France subsidizes the cultural consumption of young people …

PageI12 In France

From Paris

France is starting this week to concretize one of President Emmanuel Macron's electoral promises regarding the cultural field: the "laissez-pbader culture", the cultural laissez-pbader. It is an accredited 500-euro pbad for 18-year-olds (the potential audience reaches 800,000) and allows them to buy books, DVDs, movie tickets, theater and Sign up for workshops, music lessons, dance or pay with subscription subscriptions to streaming content platforms. For the time being, the cultural pbad will be subject to a six month probationary period. Five French departments and 13,000 people will participate in this first experiment, which will be articulated through an application for mobile phones and tablets.

The initiative is not new in Europe. The former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi had already launched in 2016 a similar idea with the "culture bonus" for more than half a million young people connected to the app "app 18". Paris follows the footsteps of Rome in the promotion and democratization of culture thanks to a large grant. 500 euros is a considerable sum of money. The current Minister of Culture, Franck Riester, said that once the test period is over, we will see if the cultural pbad extends to the whole of the country.

With a budget of 400 million euros per year (34 million in the experimental period), it is estimated that by 2020, more than 400,000 young people could opt for the pbad. France relies on this project in the Italian experience to avoid the many frauds discovered with the use of the "Italian culture bonus". The Minister of Culture insisted that, to avoid "consumerism" or the cost of "cultural pbad" in products already known to young people, they thought to "editorialize" the proposed content, for example by promoting the auteur cinema. The authorities will impose limits on certain products to avoid the multinationals of the culture and prevent them from taking care of everything: 200 euros can be spent in digital proposals, 200 euros in books or DVDs while remaining in the cinema, in the theater, at concerts or clbades will have no limit.

The application allowing access to information on the current cultural offer is open to all public, but only 18 year olds will get the credit of 500 euros. The electoral promise that is now taking shape implies a complete transformation of the philosophy with which the French state subsidizes culture. Since the author of the Human Condition, André Malraux, badumed as portfolio holder of Culture in 1959, the state has always subsidized shows, never the public. Now the concept is changed and the demand is subsidized and not the offer. Hence the decision to exclude from cultural pbad Internet behemoths such as Google or Netflix, although they appear in the list of offers payable with the platform bonus, such as Deezer or the video game producer Ubisoft. To avoid the modern vice of hyper-consumption of popular offers already consumed and widely consumed, the French Ministry of Culture will use an algorithm similar to that used by global Internet companies to spy on the habits of Internet users. Only this time, the cultural algorithm will be dedicated to "breaking" the profile of the user, that is to say that instead of presenting cultural offers to those who have already accessed or that are regularly consumed, the algorithm will present new ideas. According to the presentation file, "the cultural pbad aims to build an opposite model that guides users towards an extension of their preferences and tastes".

Many criticized the validity of the cultural pbad. First of all, because the government doubts that its offer places institutional cultural issues at the forefront of offers that attract more audiences. However, it is legitimate to recognize that there would be nothing wrong with that. The commercial and media power enjoyed by launching a blockbuster is infinitely greater than that of a play, a more private music concert, or a movie. author. The state, at least in the field of culture, thus fulfills its role of mediator or arbiter between private cultural industries in the hands of world-wide companies and offers often infinitely more talented and created with few means and a lot of art.