Hymn to Panayotis Pascot: liberation through words

Critics of “Masque et la plume”, venerable literary program on France
Inter could very well rail against this intimate, somewhat chaotic story that it contains
too many “pissed off” for their liking, it is clear that this is happening
something with the first literary foray of 25-year-old Panayotis Pascot
counter and an already intense media life. His notoriety, acquired on
social network Vine since 2014, then as a commentator for the program Quotidienà
being only 17 obviously helps, but it doesn’t explain everything. Sincerity with
to which the twenty-year-old dedicates himself and the delicate topics are not foreign to this
happened that no one expected. In this autobiographical story, she traces her own
transition to adulthood, which involves the difficult acceptance of one’s homosexuality e
a conflictual relationship with his father.

Suffocated by toxic masculinity

In his first solo on stage, “Almost” (available on Netflix), which he defends between 2019 and 2022, Panayotis Pascot talks about his shyness with girls and his family relationships, being the youngest in a family of six children . A loving mother, who carries her emotions on her shoulders, and a touchy father, stuck in a traditional conception of masculinity. Through sketches in which he imitates him, we discover a familiar father figure who is always right, even when he is wrong (raise your hand if you have the same father at home!). A man who never cries, even when he really wants to. A man who refuses to talk about his feelings or react to those of others.

“[…] you have never done anything that requires forgiveness. But I want it anyway, it’s a question of principle, you colonized us, you are in us, you are in me, always, you devour me and piss me off. Ask me for forgiveness, I need it. I need your gaze.” he writes. This is where the universal purpose of his book lies. Through his own experience with this “old-fashioned” father, the author explains how men have been educated for generationsand what education they will subsequently pass on to their children.

Exits and enters

Critics of The Mask and the Feather have mocked the fact that Panayotis Pascot has no specific reason to blame his father. No serious trauma on the horizon, so what’s the problem? And that’s where they didn’t understand anything. This father gave it to him transmitted values ​​of toxic and heteronormative masculinity which come into profound contradiction with his own identity, whether it is his sexual orientation, accepted late in life (he revealed his homosexuality reluctantly in the finale of “Almost” and explores it in his book) or his sensitivity.

With a spoken and deliberately crude language, sometimes a little repetitive, sometimes illuminated by beautiful flashes, and always with a disarming sincerity, Panayotis Pascot explains how he lied to himself for eight years, to do like his friends, to feeling validated by his father. Before finally facing the facts: “But formulating it was the hardest part. It was transmitting to others this struggle that had been going on deep inside me for so long, this struggle that belonged only to me. Before coming out, the author mainly tells us about his coming-in, that is, his awareness of his homosexuality. Then come the first gay love stories and the realization of LGBTQ+ discrimination, for example in public spaces. “As soon as his hand is in mine, I become an infrared camera that spots anyone within fifty meters.”

Male depression

Mental health presents itself as the other main theme of the book. Panayotis Pascot continues to write his melancholic depressionwhich defines how “intense depressive cycles that occur every five to eight years”. He describes with precision and raw honesty the path of his obsessive thoughts, this feeling of “walk alongside life” and this suicide attempt, at 18 years old. Even more surprising to him was the realization that his father had been suffering from depression in silence. Panayotis Pascot is not his father, he refuses to suffer in silence. In this way, his almost ordinary story (which gives it universal power) will speak to many people, especially men who don’t dare take charge of their mental health or who feel trapped in a role that isn’t really theirs.

We would like it to be different, but it still takes a certain courage in this society to expose one’s being in this way in all its vulnerabilities and to announce one’s homosexuality in a French media environment where our personalities are very rare and find themselves plastered (as Muriel Robin recently recalled). “When does it start? When will I be?” you ask.

No doubt, Panayotis Pascot began to answer this questionwith this first writing as liberating as it is promising.

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