French Television Research Articles

Spin-doctoring in French television series: The art of emotional labor

This article aims to question the spin doctor’s representations on television series. If it is easy to recognize on television series medical professionals because of their white coat and their diverse accessories for example, how can we distinguish a spin doctor who looks like an advisor like any other? Based on the analysis of four French television series ( Baron Noir, Les Hommes de l’ombre, Hénaut Président, and Ainsi soient-ils), this article makes the hypothesis that the ethos of the shadow counselor’s fictional avatar can be measured against the notion of figurative idiom. The aim is to reveal the visual language, the codes, the frameworks, and the behaviors that organize and structure the way this occupation is semiotized. And then, by focusing on the social drama of work and particularly on the asymmetric roles, we will present an expert performing emotional labor on his “client.”

“ Sans la liberté de flatter , il n’est pas d’éloge blâmeur ”: Jacques Martin and French television satire in the 1960s and 1970s

The comedian and television presenter Jacques Martin (1933–2007) is well-known to the French public even a quarter century after his disappearance from their screens. Despite having been the author/originator of many of the most watched and influential shows on French television in the 1960s, 1970s, and beyond, Martin is curiously little studied in academic literature, even though much of his work can be seen to prefigure later trends in television programming. Focusing on his satirical comedy shows of the 1960s and 1970s (at the expense of his extensive other work presenting popular culture on the petit écran during the period) this article examines his satirical project and suggests that the surprising lack of interest in his work is due to the subaltern status of the popular culture that inspired and infused his programs.

Screening race, streaming Frenchness: Women of colour on French Netflix

ABSTRACT This article builds on the emerging scholarship on Netflix productions and French series to analyse questions of racial visibility and feminine representation in two series: Dix pour cent/Call My Agent! (France Télévisions/Netflix, 2015–2020) and Plan cœur/The Hook-Up Plan (Netflix, 2018–2022). The first section focuses on Dix pour cent’s Sofia Leprince, a mixed-race receptionist and aspiring actress, and the ways in which she serves to highlight the lack of Black actors in French cinema. The second section analyses Plan cœur’s Charlotte Ben Smires, a young woman at a career crossroads who offers a paradoxical perspective on the place of Maghrebi descendants in – and their relationship with – France. Overall, the authors examine how Dix pour cent and Plan cœur, two series featuring strong women of colour, navigate racial visibility in universalist French contexts. These series speak back to a striking historical absence of actors of colour – especially women – from French television screens, yet they are nonetheless circumscribed in persistent norms of republican universalism and thus racial colour-blindness. This article examines this paradox to determine whether these successful contemporary series can truly offer ‘narrative renewal’ within the confines of republican representation norms.

Laughing about race in “colorblind” France: Racial stereotypes in French television comedy

This article examines the portrayal of race in two iconic French television series, H and Platane, exploring how they negotiate racial stereotypes within the context of France's purportedly colorblind society. Through a comparative analysis, we analyze the comedic strategies employed by these shows, drawing on humor theory to elucidate the dynamics of superiority and relief in laughter. While H often reinforces racial stereotypes under the guise of criticizing racist speech, Platane adopts a more nuanced approach, inviting viewers to engage with the complexities of racial discourse. By contextualizing these representations within France's sociopolitical landscape, we demonstrate the evolving nature of race talk in French television and its implications for broader societal attitudes. This study underscores the significance of television comedy as a space for both reflecting and potentially challenging cultural norms surrounding race and identity.

Abortion in French cinema during the long 1960s and beyond

ABSTRACT This article examines the representation of abortion in French cinema during one of the most pivotal periods for women’s rights and lives—the ‘long’ 1960s (1959–1973), one caught between post-war conservatism and the more tangible feminism of the mid-1970s. Using a feminist and sociocultural approach alongside statistical analysis of all 1,455 French-produced feature films released during this period and textual analysis of case-study films, we examine various aspects of abortion, including representation of the decision process, the procedure itself and the aftermath, alongside physical and emotional aspects. Before the long 1960s, films primarily represented abortions as a taboo: dangerous, violent, and often resulting in death. This reinforced stigma, fear and misunderstanding surrounding the procedure, although films like Claude Autant-Lara’s Une femme en blanc series (1965 and 1966), Mon amour, mon amour (Nadine Trintignant, 1967) and Avortement clandestin! (Pierre Chevalier, 1973) worked to challenge these stereotypes. We look beyond the long 1960s to filmmaking in the direct aftermath of Loi Veil before concluding with a discussion of recent French television series. This paper mitigates a gap in current scholarship by unpacking the representation of abortion in French popular media, a woefully under-studied but critical subject—essential for understanding the status of women’s reproductive rights in France.

From Bron to The Tunnel: localising international television formats

ABSTRACT This article analyses the Franco-British series The Tunnel (Canal+, 2013–2017), co-produced by Sky Atlantic and StudioCanal, as an iteration of the Swedish-Danish series Bron/Broen/The Bridge (Danmarks Radio, 2011–2018). The author situates Bron within the global television format trade and argues that The Tunnel is best understood as a localised version rather than a remake or an adaptation. With six versions of the original series now available around the world, the author argues that Bron has become such a reproducible global television format because it offers a readymade co-production template in industrial, linguistic and narrative terms through its focus on crimes on and around national borders. The article then explores the specific localisation strategies used in the Franco-British version that employ social problems such as terrorism, human trafficking and immigration to position audiences within national and regional frames. Finally, the article discusses the complexities of situating The Tunnel within a nation-centred approach to French television.

Hearing the music of Engrenages

ABSTRACT There is very little academic work on music in television series, and none on music in French television series. This article focuses on one of the most successful French television series, the eight-season-long Engrenages/Spiral (Canal+, 2005–2020). It identifies the similarities and differences between music for films and music for television series before focusing on the music composed by Stéphane Zidi for Engrenages. This combines the unusual use of gamelan instruments as musical cues with more melodic piano themes. Arguing that television series music, which might have been even more ‘unheard’ than film music, functions to shape audience perception of the characters, the article focuses on the specificities of gamelan cues and piano themes. The piano themes migrate from one character to another across the eight seasons of the series, and the article shows how this affects the narrative arc of the main character, Laure Berthaud, emphasising her rejection of (both) the conflicting roles of mother and leader.

Use of Twitter during Televised Election Debates: Spanish General Election (28 April 2019) vs. French General Election (24 April 2022)

Social media have become key in political communication, playing a crucial role in election campaigns due to their fast, ubiquitous communication. This paper focuses on the comparison of the use of the social network Twitter in Spanish and French public and commercial television stations, during the last televised debates held during their general elections (2019 and 2022). It seeks to find whether conversation and interaction with their audiences take place, and whether these meet the dialogic principles set forth by Kent and Taylor adapted to Twitter by Ribalko and Seltzer to include usefulness of information, generation of return visits and dialogic loop preservation. To do this, the content of the general Twitter profiles of two French television stations, together with their profiles focused on informative content, were analyzed before, during and after the televised election debate held on 20 April. Likewise, the Twitter profiles corresponding to two Spanish television stations, together with the profiles corresponding to their news programs, were studied before, during and after the televised election debates held on 22 and 23 April. After screening all their posts, those referring to the debate and generating the largest engagement figures were selected, in order to compare the topics covered in the televised debates with those covered in Twitter. The results reveal that the information-focused accounts originate more posts whose content is linked to the televised debates, in contrast with the general accounts. Furthermore, both the unidirectionality of their content, and the lack of dialogue and interaction between these accounts and their audiences, become apparent, in addition to the minimal occurrence of “debate about the debate” flow among users.

Život sociologa Alena Turena je došao do svog kraja - da li je došlo i do kraja društava, kako je tvrdio Turen?

Alain Touraine, the world-famous French sociologist, director and professor at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, founder of the Centre for the Analysis and Sociological Intervention in 1981, visiting professor at many universities outside France, and recipient of many national and international awards, died in Paris on June 9, 2023, at 3:30 A.M., at the age of 97. His daughter, Marisol Touraine, former French minister of social affairs, announced to the editorial staff for culture of the French television the exact time and date of her father's death. This information provoked the appearance of several in memoriam texts, rich in data on Touraine's biography and bibliography. I will also rely on these data, apart from other secondary and primary sources, in the process of reconstruction of the close relationship between Touraine's biography and his theoretical, empirical and practical political sociological work.

СТРУКТУРА ТА ТИПОЛОГІЯ ОЦІНКИ МЕДІЙНОЇ ПОДІЇ "РОСІЙСЬКО-УКРАЇНСЬКА ВІЙНА 2022–2023 РОКІВ " У ФРАНЦУЗЬКОМУ ТЕЛЕДИСКУРС

The article is devoted to the problems of axiological characterization of a media event as a part of the media picture of the world, which arises in the process of intercultural communication. The axiological characteristics are presented as a necessary constituent element of a media event, which participates in its formation. The structure of evaluation of the media event "Russian-Ukrainian war 2022-2023" in French television discourse is considered, the types of evaluation based on its relationship to the object of the evaluation characteristics and the types of evaluation based on the relationship to the subject of evaluation are identified. It was established that the media event "war in Ukraine" as an object of assessment in the audiovisual text of the analytical and informational telecast is significantly more complex in its structure than the real event, as it also includes elements that arise in the media discourse. As a result of the analysis of the types of subjects of the evaluation characteristics of the war in Ukraine as a media event in the French television discourse, it was found that the main subject of evaluation in the analytical and informative audiovisual text is a professional expert, a political scientist, that is, a person who possesses professional objectivity, authority and professional experience, which affects the formation of the evaluation of the event in the media picture of the world of the addressee of television broadcasting. In order to establish the types of assessment based on its relationship to its subject, which are included in the system of axiological characteristics of the Russian-Ukrainian war of 2022-2023, the assessment statements of heads of state, famous politicians, representatives of world organizations from countries whose interests are affected by the war in Ukraine were also considered. It was found that the introduction to the text of the assessment of a media event, the subject of assessment of which is a well-known political or socio-cultural figure, takes place with the help of the constructions of direct and indirect transmission of someone else's speech with an indication of the subject of the speech and the source of information. It is noted that a separate type of evaluation of a media event is represented by evaluation statements of direct participants of real events that have acquired the status of media events. Prospects for further research into the structure and typology of media event evaluation have been determined.

‘On n’est pas dans Black Mirror’: ambivalent optimism in Osmosis

ABSTRACT Osmosis (Netflix, 2019) is only the second French television series to be commissioned by Netflix. Set in a near-future Paris and dramatising the final beta-testing and launch of a revolutionary dating application, the programme has frequently been compared to Black Mirror (Channel 4 Television Corporation/Netflix, 2011–19). This article argues that the parallel is unhelpful since Osmosis does not contain the underlying technophobia that characterises the UK series and is largely, though not entirely, optimistic about the implications of artificial intelligence and technological advances for humanity. Nonetheless, the two series do share a common preoccupation with critiquing certain excesses of late capitalism. In its blend of dystopian and utopian elements and allusions to and subversions of Anglophone science-fiction conventions, Osmosis constitutes an original – and unashamedly French – futuristic series whose key characteristic is ambivalence.

Don’t Look Down

Don’t Look Down

Le discours médiatique parlé et la norme en français

The system of French accentuation is a relevant case of a language change, observable in a relatively short period of time in a stable synchrony. Since the mid-twentieth century, the formation of linguistic norms has largely depended on a specific type of utterance, media discourse, continually available in spoken audio-visual media. The impact of spoken media on the development of linguistic expression in the last few decades is unprecedented in language history. It is based on a communicational model in which speech is produced by a single speaker and instantly perceived by a multitude of receivers who have no possibility of intervening in the communicational process. Thus the receivers are passively exposed to an exclusive speaker and to language strategies conceived by the media and its linguistic authority. The analysis of two professional spoken interventions, uttered on French television, shows an important modification of the traditional accentual system: conserving the final accent (FA), the speakers systematically introduce an initial accent (IA), a landmark in the evolution of the French language and its normative features. The IA affects the first syllable of a stressed lexeme or the first syllable of an extended accentual unit, regardless of the syntactic function of the stressed morpheme. The FA is operated by the intonational action, while the IA seems to be realized by an accentual augmentation of vocal intensity. The automatism of lexical stressing is generating a systematic accentuation of the first syllable of the accentual unit. The IA mostly affects lexemes that speakers insist on because of their informative value (numerals, adverbs, proper names), but an important part of IA concerns different proclytics, such as deictic elements, articles and determinants. Accentual limitation of the unit on both sides is a specific feature of the speech in French audio-visual media. In recent decades it has found its echo in the normative speech of French linguistic communities.

Exhibition Review: Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life

Exhibition Review: <i>Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life</i>

Sport in the French Television Magazine Programme Cinq Colonnes à la Une (1959–1968)

During the 1960s, the rise of television as a mass medium in France went hand in hand with that of sport. Political authorities not only supported their development, but also controlled their forms and contents. Cultural history methods make it possible to formulate hypotheses concerning the influence that televised programmes may have on the viewers they are intended for. By examining the ways in which sport was exposed in an emblematic magazine programme of French television during the 1960s, entitled Cinq Colonnes à la Une, the aim is to determine its participation in the construction of a national identity. While sport made it possible to focus on the modernity of this form of media, it was also a symbol of entertainment for the viewers which helped to attract their attention relatively easily. Moreover, constructing closeness with the audience was a necessary condition in a widely viewed programme such as Cinq Colonnes à la Une for the conveyed message to reach the viewers. Such search for reality in sports reports may be interpreted as a factor facilitating the implicit diffusion of values helpful for youth resocialization through adherence to a vision of society based on work, effort, rigour and self-control.

Canal+: from innovative newcomer to beleaguered brand

This article examines the advent, embedding, and problematic contemporary situation of Canal+ within the context of the French television landscape as a whole. The first section is devoted to the arrival of the new pay-tv channel in 1984 and its growth to maturity to become an integral part of the French television system. The second section concentrates on the challenges facing Canal+ in recent years and the company’s strategic response in an era of unparalleled expansion in the supply of both television and video content as well as radical changes in media usage by French audiences.

The effect of gender stereotype content, program congruity, and liking on unconventional French television advertisement recall and purchase intention.

The effect of gender stereotype content, program congruity, and liking on unconventional French television advertisement recall and purchase intention.

Reimagining North African Immigration: Identities in Flux in French Literature, Television, and Film. Edited by Véronique Machelidon and Patrick Saveau

<i>Reimagining North African Immigration: Identities in Flux in French Literature, Television, and Film</i>. Edited by <scp>Véronique Machelidon</scp> and <scp>Patrick Saveau</scp>

Um jantar quase perfeito: cultura alimentar e socialização em um momento de crise

No dia 11 de março de 2020, após o número de casos de Covid-19, doença causada pelo novo Coronavírus, aumentar expressivamente em territórios fora da China, a OMS declarava oficialmente a doença como uma Pandemia. A partir da necessidade do isolamento social para o controle da disseminação viral, esta narrativa se constrói a partir da experiência de duas brasileiras e três franceses que residiram, durante um período, na mesma casa, localizada no município de Niterói, Rio de Janeiro. Na primeira semana de isolamento social, o abastecimento de gêneros alimentícios e a necessidade da construção de um ambiente alimentar eram as questões que atingiam ambas nacionalidades. Ademais, há a reprodução do “Jantar quase perfeito”, show de entretenimento da televisão francesa, como resposta à monotonia alimentar que surge à certa altura do confinamento. Através das preparações culinárias realizadas por cada um dos cinco moradores da casa, percebeu-se como certas comidas remetiam à territórios, à determinados grupos sociais, a momentos em família, à contextos culturais específicos relacionados a experiência de vida individual, sem que a estas concepções estivessem desassociados reflexões sobre a desigualdade de acesso à uma alimentação adequada que atinge grande parte da população brasileira. Por fim, com as barreiras físicas do isolamento social impostas pela Pandemia do novo Coronavírus, a comida expressava naquele espaço suas mais profundas dimensões de sociabilidade, entre aqueles que podiam partilhá-la presencialmente. Trazendo à luz a reflexão de que indivíduos se alimentam também através de símbolos, preenchidos com a história e identidade de cada um.

A Programme Like No Other: AIDS Prevention in French Television, 1995-1997

French television has broadcast health magazines since the 1950s. These magazines generally give more importance to medical expertise and curative medicine. In this article, I will present a programme that stands out from these, Sidamag, which was broadcast weekly in the mid-1990s. Targeting a young public and aiming to inform on preventive measures, Sidamag producers wanted to give space and voice to non-experts. These three goals were only partially achieved. Preventive measures were present in all Sidamag shows however, content analysis showed that only 14% focused on prevention in youth. Furthermore, medical discourse remained dominant although significant space was given to witness testimonials.