bulldawg
Jan 10th 2002 From The Economist print edition
Seducing Hollywood still seems to mean enraging the French film industry
IT WAS a throwaway line, born of impatience and intended for American ears. Little did Jean-Marie Messier, head of a French media giant, Vivendi Universal, and currently the best-known French businessman in America, realise what he was stirring up last month when he declared that “the Franco-French cultural exception is dead”—in plain American, that French culture is (a) very special and (b) entitled to special protection. But unwittingly he has reignited a fierce debate in France—and also exposed the delicacy of French commercial expansion in the cultural field.
Mr Messier's proclamation was made at a New York press conference where he had gone to celebrate his purchase of yet another chunk of the American media. Having already swallowed Universal Studios, this time he had snapped up the entertainment assets of USA Networks, and put a Hollywood veteran in charge of the lot. Given that Vivendi also owns Canal Plus, which finances much of the French film industry, did this not herald the “Americanisation of French cinema?” asked a French journalist. Caught off-guard, Mr Messier snapped back, calling the question itself “archaic”.
He should have known better. The outpouring of French indignation, which began instantly, has not let up. “Culture is not a tradable good,” opined Jérôme Clément, head of Arte France, a television company, in the pages of Le Monde: “It is a precious good, our soul.” “Go and learn their gospel, that of a sacred dominant cultural exception, the American one,” snorted Michel Thoulouze, a former executive at Canal Plus. French state support for its music and film, the very notion that French culture was special, was in peril. Politicians from left and right rushed in.
The oddity is that the row comes at a time when French films, many of them more accessible than the art-house product that English-speakers tend to imagine are the French studios' only output, are standing their ground against the perceived invasion from Hollywood. In 2001, when the total number of cinema admissions in France was up 11% on the previous year, over two-fifths of those tickets were for French films, up from 29% in 2000, and the highest proportion for 16 years. Four of last year's top five box-office successes were French, led by a quirky romantic comedy, “Amélie”.
Indeed, it was precisely this resurgence of national culture, argued Mr Messier in Le Figaro on January 4th, that Vivendi has supported. His original remarks, he wrote, had been grossly distorted. Though his tone might have been “a bit sharp”, he admitted, what he had meant was that he was in favour of “cultural diversity”. And of course he approved of state subsidy to ensure it: “Vivendi Universal is not the ministry of culture,” he said.
However Mr Messier tries to spin it, this will not be the last time he lands himself in trouble with the guardians of French culture and cultural protectionism. For he is a peculiarly potent new symbol of an ancient cultural battle. Reared in the most traditional of French institutions, including both the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, he has in recent years transformed a one-time sewerage and water-supply firm founded in 1853, the Compagnie Générale des Eaux, into a glamorous Hollywood outfit. He has also bought a swanky apartment on New York's Park Avenue, and moved there with his family. For the purposes of running his burgeoning company, this is straightforward and logical. In the context of French cultural sensitivities, it is bound to look like betrayal.
I firmly believe that no other country in Europe deserves Euro-Disney more than France.
They batter them, deep fry them and you can get them with chips (french fries) and salt.
There is nothing better to get rid of a shameless scottish ale and whiskey hangover than a big bottle of Irn-Bru and a deep-fried Mars bar.
It's a dietary Chernobyl!
Notice the Irish guy got it right!
I'm thinking barbecued-snail-on-a-bun here. Touch of mustard and a beer back. Yum!
You can take this "synthesis" thing too far. I once had squid-on-a-stick at a baseball game in Japan...because the hot dogs were grey. That's because the latter were made of fish parts...
Keep in mind that American Mars Bars and British Mars Bars are not the same!
http://totl.net/VisibleMars/
Note the links to cross sectiona of the American and British versions of the bars.
