The Sound of France’s Pension Fury: Saucepans
LA CLUSE-ET-MIJOUX, France — Spreading across a highway so no cars could pass, 100 or so protesters banged saucepans in a deafening racket that echoed through this remote valley of eastern France in April.
Suddenly, a helicopter carrying President Emmanuel Macron appeared overhead. The boisterous demonstrators did not stop the French leader’s visit to a nearby castle, but the scene was an earsplitting reminder of the fury that has plagued his government since it enacted a highly unpopular pension overhaul this spring that raised the legal age of retirement to 64 from 62.
For weeks, opponents of the change have been harassing Mr. Macron and his cabinet members by banging pots and pans on their official trips. In a country with no shortage of kitchenware, the protests, known as “casserolades,” after the French word for saucepan, have disrupted or stopped dozens of visits by ministers to schools and factories.
The pan beating has become a symbol of broad discontent after months of large street demonstrations failed to push the government to back down on the pension changes.
“We are not being listened to,” said Christian Salmon, a French essayist and columnist for the online publication Slate. “So now we are left with a single option, which is not to listen to you either.”
The casserolades began in April during a televised speech by Mr. Macron that was intended as a way to move on from the pension upheaval. Determined to keep up the fight, protesters gathered outside City Halls across France to bang pots and pans. In Paris, many residents joined in from their apartment windows, filling entire neighborhoods with metallic notes.
Before long, members of the government were being greeted by a cookware cacophony across the country.
“We want to show them that we’re not giving up the fight,” said Nicole Draganovic, who was banging a saucepan on the highway at La Cluse-et-Mijoux.
Around her, amid the red flags of labor unions, were the sounds of myriad utensils from a typical French kitchen: sieves, lids and frying pans banged in rhythm with metal and wooden spoons. Demonstrators without pots were clanging on metal fences that lined the highway.
“It’s like a symphony,” Ms. Draganovic added.
Pan beating dates back to the Middle Ages in a custom, called “charivari,” that was intended to shame ill-matched couples, according to Emmanuel Fureix, a historian at University Paris-Est Créteil. The tradition then took a political turn in the 1830s, under King Louis Philippe I, with people banging pots and pans at night under the windows of judges’ and politicians’ homes to demand greater freedoms.
Those saucepans, Mr. Fureix said, were “an everyday object, an instrument that embodied the voice of the people” at a time of poor political representation — a theme echoed in today’s casserolades.
Mr. Macron has been visibly annoyed by the pan beating, saying that “it’s not saucepans that will make France move forward” — to which Cristel, the French cookware manufacturer, responded on Twitter: “Monsieur le Président, at @cristelfrance we make saucepans that take France forward!!!”
Many ministers now announce their travel plans at the last minute for fear of being surprised by saucepan bangers. And the police have used antiterrorism laws to ban several protests and, on one occasion, confiscated demonstrators’ pots after the local authorities banned “the use of portable sound devices.”
A website created by a union of tech workers now ranks French regions for casserolades based on the level of cacophony and the importance of the affected government official. At a recent protest in Paris, demonstrators held up a giant pot and spoon made of cardboard, instantly providing the surrounding crowds with a mascot to rally around.
At a May Day protest, Stéphanie Allume, 55, said she saw wide-ranging significance behind the saucepans, including the struggle to put food on the table.
“When it’s no longer possible to dialogue with our government,” she said, “we drown out their voices with the noise of our pots.”
A loud discontent becomes louder with cookware.