from Hacker News

France Gave Teenagers $350 for Culture. They’re Buying Comic Books

by mantesso on 8/2/21, 12:35 PM with 96 comments

  • by jgrahamc on 8/2/21, 5:19 PM

    Am I to understand from this that the New York Times (and perhaps the bien pensant in the US) consider mere "comic books" some sort of gutter culture?

    My last trip to Paris I spent a long time in these "comic book" stores. They are absolute goldmines with passionate and knowledgeable staff and incredible selections.

  • by jacquesm on 8/2/21, 1:06 PM

    Comic books are culture. Whether you like that or not is a matter of taste. Personally I absolutely love 'Gaston' and 'Asterix', but also like some other old school ones. The newer stuff I don't feel much connection with.

  • by cwizou on 8/2/21, 5:34 PM

    As an aside, it's been a bit surprising to see the disconnect on so many topics regarding France in the NYT in the last few months.

    This seems like just the latest (and fairly mild) episode of this, but it's still a bit puzzling to me as a former (sort of) journalist to see so much editorialising, and in this case, an utter lack of facts and context.

    There's not much on the goals behind that pass, the impact of covid on many of the other options, or any background on the local "bd" culture that would explain the difference to the US comics culture to the reader. The title certainly doesn't help.

    At that point I don't know if I'm just getting more picky with time, but the fact to editorialising ratio in the NYT seem to have shifted to, at least to me, a fairly uncomfortable level pretty much every time I stumble onto one of their articles.

  • by GuB-42 on 8/2/21, 4:11 PM

    Here is the website for the initiative https://pass.culture.fr/

    Manga is explicitly mentioned in the introduction. If the government didn't want teens to buy comics, they would have excluded it, and most importantly, not mention manga on the front page!

    If by that initiative, they get teens to go to their local bookstore instead of ordering their comics on Amazon, it is a huge win, and one of the big reasons this pass exists.

  • by mombul on 8/2/21, 5:40 PM

    This article misses the point. The point is that at a time where teenagers' finances (= their parents') are not at their best (COVID), where theaters and libraries are closed-ish (COVID), where you can't just hang out freely at a coffee shop that offers free comics to read (COVID), where you can't side down in the aisles of the comic book store (COVID), they decided to give them $350. Nobody believed they'd use it to go see some Shakespeare, and nobody should. It's just dumb classicism.

    Good on them to use it for something they LIKE instead of something someome else deems better for them.

  • by makeitdouble on 8/2/21, 2:05 PM

    Why is this pass described like in a vacuum when the country we’re still in a middle of a pandemic ?

    > They can purchase tickets to movie showings, plays, concerts or museum exhibits. And they can sign up for dance, painting or drawing classes.

    Oh you mean they didn’t rush to the theaters, that also were only reopened a few weeks ago, with many closing again ?

    And the pass has limitation on what can be bought, only part of it can be spent online, and content or production has to be french and approved by the gov., which really reduces the options.

    All in all this is to me a weird take on the situation.

  • by 0xTJ on 8/2/21, 2:09 PM

    Comic books are definitely culture. It's art and story-telling. They're at least as worthy of the title as any other book they might buy.

    Sure, broadening their culture horizons would be good, if it was easy to enforce spending it on something you don't currently embrace.

    I wished, and still wish, I had money that I could justify spending to buy comic books and getting into that.

    I'm really not a fan of that sensationalist headline, trying to drive up outrage on both sides, ven though it doesn't say whether buying comic books is good or bad in the headline. The article even gives examples of how it can be beneficial, like teenagers buying from comics local shops instead of going online, or buying records locally, but ignores the fact that there's a pandemic that makes it hard to enjoy certain forms of entertainment that are pushed by this program. Overall, I don't think this is great and honest journalism, even if the content itself is interesting.

  • by mimixco on 8/2/21, 4:52 PM

    The NYT title is intentionally derisive and xenophobic. The words "comic books" and the French term bandes dessinées relate to two entirely different experiences.

    In the US, comics are considered by the masses to be the bane of pubescent boys or puerile adults obsessed with superheros and cosplay.

    In France, graphic books (they're not all novels) are an elevated and widely-used cultural resource. They're found in educated bookstores, museum shops, libraries, and basically everywhere. And you know what? They're terrific!

    France (and Belgium) have access to wonderful historical series on every period you can name. Tons of biographies of famous, real people. And beautiful, illustrated tomes which they can use to spark their imagination and learning.

    It would be more accurate to say that Americans aren't spending money on graphically illustrated books because that's not an accepted part of our culture here, rather than to try to slam the French for something cool that works well for them.

    See also: Scott's McCloud's Reinventing Comics [0] and BDfugue [1], a terrific online store for bandes dessinées.

    [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinventing_Comics

    [1] https://www.bdfugue.com/

  • by mytailorisrich on 8/2/21, 1:18 PM

    Nothing surprising. It seems odd and unrealistic to assume that people would spend windfall money on something they have no interest in or do not like.

    Whatever cultural products people enjoy, it seems reasonable to expect that they would simply consume more of them if they had more money... Especially considering that the vast majority already has the purchasing power to consume whatever they want.

  • by echelon on 8/2/21, 2:02 PM

    I feel like this behavior could have been predicted. I'm not going to say whether or not purchases of manga are bad, but to think students would consume high brow art and then to be disappointed is after the fact is pretty poor foresight.

    Can we start to use the vast number of cultural experiments we've conducted to infer which will succeed in producing the desired outcomes? Can we start trying new experiments?

    I'd like to see us give cash to students that do well in school or participate in sports, clubs, music, etc. (If the worry is that this primarily rewards students whose parents are wealthy, I'm not so sure. Wealthy kids might not be satisfied by the rewards.)

  • by touisteur on 8/2/21, 6:34 PM

    This NYT story/title has been mocked to death on French Twitter. The kids are reading. Manga, so what ? AND they're using culture-money to PAY the artists they like, even though they get their manga off the Internet for free. Isn't the greatest outcome possible? Sure, French artists might have wanted that money flowing back to French artists... But if they like it and when given a choice will pay for it... Maybe there's not enough market (want) for French BD or culture as it is today...

  • by markus_zhang on 8/2/21, 6:00 PM

    This reminds me of a scene from "Yes Minister":

    > (Sir Humphrey to Bernard)..subsidy..Is for art, for culture. It is not to be given to what the people want. It is for what the people don't want but ought to have! If they want something they'll pay for it themselves! No, we subsidies education, enlightenment, spiritual uplift. Not the vulgar pastimes of ordinary people.

  • by zrobotics on 8/2/21, 1:40 PM

  • by musicale on 8/4/21, 3:00 AM

    Comic books (and manga/graphic novels/etc.) sound like a good plan, especially during a pandemic where much of live performance either has shut down or remains risky.

    Getting more kids into physical book and record stores seems like a nice effect as well. Not everything needs to be purchased from Amazon or streamed on Spotify.

    I'd also expect to see more live events as the pandemic (hopefully) wanes.

    > And while the Culture Pass can be spent on video games, the game’s publisher must be French, and the game must not feature violence — conditions so restrictive that most popular titles are unavailable.

    Ah, I was wondering why games weren't higher on the list.

  • by jjgreen on 8/2/21, 12:40 PM

    I'm not sure why the NYT would find this surprising, it is le neuvième art.

  • by lefrenchy on 8/2/21, 6:25 PM

    > Rather than discovering high brow arts

    Some good old elitism from NYT. Worth mentioning that France has reduced prices to cultural expos for students, and there are plenty that are free! They can enjoy comic books AND art expos.

  • by AndyMcConachie on 8/2/21, 2:44 PM

    The NYT clearly doesn't understand that comics are not necessarily considered low brow culture in France and Belgium. Comic books don't have the same reputation in France and Belgium as they do in the USA.

  • by Hamuko on 8/2/21, 5:41 PM

    I get cultural allowance from my workplace and it's very limited as to what I can actually use it. I can't actually buy any things with it - no books, no comic books, no music, no games, nothing. It's mainly for movie and concert tickets - which has made this benefit rather useless for the past year and a half. I'd much prefer this system where I can actually buy cultural stuff to keep.

  • by walterbell on 8/2/21, 3:03 PM

    Secondary purpose: CBDC / digital euro training wheels for policy-gated currencies with No Buy lists.

  • by forinti on 8/2/21, 5:50 PM

    My brother got a question right on his college entrance exam because of Asterix.

    Let the kids read what they want. If they are reading, it's a win!

  • by rgoulter on 8/2/21, 2:19 PM

    > nationwide nearly 630,000 teenagers now use it.

    Is France's teenage population around 4-5 million?

  • by thiht on 8/2/21, 9:20 PM

    So the culture pass was used to buy culture. I’d say it’s a success.

  • by diogenescynic on 8/2/21, 1:41 PM

    Maybe it's just the easiest to resell?

  • by aaomidi on 8/2/21, 6:16 PM

    Comic books are culture.

  • by underseacables on 8/2/21, 7:26 PM

    Money welll spent.

  • by Hypergraphe on 8/2/21, 8:47 PM

    Another useless article from the NYT, written by a snob.

  • by mhh__ on 8/2/21, 5:32 PM

    Not real culture it seems