Culture according to Madam Fillepetti

When I was 12 years old, there were my parents a small turntable and 5 vinyl records: Charles Aznavour, Enrico Macias, Claude François and Yves Montand. Today, my 12 year old son collects in its I.pad more than 1000 titles (jazz, pop, rock, techno). However, culture Minister Aurélie Filipetti quietly considers that culture is not compatible with the market. Certainly, it is not the first stupidity from socialists. But the problem is that they hold all the powers in France.

For my part, I consider that culture is not compatible with the power that involves coercion, submission, and monopoly. An artist, to be accepted by the market, must find its audience. Then the Socialists tell me that the public is not educated. But is it not yet the State who has the mission and the monopoly of the education of the masses?

Forgive me, Madam Minister, but the Beatles, Elvis Presley, Pink Floyd, or Michaël Jackson were born in capitalist countries where people are free and not socialist regimes where people are "educated"... or interned. At no time, these artists have begged grant (from whom by the way?) and they are simply gone to meet the public, rooms after rooms, concert after concert, that they have conquered forever

In the 1970s, Swedish intellectuals castigated the pop group Abba because this group earned money doing disco. What a horror! It is true that the global success of the Group was such that record sales have helped to redress the balance of trade of the Sweden. But for the Socialists, Abba won the money, which was not compatible with the culture. Today, forty years later, every night in London sold-out musical Mamamia that stages the songs of Abba, and nobody more because of the musical contribution of this group is played. Even the lead singer of the group U2 paid them a vibrating tribute. But the Socialists have always been in this area, very ambivalent. They are always lionized the people, believing speak on his behalf, but they are the first to denigrate its choices and cultural tastes. It is true that people prefer listening to the Disco that Pierre Boulez.

In fact, if feeding is a physiological need, how to meet this vital need is also a cultural Act, because eating is an art of living. However, there is a market for McDonalds, and there is a market for the French or Italian gastronomy. Thanks to globalization, in London, Paris, Perpignan, can be found Chinese, Thai, Lebanese or Corsica cuisine. We have never had such diversity. Yet, there are always beautiful minds to assert that globalization destroys cultural diversity. But the narrow minds believe that the world is narrow so that's their vision of the world which is reducing

We always talk about the linguistic imperialism to hide our structural inability to modern languages. Under the Roman Empire, the artists spoke Latin. At the Court of Louis XIV or the Tsar, artists and thinkers expressed themselves in French. Today, it is suicidal to exclude oneself from English language. John Lennon stated one day, under the Roman Empire, the cultural center was in Rome but that today ' today, he was in New York. Then our singers official, internationally unrecognized, hide behind the cultural exception, away from broadcasting quotas and subsidies, citing the language barrier and the beauty of the French language (which they happily massacre, by the way).

But Maurice Chevallier, Charles Trenet, Charles Aznavour, or Yves Montand had a global career, punctuated by numerous U.S. tours where they did promote the French language. Americans love them as they recently loved Jean Dujardin in The Artist. Elton John himself had great admiration for Michel Berger.

In fact, markets are plural while the State combines with the singular. There are markets for the "pinard" (cheap ordinary wine) and there are markets for great Bordeaux. And these markets are not closed because according to his desires and circumstances, the same person can taste and appreciate all these products. It is in music or film majors and more confidential labels.

One invokes then the American hegemon. But Hollywood is a very small town and the directory of professionals of American cinema is not as big as the directory of the Pyrénées-Orientales. Moreover, at the time when in France Lumières brothers invented the film unit, Italian immigrants founded in Hollywood film studios while a stranger named Walt Disney, in his Studio, photographed drawings to produce snow white, the first cartoon feature. Since the Disney empire invented the first tourist amusement parks and has switched to digital with the purchase of Pixar studios..

I am told that the culture is not merchandise. It is true and it is even trite! But the access to culture would be the mere fact of an elite privileged without the widespread use of its materials that are DVDs, books or digital. However, the production and distribution of materials (cultural products) obey logic of the market, to our great benefit to all. Similarly, thanks to Japanese companies, electric guitars are now accessible to everyone, in particular children, while only professional guitarists may offer the dream of playing on a Gibson or a Fender. By the way, I'll challenge you to find me a French company that manufactures electric guitars (or any other instrument or equipment of music besides). It is an inexhaustible source of jobs (but it really wants to work in France while it struggles to suffocate one by one all the deposits of jobs).

However, as always, the State is very contradictory on this subject. When the concert place price is exorbitant, it will denounce the market and the dictatorship of money which excludes the poorest (it takes so the defense of the consumer). But when you can now download movies or music, it will denounce this free which threatens the earnings of artists (and therefore defends the producer). Artists are workers like any other and must therefore live their working lifetime (concerts, performing arts) that can never download while the widest possible dissemination of works allows to know artists.

Should I finally remind our Minister of culture that the first major literary work, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which staged the war, love, and Cyclops and sirens, was written to entertain people (make dream, frighten them, make them cry) and not to flatter the powerful.

The Socialists are so blind by ideology that they refuse to see the reality of the world as it is, preferring to impose their world as they dream it. But the dream of some often turns into a nightmare for others. In the National Socialist regime, the official art was to flatter the Reich and the Fuhrer while the heretical books were burned. In the Soviet Socialist regime (of socialism), the official art was to celebrate the proletarian revolution and the hard work in the service of the objectives of the plan (Stakhanovism). Should I recall finally that the 'cultural' revolution initiated by Mao was to run Chinese intellectuals while in Parisian salons, intellectuals were defending Maoism? In fact, the assessment of cultural socialism is also distressing that scary. However, official history textbooks do teach little, preferring to fantasize about "liberal horror”.

The official art has left nothing beautiful (everything was even ugly) as the official science or official information leads to propaganda, the opposite of knowledge. Over the centuries, only faith, passion and freedom were the most powerful artistic sources of inspiration and creativity, and they are never compatible with the ideology, power and monopoly. You will understand when Socialists speak of economy, they make the Economist that I am pounce; but when they talk about culture, they make the musician that I remain scream!

It is now well off the time when General de Gaulle knew to surround himself with brilliant French economist Jacques Rueff, and the greatest Minister of culture, André Malraux, France ever had.