the angle of the solution rather than the observation”.[v] In other words, according to Serge Cimino, a union delegate of the employees of Thalassa, interviewed in 2015 for the political weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, and who claimed to represent other critics, these studies by Think Out, wanted to turn Thalassa “into a ‘feel-good TV’ type of program, a sort of televised postcard with the sea merely as a backdrop".[vi] According to the well-known investigative site Mediapart Pernoud was accused by several of his own of not fighting hard enough to protect his journalists against these pressures. The reason, was that Pernoud’s view of the show was allergic to the politics and had always tended to let Thalassa slip into the genre of pure escapist entertainment. “I don't want to be an activist he clearly said himself in 2015, “It doesn't interest me, even if it is true that we did show, ten years ago, the vortices of plastic north of Hawaii ... But investigations cost more. We know when it starts, never when it stops. When the Costa Concordia was wrecked off the coast of Tuscany, we asked ourselves the question: should we go? It would have involved long procedures and going back twenty times ...”[vii]
Nevertheless, Pernoud advanced awareness of maritime issues, and reverence for this extraordinary environment which is the sea.
He may have been allergic to investigative journalism and activism, but for many years, at least until the pressures and demand for pure entertainment began affecting the quality and incisiveness of Thalassa, and only very recently, he let his journalists report on grave political or environmental issues. Isabelle Moeglin recalls how in 1990, after coming across a Russian monthly magazine she found out about the disappearance of a central Asian inland sea: the Aral Sea. She submitted the idea of a story on the subject.
‘We've never heard of this story,’ answered Pernoud, ‘it sounds complicated, it's going to be expensive and it's halfway around the world ... not sure our audience is interested.’
A silence followed. Then, Pernoud asked:
‘Do you believe in this story?’
‘We cannot fail to report on a disappearing sea, it is an unprecedented ecological disaster.’
‘Well I'm not convinced but… you can go.’[viii]
Isabelle Moeglin won a major award for the resulting film Aral, la mer assassinée (Aral, the Assassinated Sea). Pernoud was seen as an extremely demanding boss – he is quoted as saying that bad luck (compromising the production of a story) is a professional fault – he was inspiring. No matter how skeptical, his green light to Moeglin’s story and his trust “gave me wings” she remembers, and despite the criticism expressed around 2015, words of praise abound from many other Thalassa alumni[ix] such as Loic Etevenard (‘Meeting George was what changed my life’), Philippe Vilamitjana ("These are the best moments of my professional life") or veteran Ramon Gutierrez who is almost lyrical about the beginnings of the show:
‘Our world was big so long as it was blue!’
Also, when interviewed on France Inter, France's national public radio news station and leading media outlet, Pernoud, challenged with questions about accusations of depoliticizing the show, he defended his programming by listing the numerous features which reported on major environmental cocerns, particularly the three years of working with the researchers of oceanographic vessel Tara investigating plankton and the effects of global warming on the' oceans. [the interview is accessible here]
So even though “feel good” picturesque stories may have been Pernoud’s favorite, he was an influencer who advanced France’s progressive culture towards the environment whether he liked it or not.
‘Who could go to Mururoa to see the damage caused by the nuclear tests? Who could board a nuclear submarine or a Russian icebreaker?’ asks René Heuzey, yet another Thalassa graduate.
One quality of Georges Pernoud must not be forgotten; it shows that somehow he was progressive after all. Still a rare occurrence as late as the 1990s, the team of journalists that he hired included an equal number of men and women.[x]
But Georges Pernoud was also facing criticism himself for the decline of the show. The management of the channel was accused of putting pressure on the production to outsource the stories to news agencies. A serious threat to the jobs of journalists this is a trend that has become typical today in modern editorial practices which prefer to replace seasoned reporters with cheaper interns and inexperienced freelancers who accept any compromise – financial and editorial -- to add a line to their résumé. studies from Think Out, a consulting agency hired by France Télévision, the French public broadcasting system, recommended privatization, outsourcing and what the new editorial line should be in the 21st century: “avoid showing characters who are too unfriendly, who do not make you want to travel”, also avoid “adopting a continuous negative tone" and "tackle delicate subjects from the angle of the solution rather than the observation”.[v] In other words, according to Serge Cimino, a union delegate of the employees of Thalassa, interviewed in 2015 for the political weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, and who claimed to represent other critics, these studies by Think Out, wanted to turn Thalassa “into a ‘feel-good TV’ type of program, a sort of televised postcard with the sea merely as a backdrop".[vi] According to the well-known investigative site Mediapart Pernoud was accused by several of his own of not fighting hard enough to protect his journalists against these pressures. The reason, was that Pernoud’s view of the show was allergic to the politics and had always tended to let Thalassa slip into the genre of pure escapist entertainment. “I don't want to be an activist he clearly said himself in 2015, “It doesn't interest me, even if it is true that we did show, ten years ago, the vortices of plastic north of Hawaii ... But investigations cost more. We know when it starts, never when it stops. When the Costa Concordia was wrecked off the coast of Tuscany, we asked ourselves the question: should we go? It would have involved long procedures and going back twenty times ...”[vii]
Nevertheless, Pernoud advanced awareness of maritime issues, and reverence for this extraordinary environment which is the sea.
He may have been allergic to investigative journalism and activism, but for many years, at least until the pressures and demand for pure entertainment began affecting the quality and incisiveness of Thalassa, and only very recently, he let his journalists report on grave political or environmental issues. Isabelle Moeglin recalls how in 1990, after coming across a Russian monthly magazine she found out about the disappearance of a central Asian inland sea: the Aral Sea. She submitted the idea of a story on the subject.
‘We've never heard of this story,’ answered Pernoud, ‘it sounds complicated, it's going to be expensive and it's halfway around the world ... not sure our audience is interested.’
A silence followed. Then, Pernoud asked:
‘Do you believe in this story?’
‘We cannot fail to report on a disappearing sea, it is an unprecedented ecological disaster.’
‘Well I'm not convinced but… you can go.’[viii]
Isabelle Moeglin won a major award for the resulting film Aral, la mer assassinée (Aral, the Assassinated Sea). Pernoud was seen as an extremely demanding boss – he is quoted as saying that bad luck (compromising the production of a story) is a professional fault – he was inspiring. No matter how skeptical, his green light to Moeglin’s story and his trust “gave me wings” she remembers, and despite the criticism expressed around 2015, words of praise abound from many other Thalassa alumni[ix] such as Loic Etevenard (‘Meeting George was what changed my life’), Philippe Vilamitjana ("These are the best moments of my professional life") or veteran Ramon Gutierrez who is almost lyrical about the beginnings of the show:
‘Our world was big so long as it was blue!’
Also, when interviewed on France Inter, France's national public radio news station and leading media outlet, Pernoud, challenged with questions about accusations of depoliticizing the show, he defended his programming by listing the numerous features which reported on major environmental cocerns, particularly the three years of working with the researchers of oceanographic vessel Tara investigating plankton and the effects of global warming on the' oceans. [the interview is accessible here]
So even though “feel good” picturesque stories may have been Pernoud’s favorite, he was an influencer who advanced France’s progressive culture towards the environment whether he liked it or not.
‘Who could go to Mururoa to see the damage caused by the nuclear tests? Who could board a nuclear submarine or a Russian icebreaker?’ asks René Heuzey, yet another Thalassa graduate.
One quality of Georges Pernoud must not be forgotten; it shows that somehow he was progressive after all. Still a rare occurrence as late as the 1990s, the team of journalists that he hired included an equal number of men and women.[x]
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Even if it had been unintentional, and Georges Pernoud may not have cared to have become an icon of French conservation, but that is how many will remember him. Even though others mays feel that this is exaggerated, he will at least, with his stories about the oceans of the world, have inspired millions of French speakers to love geography, especially in France, a country where, as deplored by one of its leading scholars, Yves Lacoste, geographic education, like math, according to a decades-old exaltation of endurance and suffering in French educational doctrine, is not supposed to be “fun” but needs to be taught in a dry, ultra-technical way. [xi]
Georges Pernoud's last "Bon Vent" shown on a TV special with vibrant testimonies from personalities including Erik Orsenna who explains how important he was for raising awareness on maritime affairs including the environment.
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The golden age of French television reporting on outdoors themes remarkably compensated for that and without glamorizing geography as did the show Thalassa, young (and older) French television viewers, as citizens, would never have reflected upon environmental issues as they did, making them a foundation of modern French popular culture political agendas.
Erik Orsenna a high-ranking civil servant and speach writer of French President François Mitterrand who held several government positions in the 1980s and 1990s, member of the incomparably prestigious French Academy of Letters, but who is best known for his widely known novels and non-fiction best-sellers many of which immerse readers into a very powerful geographic and at times maritime dimensions had prefaced Georges Pernoud’s autobiography Bon vent! and contributed to halassa as a scipt writer. Orsenna explains that Georges Pernoud's legacy, his "Bon Vent" is forever implanted in us. He talks of a battle that will continue without him “thanks to the energy that he gave us (...) and that 'Bon vent!' --- that rare alloy of wonder and respect”. [xii]
Choking on his tears, Orsenna says:
“Salut , Georges!” (So long, Georges).
But the final tribute to George Pernoud’s legacy should be according to the twenty five participants of the 2020-2021 round-the-World Vendée-Globe race who all sent a message from their sail ships to pay their respects to their most famous chronicler.
Voilà.
We here at Nature & Cultures hope that these few words about an important man of the seas will encourage you to find out more about France’s relationship to geography and the natural environment, about its promoters like Georges Pernoud and about the thousands of beautiful documentaries shown on Thalassa, many of which can be viewed online. And we wish you
“Bon vent!”
Erik Orsenna a high-ranking civil servant and speach writer of French President François Mitterrand who held several government positions in the 1980s and 1990s, member of the incomparably prestigious French Academy of Letters, but who is best known for his widely known novels and non-fiction best-sellers many of which immerse readers into a very powerful geographic and at times maritime dimensions had prefaced Georges Pernoud’s autobiography Bon vent! and contributed to halassa as a scipt writer. Orsenna explains that Georges Pernoud's legacy, his "Bon Vent" is forever implanted in us. He talks of a battle that will continue without him “thanks to the energy that he gave us (...) and that 'Bon vent!' --- that rare alloy of wonder and respect”. [xii]
Choking on his tears, Orsenna says:
“Salut , Georges!” (So long, Georges).
But the final tribute to George Pernoud’s legacy should be according to the twenty five participants of the 2020-2021 round-the-World Vendée-Globe race who all sent a message from their sail ships to pay their respects to their most famous chronicler.
Voilà.
We here at Nature & Cultures hope that these few words about an important man of the seas will encourage you to find out more about France’s relationship to geography and the natural environment, about its promoters like Georges Pernoud and about the thousands of beautiful documentaries shown on Thalassa, many of which can be viewed online. And we wish you
“Bon vent!”
[i] Quoted in Blaise de Chabalier. "Thalassa : l'appel du grand large souffle ses 40 bougies". Le Figaro.fr, November 20, 2015. https://tvmag.lefigaro.fr/programme-tv/article/television/89815/thalassa-l-appel-du-grand-large-souffle-ses-40-bougies.html Perron was quoted again saying “The question to ask is: who has never seen Thalassa? " in Anouk Corge (with AFP). "Les marins du Vendée Globe rendent hommage à Georges Pernoud", L'Equipe online, 11 janvier 2021, https://www.lequipe.fr/Medias/Actualites/Les-marins-du-vendee-globe-rendent-hommage-a-georges-pernoud/1213394
[ii] Quoted in Véronique Veber, "Georges Pernoud, l’homme qui aimait la mer". https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/georges-pernoud-homme-du-large-1915506.html retrieved February 15 2021
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Quoted in Anouk Corge, op. cit.
[v] Antoine Perraud. "Tempête sociale au sein de la rédaction de Thalassa" Médiapart. June 12, 2015. https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/culture-idees/120615/tempete-sociale-au-sein-de-la-redaction-de-thalassa and "Tempête à Thalassa : Georges Pernoud vivement critiqué par ses équipes". La Dépêche online. June 24, 20015. https://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2015/06/24/2131239-tempete-a-thalassa-georges-pernoud-vivement-critique-par-ses-equipes.html
[vi] Audrey Kucinskas. "’Thalassa’ sombre, Georges Pernoud se tait: je travaille à France Télé, sauvons l'émission”. L'OBS online, JUne 25, 2015. https://leplus.nouvelobs.com/contribution/1390273-thalassa-sombre-georges-pernoud-se-tait-je-travaille-a-france-tele-sauvons-l-emission.html
[vii] Emilie Gavoille. "A 40 ans, “Thalassa” ne fait plus de vagues". Télérama on line. Oct. 9, 2015. https://www.telerama.fr/television/a-40-ans-thalassa-ne-fait-plus-de-vagues,131920.php
[viii] Quoted in Véronique Veber, "Georges Pernoud, l’homme qui aimait la mer", op. cit.
[ix] Ibid.
[x] Véronique Veber, "Georges Pernoud, l’homme qui aimait la mer", op. cit.
[xi] See Yves Lacoste. La géographie, ça sert, d'abord, à faire la guerre. Maspero. Paris, 1976.
[xii] Anonymous. "Salut Georges" l'hommage d'Erik Orsenna. Video. On line. Thalassa Facebook page. Retrieved February 15, 2021. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=742378659816301
[ii] Quoted in Véronique Veber, "Georges Pernoud, l’homme qui aimait la mer". https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/georges-pernoud-homme-du-large-1915506.html retrieved February 15 2021
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Quoted in Anouk Corge, op. cit.
[v] Antoine Perraud. "Tempête sociale au sein de la rédaction de Thalassa" Médiapart. June 12, 2015. https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/culture-idees/120615/tempete-sociale-au-sein-de-la-redaction-de-thalassa and "Tempête à Thalassa : Georges Pernoud vivement critiqué par ses équipes". La Dépêche online. June 24, 20015. https://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2015/06/24/2131239-tempete-a-thalassa-georges-pernoud-vivement-critique-par-ses-equipes.html
[vi] Audrey Kucinskas. "’Thalassa’ sombre, Georges Pernoud se tait: je travaille à France Télé, sauvons l'émission”. L'OBS online, JUne 25, 2015. https://leplus.nouvelobs.com/contribution/1390273-thalassa-sombre-georges-pernoud-se-tait-je-travaille-a-france-tele-sauvons-l-emission.html
[vii] Emilie Gavoille. "A 40 ans, “Thalassa” ne fait plus de vagues". Télérama on line. Oct. 9, 2015. https://www.telerama.fr/television/a-40-ans-thalassa-ne-fait-plus-de-vagues,131920.php
[viii] Quoted in Véronique Veber, "Georges Pernoud, l’homme qui aimait la mer", op. cit.
[ix] Ibid.
[x] Véronique Veber, "Georges Pernoud, l’homme qui aimait la mer", op. cit.
[xi] See Yves Lacoste. La géographie, ça sert, d'abord, à faire la guerre. Maspero. Paris, 1976.
[xii] Anonymous. "Salut Georges" l'hommage d'Erik Orsenna. Video. On line. Thalassa Facebook page. Retrieved February 15, 2021. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=742378659816301