"I've always had the impression that real militants are like cleaning women, doing a thankless, daily but necessary job"
About this Quote
Truffaut’s comparison lands with the cool sting of a compliment that refuses to glamorize. “Real militants,” in his framing, aren’t the poster-ready radicals of cinema and myth; they’re closer to cleaning women: constant, anonymous, indispensable. It’s a line that quietly punctures the romance of activism by swapping heroic struggle for repetitive labor. The effect is both bracing and revealing, especially coming from a director who helped make style and rebellion look seductive.
The intent feels twofold. First, it’s a defense of the unphotogenic grind: organizing meetings, leafleting, calling, showing up again tomorrow when yesterday didn’t “work.” “Daily” is the key word, insisting militancy is maintenance, not spectacle. Second, it’s an indictment of everyone who benefits from that maintenance while pretending it doesn’t exist. “Thankless” doesn’t just describe the work; it describes the audience.
The subtext is thornier. By choosing “cleaning women,” Truffaut pulls gender and class into the picture, whether he means to or not. He’s borrowing an archetype of undervalued, feminized labor to explain political commitment, implying militancy is a kind of caretaking for society’s mess. It’s admiration that risks condescension: activists as service workers tidying up after the powerful.
Context matters: Truffaut’s France had a loud culture of intellectual posturing around politics, peaking around the late 1960s. The line reads like a corrective to armchair revolution, and maybe to cinema itself: the real work happens offscreen, and it’s rarely rewarded with applause.
The intent feels twofold. First, it’s a defense of the unphotogenic grind: organizing meetings, leafleting, calling, showing up again tomorrow when yesterday didn’t “work.” “Daily” is the key word, insisting militancy is maintenance, not spectacle. Second, it’s an indictment of everyone who benefits from that maintenance while pretending it doesn’t exist. “Thankless” doesn’t just describe the work; it describes the audience.
The subtext is thornier. By choosing “cleaning women,” Truffaut pulls gender and class into the picture, whether he means to or not. He’s borrowing an archetype of undervalued, feminized labor to explain political commitment, implying militancy is a kind of caretaking for society’s mess. It’s admiration that risks condescension: activists as service workers tidying up after the powerful.
Context matters: Truffaut’s France had a loud culture of intellectual posturing around politics, peaking around the late 1960s. The line reads like a corrective to armchair revolution, and maybe to cinema itself: the real work happens offscreen, and it’s rarely rewarded with applause.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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