Cronache dal paradiso nazicomunista francese

[Feliks]

Deve esser davvero dura essere un economista liberale e vivere in francia.

Gli interventi di saint-paul sono eccezionali

Gilles Saint-Paul's web site | On economics and contemporary issues. While technically a blog, this site contains links to my pedagogical and research material.

Leggete questo

The inevitable consequences of statism in the arts

Posted on April 17, 2013
With a new government comes a new Minister of Culture, and as usual we observe turnover in the leadership of top artistic establishments. Ms Filipetti, minister of culture, is no exception to this rule: theatre directors who are disliked are replaced by people more palatable to those in power.
The case of Jean-Marie Besset, director of the Montpellier theatre, is especially interesting. In fact it could be the topic of a Vaclav Havel play.
Mr Besset is being sacked following a report by an “inspector” who criticizes his artistic choices. Mr. Besset complains that he did not get the report, which furthermore seems to have been written by a competitor, the director of the Odeon theatre in Paris.
As bureaucrats paid by the government, theatre directors are subjected to inspections. What we learn from the Besset episode is that the inspectors are not only in charge of checking that the director followed the rules of public management, but act as political commissars who evaluate the conformity of the director with the esthetic Party line.
In the particular case of Mr Besset, the political commissar complains that the style of the productions is outdated and the actors play too much like vaudeville.
National theatre directors in France are an interesting kind of apparatchiks. Most of them are stage directors (a much revered category) whose artistic-bureaucratic cursus honorum rests on catching the attention of the cultural establishment early in their careers by being “provocative”. These so-called provocations essentially mean either
(i) being outrageous to some putative conservative bourgeois infected by rigid traditional values (but, as no theatre goer would ever admit having even a shred of traditional values, nobody complains about being offended, and so it is unclear whether these predictable devices — a typical one being having naked men on stage — amount to any provocation).
or
(ii) organize one’s production around a well-meaning humanitarian cause (such as the fight against AIDS or racism), while keeping a “décalé” and chic radical twist (you don’t want to appear as being lecturing, especially when your are).
Now Mr. Besset is not a director, but an author, and furthermore he has the bad taste of giving his plays to private theatres, an endangered species which only survives in Paris. As the government has massively invested in public theatres, with the price of a seat often as low as 10 euros, private theaters, that have to pay taxes and balance their budget, and typically have to charge from 30 to 80 Euros, struggle for survival. These private theaters rely more on the text of a play and on the quality of the acting, and less on the costly decors and staging devices, because they simply cannot afford lavish productions. In contrast, major public theatres often indulge in pharaonic, opera-type productions so as to make sure to spend their entire endowment for the year (a golden rule of public management is that you don’t save a cent for the taxpayer, otherwise your endowment in the subsequent year will be reduced by the savings you made. The logic of “needs” prevails, and everybody acts so as to boost their needs).
Private theaters are less hospitable to the provocations and innovations that are instrumental in determining the careers of state stage directors, because they cannot afford to lose spectators and they prefer to cater to them rather than to the cultural establishment. This hierarchy is inverted in the public sphere.
Mr Besset’s twin sin is not to be a member of the clique in control of the higher national theatrical establishment and managing his theatre as a private one, i.e. believing that the text is more important than the actual staging, which runs agains the cultural Party line.
To be sure, the French artistic caste is almost unanimous in begging for government money. But their claims that they may achieve more independence that way than under private sponsors is ludicrous. An artist paid by the government has to cater to the tastes of the people in power (who, that way, manage to staisfy them with other people’s money). The government is no more neutral than private sponsors but, unlike private sponsors, there is only one government and its hegemony in financing the arts is a threat to diversity.
By over-subsidising theatres the government has managed to create a loyal group of supporters for state intervention in culture. There are currently some 400 plays in the Paris area; this would have to shrink to perhaps 100 should the government withdraw its support, many people in the artistic profession would have to retrain into less exciting occupations. Statism in culture is entrenched by having artificially boosted the number of artists, thus rendering them vulnerable and dependent on state subsidies for their survival.

[Theremin]

(i) being outrageous to some putative conservative bourgeois infected by rigid traditional values (but, as no theatre goer would ever admit having even a shred of traditional values, nobody complains about being offended, and so it is unclear whether these predictable devices — a typical one being having naked men on stage — amount to any provocation).

Contesto questa affermazione perché non trova riscontro nella realtà. Se fosse vera, allora i registi dei porno francesi degradanti degli anni 70/80 dovrebbero ora trovarsi nei posti di comando che decidono le sorti del cinema nazionale

[Elnath]

According to this website, the country in 2002 spent 12 billion euros per year on state support for culture, which is about 200 Euros per person, as opposed to 9 billion in Germany, which is 112 Euros per person. This does not prevent Germany from having, for example, 7 times more opera performances per year than France.

Presa da un altro articolo a dire il vero. Frase senza senso.

[Feliks]

What is totalitarianism? | Gilles Saint-Paul's web site

[Qassim]

Ma se è francese perché non scrive in francese?

[Feliks]

Ma se è francese perché non scrive in francese?

perché evidentemente vuole raccontare la francia a chi non è francese

[Robert]

Vabè l'arte di stato non va bene, allora tenetevi Di Prè e l'arte degenerata con valori da bolla.

[Morfeo]

[occidentale]

Ma mi spiegate gentilmente dove riposa la grande novita' di cui scandalizzarsi, per interposto ministro?
La Francia ha da SEMPRE avuto la tradizione di una Arte di Stato promossa e sostenuta dal Re, dall'Imperatore, persino dai governi rivoluzionari che si facevano promotori di una o dell'altra visione generale a seconda delle tendenze o delle convenienze.
In effetti se ci pensate anche la definizione di certe aree cronologiche nelle arti cosidette minori, tipo l'artigianato del mobile, e' solo in apparenza similare in tutti i paesi, la Francia ha un suo particolare aspetto.
Quello che in Gran Bretagna indica un periodo di regno tipo, arte vittoriana, edoardiana ecc.ecc. in Francia indica un tipo di arte che nasce dal sostegno o dalle indicazioni di UN sovrano, tipo lo stile Luigi XIV, XV, Napoleonico o Impero, ecc, ecc.
La differenza tra allora ed oggi sta nel fatto che le sovvenzioni adesso si sono fatte impersonali.....