French Cinema: Globalization, Representation, and Resistance

Abstract

It is now twelve years since French brinkmanship pushed American negotiators and the prospects of a world trade deal to the wire, securing the exclusion of cultural products and services from the 1993 GATT agreement and the maintenance of European systems of national quotas, public subsidies, and intellectual property rights in the audiovisual sector. The intervening period has not been quiet. Although the Multilateral Agreement on Investment was sunk when Lionel Jospin pulled the plug on negotiations in October 1998, the applications of new central European entrants to join the European Union and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have been accompanied by a continuing guerrilla battle fought by successive American administrations against the terms and scope of the exclusion. In addition, developing countries‐‐led, notably, by Brazil‐‐have been increasingly vocal in their opposition to the European regulatory and redistributive mix, which they perceive to be little more than the market protectionism of a rich man’s club. Moreover, as Jean-Michel Baer has recently argued in a perceptive overview of the cultural exception, the ability of European states to defend cultural diversity is also vulnerable to the risk-management strategies prevalent in Europe’s own cultural industries, which have accelerated the trend toward horizontal and vertical concentration amongst its major media companies. In the area of film, this has led to an increased emphasis on marketing and a concomitant reduction in the diversity of spectator choice. 1 The collection of articles in this special issue of French Politics, Culture & Society explores the terrain mapped out by the post-GATT debate on globalization, examining the way that the consumption and production of film in France is structured by the relationship between sociopolitical conditions, state regulation, and transnational economic processes. Of course, we are not