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> The author is amazingly willing to accord French bureaucrats the right to regulate the cultural consumption of Frenchmen. How is this defensible? They don't
by guelo 10y ago
> The author is amazingly willing to accord French bureaucrats the right to regulate the cultural consumption of Frenchmen. How is this defensible?
They don't have to defend it to you. You have American values, they have French values. The whole point is that they don't want Americans coming in and imposing their values over theirs.
- AlgorithmicTime 10y agoBut... no one's imposing. The people of France are choosing to consume cultural artifacts provided by netflix, et. al. The French bureaucracy is basically telling the people that "no, we know better than you what you want." Which is absurd.
- sievebrain 10y agoAmerican values tend to actually be genuinely shared by Americans and thus do not need to be enforced by the government. The USG does not force its TV stations to play specific content in order to promote American values, they arise spontaneously from the culture. When it comes to pop culture, "French values" are something the French government wishes were actual shared values, but which aren't, hence the need for subsidies and laws mandating that local content which supposedly embodies these values are played. It's a simple propagandistic switcharoo: a few lawmakers claim "French values" must be protected, but who asked the French themselves? Well, in a sense the market did, and the French weren't interested. The flip side of this is that there are definitely non-media related French values that really do arise from the people, like socialist values and the value of striking.