Intouchables/Untouchable (Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, 2011) and Lupin (Series 1, Episode 1) A (Post)National Mainstream Industry Lecture 2: Franco-US Dialogue and ‘Inclusive’ Casting A picture containing text, person, indoor, posing Description automatically generated Structure of the Lecture ØIntouchables as/and culture clash and buddy comedy Ø ØGender, class and ethnicity in recent French film comedy Ø ØClose analysis of Intouchables -key visual and thematic motifs -key areas for discussion - ØThe Netflix era in France - French TV history - recent developments - ØLupin -localisation and ‘inclusive’ casting -historical revisionism The Best-selling Films on the French Market since 2000 Extracted from a list of the 100 best-sellers, Internet Movie Database, www.imdb.com See also M. Harrod and P. Powrie (2018) on ‘New directions in contemporary French comedies’ Trailer: Bienvenue Chez Les Ch'tis Trailer - In UK Cinemas 1st April - Bing video Film plots! At least of other two. INTOUCHABLES AS COMEDY Comic Buddy Duos A transnational, transhistorical phenomenon. La Commedia dell’Arte See also Raphaëlle Moine (2007, 165-7). - Sy and Murphy But come back to race – and this multi-dimensional article - later. Gender Politics and Comic Buddy Duos A transnational, transhistorical phenomenon. See also Alberti (2013), Masculinity in the Contemporary Romantic Comedy Class and Other Stereotypes in Comedy What about intersectionality? See Moine (2010), ‘Bienvenue chez les Cht’is: la région ou la classe?’/ ‘Region or Class in Bienvenue…’ INTOUCHABLES AS COMEDY The Comedy of Ethnic Integration See Ginette Vincendeau on a recent French trend for comedies in which ‘identity is affirmed and exaggerated stereotypically, provoking conflicts that are then resolved in a tale of social harmony’ in ‘Minority Report,’ Sight and Sound, June 2015, 24-25. CLIP: Qu’est-ce qu’on a fait au Bon Dieu? Cf. Stuart Hall (1996) has noted that there is ‘always a price of incorporation to be paid when the cutting edge of difference […] is blunted into spectacularisation’ INTOUCHABLES AND REPRESENTATION Minority Visibility and Stardom: the Omar Sy Phenomenon Service après vente des émissions 2005-2012 2014 2012 Barriers to Diversity in Film Industries Aïssa Maïga, Editions du Seuil, 2018. Comedian Comedy and/as Ethnic Minority Celebrity The Impossibility of Colour-Blind Casting? Remember to say somewhere about him being made black – just wanted to us Sy. OK but shows they know stakes of visual appearances. Intouchables Visual and Performative Stereotyping? Blackface (and) Minstrelsy Stereotype and Exaggeration: Spatial Oppositions in the Film a)la banlieue … versus Paris b) Driss’ house …versus Philippe’s house Do you agree with Jacques Mandelbaum’s comments in Le Monde that Intouchables figures the possible benefits of contact between old and newer, more multicultural French generations? (in Michael 2013, p. 131, extra rdg.). Inter-generational Dialogue Ambivalence and Liminality Additional Bibliography (Part 1 – pre-break) • •John Alberti, Masculinity in the Contemporary Romantic Comedy: Gender as Genre London and New York: Routledge, 2013. • •Stuart Hall, Questions of Cultural Identity, London: Sage, 1996. • • Mary Harrod and Phil Powrie, ‘New directions in contemporary French comedies: from nation, sex and class to ethnicity, community and the vagaries of the postmodern,’ Special Issue of Studies in French Cinema on contemporary French comedy, vol. 18, issue 1 (2018). • •Andrew Higson, ‘The Limiting Imagination of National Cinema,’ in M. Hjort and S. Mackenzie (eds), Cinema and Nation, edited by London and New York: Routledge, 2011, pp. 63-74. • •Raphaëlle Moine, Remakes: les films français à Hollywood, Paris: CNRS Editions, 2007. • •---------------------, ‘Bienvenue chez les Cht’is: la région ou la classe?’ Poli-Politique de l'image, 2 (2010). • •Steve Seidman, Comedian Comedy: a Tradition in Hollywood Film, Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981. • • • • • • Introduction to Streamed ‘Television’ Mittel (2017) HBO, 2002-2008 ‘Not-Television’ (Brunsdon 2018) Television in France •The medium holds a different, lower status than in Anglo-American nations thanks to the links between French national identity and high intellectual culture. • •After a slow start in the early 1950s, 1958-64: ownership went from 10% to over 40%; it was a truly mass medium by the end of the 1960s. Television in France ‘Television in France is at once more adult and more amateurish than in Britain or some other countries. A relatively high intellectual level in programmes goes hand in hand with clumsy technical blunders of presentation due to lack of discipline or preparation.’ Charles Hildesley, Sight and Sound, 1958. July 1982: Broadcasting Bill – end of State monopoly control of television. See Mazdon, ‘Contemporary French Television, the Nation, and the Family: Continuity and Change.’ Television and New Media 2, pp.335-339 (2001). 1990s 1.‘The demise of the state monopoly, the advent of cable and satellite television, coupled with the development of new terrestrial channels and the privatization of TF1 have caused a fragmentation of the French televisual landscape and undermined the apparent certainties of the national broadcast to a national audience carried out by a state-controlled public television.’ Mazdon 2001, p.338. ØCompetition Ø‘Dumbing down’ for mass appeal and due to ØThe globalisation of culture… And more global circulation. 1998-2004 1997-2003 2001 French programmes popular internationally, 2010s – and many more, including later Lupin preeminently above all of them 2010s: the transnationalisation of television, notably through streaming platforms Changing Landscapes •Auteurism in TV •Dense storytelling •Less reliance on stars •‘French touch’ European TV •A generation of ‘telephiles’ See Benjo in Durand (2012) Lupin and French Cultural Localisation ‘Broadcasting was a national industry that progressively internationalised[, while streaming is essentially a global industry that is progressively localising].’ Chalaby (2023, 1) Netflix and Localisation as Internationalisation See also Scarlata, Lobato and Cunningham (2021, 145) on ‘circulation-based casting’ ‘Inclusive’ Netflix Images of (Relative) Ethnic Diversity Behlil, Sánchez Prado and Verheul (2020, 96–97) ‘Postcard Aesthetics’ Other Clichés European Heritage Films since the 1980s … and Lupin Modelling Fandom Rewriting Identities and (French and Postcolonial) Histories Upper-class Decadence and Corruption The Fetishisation of Le Blanc’s books The Legitimation of Leblanc’s Books Having the Last (Elite?) Laugh Additional Bibliography (Part 2) • •Melis Behlil, Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado and Jaap Verheul, ‘The Dead are Alive: The Exotic Non-place of the Bondian Runaway Production,’ in The Cultural Life of James Bond: Specters of 007, edited by Jaap Verheul, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020, pp. 81-102. • •Charlotte Brunsdon, Television Cities: Paris, London, Baltimore, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. • •Jean K. Chalaby, Television in the Streaming Era: The Global Shift, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. • •Bruce Crumley, ‘French TV’s reputation spirals upwards,’ The Guardian, 19 February 2020. • •Jean-Marie Durand, ‘Les Revenants, Ainsi soient-ils, Opérateurs…séries françaises: la resurrection,’ Les Inrockuptibles, 25 November 2012. Les Revenants, Ainsi soient-ils, Opérateurs... séries françaises : la résurrection | Les Inrocks • •Lee Hyo-won, ‘Ted Sarandos: Netflix’s Global Platform Will Bring Diversity to Hollywood,’ Hollywood Reporter, 30 June 2016. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ted-%20sarandos-netflixs-global-platform-907558. • •Lucy Mazdon, 'French Television: Negotiating the National Popular,' in D. Holmes and D. Loosely (eds), Imagining the Popular in Contemporary French Culture, pp. 162-94. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013. • •Alexa Scarlata, Ramon Lobato and Stuart Cunningham,‘Producing Local Content in International Waters: The Case of Netflix’s Tidelands,’ Continuum 35 (1): 137–150 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2021.1884654. • • Television Studies in France • •Denigration of the medium from cinephilic critics e.g. see critic René Prédal, who often writes for Cahiers du cinéma, on the small screen’s ‘vampirisation’ of cinema. (Prédal Le Cinéma français depuis 2000, 2008, p. 36) •Slow progress e.g. works by Geneviève Sellier; forthcoming Special Issue of the journal French Screen Studies (vol. 24, issue 1) • •See instead Anglo-American works e.g. John Fiske’s Television Culture, 1987, a useful introduction. N.B. The feminine gendering of early anglophone TV Studies (e.g. Modleski, pictured; Annette Kuhn; Ien Ang).