Popular Culture in Modern France

A Study of Cultural Discourse

Brian Rigby

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9781134981991
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

`Culture' is one of the most frequently used terms in the French vocabulary. It sells not only books, newspapers and magazines but also consumer products and political parties. But what are the meanings of `culture populaire'? What have the French understood by it, and what is its history? Brian Rigby's lively and cogent study traces changing notions of popular culture in France, from 1936 - the year of the Popular Front - to the present day. Asking why `culture' has become such a fiercely contested term, Rigby considers the work of the major French theorists, including Barthes, Bourdieu and Baudrillard.

1

FROM HIGH CULTURE TO ORDINARY CULTURE

In this study my aim is to set out significant elements of the discourse on culture which has been such an important feature of modern French intellectual life. My primary focus is postwar France, but I also look to the time of the Popular Front in 1936 as an important point of reference for later debates on culture. In fact, since the terms of the modern debate on culture were, to an important extent, established at the time of the Popular Front, I hope to point out the links not only between 1936 and the periods of Resistance and Reconstruction, but also to indicate the significant continuities up to the early 1960s and even beyond. However, although I take my examination of cultural discourse up to the present day, my principal aim is to sketch out the general field of cultural discourse, and for this purpose I take the key period for my investigation to be from 1945 to the late 1960s. I consider this period to be without doubt the high point of intellectual and political debate about such issues as popular culture, mass culture and State intervention in culture. This is not to say that the questions have ceased to be discussed. Cultural discourse in France is apparently infinite in quantity. Every French intellectual seems to want to have his or her say on cultural matters and the books and articles continue to be produced at an alarming rate. There seems no prospect of this flood diminishing and for some optimists this is clearly a sign of cultural health: ‘If there were no cultural discourse, that would basically mean there would be no future and, therefore, no hope and no dynamism.’¹

I do not pretend, however, to give an exhaustive treatment of all areas of cultural discourse. Rather, I am simply trying to circumscribe and give access to the abundant discourse on culture, by setting out some of the main issues and pointing to the typical themes and characteristic arguments that are to be found in this discourse. I am looking almost exclusively at the writings of intellectuals and academics, although these writings do take a great variety of forms: doctoral theses, scholarly monographs, book-length ‘essais’, journalistic articles and so forth. Within the vast area of writing upon modern culture, I am focusing particularly on questions relating to popular culture, mass culture, and the State and culture. I see myself as carrying out an introductory and preliminary survey of the ways in which French intellectuals and academics have dealt with these related issues since the time of the Popular Front and the Second World War. I am only too aware that this is a very selective approach to the study of popular culture, but it does, none the less, seem to me a worthwhile one. At the very least, I hope it can clear some ground and help to lay some foundations for the developing study of modern and contemporary French popular culture. I have chosen to approach the study of French intellectual treatment of popular culture by looking at a range of French writers who seem to me to have played a significant role in constituting the specifically French discourse on culture. I imagine that only a few of the names will be known to Anglo-Saxon readers. However, I am not so much interested in expounding the separate theories, arguments and attitudes of individual writers, as I am in building up a general picture of how the issues of popular culture have been handled in France. Few of the texts I refer to have been translated, and I hope that I can familiarise readers with important aspects of French intellectual and cultural debates which are little known outside of France.

Since my primary interest here is in what has been written about popular culture, I have felt the need to pay close attention to the specific terms used by French writers in their treatment of cultural matters. Some of the French terms might be self-evident, even to readers without much French (or without any French at all), but I have, none the less, given translations where appropriate. It seems to me that one cannot deal with specifically French debates about culture, if one does not also point out how the terms used in the debate play a role in constituting these debates. Without in any way claiming to provide a comprehensive vocabulary of modern French cultural discourse, I hope I can contribute to the understanding of this discourse by picking out and glossing many of the key words.² My aim is to focus on those terms which have actually played a significant role in the writings on culture in the relatively limited period of the last fifty years, and to try and assess what meanings they have had, and often still have, within the framework of these writings.

If one were to believe Philippe Bénéton in his Histoire de mots: culture et civilization (1975) [‘History of the words “culture” and “civilisation”’], one would be perhaps discouraged from such a venture from the beginning, for he thought that some of the key words used in the cultural debates in the period with which I am concerned had no real ‘operative’ function:

Allowing for a time-lag of a few years, scientific terms and intellectual fashions in France…follow a development parallel to that which takes place across the Atlantic. Thus, the French debate about ‘mass culture’, ‘elite culture’, and ‘high culture’ evolved at the time when it was already losing some of its vitality in the United States, and French intellectuals in the 1960s engaged in the same controversies that had occupied their American colleagues ten years earlier. Several monographs and numerous special numbers of journals were published on this theme, and they helped to put into circulation a new terminology, at the centre of which is to be found the notion of mass culture, defined sometimes by the number of people reached in the process of communication (the masses), sometimes by the means of communication (the ‘mass media’), and finally sometimes by the two at once. The concept is imprecise and appears to have very little use, as is also the case with such other notions as ‘higher culture’, ‘average culture’, ‘high culture’…which mix scientific observations and normative considerations.³

Bénéton was, therefore, aware that, from a ‘scientific’ point of view, the various terms used in the debates on culture were too imprecise. This is no doubt true, but is not my concern here, which is rather to show which terms are actually used in the cultural discourse and to attempt to explain how they have been used and what significance they have had in these debates.

I am, however, in agreement with Bénéton, when, in considering the contemporary use of the terms ‘culture’ and ‘culturel’, he concluded that there had been a shift from a universalist, all-embracing notion of culture. Bénéton observed that the field of application of the term ‘culture’ had become very extensive, and it is this extension of the term which is part of my interest in this study. It is not simply a case of everything having become ‘cultural’ in French life, whereas not so long ago everything seemed to be ‘political’, although this is part of the story. (It is the substantive ‘le culturel’, which is now sometimes used to render this sense of everything being ‘cultural’).⁴ Already in the 1960s, Henri Lefebvre was remarking that in 1946 people had used the term ‘intellectual’ in contexts where ‘cultural’ would later come to be used.⁵ Certainly the word ‘culture’ has been particularly pervasive in French life in recent years, and one does need to have some way of interpreting the range of meanings it has taken on, as well as some idea of the innumerable contexts in which the word is now to be found. Anyone who is at all acquainted with French publishing, media or politics (just to mention a few key areas) will recognise the fact that ‘culture’ is one of the most overused words in the modern French vocabulary. It sells not only books, newspapers, magazines, but also consumer products and political parties. In fact, so important is the word and concept of ‘culture’ in French society that, if one were to attempt to locate and interpret its every manifestation, one would be trying to encompass virtually the whole range of activities in every area of French life. Fortunately, my task is more modest, but, even within the limited compass of my concerns, I would hope to give an idea of how important and extensive is the use of the word ‘culture’ and consequently how important is the reflection upon cultural questions in modern and contemporary French intellectual life.

To begin with, it is important to stress that a universalist, humanist notion of ‘Culture’ with a capital C still survives strongly in French society, despite many vigorous attacks upon it.⁶ Attacks on humanist Culture have, of course, been a central feature of French intellectual life throughout the twentieth century, and have been particularly associated with Marxists and Marxist sympathisers from the 1930s onwards. (One thinks especially of Paul Nizan's Les Chiens de garde (1932) and of Sartre's Qu'est-ce-que la littérature? (1948).) The universalist, humanist values of Culture have been seen by Marxists and Marxist sympathisers as simply a bourgeois strategy designed to mask the underlying economic exploitation of the working class. The task of demystifying Culture has been taken up throughout the postwar years by the intellectual avant-garde, whether by the protesters of 1968 or by the various representatives of anti-humanist, anti-rationalist thought who have played a prominent role in Parisian intellectual life both in the 1970s and the 1980s. But it is not only the deliberate attacks of intellectuals on Culture that have called it into question and supposedly undermined its existence. The economic progress of postwar French society is also said to have undermined the premises of a humanist Culture through the growth of materialism, acquisitiveness, consumerism and so forth. Added to this is the crucial development of the mass media (radio, cinema, television) which have often been thought to offer short-term, lowgrade satisfaction and mere entertainment in place of the more worthwhile and lasting experiences of Art and Culture.

The defence of Culture has, of course, been taken up throughout the period by various traditional, conservative figures. For instance, Pierre-Henri Simon was a notable example of someone who took up the cause of humanist Culture during the student demonstrations of 1968.⁷ Other Right-wing authors and journalists such as Jean Cau, Paul Guth and Jean Dutourd have since then kept up an untiring struggle in the name of ‘true’ culture in their books and in the Rightwing press (Le Figaro-Magazine, Paris-Match etc.).⁸ Left-wing commentators have seen this ‘tenacious reactionary resistance’ as being much stronger in France than in other advanced capitalist countries.⁹ There are also, of course, famous institutions such as the Académie Française which seem specifically designed to enshrine and celebrate traditional ideas of Culture. But one can hardly claim that the Académie still plays a visible and important role in French society, and one can doubt whether this institution still represents a cultural elitism significant enough to criticise. Patrick Combes, for instance, has pointed out in his study of literature and 1968, that during the May events hardly anyone even bothered to single out the Academy for criticism.¹⁰

There are, however, many more people who believe that the educational system is still geared to perpetuating traditional, elitist notions of Culture, and to serving that small minority who have access to Culture and the competence to talk about it: ‘Culture, that is to say, true Culture, High Culture, Culture with a capital C, is almost by its very essence verbal…what counts more than paintings or statues is what has been said about them.’¹¹ In fact, the best testimony of the continuing existence of the notion of a dominant or high Culture in French society is, perhaps, to be found in the importance attributed to it by its opponents, whose vociferous attacks upon it demonstrate that it still exists as a very powerful idea and force in French life,¹² whether or not it corresponds to what actually goes on inside cultural and educational institutions, and whether or not in reality Culture plays the legitimating role which, for instance, the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has attributed to it in his works. Bourdieu himself is, of course, in no doubt that Culture does still have real power in French society, and that it remains one of the most important ways in which classes demarcate themselves from one another and in which certain classes exert power over other classes.¹³ Few people in French society, according to Bourdieu, are prepared to call into question the importance and legitimacy of Culture. Few are willing to be cast as ‘barbarians’, by asking what value Culture has, and by analysing what purposes it serves.¹⁴ In Bourdieu's terms, few people seek to understand how an interest in Culture actually works in the ‘interest’ of certain sections of society.¹⁵ In fact, it is not only the already cultured who believe in the worth of Culture.¹⁶ According to Bourdieu, the petit bourgeois is reverence itself in the face of Culture.¹⁷ What is more, even the working classes can be found to have high-flown notions about the value of Culture, although, for Bourdieu, this just goes to indicate the extent of the power wielded by dominant culture, which enables it to impose its values even on those who, strictly speaking, are outside its sphere.¹⁸ All Bourdieu's analyses of the relationship to Culture of different social groups (especially ‘dominated’ social groups) depend on a belief in the actual existence of ‘high culture’, ‘dominant culture’, ‘legitimate culture’, all of which are deemed to be possessed by dominant social groups. This legitimate culture sets a standard which, by definition, cannot be attained or matched by other dominated forms of culture possessed by inferior social groups.

There are a considerable number of French terms used to express the notion of Culture with a capital C, and this abundance seems one of the clearest indications of the importance attributed to it in French life. The word ‘la Culture’ itself by no means rules exclusively over the field. One finds ‘la Grande Culture’, ‘la Culture classique’, ‘la haute culture’, ‘la culture supérieure’, ‘la culture unique’, ‘la culture universelle’, ‘la culture générale’, ‘la culture désintéressée’, ‘la culture désincarnée’.¹⁹ All these terms come together to confirm the notion of Culture as one of the mind and spirit, made up from the great works of writers and artists. It is a unified culture, whose values are permanent and universal. Many other terms stress the notion that Culture is the emanation of the State and its institutions (here one sees how the educational system is regarded as inseparable from ideas about Culture): ‘la culture officielle’, ‘la culture légitime’, ‘la culture consacrée’, ‘la culture cultivée’, ‘la culture savante’, ‘la culture universitaire’. Almost identical with these terms are those which express the idea that Culture is the preserve of dominant social groups: ‘la culture dominante’, ‘le pouvoir culturel’. Those who possess Culture are ‘les cultivés’, ‘les intellectuels’, ‘les esthètes’. Culture is seen as an inherited possession, and is often described as ‘a private hunting-ground’ [‘une chasse gardée’]. Culture is something that is kept within a small, privileged group, a favourite image here being that of the closed circuit [‘le circuit fermé’], which is sometimes taken to be the fashionable social and cultural world of Paris [‘le tout-Paris de la culture’, ‘la culture mondaine’], but also sometimes the overlapping worlds of the fashionable Parisian intelligentsia and the University and other higher education establishments. Hence the assault on the watchdogs and guardians of culture [‘les chiens de garde’, ‘les gardiens de la culture’], which links up explicitly with Nizan's earlier attack on university professors and their bourgeois, humanist, universalist Culture. In a more humorous vein, Pascal Ory's volume Mots de passe (1985) [‘Passwords’], reinforces the view that French culture is a secret and private domain into which one can only be admitted by knowing the secret formulas,²⁰ a view already held by Emmanuel Berl earlier in the century, when he wrote: ‘The primary function of bourgeois culture is to supply passwords.’²¹

Inseparable from notions of high culture in France is the view that it is French culture itself which best embodies the values and forms of high culture. However, just as elements of the avant-garde intellectual Left have throughout this century consistently attacked the notion of Culture, so they have attacked the idea of the Nation. And just as there has been a traditional, conservative Right-wing defence of Culture, so there has been a traditional, conservative, Right-wing defence of the Nation. In fact, of course, the two are seen as inseparable. Notions of ‘la culture française’ are insepara...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Popular Culture in Modern France
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 From high culture to ordinary culture
• 2 Popular culture and popular education: leisure, work and culture
• 3 Culture and the working class and working-class culture
• 4 Popular culture as barbaric culture: the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu
• 5 Culture, the state and 1968
• 6 Mass culture, pop culture and pluralism
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index