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FRANCE
Crusader for the Arts
Flamboyant Minister Jack Lang draws mixed reviews
T
here was nothing modest about the
idea, and when the 350 cultural super-
stars
finally
left Paris last week after a
glittering two-day conference on Creation
and Development, it was clear that there
had been nothing modest about their de-
liberations. Lodged in luxury hotels at the
expense of Frangois Mitterrand’s Socialist
government,
the high-powered conven-
tioneers gathered in the Sorbonne’s ven-
erable amphitheater to ponder their curi-
ous
subject:
cultural
solutions
to
the
world’s economic crisis.
Under frescoed portraits of Diderot
and
Voltaire,
luminaries
ranging
from
Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez
to Novelists Norman Mailer and William
Styron and Actress Sophia Loren debated
such
topics as
state control of the
arts
and the unemployment crisis. In between
they supped at the Foreign Ministry and
lunched with Mitterrand. So dazzling was
the cast that even the
stars sometimes
seemed overwhelmed. Said Film Director
Francis Ford Coppola: “The people here
are
incredible.
It’s
like
a
college—
very good college.” The meeting, Italian
Theater Director Giorgio
Strehler con-
cluded grandly
in
his summation, had
provoked awareness “ofthe need to create
a new place
for research,
for
creation,
for hope.”
But while rhetoric flowed freely, the
conference fell notably short on produc-
tive debate. In his closing address Mitter-
rand
called
for
a New
Renaissance,
claiming
that
“the
originality
of
the
French idea lies there, at the intersection
of technology and creativity.” From such
high-minded but vague declarations the
colloquium often descended into special
pleading and ideological posturing. Nov-
elist
Mary
McCarthy
called
on
the
French government to permit
Poland’s Radio
Solidarity
to
broadcast in France. Feminist
Kate Millett deplored the “se-
vere lack of representation of
women” at the meeting (85 out
of 350). U.S. cultural “imperi-
alism,” particularly in the form
of the internationally popular
TV show Dallas, was repeated-
ly attacked. Not a few guests
foundered on the generalities
and the pretension. The gran-
diose
talkathon,
hinted
one
American participant, mainly
“reflects how many people are
still
willing
to
accept
a
free
ticket to Paris.”
Such spectaculars have be-
come a hallmark of France’s
lavish new investment in the
arts, and the personal signature
ofMitterrand’s flamboyant and
popular
Minister
Lang with Actress Sophia Loren
Jack Lang, 43.* Dapper in his close-cut
suits, possessed of boyish good looks and
dark curls that seem to stir women, Lang
has ambitious plans for the arts in Socialist
France. “Our goal,” he says, “is to trans-
form all of France into a cultural work
site.” The transformation ofthe budget has
been dramatic. In 1981, under President
Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the Ministry of
Culture received $500 million, or .47% of
the national budget; this year the figure has
’Although
the
usual French
spelling
is
Jacques,
Lang’s birth certificate actually says Jack—proba-
bly the result, he says, of Anglo-Saxon influences
pervading France in 1939.
j
shot up to $1.05 billion, .78% of the total.
(In contrast, Washington
allocates only
$500 million, or .06% of the federal bud-
get, to the arts.) But Lang’s campaign to
rejuvenate France’s cultural life has also
depended on vengeful attacks on U.S. cul-
tural
“imperialism”
that
even
many
French intellectuals find embarrassing.
Whatever the merits of Lang’s efforts,
they have certainly been visible—and au-
dible. Last year, for example, he decided
that the French should mark the summer
solstice with a national “musical festival”
in which everyone would simultaneously
pluck, pound, tingle and bow musical in-
struments as church bells rang and neigh-
borhood
salsa bands
played.
Right on
cue, 5 million French joined in an exuber-
ant celebration that banged on from 8:30
p.m. until well past midnight. Lang has
filled the once empty courtyard of Paris’
staid Louvre museum with exhibitions of
new French
fashions,
displayed
to
the
thump of disco rhythms. A troupe from
the Comedie Frangaise has played in the
Paris subways. Still to come are an ambi-
tious new “people’s” opera house for the
Place de la Bastille, a new ballet school
for Marseille and a dance conservatory
for Lyon. And,
seemingly
everywhere,
there is Lang himself: listening to the rau-
cous new-wave
bands,
paging
through
displays at the annual comic book exhibi-
tion at Angouleme, inspecting Grenoble’s
art museum.
Lang’s evangelizing has boosted him
to fourth place in popularity among the
Mitterrand Cabinet’s 35 ministers. That
appeal, however, is due in part to his often
gratuitous attacks on U.S. influences. For
two years in a row, Lang has bypassed the
American film festival at Deauville, a ma-
jor annual event,
to
visit more obscure
French art projects in provincial towns.
In a burst of chauvinism that seemed cal-
culated to stir Third World sympathies,
Lang called, at a UNESCO conference last
summer, for a crusade against U.S. cultur-
al “imperialists” who “want to impose a
uniform way of life on the en-
tire planet.” In response, Lang
prescribes government
subsi-
dies for local talent, and favors
requiring
that 60%
of
films
broadcast
on
French
televi-
sion be French produced. His
attacks
on
American
films,
which dominate French televi-
sion and movie houses, have
astonished many cultural lead-
ers
in
France.
They
argue
that
American
influences
have
stimulated
French
cre-
ativity. Replies Lang: “All I’m
doing
is
recognizing that the
North American film industry
is large and penetrates the Eu-
ropean market. So who’s de-
claring war on whom?”
His polemical style comes
naturally. A lawyer by
train-
ing, Lang founded the experi-
Americans In Paris: Director Arthur Penn, Novelists Styron and Mailer
TIME, FEBRUARY 28, 1983