Representing “Diversity”: The Social and Professional Conditions for Accessing Public Funding in the French Audiovisual Sector

Abstract

In France, public funding occupies a specific place in the production and consecration cycles of film and television. Offering both financial resources and legitimacy to works determined to be of “quality,” this funding constitutes an ideal empirical platform to identify the interconnected social relations of gender, race, and class which shape access to French audiovisual production. Taking as its subject the Images de la diversité commission, a unique public funding scheme aimed at combating discrimination in the audiovisual sector, this article seeks to analyze the modalities of this state-funded support to a cultural industry. Established in 2007 to support works that “represent diversity” in film and television, this commission has institutionalized award criteria that fall between art and politics, and at the intersection of race, class, age, and migration status. By analyzing quantitatively a body of 1,318 works, stories, and production companies funded by the commission, this article aims to identify the social and professional conditions of this support for “diversity” and of access to production and legitimacy in the French audiovisual sector.