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PARIS — When the French government launched a smartphone app that gave every 18-year-old in the country €300 for cultural exchanges such as books and music, or tickets to exhibitions and performances, the impulse of most young people was not to buy Proust’s greatest works. or to line up and see Molière.
Instead, the youth of France flocked to the manga.
“This is a really good venture,” said Juliette Sega, who lives in a small town in southeastern France and spent €40 (about $47) to buy Japanese comics and a dystopian novel, “The Maze Runner.” “I’m a constant consumer of novels and manga, and that helps me pay for them.”
As of this month, books represented more than 75 percent of all purchases made through the app since it launched nationwide in May – and roughly two-thirds of those books were manga, according to the organization that runs the app. Culture Card.
The French news media wrote: “manga rush” fueled by “manga pass” — observations through a somewhat distorted lens, as the app comes as theaters, movie theaters and music festivals have less to offer, stemming from pandemic-related restrictions. And the manga was already wildly popular in France.
But the focus on comics reveals a subtle tension at the heart of Culture Pass’s design between the near-complete freedom it affords young users – including buying the mass media they already love – and its architects’ goal of navigating users to fewer people. -known and higher-level arts.
Every French 18-year-old can activate the pass and spend €300, around $350 for up to two years on the app, where more than 8,000 businesses and institutions list their offers.
Teens can purchase physical items from bookstores, record stores, and art supply or instrument stores. They can buy tickets for movie screenings, plays, concerts or museum exhibits. They can enroll in dance, painting or drawing classes.
Noël Corbin, the Ministry of Culture official who oversaw the project, said the pass gives France’s newly minted adults a way to search for cultural offerings nearby – the app has a geolocation feature – and encourages them to indulge their cultural passions.
But it also uses incentives to push young people into new, more challenging art forms, he said, a kind of curation to “bring young people to explore possibilities spaces of cultural life.”
These include access to VIP events, such as a live streamed concert, as well as recommendation lists curated by Culture Pass staff and popular artists and celebrities. Soulages Museum in Southern France and a look behind the scenes Avignon theater festival.
Making the initiative one of his campaign promises, President Emmanuel Macron said in his speech for the launch of the Cultural Gateway in May that France would be a “terrible victory” when young people stopped saying, “This is a work of literature, this is a movie.” not for me.”
Still, critics argue it’s a waste of taxpayer money to free 825,000 young people with free cash and expect them to be pushed out of the nearest multiplex and art house movie theater.
Jean-Michel Tobelem, associate professor of cultural economics at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, said it was a laudable effort, but that it would greatly benefit mainstream media.
“You don’t need to force teens to watch the latest Marvel movie,” he said. He emphasized that there is nothing wrong with pop music or blockbuster movies, and said, “You can get into Korean culture through K-Pop and then discover that there is a whole cinema, literature, painters and composers with it.”
But Tobelem said he wasn’t convinced the Culture Gateway’s unconditional approach would do that, and the app gave little incentive to engage in “more challenging work on an artistic level.”
The app comes with built-in restrictions: Users can only spend up to €100 for offers such as e-books and online media subscriptions, and music or movie streaming services, again limited to French companies. And while the Culture Pass can be spent on video games, the publisher of the game must be French and the game non-violent – the conditions are so restrictive that most popular games cannot be used.
Naza Chiffert, who runs two independent bookstores in Paris, said the Culture Pass has already had a positive impact on her business. “It’s not easy to bring in young people who read but are more accustomed to Amazon or the department stores,” he said, but now they have teenagers in their stores every day.
Still, while some worry that the transition will be a financial trophy for people from privileged backgrounds, it does little to help others expand their cultural horizons.
“One child from the projects will lean on what they already know,” said French Communist Party senator Pierre Ouzoulias, who pressed to cancel the pass. “I can’t imagine for a moment a child using a pass to listen to Baroque opera.”
Ouzoulias fell in love with Baroque opera in his youth, despite growing up “in a relatively modest environment with almost no musical culture.” But he said he was an exception to the rule and asked for more structured support from the state. “If you leave individuals alone, you perpetuate social discrimination,” he said.
A large union representing hundreds of public cultural institutions, especially performing arts, called transition A “presidential apparatus” with “exorbitant” funding. The project cost €80 million (about $95 million) this year and will remain part of the Ministry of Culture’s budget, though this is expected to double next year. budget of around 4 billion €.
Opponents accuse Macron of throwing cash at young people and holding an election to court their votes before next year’s presidential election. disorganized approach Rather than funding existing cash-strapped outreach programs such as those run by youth community centers that expand access to culture in a more structured way.
The French Ministry of Culture says it plans to introduce the pass to secondary school students until they turn 18, first in a teacher-led classroom setting and with increasing amounts of autonomy and money. young audiences, who are often difficult to attract, right on their smartphones.
Young people echoed both critics and supporters of the transition: More guidance wouldn’t hurt, but freedom is great.
Gabriel Tiné, an 18-year-old osteopathy student in Paris, spent more than €200 on his school pass. Citeaux SphereIt’s a Parisian record store where they were mixing records with a friend one afternoon recently.
Nearly all of their friends have activated the pass, and nearly 630,000 youth nationwide are now using it. There are minor complaints: The app has bugs and is better designed for those who know what to look for, not just browsing. But Tiné said she liked the idea, especially her ability to splurge on musical instruments or art classes.
“I wouldn’t say no to going to a jazz concert or anything like that,” Tiné said, adding that the practice didn’t convince her to buy those tickets.
“The interesting thing,” he said, “is that any man can do whatever he wants with it.”
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