9 ms·

France Gave Teenagers $350 for Culture. They’re Buying Comic Books

65 points by mantesso 5y ago

jjgreen 5y ago
I'm not sure why the NYT would find this surprising, it is le neuvième art.
jacquesm 5y ago
Comic books are culture. Whether you like that or not is a matter of taste. Personally I absolutely love 'Gaston' and 'Asterix', but also like some other old school ones. The newer stuff I don't feel much connection with.
- yann2 5y ago
  +1 No accident that part of the world produced Herge and Mobieus and inspired Miyazaki.
- jsilence 5y ago
  Also the works of Marc-Antoine Mathieu are highly recommended! It IS culture.
  - edhelas 5y ago
    I'm French and I'd never have though to read this author name on Hacker News one day :D
    - jsilence 5y ago
      His stuff is simply mind blowing. And as others mentioned, Hergé (BE) and Moebius are giants of the comic olympus.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  Yup, this whole thing has a huge whiff of classicism and snobbery.
- yumraj 5y ago
  Never read Gaston, might have to look it up. But I love Asterix and Tintin, which I read while growing up in India. Interestingly the other comics I read were Phantom, Mandrake, Rip Kirby, Flash Gordon - available via a local publisher, Indrajal Comics [0], that were sent to us monthly (or was it weekly) via a subscription. Got introduced to all the *men much later. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indrajal_Comics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indrajal_Comics
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Gaston is very funny, don't miss the signatures, which are always a little gag by themselves. Here is a (French, I hope you can read it, if not you'll have to scrounge for a translated version) sample: https://imgur.com/gallery/oTnED https://imgur.com/gallery/oTnED
    - yumraj 5y ago
      Thanks. I don't speak French, will look for English version..
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        Quick and dirty translation, apologies for errors but this should get you the gist: "Gaston, bring me the last letter of insults from de Mesmaeker" "I'm curious how long it will take him to retrieve that from his" "mess...." "err, thanks" "Strange, he must have had it in hand by chance". "Let's do a second test" "Please fetch me the 4603rd response to the latest contest, it is ur" "gent" "Urr... thanks" "That's not possible, I know the mess in his place" "And the letter signed 'a new reader of 78'" "It upsets me, it upsets me" "And the message sent by that group of hippies" "He's invented a new system for classification of documents" "And look, in every piece there are tiny holes, it is a system based on micro-perforations" "I love my cactus, all of the correspondence organized and visible" Enjoy :)
        yumraj 5y ago
        :D ... thanks for taking the time, much appreciated..
- SilasX 5y ago
  Regardless of what you consider "culture", the French government had some conception of what kinds of things they wanted the teens to engage in, and this isn't it (even if it's worthwhile in its own right). I think that's the article's point, and the program may respond by restricting the funds' usage in the future.
  - vlunkr 5y ago
    > the French government had some conception of what kinds of things they wanted the teens to engage in, and this isn't it Is that true though? Maybe some people in the government feel that way, but it sounds like the goal was just to allow teenagers to buy what they wanted. If they thought kids were going to spend it to go the opera or something, why wouldn't they have put more restrictions on it in the first place?
  - WastingMyTime89 5y ago
    > the French government had some conception of what kinds of things they wanted the teens to engage in, and this isn't it What? The French government isn't dumb. If they didn't want, teenagers to spend the pass money on BD, it would have been excluded. As is, I assume the French government is perfectly fine with French teenagers spending it on French produced entertainment in French stores.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    Here is a quote from the French governement site presenting the program [0]: > Envie d’aller au théâtre, voir un film ou un spectacle ? De prendre des cours de photo ? D’un roman ou d’un manga ? [emphasis mine] Which roughly means Would you like to go to the theatre, see a film or a show? Take some photography courses? Read a novel or manga? If the French government didn't intend for the money to be used this way, they certainly haven't told the people designing the site that promotes it. [0] https://pass.culture.fr/ https://pass.culture.fr/
- arp242 5y ago
  And a lot of things we now consider high-brow culture were really just the comic books of the past.
- arrrg 5y ago
  Does the article claim something else?
  - AutumnCurtain 5y ago
    Nope. It shares the perspectives of some people who do but the author does not take a stance. Shocking to see so many comments here acting like that's the case.
- arcturus17 5y ago
  Gaston is possibly some of the best humor I've ever seen in any cultural medium. Tintin was gripping too, and arguably the greatest cultural icon to come from European comics. In Spain we had a good comic culture from the 50s onwards, with perhaps one of the greatest exponents being Mortadelo y Filemón which had was hilarious and had some international exposure (I've seen it in German flea markets as Clever & Smart) I agree that comics are culture too, but I can see how this will ruffle some feathers among people expecting that young kids would be buying thick tomes by Chateaubriand or attending Racine plays in droves. This is a model of subsidy (vouchers, in essence) which some free-market economists can get behind as it still allows agency from individuals or markets. However what we're seeing is the very reason why others would staunchly oppose this kind of model...
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    I have a story about Gaston, and how funny it is. When I was a kid I would read with a flashlight under the covers after the time that I was supposed to be in bed and sleeping. This worked well for most books but with Gaston I couldn't help myself being in stitches from time to time which invariably attracted unwanted parental attention. There are a couple that immediately spring to mind, the one where he launches the gas container from the roof of his car, the 'running gag' about the contracts that never get signed and that surprise in fact do get signed and then are promptly shredded by the cat and the badly humored seagull that drops stuff on people. And the parking meter wars, hilarious.
    - Agingcoder 5y ago
      And the morue aux fraises (cod with strawberries)
mytailorisrich 5y ago
Nothing surprising. It seems odd and unrealistic to assume that people would spend windfall money on something they have no interest in or do not like. Whatever cultural products people enjoy, it seems reasonable to expect that they would simply consume more of them if they had more money... Especially considering that the vast majority already has the purchasing power to consume whatever they want.
zrobotics 5y ago
https://archive.vn/bhGDF https://archive.vn/bhGDF
diogenescynic 5y ago
Maybe it's just the easiest to resell?
echelon 5y ago
I feel like this behavior could have been predicted. I'm not going to say whether or not purchases of manga are bad, but to think students would consume high brow art and then to be disappointed is after the fact is pretty poor foresight. Can we start to use the vast number of cultural experiments we've conducted to infer which will succeed in producing the desired outcomes? Can we start trying new experiments? I'd like to see us give cash to students that do well in school or participate in sports, clubs, music, etc. (If the worry is that this primarily rewards students whose parents are wealthy, I'm not so sure. Wealthy kids might not be satisfied by the rewards.)
- swalls 5y ago
  Are you implying this wasn't intentional? France (alongside Belgium) practically invented the comic industry, but in recent years I'd imagine that's been getting decimated by east Asian manga. If you want to inspire a generation to revitalise your comic industry, this doesn't seem like a bad way.
  - WastingMyTime89 5y ago
    > but in recent years I'd imagine that's been getting decimated by east Asian manga France has been consuming manga for decades. It's the market with the most translations (more than in the US) and is by itself 40% of the European market. There were already some notable anime coproductions between France and Japan in the 80s. Amusingly, like with comic books, the culture surrounding mangas in France is actually very different than in the US. As pretty much everyone has been exposed to anime as a child, there is far less of a stigma surrounding it and you can consume some without being seen as a weirdo. If it hasn't killed BD yet, it probably never will. I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually growing the market.
makeitdouble 5y ago
Why is this pass described like in a vacuum when the country we’re still in a middle of a pandemic ? > They can purchase tickets to movie showings, plays, concerts or museum exhibits. And they can sign up for dance, painting or drawing classes. Oh you mean they didn’t rush to the theaters, that also were only reopened a few weeks ago, with many closing again ? And the pass has limitation on what can be bought, only part of it can be spent online, and content or production has to be french and approved by the gov., which really reduces the options. All in all this is to me a weird take on the situation.
0xTJ 5y ago
Comic books are definitely culture. It's art and story-telling. They're at least as worthy of the title as any other book they might buy. Sure, broadening their culture horizons would be good, if it was easy to enforce spending it on something you don't currently embrace. I wished, and still wish, I had money that I could justify spending to buy comic books and getting into that. I'm really not a fan of that sensationalist headline, trying to drive up outrage on both sides, ven though it doesn't say whether buying comic books is good or bad in the headline. The article even gives examples of how it can be beneficial, like teenagers buying from comics local shops instead of going online, or buying records locally, but ignores the fact that there's a pandemic that makes it hard to enjoy certain forms of entertainment that are pushed by this program. Overall, I don't think this is great and honest journalism, even if the content itself is interesting.
rgoulter 5y ago
> nationwide nearly 630,000 teenagers now use it. Is France's teenage population around 4-5 million?
- GuB-42 5y ago
  Something like that. But the offer is only for those who are exactly 18.
AndyMcConachie 5y ago
The NYT clearly doesn't understand that comics are not necessarily considered low brow culture in France and Belgium. Comic books don't have the same reputation in France and Belgium as they do in the USA.
walterbell 5y ago
Secondary purpose: CBDC / digital euro training wheels for policy-gated currencies with No Buy lists.
- vkou 5y ago
  That's a silly thing to worry about. Businesses would scream bloody murder if their industry ended up on a no-buy list, and given a choice, governments kowtow to their interests. Cui bono? Governments also have far more effective, simpler-to-implement instruments for stopping the operation of undesirable businesses. Tariffs, taxes, and bans.
  - walterbell 5y ago
    Some businesses would win, some would lose. Always good to be (friends of the) king. The implications will motivate closed-door debates and public prototypes for data collection. But it will be hard to resist the lure of population-wide transaction data for fintech and social credit analytics married to digital/healthpass identity. Previously discussed, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27805709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27805709
    - vkou 5y ago
      As I said, this can all be accomplished through tariffs, taxes, or straight up bans, without engaging some Rube Goldberg contraption of playing whack-a-mole with payment systems and processors. A sovereign nation resorting to this to ban an undesirable category of business from its borders is swatting flies with a hockeystick. Possible? Yes. But why would it bother, when there are purpose-made flyswatters. If the government wants to shut your business down, it can trivially do so, by revoking your business license, or banning your category of business outright. It doesn't need to get into this nonsense with payment processing - which has a number of workarounds.
      - walterbell 5y ago
        As stated publicly by the BIS (central bank that governs all other central banks) in the top comment of the referenced thread, the difference with CBDCs would be granularity of targeting, in real-time, at the transactional level. As to the question of "why bother", one stated reason for CBDCs is to enable nation-state competition with Facebook's Diem cryptocurrency, whose stated reason for existence is to compete with Bitcoin, whose observed reason for existence is to make a small subset of humans more wealthy. There are also incentives for non-government entities, https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/get-ready-for-the-no-buy-list https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/get-ready-for-the-no-buy-li... > First, in January, PayPal blocked a Christian crowdfunding site that raised money to bring demonstrators to Washington on January 6. Then, in February, PayPal announced that it was working with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to ban users from the platform. This week the company announced it is partnering with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to investigate and shut down accounts that the ADL considers too extreme.
GuB-42 5y ago
Here is the website for the initiative https://pass.culture.fr/ https://pass.culture.fr/ Manga is explicitly mentioned in the introduction. If the government didn't want teens to buy comics, they would have excluded it, and most importantly, not mention manga on the front page! If by that initiative, they get teens to go to their local bookstore instead of ordering their comics on Amazon, it is a huge win, and one of the big reasons this pass exists.
mimixco 5y ago
The NYT title is intentionally derisive and xenophobic. The words "comic books" and the French term bandes dessinées relate to two entirely different experiences. In the US, comics are considered by the masses to be the bane of pubescent boys or puerile adults obsessed with superheros and cosplay. In France, graphic books (they're not all novels) are an elevated and widely-used cultural resource. They're found in educated bookstores, museum shops, libraries, and basically everywhere. And you know what? They're terrific! France (and Belgium) have access to wonderful historical series on every period you can name. Tons of biographies of famous, real people. And beautiful, illustrated tomes which they can use to spark their imagination and learning. It would be more accurate to say that Americans aren't spending money on graphically illustrated books because that's not an accepted part of our culture here, rather than to try to slam the French for something cool that works well for them. See also: Scott's McCloud's Reinventing Comics [0] and BDfugue [1], a terrific online store for bandes dessinées. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinventing_Comics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinventing_Comics [1] https://www.bdfugue.com/ https://www.bdfugue.com/
- derefr 5y ago
  The NYT is using that term because most Americans have never even heard the more fitting English-language term "graphic novels", and wouldn't know what it meant if the NYT used it. (Though, also, it's clickbait. They want to shock people into reading the article by asking an implicit question with an evocative contrast: highlighting the discrepancy of mood between a term usually used to refer to high-brow concepts — "Culture" — and a term usually applied to low-brow media — "Comic Books". The body of the article, though investigating a similar tension, doesn't carry that same derogatory editorial thrust.)
  - mimixco 5y ago
    For sure, but they're not all novels. There's lots of factual graphic books and lots of conceptual things that can be learned from those books. It's also notable that the NYT did not mention any of the differences between US and French or Belgian "comics."
jgrahamc 5y ago
Am I to understand from this that the New York Times (and perhaps the bien pensant in the US) consider mere "comic books" some sort of gutter culture? My last trip to Paris I spent a long time in these "comic book" stores. They are absolute goldmines with passionate and knowledgeable staff and incredible selections.
- imperio59 5y ago
  France has a long tradition of the "BD" (Bande Dessine = Comic Books) and a thriving community of illustrators and writers who make them. There are many great series which a lot of us French kids grew up with who had pretty intricate plots and were very well crafted. I agree that sneering at Comic books as "not the culture we wanted" is BS. Culture is culture. French and Belgian comic books like "Asterix et les Gaulois" or "Tintin" or "Gaston La Gaffe" etc... are great works of comedy and art just like anything else.
  - rchaud 5y ago
    From the article, it doesn't seem like the money is going towards French + Belgian comics either. I am not French, but Asterix and Tintin comics were widely sold in translated versions in my country and across the world. But mine was also the pre-Internet era, where we'd spend small fortunes on comics and magazines because we had nothing to offset the boredom. With always-on Internet, that's just not a reality now.
    - dfxm12 5y ago
      Is the money going to French bookstores, though?
  - Isamu 5y ago
    Moebius, of course. Right now I really love PTSD by Guillaume Singelin.
  - julienfr112 5y ago
    Young french people are not buying "BD Franco-Belge", but mangas.
Hamuko 5y ago
I get cultural allowance from my workplace and it's very limited as to what I can actually use it. I can't actually buy any things with it - no books, no comic books, no music, no games, nothing. It's mainly for movie and concert tickets - which has made this benefit rather useless for the past year and a half. I'd much prefer this system where I can actually buy cultural stuff to keep.
mhh__ 5y ago
Not real culture it seems
cwizou 5y ago
As an aside, it's been a bit surprising to see the disconnect on so many topics regarding France in the NYT in the last few months. This seems like just the latest (and fairly mild) episode of this, but it's still a bit puzzling to me as a former (sort of) journalist to see so much editorialising, and in this case, an utter lack of facts and context. There's not much on the goals behind that pass, the impact of covid on many of the other options, or any background on the local "bd" culture that would explain the difference to the US comics culture to the reader. The title certainly doesn't help. At that point I don't know if I'm just getting more picky with time, but the fact to editorialising ratio in the NYT seem to have shifted to, at least to me, a fairly uncomfortable level pretty much every time I stumble onto one of their articles.
- zepto 5y ago
  > the fact to editorialising ratio in the NYT seem to have shifted to, at least to me, a fairly uncomfortable level pretty much every time I stumble onto one of their articles It’s not just you. You are waking up from the gell-mann amnesia.
- not_exactly__ 5y ago
  I’ve personally stopped reading NYT specifically because of this editorializing vs just reporting issue. It’s really frustrating to see in individual articles; in the greater scheme of things, it’s sad to observe. NYT has always had blunders (eg 2003 war in Iraq), but this is something else altogether.
- nagrom 5y ago
  It's not just France - the way that the NYT treats the UK has become a running joke e.g: https://londonist.com/london/food-and-drink/until-recently-londoners-ate-boiled-mutton-and-porridge-according-to-this-new-york-times-article https://londonist.com/london/food-and-drink/until-recently-l... https://unherd.com/2020/01/what-has-the-new-york-times-got-against-britain/ https://unherd.com/2020/01/what-has-the-new-york-times-got-a... This weird inability to reflect reality I see day-to-day coupled with the insistence on anti-patterns of behaviour for those cancelling their subscriptions has prevented me from taking out a sub to the NYT. That's a shame, as some of the articles are great.
mombul 5y ago
This article misses the point. The point is that at a time where teenagers' finances (= their parents') are not at their best (COVID), where theaters and libraries are closed-ish (COVID), where you can't just hang out freely at a coffee shop that offers free comics to read (COVID), where you can't side down in the aisles of the comic book store (COVID), they decided to give them $350. Nobody believed they'd use it to go see some Shakespeare, and nobody should. It's just dumb classicism. Good on them to use it for something they LIKE instead of something someome else deems better for them.
forinti 5y ago
My brother got a question right on his college entrance exam because of Asterix. Let the kids read what they want. If they are reading, it's a win!
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Now I'm curious as to what the question was!
  - forinti 5y ago
    Which Roman Emperor conquered Gaul.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      Cool :) Almost conquered Gaul ;)
      - forinti 5y ago
        Of course, except for a small village...
markus_zhang 5y ago
This reminds me of a scene from "Yes Minister": > (Sir Humphrey to Bernard)..subsidy..Is for art, for culture. It is not to be given to what the people want. It is for what the people don't want but ought to have! If they want something they'll pay for it themselves! No, we subsidies education, enlightenment, spiritual uplift. Not the vulgar pastimes of ordinary people.
- rchaud 5y ago
  I thought the same! A funny exchange on the merits of subsidizing highbrow entertainment like opera vs lowbrow 'mainstream' industries like football and films. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvNw0P5ZMbA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvNw0P5ZMbA
  - markus_zhang 5y ago
    Yeah exactly. And the sex education part is very funny.
aaomidi 5y ago
Comic books are culture.
lefrenchy 5y ago
> Rather than discovering high brow arts Some good old elitism from NYT. Worth mentioning that France has reduced prices to cultural expos for students, and there are plenty that are free! They can enjoy comic books AND art expos.
touisteur 5y ago
This NYT story/title has been mocked to death on French Twitter. The kids are reading. Manga, so what ? AND they're using culture-money to PAY the artists they like, even though they get their manga off the Internet for free. Isn't the greatest outcome possible? Sure, French artists might have wanted that money flowing back to French artists... But if they like it and when given a choice will pay for it... Maybe there's not enough market (want) for French BD or culture as it is today...
- rchaud 5y ago
  What are they mocking? It seems from your comment that the facts were reported accurately. Money is going towards manga, so not towards French creators. This is a government program, so the intention is to support French artists, is it not?
  - touisteur 5y ago
    The intention is first to support teenagers. Usual culture and meeting places for teens have been closed because COVID-19. Even libraries... Edit to answer your question: the framing of the question was 'we gave them money for 'culture', they bought comic books'. Expecting any other outcome would be counterintuitive if you've ever met teenagers. Cinemas, concerts, librairies, indoors activities are all closed. They're supposed to stay home and telecommute to high school (WTF?). General reaction was 'good', 'manga are culture too', 'who could have seen that coming'.
underseacables 5y ago
Money welll spent.
Hypergraphe 5y ago
Another useless article from the NYT, written by a snob.
thiht 5y ago
So the culture pass was used to buy culture. I’d say it’s a success.
musicale 5y ago
Comic books (and manga/graphic novels/etc.) sound like a good plan, especially during a pandemic where much of live performance either has shut down or remains risky. Getting more kids into physical book and record stores seems like a nice effect as well. Not everything needs to be purchased from Amazon or streamed on Spotify. I'd also expect to see more live events as the pandemic (hopefully) wanes. > And while the Culture Pass can be spent on video games, the game’s publisher must be French, and the game must not feature violence — conditions so restrictive that most popular titles are unavailable. Ah, I was wondering why games weren't higher on the list.

65 points by mantesso 5y ago

I'm not sure why the NYT would find this surprising, it is le neuvième art.

Comic books are culture. Whether you like that or not is a matter of taste. Personally I absolutely love 'Gaston' and 'Asterix', but also like some other old school ones. The newer stuff I don't feel much connection with.

yann2 5y ago
+1 No accident that part of the world produced Herge and Mobieus and inspired Miyazaki.
jsilence 5y ago
Also the works of Marc-Antoine Mathieu are highly recommended! It IS culture.
- edhelas 5y ago
  I'm French and I'd never have though to read this author name on Hacker News one day :D
  - jsilence 5y ago
    His stuff is simply mind blowing. And as others mentioned, Hergé (BE) and Moebius are giants of the comic olympus.
ashtonkem 5y ago
Yup, this whole thing has a huge whiff of classicism and snobbery.
yumraj 5y ago
Never read Gaston, might have to look it up. But I love Asterix and Tintin, which I read while growing up in India. Interestingly the other comics I read were Phantom, Mandrake, Rip Kirby, Flash Gordon - available via a local publisher, Indrajal Comics [0], that were sent to us monthly (or was it weekly) via a subscription. Got introduced to all the *men much later. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indrajal_Comics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indrajal_Comics
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Gaston is very funny, don't miss the signatures, which are always a little gag by themselves. Here is a (French, I hope you can read it, if not you'll have to scrounge for a translated version) sample: https://imgur.com/gallery/oTnED https://imgur.com/gallery/oTnED
  - yumraj 5y ago
    Thanks. I don't speak French, will look for English version..
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      Quick and dirty translation, apologies for errors but this should get you the gist: "Gaston, bring me the last letter of insults from de Mesmaeker" "I'm curious how long it will take him to retrieve that from his" "mess...." "err, thanks" "Strange, he must have had it in hand by chance". "Let's do a second test" "Please fetch me the 4603rd response to the latest contest, it is ur" "gent" "Urr... thanks" "That's not possible, I know the mess in his place" "And the letter signed 'a new reader of 78'" "It upsets me, it upsets me" "And the message sent by that group of hippies" "He's invented a new system for classification of documents" "And look, in every piece there are tiny holes, it is a system based on micro-perforations" "I love my cactus, all of the correspondence organized and visible" Enjoy :)
      - yumraj 5y ago
        :D ... thanks for taking the time, much appreciated..
SilasX 5y ago
Regardless of what you consider "culture", the French government had some conception of what kinds of things they wanted the teens to engage in, and this isn't it (even if it's worthwhile in its own right). I think that's the article's point, and the program may respond by restricting the funds' usage in the future.
- vlunkr 5y ago
  > the French government had some conception of what kinds of things they wanted the teens to engage in, and this isn't it Is that true though? Maybe some people in the government feel that way, but it sounds like the goal was just to allow teenagers to buy what they wanted. If they thought kids were going to spend it to go the opera or something, why wouldn't they have put more restrictions on it in the first place?
- WastingMyTime89 5y ago
  > the French government had some conception of what kinds of things they wanted the teens to engage in, and this isn't it What? The French government isn't dumb. If they didn't want, teenagers to spend the pass money on BD, it would have been excluded. As is, I assume the French government is perfectly fine with French teenagers spending it on French produced entertainment in French stores.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  Here is a quote from the French governement site presenting the program [0]: > Envie d’aller au théâtre, voir un film ou un spectacle ? De prendre des cours de photo ? D’un roman ou d’un manga ? [emphasis mine] Which roughly means Would you like to go to the theatre, see a film or a show? Take some photography courses? Read a novel or manga? If the French government didn't intend for the money to be used this way, they certainly haven't told the people designing the site that promotes it. [0] https://pass.culture.fr/ https://pass.culture.fr/
arp242 5y ago
And a lot of things we now consider high-brow culture were really just the comic books of the past.
arrrg 5y ago
Does the article claim something else?
- AutumnCurtain 5y ago
  Nope. It shares the perspectives of some people who do but the author does not take a stance. Shocking to see so many comments here acting like that's the case.
arcturus17 5y ago
Gaston is possibly some of the best humor I've ever seen in any cultural medium. Tintin was gripping too, and arguably the greatest cultural icon to come from European comics. In Spain we had a good comic culture from the 50s onwards, with perhaps one of the greatest exponents being Mortadelo y Filemón which had was hilarious and had some international exposure (I've seen it in German flea markets as Clever & Smart) I agree that comics are culture too, but I can see how this will ruffle some feathers among people expecting that young kids would be buying thick tomes by Chateaubriand or attending Racine plays in droves. This is a model of subsidy (vouchers, in essence) which some free-market economists can get behind as it still allows agency from individuals or markets. However what we're seeing is the very reason why others would staunchly oppose this kind of model...
- jacquesm 5y ago
  I have a story about Gaston, and how funny it is. When I was a kid I would read with a flashlight under the covers after the time that I was supposed to be in bed and sleeping. This worked well for most books but with Gaston I couldn't help myself being in stitches from time to time which invariably attracted unwanted parental attention. There are a couple that immediately spring to mind, the one where he launches the gas container from the roof of his car, the 'running gag' about the contracts that never get signed and that surprise in fact do get signed and then are promptly shredded by the cat and the badly humored seagull that drops stuff on people. And the parking meter wars, hilarious.
  - Agingcoder 5y ago
    And the morue aux fraises (cod with strawberries)

mytailorisrich 5y ago

Nothing surprising. It seems odd and unrealistic to assume that people would spend windfall money on something they have no interest in or do not like. Whatever cultural products people enjoy, it seems reasonable to expect that they would simply consume more of them if they had more money... Especially considering that the vast majority already has the purchasing power to consume whatever they want.

zrobotics 5y ago

https://archive.vn/bhGDF https://archive.vn/bhGDF

diogenescynic 5y ago

Maybe it's just the easiest to resell?

echelon 5y ago

I feel like this behavior could have been predicted. I'm not going to say whether or not purchases of manga are bad, but to think students would consume high brow art and then to be disappointed is after the fact is pretty poor foresight. Can we start to use the vast number of cultural experiments we've conducted to infer which will succeed in producing the desired outcomes? Can we start trying new experiments? I'd like to see us give cash to students that do well in school or participate in sports, clubs, music, etc. (If the worry is that this primarily rewards students whose parents are wealthy, I'm not so sure. Wealthy kids might not be satisfied by the rewards.)

swalls 5y ago
Are you implying this wasn't intentional? France (alongside Belgium) practically invented the comic industry, but in recent years I'd imagine that's been getting decimated by east Asian manga. If you want to inspire a generation to revitalise your comic industry, this doesn't seem like a bad way.
- WastingMyTime89 5y ago
  > but in recent years I'd imagine that's been getting decimated by east Asian manga France has been consuming manga for decades. It's the market with the most translations (more than in the US) and is by itself 40% of the European market. There were already some notable anime coproductions between France and Japan in the 80s. Amusingly, like with comic books, the culture surrounding mangas in France is actually very different than in the US. As pretty much everyone has been exposed to anime as a child, there is far less of a stigma surrounding it and you can consume some without being seen as a weirdo. If it hasn't killed BD yet, it probably never will. I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually growing the market.

makeitdouble 5y ago

Why is this pass described like in a vacuum when the country we’re still in a middle of a pandemic ? > They can purchase tickets to movie showings, plays, concerts or museum exhibits. And they can sign up for dance, painting or drawing classes. Oh you mean they didn’t rush to the theaters, that also were only reopened a few weeks ago, with many closing again ? And the pass has limitation on what can be bought, only part of it can be spent online, and content or production has to be french and approved by the gov., which really reduces the options. All in all this is to me a weird take on the situation.

0xTJ 5y ago

Comic books are definitely culture. It's art and story-telling. They're at least as worthy of the title as any other book they might buy. Sure, broadening their culture horizons would be good, if it was easy to enforce spending it on something you don't currently embrace. I wished, and still wish, I had money that I could justify spending to buy comic books and getting into that. I'm really not a fan of that sensationalist headline, trying to drive up outrage on both sides, ven though it doesn't say whether buying comic books is good or bad in the headline. The article even gives examples of how it can be beneficial, like teenagers buying from comics local shops instead of going online, or buying records locally, but ignores the fact that there's a pandemic that makes it hard to enjoy certain forms of entertainment that are pushed by this program. Overall, I don't think this is great and honest journalism, even if the content itself is interesting.

rgoulter 5y ago

> nationwide nearly 630,000 teenagers now use it. Is France's teenage population around 4-5 million?

GuB-42 5y ago
Something like that. But the offer is only for those who are exactly 18.

AndyMcConachie 5y ago

The NYT clearly doesn't understand that comics are not necessarily considered low brow culture in France and Belgium. Comic books don't have the same reputation in France and Belgium as they do in the USA.

walterbell 5y ago

Secondary purpose: CBDC / digital euro training wheels for policy-gated currencies with No Buy lists.

vkou 5y ago
That's a silly thing to worry about. Businesses would scream bloody murder if their industry ended up on a no-buy list, and given a choice, governments kowtow to their interests. Cui bono? Governments also have far more effective, simpler-to-implement instruments for stopping the operation of undesirable businesses. Tariffs, taxes, and bans.
- walterbell 5y ago
  Some businesses would win, some would lose. Always good to be (friends of the) king. The implications will motivate closed-door debates and public prototypes for data collection. But it will be hard to resist the lure of population-wide transaction data for fintech and social credit analytics married to digital/healthpass identity. Previously discussed, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27805709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27805709
  - vkou 5y ago
    As I said, this can all be accomplished through tariffs, taxes, or straight up bans, without engaging some Rube Goldberg contraption of playing whack-a-mole with payment systems and processors. A sovereign nation resorting to this to ban an undesirable category of business from its borders is swatting flies with a hockeystick. Possible? Yes. But why would it bother, when there are purpose-made flyswatters. If the government wants to shut your business down, it can trivially do so, by revoking your business license, or banning your category of business outright. It doesn't need to get into this nonsense with payment processing - which has a number of workarounds.
    - walterbell 5y ago
      As stated publicly by the BIS (central bank that governs all other central banks) in the top comment of the referenced thread, the difference with CBDCs would be granularity of targeting, in real-time, at the transactional level. As to the question of "why bother", one stated reason for CBDCs is to enable nation-state competition with Facebook's Diem cryptocurrency, whose stated reason for existence is to compete with Bitcoin, whose observed reason for existence is to make a small subset of humans more wealthy. There are also incentives for non-government entities, https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/get-ready-for-the-no-buy-list https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/get-ready-for-the-no-buy-li... > First, in January, PayPal blocked a Christian crowdfunding site that raised money to bring demonstrators to Washington on January 6. Then, in February, PayPal announced that it was working with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to ban users from the platform. This week the company announced it is partnering with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to investigate and shut down accounts that the ADL considers too extreme.

GuB-42 5y ago

Here is the website for the initiative https://pass.culture.fr/ https://pass.culture.fr/ Manga is explicitly mentioned in the introduction. If the government didn't want teens to buy comics, they would have excluded it, and most importantly, not mention manga on the front page! If by that initiative, they get teens to go to their local bookstore instead of ordering their comics on Amazon, it is a huge win, and one of the big reasons this pass exists.

mimixco 5y ago

The NYT title is intentionally derisive and xenophobic. The words "comic books" and the French term bandes dessinées relate to two entirely different experiences. In the US, comics are considered by the masses to be the bane of pubescent boys or puerile adults obsessed with superheros and cosplay. In France, graphic books (they're not all novels) are an elevated and widely-used cultural resource. They're found in educated bookstores, museum shops, libraries, and basically everywhere. And you know what? They're terrific! France (and Belgium) have access to wonderful historical series on every period you can name. Tons of biographies of famous, real people. And beautiful, illustrated tomes which they can use to spark their imagination and learning. It would be more accurate to say that Americans aren't spending money on graphically illustrated books because that's not an accepted part of our culture here, rather than to try to slam the French for something cool that works well for them. See also: Scott's McCloud's Reinventing Comics [0] and BDfugue [1], a terrific online store for bandes dessinées. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinventing_Comics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinventing_Comics [1] https://www.bdfugue.com/ https://www.bdfugue.com/

derefr 5y ago
The NYT is using that term because most Americans have never even heard the more fitting English-language term "graphic novels", and wouldn't know what it meant if the NYT used it. (Though, also, it's clickbait. They want to shock people into reading the article by asking an implicit question with an evocative contrast: highlighting the discrepancy of mood between a term usually used to refer to high-brow concepts — "Culture" — and a term usually applied to low-brow media — "Comic Books". The body of the article, though investigating a similar tension, doesn't carry that same derogatory editorial thrust.)
- mimixco 5y ago
  For sure, but they're not all novels. There's lots of factual graphic books and lots of conceptual things that can be learned from those books. It's also notable that the NYT did not mention any of the differences between US and French or Belgian "comics."

jgrahamc 5y ago

Am I to understand from this that the New York Times (and perhaps the bien pensant in the US) consider mere "comic books" some sort of gutter culture? My last trip to Paris I spent a long time in these "comic book" stores. They are absolute goldmines with passionate and knowledgeable staff and incredible selections.

imperio59 5y ago
France has a long tradition of the "BD" (Bande Dessine = Comic Books) and a thriving community of illustrators and writers who make them. There are many great series which a lot of us French kids grew up with who had pretty intricate plots and were very well crafted. I agree that sneering at Comic books as "not the culture we wanted" is BS. Culture is culture. French and Belgian comic books like "Asterix et les Gaulois" or "Tintin" or "Gaston La Gaffe" etc... are great works of comedy and art just like anything else.
- rchaud 5y ago
  From the article, it doesn't seem like the money is going towards French + Belgian comics either. I am not French, but Asterix and Tintin comics were widely sold in translated versions in my country and across the world. But mine was also the pre-Internet era, where we'd spend small fortunes on comics and magazines because we had nothing to offset the boredom. With always-on Internet, that's just not a reality now.
  - dfxm12 5y ago
    Is the money going to French bookstores, though?
- Isamu 5y ago
  Moebius, of course. Right now I really love PTSD by Guillaume Singelin.
- julienfr112 5y ago
  Young french people are not buying "BD Franco-Belge", but mangas.

Hamuko 5y ago

I get cultural allowance from my workplace and it's very limited as to what I can actually use it. I can't actually buy any things with it - no books, no comic books, no music, no games, nothing. It's mainly for movie and concert tickets - which has made this benefit rather useless for the past year and a half. I'd much prefer this system where I can actually buy cultural stuff to keep.

mhh__ 5y ago

Not real culture it seems

cwizou 5y ago

As an aside, it's been a bit surprising to see the disconnect on so many topics regarding France in the NYT in the last few months. This seems like just the latest (and fairly mild) episode of this, but it's still a bit puzzling to me as a former (sort of) journalist to see so much editorialising, and in this case, an utter lack of facts and context. There's not much on the goals behind that pass, the impact of covid on many of the other options, or any background on the local "bd" culture that would explain the difference to the US comics culture to the reader. The title certainly doesn't help. At that point I don't know if I'm just getting more picky with time, but the fact to editorialising ratio in the NYT seem to have shifted to, at least to me, a fairly uncomfortable level pretty much every time I stumble onto one of their articles.

zepto 5y ago
> the fact to editorialising ratio in the NYT seem to have shifted to, at least to me, a fairly uncomfortable level pretty much every time I stumble onto one of their articles It’s not just you. You are waking up from the gell-mann amnesia.
not_exactly__ 5y ago
I’ve personally stopped reading NYT specifically because of this editorializing vs just reporting issue. It’s really frustrating to see in individual articles; in the greater scheme of things, it’s sad to observe. NYT has always had blunders (eg 2003 war in Iraq), but this is something else altogether.
nagrom 5y ago
It's not just France - the way that the NYT treats the UK has become a running joke e.g: https://londonist.com/london/food-and-drink/until-recently-londoners-ate-boiled-mutton-and-porridge-according-to-this-new-york-times-article https://londonist.com/london/food-and-drink/until-recently-l... https://unherd.com/2020/01/what-has-the-new-york-times-got-against-britain/ https://unherd.com/2020/01/what-has-the-new-york-times-got-a... This weird inability to reflect reality I see day-to-day coupled with the insistence on anti-patterns of behaviour for those cancelling their subscriptions has prevented me from taking out a sub to the NYT. That's a shame, as some of the articles are great.

mombul 5y ago

This article misses the point. The point is that at a time where teenagers' finances (= their parents') are not at their best (COVID), where theaters and libraries are closed-ish (COVID), where you can't just hang out freely at a coffee shop that offers free comics to read (COVID), where you can't side down in the aisles of the comic book store (COVID), they decided to give them $350. Nobody believed they'd use it to go see some Shakespeare, and nobody should. It's just dumb classicism. Good on them to use it for something they LIKE instead of something someome else deems better for them.

forinti 5y ago

My brother got a question right on his college entrance exam because of Asterix. Let the kids read what they want. If they are reading, it's a win!

jacquesm 5y ago
Now I'm curious as to what the question was!
- forinti 5y ago
  Which Roman Emperor conquered Gaul.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Cool :) Almost conquered Gaul ;)
    - forinti 5y ago
      Of course, except for a small village...

markus_zhang 5y ago

This reminds me of a scene from "Yes Minister": > (Sir Humphrey to Bernard)..subsidy..Is for art, for culture. It is not to be given to what the people want. It is for what the people don't want but ought to have! If they want something they'll pay for it themselves! No, we subsidies education, enlightenment, spiritual uplift. Not the vulgar pastimes of ordinary people.

rchaud 5y ago
I thought the same! A funny exchange on the merits of subsidizing highbrow entertainment like opera vs lowbrow 'mainstream' industries like football and films. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvNw0P5ZMbA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvNw0P5ZMbA
- markus_zhang 5y ago
  Yeah exactly. And the sex education part is very funny.

aaomidi 5y ago

Comic books are culture.

lefrenchy 5y ago

> Rather than discovering high brow arts Some good old elitism from NYT. Worth mentioning that France has reduced prices to cultural expos for students, and there are plenty that are free! They can enjoy comic books AND art expos.

touisteur 5y ago

This NYT story/title has been mocked to death on French Twitter. The kids are reading. Manga, so what ? AND they're using culture-money to PAY the artists they like, even though they get their manga off the Internet for free. Isn't the greatest outcome possible? Sure, French artists might have wanted that money flowing back to French artists... But if they like it and when given a choice will pay for it... Maybe there's not enough market (want) for French BD or culture as it is today...

rchaud 5y ago
What are they mocking? It seems from your comment that the facts were reported accurately. Money is going towards manga, so not towards French creators. This is a government program, so the intention is to support French artists, is it not?
- touisteur 5y ago
  The intention is first to support teenagers. Usual culture and meeting places for teens have been closed because COVID-19. Even libraries... Edit to answer your question: the framing of the question was 'we gave them money for 'culture', they bought comic books'. Expecting any other outcome would be counterintuitive if you've ever met teenagers. Cinemas, concerts, librairies, indoors activities are all closed. They're supposed to stay home and telecommute to high school (WTF?). General reaction was 'good', 'manga are culture too', 'who could have seen that coming'.

underseacables 5y ago

Money welll spent.

Hypergraphe 5y ago

Another useless article from the NYT, written by a snob.

thiht 5y ago

So the culture pass was used to buy culture. I’d say it’s a success.

musicale 5y ago

Comic books (and manga/graphic novels/etc.) sound like a good plan, especially during a pandemic where much of live performance either has shut down or remains risky. Getting more kids into physical book and record stores seems like a nice effect as well. Not everything needs to be purchased from Amazon or streamed on Spotify. I'd also expect to see more live events as the pandemic (hopefully) wanes. > And while the Culture Pass can be spent on video games, the game’s publisher must be French, and the game must not feature violence — conditions so restrictive that most popular titles are unavailable. Ah, I was wondering why games weren't higher on the list.