Badaud

The badaud is an important urban type from 18th and 19th-century French literature, one that has been adapted to explain aspects of mass culture and modern experience.

The term badaud (plural, badauds) comes from the French and has the basic meaning of "gawker”, or more neutrally, “bystander”. The term usually carries the connotation of idle curiosity, gullibility, simpleminded foolishness and gaping ignorance. It was an old inheritance, but was elaborated as an urban type in the eighteenth and nineteenth century to describe the street crowds that were an essential feature of the Parisian landscape. Like the flâneur, to which it has been frequently contrasted, the badaud has been construed as an emblematic figure of the modern, urban experience and of mass culture. The term badauderie (though not frequently used) refers to the act of gathering in a street crowd or gawking.