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UNPLUGGED: Global Cultures or French Exceptions?

An Update by Rüdiger Wischenbart

For a long time, France was successful at having it all: It was considered to be a 'Grande Nation', a power of global influence, and a unique and somewhat stubbornly different country that could draw a line around its own parochial realm.

There is still, for example, the policy of 'Francophonie', for some a leftover from the era of colonialism, but until this day a substantially funded action line to promote French culture, language and, not the least, political and business interests around the globe, and particularly among France’s former colonies.

There is a strong and successfully defended political will to interfere even in world politics in order to reserve France a high profile in all symbolic matters. Unforgettable is France’s – successful – threat in 1993 to boycott the GATT treaties in case that it can not preserve a 'cultural exception' for its national movie industry ('le cinema francais') with quotas against the overwhelming inflow of Hollywood movies. The same system was applied a little later in defence of 'la chanson' against Anglo-Saxon rock’n roll.

France was also the first 'wired' nation with its 'Minitel' system, a popular analogue network to transmit information to upgraded telephone terminals. However what was at first a powerful communication tool ahead of its time, later turned into a major obstacle against the spread of the more advanced Internet technology.

And most recently, France had substantial pride in challenging the huge US media and entertainment conglomerates, like AOL Time Warner, Viacom or Disney, on the prestigious turf of 'culture' with its home grown and highly ambitious Vivendi group.

Vivendi was born out of an unexpected heritage. The former state owned and then privatised water and sewage group 'Générale des Eaux' had started to invest in the late 1990ies in the much hyped 'media' sector by acquiring Havas, another recently privatised collection of various assets in publishing, thus becoming almost overnight the largest French publisher, with particular leverage in the strategically interesting sectors of education and of professional information (journals).

The turn around and take off was the brain child of Jean Marie Messier, Vivendi’s new, young and charismatic CEO, who, after the initial surprise, dynamically carried on with further stunning mergers and acquisitions, notably with France’s pay TV 'Canal plus', with Seagram’s 'Universal' group that brought nothing less than a full fledged Hollywood studio complex and one of the five major labels of the music industry to the originally French group, with the acquisition of USA Network thus adding a truly American distribution network to the group, and, at last, with the acquisition of a leading US educational publishing company, Houghton Mifflin.

The series of mergers and acquisitions, worth some 100 billion dollars, also brought about the urge to integrate US business culture and a number of outstanding industry figures to the previously predominantly French party, like Barry Diller, or, as a new and powerful shareholder for Vivendi, Seagram’s former owner Edgar Bronfman jr.

In the second half of 2001, Messier took a serious effort to acknowledge the shift in orientation and culture of his company, by then already the second largest media and entertainment group in the world, by moving his home and his family to New York. But the highly symbolic step was just another way to ask for trouble at home.

Messier chose a news conference in New York in December 2001 to declare 'la mort de l’exception culturelle française' (the 'death of the French cultural exception'). (1)

The immediate result was a widely publicized and controversial debate in France on the various antagonisms between 'culture', 'globalisation', 'Americanisation', 'cultural industries', the regulatory role of the state, the values of French civilisation and their role for global cultural diversity. Interventions came from most prominent cultural actors, the prime minister and the president of the republic, and there was instantly a general consensus, that 'French' culture was to be defended against those alienating forces and, with the presidential elections looming, that 'Vivendi must remain French'.

The world’s second largest communication company was treated, in short, like a misbehaving child in need for guidance to find the way back under the parental authority. A strange trajectory, indeed.

The battle was not exclusively fought over the high ground of national pride. It had and still has a rather pragmatic and factual component as well.

By controlling the French pay TV channel 'Canal plus' which finances between 20 and 25 percent of the French movie industry as a co-producer or by pre-financing productions with exploitation guaranties, Vivendi took became a powerful key player in a particularly sensitive sector of the cultural environment.

'Le cinema français' is not only a popular cultural pastime but probably the most important medium for the continuous self-reflection of the French society. And even beyond this, the system of the 'French' movie industry is in fact the central hub for major parts of the European film market, and for movie makers from many developing countries as well. The newest productions of the Spaniard Pedro Almodovar, of the Egyptian Youssef Chahine or even many a Chinese or Latin American release rely in one way or another on partners within the French system. So who controls this French system holds a key position for the European – and even global - cultural diversity.

For years, Jean-Marie Messier follows a double strategy in this respect. He likes to proclaim himself a partisan for cultural diversity, as he pointed out in an article in Le Monde more than half a year before the open conflict on the 'cultural exception' had broken out: 'Ma philosophie personnelle m'incitera toujours à être un adepte enthousiaste de la diversité.' (2) He confronts those who foresee globalisation as a homogenizing force undermining cultural diversity with his vision of an ever more divers, more open and even more tolerant future.

Messier has a point though, as truly everywhere in the world, as he says, local production of culture and content is rather growing than diminishing. And Unesco statistics demonstrate that the transnational commerce in cultural goods is in fact a dynamic growth industry.

But at the same time, Messier informed the management of Canal plus in another recent interview with the press that he expected them to be profitable within two years. Then, when recently the debate on the strategy of the group of Vivendi Universal and the genie of its leader Messier came under heavy fire, one of Canal’s managers stepped down, and the other got fired at shortest notice.

The battle is fought along two lines. On the one hand, the profitability of the whole enterprise became subject to serious questioning. Vivendi produced the heaviest losses ever recorded in French economic history.

On the other hand, it is, again, a matter of culture.

'Canal plus’' role in financing the movie industry is written down in a government decree and in a contract between 'Canal plus' with he government which expires in two years. When Messier urges Canal plus to raise profitability – not the least to make a contribution to balance the groups’ debt -, he is certainly ready to maintain the role of Canal plus for the French cinema, but probably not as a hub for much more.

So in the end, the cultural 'mission' of the French could indeed be soon reduced to an 'exception' just for the French within that larger playing field of culture and the cultural industries.

And this would produce a heavy blow to cultural diversity itself.

Preliminary Conclusions

In a conversation on the whole complex of cultural industry versus creation, held in Paris in April 2002 with several colleagues from Le Monde (3) an aspect of probably strategic importance came up that illustrates what makes the debate on Vivendi Universal such an exemplary case.

Jean-Marie Messier, in only three years after taking over Canal plus, had completely changed the company’s internal culture. Getting finally rid of its long time CEO Pierre Lescure in spring 2002 was only the final step to this turn around.

His general strategy being that of an investment banker who trades assets and shifts orientations in no time along his way, he literally has to break up the grown internal traditions of the acquired companies – movie productions, music studios, publishing companies – if he successfully wants to re-arrange and eventually dispose of them at will.

I assume it is neither naive nor overidealistic to say that this approach changes that very core concept of how in the past, the production of innovative culture – many books, independent music and cinema - has been usually organised, driven by creative milieus and along historically evolving lines and traditions.

According to the logic and will of a global corporation, this grid is supposed to give place to a new 'consumer driven approach' (4) as professed by Vivendi Universal in many of their strategy papers, and, consequently, by the necessities of a fast and highly effective distribution machinery which is the power engine in any of the recently built media conglomerates.

Global cultural industries and domestic cultural traditions, so it seems, are almost inevitably set on a collision course. But, one may add, at this moment in time, no-one can foretell who will win, who will survive, and who or what will go under along the way.

Notes
(1) For a summary, see Nicole Vulser: La petite phrase sur la 'mort de l'exception culturelle française' qui déclencha une tempête. Le Monde, 07.02.2002. back to top
(2) Jean-Marie Messier: Vivre la diversité culturelle. Le Monde, 9 avril 2001.
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(3) Participants at the conversation in April 2002 in Paris were Alain Salles, Nicole Vulser, and Jean Frodon. I owe additional insight to Fabrice Piault of Livres hebdo, and David Kessler of the Centre National de la Cinématographie. back to top
(4) www.vivendiuniversal.com/vu2/en/who_we_are/who_we_are.cfm back to top




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