Netflix’s Lupin: Cultural Heritage and Internationalisation in the Age of Global SVoD
Platforms1
David Pettersen
Netflix’s series Lupin (2021–) about a gentleman thief has become a global success, reportedly
generating over 70 million viewers worldwide in the 28 days that followed its initial release. Based
on a series of turn-of-the-twentieth century popular novels well known to French audiences, the
series features Omar Sy, France’s best-known and most bankable star. The series’s success has
extended to several markets, with Sy reporting in an interview that he received fan messages from
as far away as Brazil and Columbia (Roxborough 2021). The series also did well in
French-speaking African countries. Journalist Geneviève Sagno writing for BBC Afrique calls
attention to individual tweets by Senegalese politician Macky Sall and Senegalese singer Youssou
N’Dour that celebrate Lupin, Sy and his career following the series’s drop (Sagno 2021). Replies
to official English-language tweets about Lupin on Sy’s public Twitter account are in a mix of
languages, including English, French and Spanish, and it is clear from reading through the tweets
that most (though not all) users responded positively to the series and to Sy’s performance (Omar
Sy [@OmarSy] 2021). While Sy was somewhat familiar to international audiences following the
surprise success of Olivier Nakache and Eric Tolédano’s film Intouchables/Untouchable in 2011,
Lupin represents his breakout international hit, especially after relocating to Los Angeles in the
early 2010s. There, he made several English-language films over the past decade, such as Jurassic
World (Colin Trevorrow, 2015) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (Bryan Singer, 2014), that failed
to catapult him into starring roles in international mainstream cinema.
It is somewhat surprising that, despite Sy’s efforts to learn and work in English, a
French-language series would garner him so much visibility. Of course, international viewers
could choose to watch the series dubbed into local languages, but beyond the question of language,
Lupin is an important media object through which to understand the commissioning and media
localisation practices of streaming video-on-demand (SVoD) platforms in the early 2020s. The
series manages to be locally specific to France while also remaining postnational in its accessibility
to different audiences around the world. Unlike the cultural mishmash of Europudding films from
the early 2000s like L’Auberge espagnole/The Spanish Apartment (Cédric Klapisch, 2002), or the
cultural genericness of entertainment films destined for international markets, such as
EuropaCorp’s Transporter films from the 2000s, cultural embeddedness in Lupin is not an obstacle
to the international circulation of long-form serial television. Rather, cultural references anchored
in the category of the nation help localise the series for different international audiences, though
not always in the same ways.
Internationalisation practices
In the age of simultaneous worldwide release of films and series on SVoD platforms, questions of
media localisation take on increased urgency. The first issue that scholars most often examine
when considering localisation is the translation of language and cultural references through
subtitling, dubbing and remixing. These are certainly important aspects of how media is localised
for different markets, though it is hardly the only one. Media scholars Andrea Esser, Ian Robert
Smith and Miguel Bernal-Merino describe how localisation studies has long been a fragmented
field across different disciplines. Media translation studies approached localisation through
questions of language subtitling and dubbing, video-game studies focused on issues of language
and interface design, and film and television studies examined practices of remakes and
adaptations (Esser, Smith and Bernal-Merino 2016, 6–8). All these issues are relevant to Netflix’s
Lupin, and the series invites an adaptation studies approach not just because it is an adaptation of
a series of novels but also because these novels have been adapted to the screen many times over
the course of the twentieth century.
While I will discuss some issues of adaptation in this chapter, I want to expand the purview
of localisation beyond a narrow focus on translation or adaptation to include other aspects of the
distribution, exhibition and reception processes, including promotional campaigns, newspaper
reviews and, at even the smallest level of scale, individual acts of interpretation. In the age of
global media circulation through SVoD platforms that seek to reach multiple audiences
simultaneously, I contend that we need a different term to think about the production processes at
play, because increasingly, localisation is not something that happens after the production of media
content is completed. Rather, it involves a series of decisions and practices that occur throughout
the production process. Consequently, I have found the related term internationalisation helpful,
especially as it has been used in the software design industry.
To appreciate why this term might be useful, we first need to distinguish between two broad
categories of media that SVoD platforms offer to their subscriber base: content produced in local
contexts that SVoD platforms acquire for distribution, and content that SVoD platforms
commission for production in local contexts and then distribute internationally. The distinction
between the two is not absolute, but it points to the level of creative influence or control the SVoD
platform has upstream in the pre-production process. The distinction is difficult to draw because
streaming companies often obscure a series’s country of origin, branding everything as a Netflix,
Amazon or Hulu ‘original’. Acquired content aligns with the more familiar sense of localisation
as consisting of the translation of language (subtitles and dubbing) after a film or series is complete.
SVoD platforms like Netflix that acquire and then localise international series have enabled a kind
of golden age of global viewership for international films and series, especially as the pandemic
halted media production and subscribers were hungry for new content. In the case of Netflix, Dix
pour cent/Call My Agent! (France Télévisions/Netflix, 2015–2020) or Engrenages/Spiral (Canal+,
2005–2020) are examples of acquired series (though the latter is no longer available on Netflix in
the USA). Dix pour cent is branded within the Netflix app as a Netflix Original series, highlighting
the challenges of unpacking the production history of a series solely based on the metadata within
a streaming app.
By contrast, when a SVoD platform like Netflix commissions a film or series, the content
may be produced in a specific geographic and cultural context, but it is also created to circulate in
many different markets. Commissioned content thus typically involves a series of decisions
throughout the pre-production, production and post-production processes that facilitate
localisation. In the realm of software design, developers prefer the term internationalisation to
localisation to describe this approach, and the term can, in my view, help us better understand the
multiple audiences sought by commissioned series. For example, the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C), the organisation that sets the standards for the World Wide Web, explains in
one of its policy documents that when embarking on a process of internationalisation, ‘you design
or develop your content, application, specification, and so on, in a way that ensures it will work
well for, or can be easily adapted for, users from any culture, region, or language’.2
In their view,
‘internationalization […] enables easy localization for target audiences’ (my emphasis).3
As I
adapt this term to think about the media production process, I would add that internationalisation
also requires a consideration of interface: both how media objects reach audiences (theatrical
release, television release, SVoD platforms, disc); how the formal and stylistic choices of a media
object play in different markets (questions of adaptation, remakes, genre, casting and stardom);
and finally how media objects interact with local, regional and global capital flows (funding,
subventions, profits and reinvestment of profits).
Lupin, released six years after Netflix’s 2014 launch in the French market, exemplifies the
kinds of postnational series that have emerged from production practices of internationalisation.
Netflix was the first among US-based streaming platforms, which also include Amazon, Hulu and
Apple, to move into localised media production outside the USA as a way of expanding its
subscriber base globally (Scarlata, Lobato and Cunningham 2021, 138–139). While one might
reasonably anticipate culturally generic films and series as the natural outcome of a strategy of
simultaneous global release, content commissioners do not see a disconnect between the
embeddedness of media in a local culture and the global circulation of media. While not every
local in-reference makes it into the final cut of a series or film, Kelly Luegenbiehl, Netflix’s Vice
President of International Originals, has said that ‘the more local that we are and the more specific
we are, the more universal we actually are’ (in Scarlata, Lobato and Cunningham 2021, 140). Local
embeddedness that later supports global circulation can take many forms, including famous
directors, recognisable actors or stars, adaptations or remakes of well-known local series or novels,
iconic locations, use of genre codes and inclusive casting practices.
Conversations about internationalisation begin at the earliest stages of production and
continue throughout the process. In the case of Lupin, George Kay, the series’s creator and
showrunner, originally hails from the UK, and in an interview with Le Monde, he highlighted the
importance of collaboration in making the series appeal to different audiences outside France.
However, French audiences were not neglected. Kay points to the importance of the writing team,
including French screenwriters like François Uzan, who collectively ensured that the France in the
series would be recognisable for those living in and beyond the Hexagon (Sotinel 2021). The first
three episodes were directed by Louis Leterrier, who has experience in France directing movies
for EuropaCorp (The Transporter, 2002, and Transporter 2, 2005) and has made films in
Hollywood (The Incredible Hulk, 2008).
In addition to carefully managing the production process, Netflix’s interest in
internationalisation extends to the localisation of production itself, hiring local talent and opening
production offices throughout the world. In the case of France, Netflix opened an office in Paris
in January 2020 after several years of tense relations with the French media industry and its
protectionist policies. The relationship between Netflix and the French industry had a rocky start
in 2017 when the Cannes Film Festival refused to screen Netflix-produced films in competition
because they had never been released in theatres (Cousin 2018, 1–5). Netflix chose not to release
those films in French theatres because that would have locked them into France’s strict media
chronology, which regulates the timeframe when a film can be commercialised in secondary media
markets such as disc rentals, private pay-channel broadcast, public television broadcast and of
course VoD release. These debates are still ongoing and a full engagement with them would take
this chapter too far afield. What is important for the purposes at hand is that Netflix’s opening of
a French office represents an instance of localisation in the sense of entering and working within
a local media industry, including the regulatory structures that govern it. In the case of Lupin,
Netflix hired Gaumont Television to produce the series, working with rather than against local
media companies.4
Gaumont had long been interested in a new adaptation of the Lupin novels, and Sy had
expressed interest in the role shortly after the success of Intouchables that the French studio also
produced. Work had begun before Netflix came on board, but when Netflix arrived, they were not
happy with the direction of the series’s screenplays, and they invited Kay to take over. In coming
to the series, Kay talks about being utterly seduced by Sy’s charisma, suggesting that his stardom
was central to how Kay and his team adapted the novels (Sotinel 2021). Casting France’s bestknown
Black star in the role of Lupin has important consequences for how the series was produced
and later circulated. By transforming the character into the twenty-first-century son of a Senegalese
immigrant, it participates in the postnational trends discussed by Mary Harrod’s and Christopher
Meir’s chapter in this volume of making diasporic actors more visible in mainstream French media.
Furthermore, it frames the series as a tale of social integration, a key element of Sy’s star persona.
Finally, it aligns with the way Netflix uses inclusive casting as a central element of its
internationalisation strategy.
Netflix is widely known for its desire to curate a racially, culturally and linguistically
diverse catalogue. In a 2016 event in Seoul, Ted Sarandos, the co-CEO and Chief Content Officer
of Netflix, explained the reason for this commitment by noting that half of Netflix’s subscriber
base is outside the USA and that international subscribers are essential for the company’s growth.
In his view, being a global SVoD service requires a different approach to casting, one that favours
inclusivity and diversity. Sarandos suggested that while traditional Hollywood studios have
experienced ongoing difficulties moving towards more inclusive representation in front of and
behind the cameras, Netflix has an edge in this regard, and the company will only seek to become
more diverse and inclusive in the casting of its series and films (in Hyo-won 2016). While Netflix’s
casting practices support the fight against systemic racism in the USA, they also make economic
sense for a streaming company that releases content simultaneously in many markets around the
world, not all of them countries in which White communities are the dominant social group. This
has led many of Netflix’s original series to the practice of what the media scholars Alexa Scarlata,
Ramon Lobato and Stuart Cunningham call ‘circulation-based casting’, that is, the use of a diverse
and international cast of actors who are well known in different local markets and who often speak
in accented English or another language (Scarlata, Lobato and Cunningham 2021, 145).
Despite Lupin’s postnational production process, the series is remarkable for just how
French it is. The Netflix series was made in French rather than in English, and the casting choices
reflect a diverse blend of French acting talent. The actors in this series include three familiar French
actresses, Clotilde Hesme, Nicole Garcia and Ludivine Sagnier, known for their roles in several
mainstream and auteurist films, as well as the male performers Vincent Londez, who is best known
for his television work in French and Belgian crime series; Fargass Assandé, an Ivorian actor and
director known for his theatrical work; and of course Sy. These casting choices represent an
attempt to appeal to different types of domestic and international viewers that watch the kinds of
media the actors are known for. The series itself also mixes many different genres from one episode
to the next, moving freely among family melodrama, romantic comedy, action, comedy, thriller
and police procedural.
Lupin has Sy’s character, Assane Diop, adopt disguises drawn from different social classes.
In the first episode, Sy’s character poses as a caretaker who works at the Louvre. Later in the same
episode, the character re-disguises himself as a tech millionaire, closer to the high society
gentleman thief of Maurice Leblanc’s original novels. For Assane Diop, social class and cultural
distinctions seem to pose no barriers; his talent for theft has given him access to wealth, and his
education makes it possible for him to imitate members of the upper class. Yet the character never
forgets his roots as the son of a Senegalese immigrant, and his main desire is to get justice (or
perhaps revenge) for his father, who was wronged by his upper-class employers. The use of Sy as
an everyman who can pass as belonging to any social class not only tracks with Netflix’s
commitment to inclusive casting that I discussed earlier, but also it aligns the series with Sy’s
international star persona, whose fame largely rests on Intouchables, also viewable on Netflix. In
that film, he played a Senegalese immigrant character who successfully learns the social codes of
the Parisian upper classes while remaining rooted in his class and culture of origin. Similarly, while
Assane in Lupin takes on a variety of disguises from different social classes, his quest to clear his
father’s name testifies to a desire to maintain his rootedness in his own family’s history.
In addition to language, casting and source material, the series also enables localisation in
different markets through its narrative choices and its many references to art, music and sites of
cultural heritage and tourism in Paris. These references serve to locate domestic and international
viewers within an imagined national space and its cultural hierarchies. It would be easy to discuss
the series’s appeal to international audiences through a consideration of setting or genre. The series
uses the viewing pleasures of genres that cross borders, from the action film and the crime genre
to the romantic comedy and family melodrama. These two – setting and genre – often go together,
evoking what film scholars Melis Behlil, Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado and Jaap Verheul in the
context of a study of James Bond films call a ‘postcard aesthetics’ that reduces international
locations to ‘exotic non-places’ (Behlil, Sánchez Prado and Verheul 2020, 96–97). The Louvre
and the Musée d’Orsay are not quite exotic non-places, but they are postcards of overdetermined
sites of tourism for international audiences.
Lupin with and against heritage cinema
The ways in which familiar sites of tourism localise Lupin for international audiences do not
detract from localisation for French audiences. Lupin’s domestic localisation depends on how the
series engages with the Maurice Leblanc novels, one of France’s most beloved popular series of
books and the source material for many previous film and television adaptations. Netflix’s series
shifts the relative positions of cultural taste and hierarchy by inducting a popular novelist, Leblanc,
into the canon of French literature and, more importantly, but transforming Arsène Lupin into a
second-generation Black French citizen. The showrunners position Lupin with and against the
heritage film genre to highlight the ways in which the series is a fable of social integration very
much in line with Sy’s domestic star persona. Lupin’s engagement with the heritage genre also
activated heritage spectatorship practices, such as travel to sites of cultural importance and reading
the source novels, for domestic and even international audiences. The cultural politics of the
series’s use of the source novels might not be apparent to international viewers who lack specific
local knowledge, but this does not necessarily impede the viewing pleasures offered by the series.
Any work of art, film or media situates its position in cultural hierarchies of value through
intertextual references to other works. However, a film or series that explores questions of social
integration, references to culture – high and low, legitimate and popular – positions itself with
respect to the cultural values of dominant society. To put it differently, arguments in favour of
inclusivity for minority communities cannot be separated from the ways in which these
communities are aligned with different kinds of culture. This has been an important dimension of
Sy’s stardom from his breakthrough film Intouchables. That film’s narrative depended on an
opposition between legitimate and popular culture, and the Driss character’s integration into
French society required him to master the codes of legitimate culture and demonstrate proper use
of popular and legitimate cultural references. This a crucial part of how many in France understand
integration in a universalist country – learning the French language and legitimate culture, such as
literature, as a (if not the) key vector of social integration. There are many diasporic and
postcolonial writers who focus on scenes at school and apprenticeship in language and literature,
from Azouz Begag to Fatou Diome, through an initiatory figure, such as a teacher or other mentor.
Lupin also highlights the importance of cultural mastery for social integration, but its
narrative arc scrambles the traditional parameters of legitimate and popular culture. One of the
series’s central subplots concerns the link between the democratisation of legitimate culture and
the integration of diverse citizens into the nation. The climax of the series’s first two parts revolves
around a fundraising event that corrupt bigwig Pellegrini’s daughter, Juliette, who runs the family
foundation, organises to raise money to support equal access to legitimate culture regardless of
one’s social origins. A speech Juliette gives before a benefit auction in Episode 7 (P02/E02) makes
explicit these stakes of the foundation’s work.5
Juliette begins by acknowledging her own
privilege. She explains that due to growing up in the Pellegrini family, she could visit the best
museums and attend the most superb operas as a child, but she admits that not everyone could:
‘there were no limits, as you might expect with my father’.6
The final sentence in Juliette’s speech
sounds like that of a mid-twentieth-century, Malraux-era deputy cultural minister arguing for the
democratisation of legitimate culture at the opening of a Maison de la culture somewhere in the
provinces: ‘Culture must be accessible to all, without distinction. This is the foundation’s very
mission and the reason we call upon you today.’ Juliette’s use of the word distinction is likely an
ironic wink at Bourdieu’s famous 1979 study of cultural value (Bourdieu 1984).
Despite these noble intentions, the Pellegrini family reeks of backwards-looking forms of
elite social distinction. Pellegrini’s office is visually represented as a museum-like space, with its
rich leather interior, its wood panelling and its bookshelf of leather-bound volumes. The Pellegrini
apartment scenes were shot at the Musée Nissim de Camondo, a decorative arts museum in Paris,
built in 1911 but designed to look like a late eighteenth-century space. Beyond the statues and
furniture, the production design also includes prominent medieval tapestries. This choice of
location marks Pellegrini as a member of wealthy elite circles but also connects him to historical
memories of the aristocratic or colonial elites. However, Pellegrini’s mastery of legitimate culture
is ultimately empty of authentic investment. It is a hollow marker of class privilege that masks his
unbridled individualism. Juliette’s phrase about life with her father having no limits comes across
to viewers as ironic because it characterises how Pellegrini conducts business, doing whatever he
wants for his own financial gain and only respecting the law when it is expedient or in his own
self-interest to do so. Unbeknown to Juliette, the funds raised during the benefit concert will not
facilitate access to culture for the poor but only add to his own personal coffers.
Whereas the series represents Pellegrini’s relationship to legitimate culture as vacuous, it
constructs Assane Diop’s relationship to it as authentic and genuine. Unlike Sy’s character in
Intouchables, who was initiated into legitimate culture through Philippe, Assane Diop is a socially
mobile autodidact who is already able to interact in whatever situation he finds himself, be it with
the communities of the banlieues or the wealthy circles attending the auction of the necklace in
Chapter 1 (P01/E01). Assane is also able to charm individuals connected through postcolonial
histories, be they the woman from ‘his village’ who works at the prison or the wealthy woman
who made her fortune in the Belgian Congo from whom he steals (P01/E05). The production
design of his Parisian apartment is just as rich, opulent and spacious as Pellegrini’s, though hipper
and more modern. Always assuming he has the right to be wherever chooses has long been a part
of Sy’s star persona, but it takes on a new dimension in Lupin. If Assane’s initiation into French
culture could be attributed to Pellegrini, it is purely by accident and primarily through an
experience of reading Maurice Leblanc’s Arsène Lupin novels. Thus, during a flashback in
Chapter 1 (P01/E01) when Pellegrini becomes especially irritated by his flailing business deals,
he catches his driver, Assane’s father, Babakar, taking a break from cleaning to see what the
bookshelves in Pellegrini’s office hold. Pellegrini yells at Babakar that he is not being paid to read.
Pellegrini’s wife comes to apologise for her husband’s behaviour, and she invites Babakar to
choose one of the books from the bookshelves as a gift for his son. Babakar selects the first volume
of Arsène Lupin in a rich, leather-bound edition. Babakar is ultimately unable to give the book to
Assane before he is falsely arrested for stealing the necklace from Pellegrini’s office and killed in
prison. After young Assane learns the news, he goes through his father’s possessions, and he finds
a wrapped birthday present: the first Arsène Lupin novel.
Figure 12.1: Lupin’s Assane (Omar Sy) gifts his copy of Arsène Lupin to his son, Raoul
(P01/E01).
The series spends a significant amount of screen time demonstrating just how carefully
Assane reads the Leblanc books. We see this especially in his efforts to pass on the gift of reading
to his son, Raoul. Part 1’s first episode ends with a scene in which Assane regifts the same book
his father gave him to his son. The two stand on the Pont des Arts, the bridge best known to tourists
for the many combination locks that lovers used to place there (see Figure 12.1). In the background
is the prestigious Institut de France building with its gilded dome, visually placing the Leblanc
novels on a par with the hallowed knowledge dispensed inside. Assane gently chides his son for
all the time he spends on his phone, remarking how much he enjoyed reading at Raoul’s age. Raoul
cheekily fires back that it was normal to read back then because smartphones did not exist. Assane
calls Raoul’s comment dreadful and wonders aloud if his son merits the gift he is about to make.
As Assane pulls the book from his jacket, viewers can see sticky notes on certain pages, indicating
how many times Assane has reread the book over the years. Later episodes feature close-ups in
which viewers see the marginal notes Assane has made in the books, suggesting that he read the
book with the close analysis techniques more properly reserved for literature. Even more than
literature, however, the novels functioned as a kind of textbook for him. A flashback in Part 1’s
third episode features Assane reading while a young Claire sits next to him on a bed in the school
dormitory. Claire asks Assane how he doesn’t get bored always rereading the same book. Assane
replies that he learns new things each time. Assane lacks a father, a teacher or another mentor
figure, but the Leblanc novels play this role for him in a traditional literary apprenticeship, yet one
that is based on the pleasure of reading. During the first episode’s scene of Assane and Raoul on
the bridge, Assane tells his son that he will ‘enjoy’ the book –‘ça va te plaire, ça’ – suggesting that
reading can be as pleasurable as other forms of popular culture. In an internal monologue heard as
voiceover, Assane intones, ‘Arsène Lupin is more than a book. It’s my heritage, my method, my
voice. I am Lupin.’ From the very first episode, the series positions the Leblanc novels as a form
of cultural heritage and an instruction manual for social integration.
As the series continues, it models the initiation into cultural heritage through Assane’s
relationship to other characters, especially his son. The focus on reading reveals the series to be a
série patrimoniale but not in the typical ways scholars have defined heritage cinema. Dayna
Oscherwitz defines the heritage picture genre in cinema as focusing on ‘heritage properties’
(Oscherwitz 2010, 3), what Pierre Nora has called in a different context ‘lieux de mémoire’ or sites
or realms of memory (Nora 1996, 1–3).⁠ Heritage properties could involve adaptations of ‘culturally
prestigious’ or well-known literary texts, or the use of ‘significant’ or ‘culturally resonant’
buildings, landscapes and interior spaces (Oscherwitz 2010, 3). While Maurice Leblanc’s popular
Arsène Lupin novels, first published in 1905, are well known, not all viewers in France would
necessarily agree that they are equivalent to prestigious novels by the likes of such literary greats
as Balzac or Proust. Yet, through a self-conscious representation of characters reading the Lupin
novels, the series seeks to shift perceptions of the cultural value afforded them. To put it another
way, the series takes it for granted that Leblanc represents an instance of a popular site of memory,
in Nora’s sense, yet it nevertheless seeks to convince viewers of this fact over the course of the
series through viewer surrogates like Raoul. For Oscherwitz, while heritage films build on the
genre of historical films of which they are a part, they are distinctive in that they respond to a
‘perceived loss of culture by encoding national identity as a product of memory’ (Oscherwitz 2010,
3–4). In a related vein, Hilary Radner, building on the work of Raphaëlle Moine and Ginette
Vincendeau on the heritage genre, suggests that French heritage films are ‘preoccupied with a
“meticulous” reconstruction in terms of costume and décor, as part of an aesthetic that might be
appropriately described as curatorial or museological, exhibiting strong mannerist tendencies’
(Radner 2015, 293). Netflix’s Lupin is notable for the ways it refuses to do the work of cultural
heritage as mannerism, museumification or memory. Instead, it opts for a hyper-contemporary,
cosmopolitan and entertainment-oriented adaptation that fuses past and present. Yet, I would argue
that it still creates the reverential relationship to the source novels that is characteristic of heritage
filmmaking through narrative mise-en-abyme.
As we have seen, Sy’s Lupin is depicted as a devoted reader of the original novels,
something that he passes on to his own son. Raoul does begin reading the Lupin novels and takes
pleasure in them. Moreover, the series represents him as choosing to read the novels over other
kinds of media, bringing reading to life as a heritage practice. In Part 1’s second episode, Raoul
reads the first Lupin novel at the dinner table. His mother, Claire, is surprised by this new
behaviour, and she asks him if he now prefers reading to playing video games. Raoul does not
answer her, clearly absorbed in the book. Later, in Chapter 9 (P02/E04), Raoul sits in his room
reading the second Lupin novel, Arsène Lupin versus Herlock Sholmes. Claire’s new boyfriend,
Marc, enters Raoul’s room and asks him what he is reading. Raoul replies that it is a Lupin novel
his father gave him. Marc then asks if he is not too old to be reading such a novel, suggesting that
popular novels are something for children and not young adults. When Raoul does not even reply,
Marc asks what the story is about, and Raoul explains that the first part of the second novel
revolves around a complicated escape. This scene is intercut with Assane and Benjamin’s flight
from the police in a chase sequence that ranges from Assane’s apartment to a storage container to
the Parisian catacombs. This kind of self-conscious intertextuality marks adaptation as a process
of transcoding, in Linda Hutcheon’s sense (Hutcheon 2013, 16–17), but it also connects the series
engagement with popular media genres – from comedy and romance to the thriller and
action-adventure – to the pleasure of reading popular novels.
Cultural heritage and modelling fandom
The series’s staging of the Lupin novels as a site of memory worthy of heritage practices continues
with the pilgrimage that Lupin organises with his son and his son’s mother to Étretat to honour
Maurice Leblanc’s birthday. Raoul dons a black cape in honour of Lupin, as do many other visitors
to the beaches that appear in this episode (P01/E05). In addition to the Leblanc novels as a popular
site of memory, the series transforms Leblanc himself and his home town into such a site through
the trip to city and beaches of Étretat. By showing pilgrims dressed as Lupin on the beaches, the
series normalises heritage practices such as visiting sites of memory. The series mixes this kind of
cultural reverence with the narrative pleasures of the action film and thriller. One of Pellegrini’s
enforcers, Léonard, tries to abduct Raoul on the train to Étretat and then succeeds in kidnapping
him at the beach. The series then moves into an extended car chase sequence and showdown in a
deserted mansion. In this way, the series demonstrates that the reverential relationship to sites of
memory is in no way antithetical to the pleasures of commercial entertainment.
Yet the series goes one step further than merely legitimating reading popular genres for
pleasure: it inducts them into the canon of French literature. During Chapter 10 (P02/E05), the
series flashes back to an earlier moment in the contemporary narrative to clarify the identity of one
of the key characters. Assane and Benjamin seek to recruit a double agent to infiltrate Pellegrini’s
organisation. Their method, however improbably, is to look for people who go to the library to
read Lupin novels. This scene is shot at the French National Library (BNF) Richelieu’s main
reading room, which is not as familiar a site to international tourists as the Louvre or the Musée
d’Orsay, but its ornate architecture would nevertheless mark it as a place that focuses on the
preservation of cultural heritage (see Figure 12.2). The setting is nevertheless absurd for two
reasons. First, readers could not access the Leblanc novels at the BNF Richelieu because their
collection focuses on rare books and manuscripts. Second, the Arsène Lupin novels are so widely
available that it would suffice to visit any municipal library to read them rather than go through
the researcher accreditation process at France’s national library. As Assane and Benjamin walk
past the reading tables back to the stacks where the Arsène Lupin novels are kept, viewers notice
a sign, probably added by the production designer, that reads ‘Maurice Leblanc – Littérature
française’. The juxtaposition of Leblanc’s name and French literature subtly assimilates the Lupin
novels into the rarefied category of legitimate French literature and demonstrates the series’s
investment in a transvaluation of cultural values.
Figure 12.2: The French National Library Richelieu’s ornate reading room (P02/E05).
For their final gambit to expose Pellegrini, Assane and Benjamin await a passionate fan of
Arsène Lupin who takes the novels as seriously as they do. However, they have to wait a
surprisingly long time to find one. After several other patrons have come and gone, a young man
arrives, removes the library call number tag from one of the Arsène Lupin volumes and slips it into
his coat before asking Assane and Benjamin what they are doing. The young man is heavily
tattooed, wears black make-up and has several piercings. During a makeover sequence, Benjamin
and Assane turn him into a strait-laced business type, and viewers suddenly realise that he is
Pellegrini’s investment consultant whom they met several episodes prior. In the same way that
Lupin’s many disguises lead viewers to question the fixity of social roles, the series also invites
viewers to question cultural hierarchies of the literary canon, if not the importance of reading itself.
The ways in which the series cues a heritage relationship to Lupin novels and to Leblanc
himself as author have had effects in the real world. When both parts of Lupin’s first season
appeared on Netflix at the height of the pandemic, French tourists flooded Étretat and the museum
located in Maurice Leblanc’s former house despite COVID-19 restrictions. Locals have taken to
calling these visitors ‘Netflix tourists’, and the numbers were much higher than after the 2004
cinematic adaptation starring Romain Duris or the 1970s television adaptation with Georges
Descrières (Pineau 2021). The numbers were so high that locals called for greater regulation and
quotas. The series has also increased book sales, including among young readers – though not to
nearly as many as the series’s 70 million viewers (Baud 2021). While many forms of commercial
cinema and television hope to create transmedia tie-ins, ancillary revenue streams and potential
tourism business, Lupin’s success came as something of a surprise.
***
The anecdote about tourism to Étretat demonstrates that Lupin managed to create the spectatorial
relationship of a heritage film for domestic audiences even as it departs from many of the genre’s
characteristics in cinema. Cultural heritage is not opposed to internationalisation in the age of
SVoD; it is now a part of it. Viewers see the internationalisation of cultural heritage most strongly
in the choice to cast Sy as Lupin. In her analysis of the different ways that minority actors are cast
in contemporary theatre, Angela Pao enumerates the four types of casting practices used by the
Non-Traditional Casting Project in the 1980s: ‘color-blind casting’, in which ‘the best actor for
the role is cast’; ‘societal casting’, in which minorities play ‘the roles they perform in society as a
whole’; ‘conceptual casting’, in which a minority actor is cast ‘to give the play greater resonance’;
and ‘cross-cultural casting’, in which the play’s narrative world ‘is translated to a different cultural
setting’ (Pao 2010, 4). Lupin’s producers could have opted for a purely conceptual casting practice
in selecting a Black actor to play Arsène Lupin in a period piece. Instead, they opted for a
combination of conceptual and cross-cultural casting by transforming the Lupin novels into a
contemporary tale about the son of a Senegalese immigrant in France.
The series thus diversifies the face of French cultural heritage, very much in keeping with
Netflix’s commitment to inclusive casting, while expanding the kinds of pleasures viewers can
expect from a heritage film or series. This is not new per se, as there are many examples of
combining the codes of French heritage cinema with various genres, from comedy in Les
Visiteurs/The Visitors (Jean-Marie Poiré, 1993) to horror in Le Pacte des loups/Brotherhood of the
Wolf (Christophe Gans, 2001) or action in The Emperor of Paris (Jean-François Richet, 2018).
What is distinctive, I think, is Sy’s cross-over appeal to many different domestic and international
audiences and the notable success the series had on Netflix’s streaming platform worldwide as
opposed to distribution in film theatres or linear television. Given that Lupin was led by a British
showrunner, featured a multinational writing team and was made by a French studio for an
American SVoD platform, the series is a particularly revelatory example of the design processes
of internationalisation and the global popularity that are possible for postnational French-language
series in the current age of SVoD platforms.
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1
This chapter grew out of the conclusion to my book French B-Movies: Universalism, Suburban Spaces, and the
Challenge of Hollywood (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2023). I am grateful to the press for permission to
reuse a few paragraphs here in slightly modified form.
2
‘Internationalization’ (n.d.). World Wide Web Consortium. https://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/i18n.
3
Localization vs. Internationalization’ (n.d.). World Wide Web Consortium.
https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-i18n.en.
4
See Christopher Meir’s contribution to this volume for a detailed appraisal of Gaumont’s role in producing the
French postnational ‘popular’.
5
Because of the COVID-19 lockdown, Netflix divided what was supposed to be the first 10-episode season into two
‘parts’ – Part 1, Episodes 1–5 and Part 2, Episodes 1–5.
6
Translations are the author’s own.