Mime Memorial Sparks Parisian Spat

(FiniteTimes.com) – As France mourns its fallen crown prince of nonverbal mirth, a debate has been ranging in Parisian circles as to the best way to memorialize famed mime Marcel Marceau. And as so happens in the capitol city, the desire to create something new and unusual is running up against old and inflexible laws and regulations.

“What are you going to do, stick M. Marceau in a box and bury him in the ground?” asked Claud LaFont, chairhomme of the Paris Artistic Heritage Foundation, a grassroots group that seeks to preserve the historical uniqueness of French art and culture. “Mimes come with their own boxes – it would be redundant!”

M. LaFont placed his hands in front of him, his face twisting into bemusement as the hands traced the contours of an imaginary wall. Quickly he shifted into the classic “tugging on an imaginary rope” pose. “Wild horses could not drag me to a place where I would find that acceptable. Mais non!”

LaFont and the Paris Artistic Heritage Foundation have something else in mind when it comes to a final resting place for Marceau and his legendary alter-ego, Bip. They envision a mausoleum dedicated to Marceau’s six decades of performing, with still photographs, movie clips and a solitude garden where one can go to quietly reflect on the universe and its imaginary intangibles.

At the center of the mausoleum will be Marceau himself, embalmed, painted and wired-up in the classic “mime in a box” pose, then encased in a Lenin-ish glass enclosure.

“We’ve experimented with the bodies of dead convicts, stuffing or embalming them, then posing them,” LaFont said, briefly miming the peeling of a banana for no discernible reason. “The light, when it strikes them just right, is eerie. You can swear they move. Can you imagine the world’s greatest mime in such a setting? Breathtaking.”

And, apparently, also quite illegal. Paris has some of the most draconian entombment laws to be found in the civilized world, and it is doubtful that the Paris Artistic Heritage Foundation’s plans for Marcel Marceau’s remains will come even close to being realized under them.

“You have to remember that Paris, for centuries, was little more than a disease-ridden cesspool,” said Danielle Dubois, Paris Commissioner of Health and Sanitation. “Every cemetery in the city, every one, was dug up and moved to the catacombs near the end of the 18th century to fix this problem. Ever since, burial laws in France, and especially Paris, have been very, very – how do you say? Inflexible.”

Mlle. Dubois doubts that French law will bend enough to allow the Marceau memorial to move forward as planned, but she does offer some solutions that would probably get the nod.

“You could bury him in the case, outside city limits of course, and then tunnel down to it and view him that way,” Dubois suggested. “Send everyone down with little flashlights. Ooo, scary. You could also cremate him, then take the ashes and make them into something.

“There’s this one company outside of Nice that does this with glue and little molds,” Dubois added. “Maybe a little Marceau poodle? Or a bunny?”

LaFont and his organization are expected to file suit this week in the Paris courts to allow them to move forward with their Marceau memorial.

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