About

Stéphane Bern with a gun refers to an image of french TV movie "Pour l'Honneur d'un fils" showing TV celebrity and History enthusiast Stéphan Bern aiming with a handgun. In August 2022, the picture became an exploitable in the french twitter and reddit communities, mostly with parody captions and photoshop edits.

Origin

On August 11th, 2022, french TV channel France 3^[1] released on their twitter account^[2] the trailer of TV movie "Pour l'Honneur d'un fils"^[3] ("for a son's honor") for a planned airing on august 25, 2022. The Film narrates the story of a military officer going outlaw to investigate the mysteries surrounding his son's death. The main character of the movie is portrayed by french radio and TV journalist Stéphane Bern^[4], well known in France for hosting various TV shows about french History, and most notably his adoration for the french Monarchy. In one particular shot of the trailer, he is seen pointing a gun sideways, with a serious face. (shown below)

Par loyauté pour son fils, il va défier les lois…

🔍 « 𝗣𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗹’𝗵𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝘂𝗿 𝗱’𝘂𝗻 𝗳𝗶𝗹𝘀 » avec @bernstephane, c'est à découvrir le 25 août à 21.10 sur #France3 ! 📺 pic.twitter.com/o3UVwhv5qn

— France 3 (@France3tv) August 11, 2022

The trailer was poorly recieved, many users criticizing the overall poor acting of the characters and editing in the trailer. The following day, twitter user @skyzar34^[5] posted a still image of the sequence, captionned "this photo has an unconsidered meme potential"

Cette photo a un potentiel de meme inconsidéré pic.twitter.com/9m58jr0j8D

— Skyzar 🎴 (@skyzar34) August 12, 2022

Spread

Following Skyzar's tweet, many users started reposting the picture, adding humorous captions mocking Mr Bern's fascination for the french History, and most notably for the french Monarchy. (examples below)

On August 13th, a photoshopped version of the picture was posted on the r/frenchmemes^[6] subbredit, showing Bern attempting to shoot french revolutionnary leader Maximilen Robespierre. (shown below, left). The same day, another photoshop edit of the picture was posted to the same subreddit, this time following the wait it's all Ohio format. (shown below, right)

Still on August 13th, the emegrence of the meme was noticed and commented on the french version of the Huffington Post.^[7]

Various Examples

Search interest

External References