Finished the committed intellectual, here comes the time of the freed art… of the program of the candidates. The weekly chronicle of Gilles Martin-Chauffier.
In this election campaign, no one talked about culture. From one candidate to another, the programs would have fit in a box of cachous. For a country that basks in its heritage like snakes in the grass, this silence is bizarre. And unexpected. In the time of Jack Lang, battalions of intellectuals came to lay down song and plumage at the feet of His Majesty Mitterrand I. Same thing for artists. As soon as they had finished cartwheeling on the steps of the Cannes Film Festival, they went there from their aubade in the courtyard of the Elysée. Occasionally they raised their voices. Let us remember that old Yves Montand who heard Vesuvius rumble every time he cleared his throat.
We are no longer there. The intelligentsia sulks. Let’s not talk about his hostility to Marine Le Pen. The poor thing would be in flames that they wouldn’t throw a glass of water at her. After weaving praises to Stalin for decades, they pretend to mistake this smiling housewife for the new Eva Braun. Let’s move on. But why such silence with Emmanuel Macron? Jack Lang, always him, would have shaken this little world like a bottle of Orangina, and the result would have been much crazier. Behind her bursts of laughter, under her good cheeks round like pillows, poor Roselyne Bachelot must be disappointed. With a meager annual budget of 4 billion euros, it has managed to mobilize 13.6 billion for the environment since the start of the Covid epidemic. Solidarity fund, partial activity, loans guaranteed by the State, exemption from contributions… And so on: it takes liters of coffee not to sink into a coma when the administration aligns its language with you. Cultural oils are cannibals. Impossible to satiate them with lollipops. In the glaciers of their recognition, claims are plugged into direct current. At the slightest suggestion of reform, they improvise a Greek tragedy.
We have never dared to regulate the famous regime of intermittents du spectacle which was supposed to help circus professionals, dancers, actors or musicians, and which also serves to finance the make-up artists of prosperous television production companies or the hairdressers of stars millionaires. Let’s not talk about this story of removing the TV license fee. There too, the overplayed emotion wins everything. No one has yet talked about making France 2 pay. I’m kidding! I do not want the death of this old chain which, one day, at the time of “DimDamDom”, was young and which, today, with the courage of a lioness, always lines up in the good camp. But there are exciting cultural projects. And a lot. How to resist the empire of digital monopolies? How to face Netflix, Disney and other American giants of small and big screen? How to put an end to the eternal cultural supremacy of Paris? In a city overloaded with museums, even that of the First Arts has settled there while the whole world would have come to admire it in Carnac, Lascaux or near the Cosquer cave. No, it had to be on the banks of the Seine which never have enough. As soon as the immense glass roof of the Grand Palais has been polished like a boot at a price of gold, hundreds of millions of euros have been announced to enlarge and transform the rest of the museum. Let’s not dwell on the percentage of the culture budget swallowed by the Opera, the Philharmonie, the François-Mitterrand Library and other precious stones of the Parisian setting. The court still reasons as at Versailles. And, as at Versailles, there is talk of ribbons at the very moment when the sans-culottes approach.
Also read. Chronicle “L’air du temps” – This campaign leaves us “baba”
What threads have been disconnected in the brains of the twelve candidates in this election so that none of them has broached the subject of the “cancel culture” and of all the illiterates who want to be removed from the La Fontaine programs, Voltaire, Shakespeare and others for lack of “humanity”! When evil speaks the language of good, civilization is in danger. But, apparently, it does not move the princes who govern us. Shame. Because you will see: when the culture has disappeared, the rest will no longer have any meaning.