Paris
How easy is it to destroy the space of culture and make it subservient to an inhumane ideology? How hard is it to resist this onslaught? A long history of modern man could, I imagine, be written on the basis of these questions. And it would certainly have a great capital for what we have been living in recent years.
A good recent example is France, where the publishing space is going through the biggest crisis in recent years, as hundreds of authors ask to withdraw their books from Grasset publications. The writers are protesting – rightfully so – the removal of the historic director Olivier Nora and they fear that Grasset will turn, as has already happened with the other historic house, Fayard, into a Trojan Horse of the Far Right. Both have now been bought, along with channels and magazines, by the billionaire ultraconservative Vincent Bolloret. The businessman has supported the normalization of far-right and racist speech in France in recent years, notably through the CNews channel and an expanding media conglomerate. “We don’t want our ideas, our work, to become his property” some of the country’s most recognizable writers write in an open letter. “We will not become hostages in an ideological war that wants to impose authoritarianism everywhere, in the media and culture”.
In the same vein, six hundred people from all areas of film production signed on May 11, at the beginning of the Cannes Film Festival, a text condemning the extension to the cinema of the “Bollore phenomenon”. In addition to publishing and media, Bolloré has been slowly buying cinema chains and expanding his stake in pay-per-view Canal+, the private operator that has been pumping money into French cinema for the past few decades through a funding program. Entitled ‘Zapper Bolloré’, that is “Change the channel, turn off Bollore”the collective of cinema workers reiterated that they do not want to remain mere spectators of this wider transformation of the cultural field. Among the initial signatures, h Juliette Binosh Adele Enel, or Ariane Lambedthe director Arthur Arari (whose film is playing at the Cannes Competition) and hundreds of technicians, working in film production and distribution. We often forget how much you risk in these spaces even by signing such a text. Canal+ officials were reminded of this when a few days later they reacted by effectively blacklisting those who signed, saying that they would not want to work with these people in the future. In response, signatures on the original text have multiplied – they have already passed 1,600. Even if the threat hangs against female directors, technicians, actors, writers, screenwriters that they are not going to work again.
The story is instructive in many ways about how the over-concentration of the media in the hands of a techno-imperial oligarchy is now deeply embedded in the field of cultural production at all levels and what this all means for the great, deep, far-right political turn that characterizes today’s societies. But it is also indicative, essentially, of its opposite: the importance we still attach to publishers, publishing houses, magazines that are slowly being built by groups of writers, theater and film organizations, festivals and independent film distribution networks. They may represent a small percentage in relation to mass-consumed culture: but there is a reason why we still consider their role so important in the free flow of ideas and democracy. It’s simple, cultural expression and its creative movement have a central place in what we usually call the “collective imaginary”, that ever-moving production horizon of our world.
So if the collective imaginary is the way we think about the world we participate in, its key feature is that it takes shape slowly, not exactly in terms of bestsellers and ratings. More often leaving room for dialogue, the low voice, the foreign and strange, the artisanal, the original, the radically libertarian and the uncharted. Basic principles of coexistence, those that we often describe as human rights or as values, in the laboratory of the collective imagination are created as well as renewed. At this level, the resistance to the old and new forms of their oppression is organized, but also, not to mince our words, the rejection of fascism.
It is no coincidence that the corresponding reference is made in the filmmakers’ letter against Bollore: “To leave French cinema in the hands of a far-right boss means that we risk not only the homogenization of films, but also the capture of the collective imagination by a fascist rule”.
I’m not describing a storm in a teacup, it’s hopefully obvious. We have been witnessing this crude attempt to control and violently colonize the collective imagination everywhere in recent years. It takes many forms. Therefore, the French writer reminded Virginie Deptwe need to constantly insist on connections. Suddenly, notice how the president’s vocabulary of violence and destruction Trump you also hear it in a description of an aggressive takeover of a publishing house and, often the same words, in a description of sexual abuse or the treatment of prisoners. Not because the acts are the same – but because the practice and the business of normalizing it are the same.
Explaining to “Monde” why he signed the filmmakers’ text, Mr Robin Cabillodirector of the classic AIDS story film 120 Beats a Minute, also reminded me how much we need to draw inspiration from older forms of cultural resistance and solidarity in order to confront this tumult here as well.
After all, this is, I think, the reason why such an effort is being made today to “debunk” corresponding stories of resistance from the past. To be as if they did not exist, as if they had no cost, as if they had no effect. Underestimating cultural resistance, collectivity, courage and its cost, the goal is always to normalize its opposite, to make fascism seem natural, a game, a simple possibility, then, but especially now. And it is, I want to say again, like that old song: “I know what he hides in his teeth, as he shakes my hand with a smile…” (the verse is from the song “Fascism does not come from the future” with lyrics by Fonda Ladis and music by Thanos Mikroutsikos).
Mr. Dimitris Papanikolaou is a professor of Modern Greek and Cultural Studies at the University of Oxford.
