French Comedian Rémi Gaillard Under Fire Over ‘Air Sex’ Video
A French comic is under fire for his “air sex” video clip. Rémi Gaillard is being slammed for apparently promoting rape culture after he uploaded a video of him emulating having sex with unsuspecting women.
The clip he titled “Free Sex,” which he uploaded on March 28 and has since garnered over 4.8 million views, sees Gaillard using visual perspective to make it look like he was having sex with women in public.
The women in the video were oblivious to Gaillard while he pantomimed sex acts a short distance from them. And although Gaillard later claimed that the women gave their approval to release the video, it didn’t appear that they knew they were being filmed at that time.
Some viewers of the video expressed their disgust over Gaillard’s antics, saying that he is glorifying rape culture and sexism.
Online commenters call the video “deplorable,” “unfunny,” and “disgusting” among other things.
There were also those who defended the comedian, calling his critics feminists who take jokes too seriously.
Gaillard responded to his critics on his Facebook page, saying that although he does not consider women as objects, the media is using his video to make it controversial. He also said that if his video did not make anyone laugh, then it was another matter, perhaps implying that many people found his video humorous.
He thanked his followers for “voting en masse... for the freedom of expression.”
Writer Dom Bochel wrote on the French magazine Nouvel Observateur, via The Local, that the video is a “trivialisation of the sexual violence of which we have been or will be one day the victim of.”
She added that Gaillard’s response was mixed, with his defenders being “very, very much guys, which is to say people who have never been solely considered as being a sexual object.”