France Gave Teenagers $350 for Culture. They’re Buying Comic Books
1–10 of 10 posts
Re: France Gave Teenagers $350 for Culture. They’re Buying Comic Books
#2> But the focus on comic books reveals a subtle tension at the heart of the Culture Pass’s design, between the almost total freedom it affords it young users — including to buy the mass media they already love — and its architects’ aim of guiding users toward lesser-known and more highbrow arts.
Seems they could have made the items they wanted to guide users towards free or cheaper, rather than handing out money and hoping
> Noël Corbin, a Culture Ministry official who oversees the project, said the pass gave France’s newly minted adults a way of looking up nearby cultural offerings — the app has a geolocation feature — and encouraged them to indulge their cultural passions.
Manga may not be for everyone, but is this not part of their cultural passions?
Re: France Gave Teenagers $350 for Culture. They’re Buying Comic Books
#3The title is pedantic, as were many reactions from older people on French twitter, which is not really surprising. I'd rather have them buy manga from actual living authors compared to things that already fell into the public domain, like Proust or Molière. However that would mean publishers can't get free money by guilt tripping people into consumming the "good" kind of culturen, so that wouldn't work. I do wish this money could be used to buy an e-reader though, you could get one for ~100€ and still have 200€ for whatever you want.
Re: France Gave Teenagers $350 for Culture. They’re Buying Comic Books
#4> But the focus on comic books reveals a subtle tension at the heart of the Culture Pass’s design, between the almost total freedom it affords it young users — including to buy the mass media they already love — and its architects’ aim of guiding users toward lesser-known and more highbrow arts. Seems they could have made the items they wanted to guide users towards free or cheaper, rather than handing out money and…
>Seems they could have made the items they wanted to guide users towards free or cheaper
What they should have done is first hand out a month of free coupons for local french books/movies/books/music and then once everyone used their coupons they can decide for themselves whether they want to spend their culture pass balance on that.
Re: France Gave Teenagers $350 for Culture. They’re Buying Comic Books
#5Alison Bechdel, to mention the first who comes to mind, regularly gets very respectful mentions in the New York Times.
Re: France Gave Teenagers $350 for Culture. They’re Buying Comic Books
#6The title is pedantic, as were many reactions from older people on French twitter, which is not really surprising. I'd rather have them buy manga from actual living authors compared to things that already fell into the public domain, like Proust or Molière. However that would mean publishers can't get free money by guilt tripping people into consumming the "good" kind of culturen, so that wouldn't work. I do wish thi…
To emphasize your point, if it is in the public domain, by definition they already own it, and your suggestion that they purchase an e-reader would make access to their ownership of extensive cultural capital that much more accessible.
I realize that there is a lot of frustration regarding e-readers, but this is already the primary reason I own one-- to access the books which already belong to me in the public domain so that I don't need to pay for them again just to read them. On the other hand, I generally won't purchase copyrighted books for my e-reader because I won't own it like I would a physical copy.
Re: France Gave Teenagers $350 for Culture. They’re Buying Comic Books
#7French people have a far greater apparent range than US people for what passes as culture. I have seen crowds of people listening to unusual or challenging music (e.g. viola and kora in an original composition) clearly making an effort to understand or be moved by such compositions. I should think comic books would be a non-issue to parents there.
Re: France Gave Teenagers $350 for Culture. They’re Buying Comic Books
#8It's a little late to stop considering comic books as a part of French culture. Asterix has been sold worldwide to 350 millions copies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix
https://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2014/03/asterix-and-the-bl...
Re: France Gave Teenagers $350 for Culture. They’re Buying Comic Books
#9The title is pedantic, as were many reactions from older people on French twitter, which is not really surprising. I'd rather have them buy manga from actual living authors compared to things that already fell into the public domain, like Proust or Molière. However that would mean publishers can't get free money by guilt tripping people into consumming the "good" kind of culturen, so that wouldn't work. I do wish thi…
To emphasize your point, if it is in the public domain, by definition they already own it, and your suggestion that they purchase an e-reader would make access to their ownership of extensive cultural capital that much more accessible. I realize that there is a lot of frustration regarding e-readers, but this is already the primary reason I own one-- to access the books which already belong to me in the public domain…
That's a really good way to put it!
Re: France Gave Teenagers $350 for Culture. They’re Buying Comic Books
#10> 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.
The amount of unrealistic idealism on display is what I've come to expect from a committee driven programs that also fears the outrage of their pet bases that keep votes/money coming in (further diverging the idea from the intended end users).
Why does every government project have to be an exercise in unintended side-effects overtaking the original good intentions?
No amount of whitelisting with added conditions will make this work so broadly or universally country-wide when you're ultimately a stream fighting against an ocean. People will always find the loopholes and bypasses to do what they want to do. Which should be expected and factored in.
Instead of forcing things where there is little motivation by the teenagers to truly appreciate what they are consuming, the goal should be to remove barriers/hurdles for those who are motivated by helping expose the opportunities (by helping overcome limitations like local access, cost, etc) and investing in the harder problem of getting them motivated.
Otherwise it's just best to plant small seeds which let them find it themselves via other form factors - where being more targeted probably makes more sense.
This is where the arguments of wastefulness ring true, not simply because people don't want kids to explore more high-arts or deeper culture or whatever. Instead balancing the ambition with hard realities.