French Bashers Enjoy!

[doczinn]

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3232,36-833900,0.html

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lemonde.fr%2Fweb%2Farticle%2F0%2C1-0%402-3232%2C36-833900%2C0.html&langpair=fr%7Cen&hl=en&safe=off&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools"" target="_blank">Google's translation

And a better http://www.theweekmagazine.com/search/articles/info.aspx?ArticleID=4650"" target="_blank">partial translation

The French have underestimated Americas cultural richness, said Eric Le Boucher in Paris Le Monde. Weve long dismissed the U.S. as a place where the market alone decides what gets written, filmed, painted, or choreographed. Our own system, "which rests largely on public subsidizing of the arts and on massive unemployment insurance for artists," seemed intrinsically superioreven morally superior. Yet a new French study of the American culture industry says this caricature of the U.S. as McHollywood is way off the mark. The U.S. has 2 million people professionally employed as artists. Not only is that figure nearly three times the number employed as police in the U.S., but its also proportionately much larger than the artist population in France. Even more surprising, to French sensibilities, is "the diversity of the American art scene." Spurred by competition and lacking the complacency that government funding imparts, American artists have created independent theaters, studios, writing workshops, and alternative dance groups, even in small towns. The result is not a cultural scene ruled by money but one that is "profoundly democratic."

[theCZ]

Well, I'm not really a french basher, but I do think it's silly how they like feeling superior about their art and culture.

[Mabs2]

I also think it's silly how they seem to put so much effort they giving money to artists who do nothing productive.

[Sindawe]

Ahhh...but French artists on government support DO produce something productive.  They produce the rationalization for the sense of moral superiority of French culture over all others.

[Perd Hapley]

Weve long dismissed the U.S. as a place where the market alone decides what gets written, filmed, painted, or choreographed. 

The result is not a cultural scene ruled by money but one that is "profoundly democratic."

Don't they realize that letting the market decide is democratic?  Morons.

[The Rabbi]

Ahhh...but French artists on government support DO produce something productive.  They produce the rationalization for the sense of moral superiority of French culture over all others.

They also produce lower unemployment figures, just like their military.  The French.  Feh.