Alex Hughes. Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture

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communication and administrative skills and

rapidly became the most unpopular prime min-

ister of modern times. Following disastrous

regional elections in May 1992, the Socialist

Party bosses insisted that she be replaced; in a

demonstration of how weak Mitterrand’s po-

litical authority had become, he reluctantly

agreed. It was the end of Cresson’s political

ambitions, although she received the consola-

tion prize of a portfolio in the Commission of

the European Union in 1994.

PETER MORRIS

See also: educational elitism: the grandes

écoles; parties and movements; women and

politics

Croix, La

Newspaper

A Catholic daily founded in 1883, and now

published by Catholic press group Bayard.

This quality newspaper provides broad news

coverage, as well as exploring religious mat-

ters. Particular importance is attached to de-

bate and dialogue, giving rise to a substantial

letters column. Once very right-wing and

closely linked to the Catholic hierarchy, in

1956 La Croix dropped the crucifix from its

front page and has become more open-

minded. Christian values are defended, but

without religion becoming all-pervasive. Most

readers are provincial (75 per cent) and are

regular subscribers (93 per cent). In line with

declining religious practice, circulation has

fallen below 100,000 copies in the 1990s.

PAM MOORES

See also: Catholicism and Protestantism; na-

tional press in France

Crozier, Michel

b. 1922, Ste-Ménéhould, Marne

Sociologist

Famous principally for the analysis of French

politics and society developed in 1970 in La

Société bloquée (Stalemated Society), where he

portrayed French culture as tolerant of inter-

nal pressures for long periods but periodically

suffering crises of change and modernization,

Crozier has provided insightful studies of poli-

tics, society and bureaucracy. The term ‘société

bloquée’, borrowed from Stanley Hoffmann’s

description of France as a ‘stalemate society’,

has succeeded in explaining how rigidities and

lack of transparency have fostered upheavals

such as May 1968. Crozier has developed de-

tailed analyses of the French civil service, rang-

ing from his 1964 study Le Phénomène

bureaucratique (The Bureaucratic Phenom-

enon) and the 1979 On ne change pas la

société par décret (Society Does Not Change

by Decree), to the 1987 État modeste, État

moderne (Modest State, Modern State), which

influenced government thinking on the reform

of the state in the 1990s.

HUGH DAUNCEY

cultural policy

Cultural policy signifies the central and, in-

creasingly, local government measures that are

taken to protect and encourage the arts and

heritage. These measures concern four areas.

The first two are time-honoured spheres of

state intervention in France: preserving the

national heritage (conservation du

patrimoine), and providing professional train-

ing (formation) in such skills as music, the fine

arts, conservation and museum management.

But at specific moments in its recent history,

policy has become more voluntarist, seeking

to widen access to the arts (démocratisation)

or to facilitate the production of new works

(creation). Since 1959, such voluntarism has

been the mission of a specific ministry and,

since the 1980s, the subject of debate.

Prior to 1959, it is not really appropriate

Croix, La

129

to speak of a cultural policy at all. With the

exceptions of the Popular Front in 1936 and

the governments of 1944–7, the liberalism of

the Third and Fourth Republics implied an

‘arm’s length’ relationship with the arts, the

state’s role being largely confined to conserva-

tion and training. Furthermore, in official par-

lance the term ‘cultural’ had not yet replaced

the narrower ‘beaux-arts’ (fine arts). Beauxarts

came under the gigantic education ministry and

was overshadowed by it. Little money was

spent on the arts and scant attention paid to

extending their constituency or commission-

ing innovative new work. In the standard his-

tory, this non-intervention is frequently criti-

cized, though Marc Fumaroli has argued that

the greatness of France’s cultural achievements

during the period belies this view. Neverthe-

less, abstention came to an end with the Fifth

Republic, when de Gaulle created a separate

department in 1959, the Ministry of State in

charge of Cultural Affairs, under a prestigious

incumbent, André Malraux.

Cultural policy now took on the appear-

ance of a national crusade. Convinced that the

heritage of great art was the only salvation for

humankind in a godless world and for a di-

vided nation spiritually diminished by mass

leisure, Malraux saw his mission in the quasi-

religious, unitarian terms which have charac-

terized ministerial discourse ever since. More

prosaically, the term action culturelle (cultural

action) was coined to describe that mission

which, as defined in a decree of July 1959,

implied three forms of voluntarism.

One was the traditional sphere of conser-

vation, where a number of important meas-

ures were taken: the cleaning of Parisian build-

ings; a programme for restoring historic monu-

ments; the well-known Malraux act, creating

urban conservation zones; and a massive in-

ventory of France’s monuments and artistic

treasures. But the new ministry also ventured

into less traditional territory. Contrary to past

practice, Malraux took some tentative steps

towards encouraging creation, such as the

avance sur recettes (1959) which aids innova-

tive new films; or the National Centre for Con-

temporary Art (1967) which bought bold new

work by little-known visual artists. Malraux’s

chief form of voluntarism, however, involved

democratization, which the left-wing govern-

ments of 1936 and 1944–7 had made the

touchstone of their short-lived interventionism.

Malraux went further, most notably by launch-

ing an ambitious programme of regional arts

centres, the maisons de la culture.

His originality and achievements should not,

however, be exaggerated. First, the rapid eco-

nomic, industrial and technological changes

France was undergoing were already

foregrounding the cultural in a way govern-

ments could not ignore. Indeed, against this

backcloth, Malraux’s policies appear somewhat

modest if not retrograde. His department still

retained some of the old beaux-arts ways, and

his unashamedly disdainful conception of mass

leisure already seemed to come from a bygone

age. His budget also remained too small to en-

act many of his ambitions. Furthermore, the

upheaval of May 1968 lambasted his largely

unsuccessful democratization policies as bour-

geois and paternalistic, though with hindsight

what it chiefly highlighted was that they were

out of touch. With de Gaulle’s resignation in

April 1969, Malraux too stood down.

There followed a period of instability for

cultural policy, the ministry repeatedly chang-

ing its name, status and minister. Under Presi-

dent Pompidou (1969–74), ‘cultural action’

became ‘cultural development’, according to

which the state’s responsibility was to encour-

age the creativity of all in the name of quality

of life and economic progress. This implied a

more modern, pluralistic definition of culture,

embracing the media, the cultural industries

and the rich diversity of grassroots practices.

Little, however, altered in the ministry’s remit.

When President Giscard d’Estaing came to

power in 1974, its standing and its budget de-

clined, though this was partly compensated by

the rise in local government spending on the

arts, encouraged via a system of contractual

agreements with central government called

‘cultural charters’. Similarly encouraged were

corporate sponsorship and the rapidly expand-

ing cultural industries, in the hope that the

market and new technologies would allow

cultural policy

130

reduced state intervention. Yet both Pompidou

and Giscard opened up a new sector of state

spending by initiating the presidential Grands

Projets (grand projects): magnificent new cul-

tural facilities for Paris such as the Pompidou

Centre and the Musée d’Orsay. By thus scal-

ing down expenditure on local projects while

concentrating resources on Paris, Giscard gave

the new Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste) under

François Mitterrand a platform upon which

to build an alternative strategy. With his elec-

tion to the presidency in May 1981, culture

became a government priority and the

Mitterrand years (1981–95) represent the sec-

ond great age of cultural policy.

This strategy was based on three priorities:

‘irrigation’ (e.g. a bill on creative-arts educa-

tion in schools), decentralization and creation.

To pursue it, Mitterrand appointed a contro-

versial theatre activist, Jack Lang, to the Min-

istry of Culture (as it was now known) and

doubled his budget. In his first budget speech,

Lang appeared to lay the high Malraucian

conception of culture to rest, building on the

notion of cultural development instead. He

particularly stressed the need for France to be

irrigated by creativity and invention if eco-

nomic stagnation was to be vanquished. Eve-

rything, he claimed, is cultural and, accord-

ingly, everything would be a priority.

Unsurprisingly, this non-selective policy was

enacted with mixed results.

On decentralization, Lang was reluctant to

devolve to local authorities the new funds he

had just acquired. Instead, he extended the

mid-1970s charters, rechristened ‘conventions

for cultural development’. He also set up a

controversial new Directorate for Cultural De-

velopment within his ministry, whose mission

was to develop local contacts and encourage

the amateur creativity of different communi-

ties. Another approach was the emphasis on

festive occasions, such as the Fête de la

Musique, a national music day introduced in

1982, which urged amateur and professional

musicians to make music in the streets. As for

creation, Lang ostentatiously protested about

American cultural ‘imperialism’ and spoke up

for French creative activities of every kind,

particularly those formerly neglected by the

state: rock and pop, comic strips, circus, even

French cuisine, earning the policy the pejora-

tive nickname, le tout-culturel (everything-cul-

tural). He also began to stress the economic

benefits of cultural industries such as fashion

and of new technologies such as video, com-

puter games or musical software, while new

mechanisms to encourage private sponsorship

were devised. In the meantime, Mitterrand too

was supporting French creation by launching

the most extensive programme of Grands

Projets so far, designed to promote architec-

tural design, improve access and provide new

employment opportunities. The programme

included the Louvre Pyramid, the monumen-

tal arch of La Défense and a controversial

‘popular’ opera house at La Bastille.

These new measures, heavily publicized by

Lang, did not go unnoticed. Opposition par-

ties complained of the escalating costs of the

Grands Projets, neglect of the national cultural

heritage, and failure to produce the promised

bill on creative-arts education. Many on Left

and Right also deplored Mitterrand’s high-

handed authorization of private television

channels. Even so, when Lang left office in

March 1986 after the Socialist Party’s electoral

defeat, his successor, the Centrist François

Léotard, largely continued his work, develop-

ing Lang’s sponsorship measures by a new act

in 1987, and introducing the eagerly awaited

creative-arts education bill in 1988. He also

prioritized the national cultural heritage and

extended the private television sector by sell-

ing off TF1. In turn, when Lang returned af-

ter Mitterrand’s 1988 re-election, he left much

of Léotard’s work intact, continuing to fore-

ground the national heritage, while Mitterrand

rounded off his Grands Projets with an ex-

pensive new plan for a national library, the

Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

Lang left office again in March 1993. Like

Léotard, his successors—the Gaullist Jacques

Toubon (1993–5) in the Balladur government,

President Chirac’s first Culture Minister, the

Centrist Philippe Douste-Blazy (1995–97)—and

the Socialist Catherine Trautmann (1997–) did

not substantially undo his achievements which,

cultural policy

131

despite the uproar they initially caused, have

been absorbed into the status quo. Toubon’s

main accomplishments were reinforcing the use

of the French language and seeing off the Ameri-

can assault on French audiovisual ‘protection-

ism’ during the 1993 GATT (General Agree-

ment on Tariffs and Trade) negotiations, both

of which were consistent with Lang’s anti-

Americanism; as were Douste-Blazy’s bid in

February 1996 to strengthen the EU directive

protecting European audiovisual production,

‘Television without frontiers’, and his introduc-

tion of an obligatory 40 per cent quota of French

music on domestic radio in January 1996.

The history of French cultural policy since

1959 is, therefore, one of continuity more than

change. A number of persistent themes in fact

define its distinctiveness. Part of that distinc-

tiveness is of course the ministry’s very exist-

ence. This has not been seriously challenged

for years, doubtless because of an underlying

political consensus about the importance of

culture to national identity. A second continu-

ity is the problematic relationship between

policies for culture and those concerning the

two major influences on cultural life today:

education and television. Any cultural policy

ignores these influences at its peril. Yet the

French education system has traditionally been

reluctant to find time for creative activities in

schools beyond a theoretical minimum. There

are, therefore, those who regret the adminis-

trative separation of culture and education in

1959, for neither the Léotard law of 1988 nor

a short-lived Ministry of Education and Cul-

ture under Lang in 1992–3 adequately ad-

dressed the problem. The periodic separation

of culture from ‘communication’, the depart-

ment responsible for broadcasting, has created

similar difficulties, to say nothing of

Mitterrand’s readiness to privatize broadcast-

ing irrespective of the cultural cost.

One last continuity involves the definition

of culture itself, despite a semblance of change

under Lang. Much of the hostility he incurred

concerned the confusion about aesthetic val-

ues which le tout-culturel was deemed to have

caused. And yet the distribution of his budg-

ets actually changed little, the lion’s share still

going to high-cultural activities. Consequently,

the need which some identify to design an en-

tirely new policy is still largely intact (as dem-

onstrated by Douste-Blazy’s decision in Feb-

ruary 1996 to appoint a commission for that

purpose). Recent developments in communi-

cation and information technologies have

brought about new patterns of cultural con-

sumption enabling the French to take their

cultural pleasures in the privacy of their

homes. It remains to be seen how far these

patterns can be reconciled with the ministry’s

deepest raison d’être, which is to perpetuate a

shared national culture.

DAVID LOOSELEY

See also: architecture under Mitterrand; arts

funding (including regional); Toubon law; li-

braries

Further reading

Fumaroli, M. (1991) L’État culturel: essai sur

une religion moderne, Paris: Fallois (a po-

lemical but stimulating historical essay).

Looseley, D.L. (1995) The Politics of Fun:

Cultural Policy and Debate in Contempo-

rary France, Oxford and Washington, DC:

Berg (a broad history since 1936 and a

close study of the Mitterrand era).

Mesnard, A.-H. (1990) Droit et politique de

la culture, Paris: PUF (a thorough technical

analysis of cultural policy legislation).

Rigaud, J. (1995) L’Exception culturelle: cul-

ture et pouvoirs sous La Cinquième

République, Paris: Grasset (a moderately

polemical essay by a cultural administrator).

Wangermée, R. and Gournay, B. (1991) Cul-

tural Policy in France, Strasbourg: Council

for Cultural Co-operation (a detailed, in-

formative, outsider’s assessment).

cultural topography (Paris)

Paris, like all capital cities, evolved certain geo-

graphical districts in which cultural activity

cultural topography (Paris)

132

was privileged and dominant, depending upon

such features as proximity to the university

and its attendant publishing houses, the pro-

vision of artisanal premises which could be

used as artists’ studios, and a supply of cheap

accommodation, bars and restaurants. In the

postwar period, the traditional cultural areas

continued to operate, albeit with increased or

diminished importance.

Montmartre, for example, was massively

important in the first years of the century as

the centre of the avant-garde under the leader-

ship of its impresario Apollinaire, and in the

interwar years as the headquarters of a radi-

cally conservative bohemianism, uniting fig-

ures such as Vlaminck, Aymé, Céline,

MacOrlan, Dorgelès, Carco, and illustrators

and engravers like Gus Bofa, Chas Laborde

and Daragnès. Later it still played host to writ-

ers and artists, but had considerably less im-

pact, overshadowed by the ‘pleasure and crime’

of the Place Pigalle and the tourism on the Place

du Tertre. Similarly, Montparnasse, which had

been a major centre of the visual arts in the

last half of the nineteenth century, had wel-

comed the Cubists when they left Montmartre

just before World War I, and was the principal

stage for the années folles of the 1920s, still

retained its cafés and some of its personalities,

but was considerably diminished in impor-

tance. The major, and last, beneficiary of this

process of cultural topographic evolution was

also the most permanent: the Quartier Latin,

and, especially, St-Germain-des-Près.

From the Middle Ages onwards, the

Quartier Latin, with the university and the

publishing industry which sprang up around

it, was the capital’s major cultural centre. In

the nineteenth century, joined by the École des

Beaux-Arts, it was the context for the dramas

of intellectual and artistic ambition of the

young Bohemians described in Murger’s Scènes

de la vie de bohème. In the twentieth century,

however, importance shifted to St-Germaindes-

Près, still dominated by Bohemians and poets,

most notably Apollinaire and Léon-Paul

Fargue, but increasingly, in the 1930s, by po-

litically committed intellectuals of both Left

and Right, with each faction having its pre-

ferred café. After the Liberation, this tendency

became accentuated, to the extent that St-

Germain-des-Près achieved considerable, but

ambiguous, prominence, even in the popular

press. Its left-wing intellectual tradition was

maintained by the phemomenon of existential-

ism, whose more serious protagonists used the

Café de Flore and the Deux Magots as places

to write and debate, and by the dissident com-

munists of the Groupe de la Rue St-Benoît,

including Marguerite Duras and Edgar Morin.

The Right continued to occupy its traditional

headquarters in the Brasserie Lipp, on the other

side of the Boulevard St-Germain, but its

younger members, especially the Hussards,

congregated in the Rhumerie Martiniquaise.

The originality of St-Germain-des-Près in the

postwar period, however, was that it combined

this intellectual and literary activity with an

explosion of youth and popular culture, pre-

dominantly orchestrated by Boris Vian, who

played the same role in the 1940s as that played

by Apollinaire in the 1900s. The Quartier Latin

had become a centre of youth culture during

the Occupation through the activity of the

‘Zazous’ and, largely under Vian’s influence,

this activity became concentrated on St-

Germain-des-Près after the war, particularly

through the ‘caves’, of which Le Tabou, opened

in 1947, was the prototype: primitive night-

clubs which combined American dance, caba-

ret performance and jazz, and in which young

Parisians mixed with established writers and

intellectuals. While this youth culture proved

to be the most vibrant, but also the most

ephemeral, ingredient in this cultural mixture,

the other two elements, jazz and cabaret,

proved more durable. Initially under Vian’s

influence, Paris increasingly, through the clubs

in St-Germain-des-Près, became with New

York the foremost jazz centre in the world,

welcoming both New Orleans and bebop

styles. The young performers in Vian’s ‘caves’

rapidly moved on to the Left Bank music hall,

Bobino, and evolved a new style of French

popular music, the chanson Rive Gauche,

which, through singers like Juliette Gréco, Léo

Ferré, Georges Brassens and Marcel

Mouloudji, is still prominent.

cultural topography (Paris)

133

Parisian cultural history after the 1950s,

however, is the story of the disappearance, or

at best dispersal, of these centres of cultural

dominance. The early Left Bank music hall

stars moved to the Right Bank, from Bobino

to L’Olympia; jazz became available all over

the city; and intellectual and literary activity

was no longer exclusively situated in one

quartier. The reasons for this evolution are both

technical and to do with the status of writers

and intellectuals. If politically committed in-

tellectuals needed to meet so frequently in par-

ticular venues, it was as much to communi-

cate essential ideas and information as to so-

cialize, and that communication was facilitated

by, for example, the proliferation of the tel-

ephone in France in the 1960s and 1970s. At

the same time, technical changes in the print

media and the challenges presented to them

by the audiovisual media, altered both the

modes of communication and the patterns of

sociability of the writers and intellectuals. At

the same time, the vigour of Parisian cultural

centres was diminished by the changing status

of the intellectual: freelance or Bohemian in-

tellectuals require places to congregate; pro-

fessional intellectuals, less so. From the 1950s

onwards, there was a marked

professionalization of the French intellectual,

by which most of the major protagonists op-

erated within the university system. At the same

time, the expansion of the University of Paris

in the 1960s to Nanterre and Vincennes, and

subsequent expansion to other areas of Paris

following the Edgar Faure reforms, definitively

removed an important monopoly from the

Quartier Latin, reinforced by the relocation to

the provinces of Grandes Écoles like the École

Polytechnique and ENA. This devolution of

university activity within the capital was ac-

companied by a devolution of theatrical activ-

ity: both the serious and the popular Parisian

theatres, mainly situated on the Right Bank

and the Grands Boulevards, have been joined

by major theatrical ventures outside of the cen-

tre of the city: Les Amandiers at Nanterre, Pe-

ter Brook’s Bouffes du Nord, the Théâtre de

la Villette and the Théâtre Gérard Philipe at

St-Denis. In this way, if the traditional notion

of urban centres of cultural activity has per-

manently changed, that change has been ac-

companied by an erosion of a monopoly which

can only be fruitful.

NICHOLAS HEWITT

See also: cultural policy; music venues; theatre

Further reading

Hewitt, N. (1996) ‘Shifting Cultural Centres

in Twentieth-Century Paris’, in

M.Sheringham (ed.) Parisian Fields, Lon-

don: Reaktion Books (an account of Par-

is’s cultural topography and its economy).

Cuny, Alain

b. 1908, St-Malo;

d. 1994, Paris

Actor

A great tragic actor, with a rich career in thea-

tre and film. He is especially remembered for

his mystic interpretations of Claudel, includ-

ing his own film of L’Annonce faite à Marie

(The Good News to Mary) in 1991.

ANNIE SPARKS

Further reading

Simon, A. (1989) Alain Cuny: le désir de pa-

roles, Lyon: La Manufacture (interviews

with Cuny).

cycling

Cycling is one of France’s most popular sports

and the annual road race, the Tour de France,

attracts millions of spectators. The sport is

governed by the Fédération Française de

Cyclisme, which was founded in 1945 (its

cycling

134

predecessor dates from 1881). While track

cycling is much less lucrative, road racing in

France is highly commercialized and a huge

caravan of sponsors and reporters follows the

Tour and the so-called ‘Classics’ (Paris-

Roubaix, Paris-Tours, Paris-Nice, etc.). Out-

standing French cyclists of the postwar period

include Louis Bobet, Jacques Anquetil,

Bernard Thévenet, Laurent Fignon and

Bernard Hinault, all winners of the Tour de

France on more than one occasion.

IAN PICKUP

Further reading

Noret, A. and Thomas, R. (1980), Le

Cyclisme, Paris: PUF (an account of the

history, development and organization of

cycling in France).

cycling

135

Da Silva, Éric

b. 1957, Gennevilliers

Playwright, actor and director

The director of L’Emballage Theatre in Paris,

Da Silva’s career spans twenty years, includ-

ing collective creations, the production of his

own plays and the translations of several clas-

sics for the Théâtre de la Bastille and Théâtre

de Gennevilliers. His plays include No Man’s

Man and Je ne pourrais pas vivre, si je croyais

que je faisais du mal (I Couldn’t Live if I

Thought I Was Doing Wrong).

ANNIE SPARKS