DANS LA FABRIQUE DU MYTHE AMÉRICAIN : DÉCONSTRUIRE L’AMÉRICANITÉ AVEC JEAN ROLIN DANS LE RAVISSEMENT DE BRITNEY SPEARS
IN THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN MYTH: DECONSTRUCTING “AMERICANNESS” WITH JEAN ROLIN IN LE RAVISSEMENT DE BRITNEY SPEARS

Summary/Abstract: Jean Rolin’s Le Ravissement de Britney Spears initially presents itself as a resolutely absurd novel: a French spy without a driver’s license is sent to Los Angeles to protect Britney Spears, supposedly threatened by a terrorist organization. Yet as the narrative unfolds, a more critical reflection emerges, inviting readers to interrogate the representations of America in contemporary French literature.Drawing on Roland Barthes’s tools of myth analysis, this paper examines how Rolin stages a mythological vision of postmodern America: a society defined not only by the consumption of objects and bodies but also by images and signs. The novel constructs a representation of the myth of “Americanness” while simultaneously functioning as a counter-myth, subverting French literary conventions to question its own positioning as a critique of American culture. Through Los Angeles, the paradigmatic city of simulacra, the narrative explores the challenge of representing a world saturated with signs, where fiction itself becomes symptomatic of the reality it seeks to depict.

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