French view:
Young people and culture: the clichés
die hard!
In France, access to culture has become
easier for eighteen to thirty year olds but inequalities persist: one in four young people
has neither a computer nor a mobile phone, and 48% of young theatregoers come from a
middle-class or intellectual family. These activities may still be subject to changing
fashions, social background and purchasing power, but they are a lot less simplistic than
you might think. By Sophie Simonot, journalist, FRANCE
Many academics, teachers and parents
complain because they feel that intellectual levels are falling! The figures prove it:
young people visit museums less, spend their lives chatting on the Internet, read nothing
but Stephen King while watching American soaps such as Friends or reality shows like
"Star Academy" on television, walkman glued to their ears and the games console
handy. The things they do like are the latest look, designer labels, American films...
What a strange way of seeing one’s youth!
It is, however, still going by the figures,
easy to portray their cultural habits in a much more positive light. Music is their
favourite leisure activity: 86% of fourteen to eighteen year olds put it at the top of
their activities, above the cinema and clubbing (68%), sport (56%) and television (48%).
For 90% of young people aged fifteen to twenty-four radio is also overwhelmingly popular:
they listen to it every day without exception, and it is a young station (NRJ) that has,
since November 2002, occupied the highly coveted first place in the general ranking of
radio stations, irrespective of audience. International popular music has a strong
showing, but songs in French are still in the majority (60%).
Young people do of course watch a lot of
television, but less than their elders; and if they tend to choose mostly soaps and
reality-TV shows, that is because they are the programmes people talk about, which favours
social interaction. Do they read less than they used to? Maybe, but that’s also true
of the "oldies"! Young people still read more than their elders. When asked
"Do you like reading?", 94% of eighteen to twenty-five year olds say they do and
81% are convinced that the computer will never replace the book...
Contrary to popular belief, reading
continues to occupy an important place in their leisure time, but the reading matter they
choose has changed considerably: there is a greater variety of media (computers and new
technologies) and young people admit to tastes they would perhaps have been ashamed of in
the past. For example, comic strips (especially Japanese Mangas), Stephen King (that’s
not a cliché) or other authors not recognised by mainstream culture, such as Betty
Mahmoody (Not Without My Daughter), Mary Higgins Clark or Jostein Gaarder (Sophie’s
World). As Béatrice Toulon, editor in chief of the magazine Phosphore sees it: "They
don’t read the same things their parents did, but what is new is that they are not
afraid to admit it. They have their own culture which they flaunt without any hang-ups
about it!"
The different “tribes”
Another commonplace is that young people
are sectarian. In France, advertising executives, journalists and politicians are very
keen on the notion of "territory". New fashions are regularly identified and
young people are classified into "tribes" according to their social background
and their cultural habits. "Lascars" (young people from the impoverished
suburbs) collect trainers and prefer rap to literature. In Paris, "jet-setteurs"
and "bourgeois-bohèmes" (leftish AND compulsive consumers) love to window-shop
and hang out in trendy night spots. The "raveur" goes in for a lot of body
piercing, the "skateur" worships oversized trousers, the "campagnard"
is bound to be at a loose end and the "internaute" glued to his computer screen,
incapable of going to cafés, museums...
This stereotyped view not only helps to
sell products (only in this context they don’t talk about "tribes" but
"niche markets"), but, and above all, gives things a label, makes them more
comprehensible and offers reassurance! For 60% of the French today are
"thirty-somethings" who are a little scared of young people, although their
cultural habits are much more cosmopolitan than people think.
Rap only among "lascars"? Hardly.
Rap is everywhere, even in the top educational institutions. Take Jérôme, for instance,
who is studying for a higher commercial diploma while at the same time trying to set up a
rap label and his own production company. So does this young man work with purist rap
musicians? Yes, but rappers who also watch reality-TV shows like "Pop Stars" and
"Star Academy" and who are therefore familiar with the whole repertoire of
French light music brought back into fashion by this kind of programme, even going so far
as to include sound loops from the songs of Jacques Brel in their rap pieces.
Elise is a University lecturer, after being
brilliantly successful in the literary high schools. So she is an intellectual, a bit of a
"bourgeoise-bohème" or "bobo". Indeed, but she enjoys her regular
’fix’ of the American TV soap ER and she adores Stephen King. "That was a
source of friction with my father. He used to say that you didn’t win competitions by
watching TV soaps. He didn’t understand. We had a bet on it, and I won a car!"
Cécile, on the other hand, goes to
religious gatherings in the summer (she met the Pope in Toronto) and marijuana-growing
festivals in the winter! Her boyfriend (who has not a single body piercing) scours free
parties (alternative techno parties) with his flatmates... New trends pop up regularly,
and youth culture is one great big hotchpotch and incredibly varied.
Sandira, at the meeting point of
different cultures
When it comes to cultural
cross-fertilisation, Sandira is an amazing hybrid. Coming from a family of entrepreneurs,
this twenty year old left school early and has already been working in the Internet world
for five years. She has already experienced five start-ups and is what is known as a
"web baby", symbolic of this new generation born with a computer slung over one
shoulder. For her, life is divided into two categories: the on-line world (what is in the
computer) and the off-line world (everything outside, real life). For the moment, her only
access to culture has been in the on-line world, or through a screen: flat screen,
television screen, cinema screen ...Hers is the "internaute" or web surfers’
tribe.
Glued to her screen, incapable of visiting
museums? When we met her she was visiting the Musée d’Orsay in Paris for the first
time. "I’d seen this picture before in the film Mr Bean. But I didn’t know
that it really existed! On the other hand, The Origin of the World [by Courbet], I’d
seen that before on TV, so you see I really do have culture!" For Sandira is aware of
her shortcomings: "I think people who can talk about architecture, literature, are
amazing! Sometimes, when you’re talking to them they make hyperlinks to references I
don’t have. Of course, if I’d been to college, I would have had access to other
knowledge bases..."
For the rest of us, the
"thirty-somethings", Sandira is an extraterrestrial. How dare she put so noble a
term, "culture", alongside such vulgar expressions as "hyperlinks" or
"knowledge base"? Doesn’t that presage an intellectually vacant virtual
world? But Sandira sees things much more simply: "From a cultural point of view, I am
like any worker who started work at the age of sixteen, I have gaps. But I have my whole
life in front of me!" Since she is also a young woman of her generation, growing up
in a world without barriers, she travels, clear-sighted and perfectly at ease, from
capital to capital... "Tomorrow, I’m off to London, and the Tate Gallery is part
of the schedule!"
Roudy, on benefit by day and DJ at
night
Finally, when we look closely at the
relationship between young people and culture, the most significant change is undoubtedly
the professionalisation of activities that were for a long time the preserve of the world
of leisure (music, cinema, theatre, etc.). Roudy, aged twenty-five, is an orphan.
Unemployed, he lives in an attic room in Strasbourg and gets the minimum State welfare
payment (390 euros per month). He finds it very difficult to live in a dignified manner
from one month to the next. No visiting the cinema or exhibitions, no mobile phone or
computer, and makeshift clothes.
Thirty years ago, from the same background,
Roudy would most probably have opted for factory work. In 2002, he’s a DJ! "I
have worked in about fifteen factories before now, but I don’t want that kind of
life. In any case, it’s a real hassle everywhere, so if I’m going to be
unemployed I might as well try to do what I love."
Romain feels the same way, he’s
twenty-four and working to pay for his evening classes at drama school, having spent over
five years in techno music. He will do everything he can to escape a joyless existence:
"At the moment I’m a sales rep, but that makes no sense. Where is that going to
get me? Consuming things so I can forget how frustrated I am? I want to live, get ideas
across... And I’ve got nothing to lose." This is perfectly true, since, in
France, the level of poverty among the under thirties has doubled in the last ten years.
The arts have become the last safe investment, the place for all their hopes and dreams.
In 1968 people joined the political parties of the left in order to try to change the
world. Today Romain and Roudy are trying to dream their lives, since they can’t
change the world...
These individuals were followed all through
2001 by Sophie Simonot and Rémi Lainé while making a documentary series entitled Vingt
ans, le bel âge [Twenty, the best days of your life] broadcast by France 2 in 2003.
(Courtesy Label FRANCE Magazine No-51,
July 2003, Embassy of France, Kathmandu)
The German Historical
Museum
A new masterpiece of
architecture for Berlin: the German Historical Museum opens its new extension designed by
star architect I. M. Pei.
By Janet Schayan
The sky over Berlin seems close enough to
touch at the new extension to the in Berlin. The building is reminiscent of a transparent
snail’s shell revealing a staircase spiralling upwards through three levels. Each
level contains foyers extending into the impressive glass body which sweeps out like a
huge convex sculpture. An architectural showpiece – Germany’s very first ”Pei.”
The ”magician of light” Ieoh Ming Pei designed the glass pyramid for the Louvre
in Paris and the spectacular east wing of Washington’s National Gallery of Arts.
Berlin is now the proud owner of a genuine ”Pei,” the 86-year-old master of
contemporary architecture, who was born in China and has lived in the USA since 1935 and
now only accepts projects that really fascinate him. ”You have to be very selfish in
old age,” he says. But the product of this egoism brings happiness to many: the
Berliners and visitors to the city have gained a new landmark of the highest quality, and
after five years of construction the German Historical Museum (DHM) now has its
long-awaited extension with 2,700 square metres of exhibition space.
”My stairway is boldly confident, but
that’s the way it’s supposed to be,” I. M. Pei remarks about the
characteristic element of the museum extension which was opened at the end of May. ”It’s
designed to seduce people into the building”. With every step new perspectives open
up in both the light-flooded entrance hall and the architecture at the heart of the city
outside. The stairs in the tower ascend so gently that you can easily take your eyes off
the floor and gaze into the sky above – or look out at the impressive neighbouring
baroque building, the ”Zeughaus,” which was once the old armoury. Here, pressure
is on to complete renovation by the end of 2004. It is the oldest building on the
boulevard ”Unter den Linden,” and together with Pei’s extension it will
house the complete German Historical Museum: the permanent exhibition embracing 2,000
years of history in an area of 7,500 square metres at the Zeughaus, and the special
exhibitions in the Pei building, which are connected by any underground passageway.
The subtlety is that the history of the
DHM, which was only founded in 1987, is closely interwoven with its subject, in fact it
was overtaken by it: if German reunification had never taken place, the German Historical
Museum would have been erected close to the Reichstag building in the west of the city.
The competition for architectural designs had barely closed when the Wall came down –
and just one year later the young museum found its new home in the baroque Zeughaus in the
east of the city. It also acquired the collection belonging to the Museum of History of
the GDR which resided there. As a result these two history museums from the east and the
west were merged to create Germany’s first mutually reunited cultural institution.
And the plot of land originally designated for the new DHM has become the site of history
in the making: it is where the Chancellery now stands.
But the Zeughaus itself is also a site of
political and cultural history. Over the centuries it served as an armoury, a memorial
centre to heroes, a Nazi propaganda forum, and finally from 1952 to 1990 as a museum. In
1695 construction started on the building that bears the signature of the baroque star
architect Andreas Schlüter together with those of the two masters of Prussian classicism,
Schinkel and Schadow, who were commissioned for the alterations after 1815. Finding the
right form for the new extension presented Pei with a major challenge: he had to do
justice to the architects’ great name while coming to terms with the available space
– a space overshadowed by the Zeughaus yet prominently conspicuous at the transition
to Museum Island.
The opinions of architectural critics are
seldom unanimous: they however agreed that I.M. Pei, a student of the German architect
Walter Gropius and an admirer of Schinkel, has succeeded in creating a masterpiece. He
”has united Schlüter’s monumentalism, Schinkel’s elegance and China’s
melancholy in his design,” commended the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper on the
building that appears unexpectedly weightless and delicate. The enraptured Süddeutsche
newspaper said: ”The magician of light has implanted a prism of light in Berlin. A
prism that wonderfully refracts the city’s visual rays and light axes in all the
bright colours of the scintillating urban spectrum.” But the newspaper critics also
share the opinion that they are not at all impressed by the actual exhibition halls: they
are too dark, too low, too much like underground car parks. Museum director Hans Ottomeyer
frowns at such comments: ”Many of the critics fail to recognize the purpose of the
exhibition halls,” he says. And adds that they have to prevent the entry of daylight,
maintain a constant temperature and humidity and guarantee high security for the exhibits,
and in this respect the new rooms are ideal. This criticism does not seem to bother
visitors to the first exhibitions – ”The Idea of Europe. Concepts for an Eternal
Peace” located on two levels and ”John F. Kennedy” on a single level.
Ottomeyer is happy that together with the
Pei building the DHM can now make its comeback as a central figure among Berlin’s
major museums, even though the 7,000 exhibits for the permanent exhibition will have to
lie dormant in their storerooms for a good eighteen months until the Zeughaus is finally
completed. When Ottomeyer, a cultural historian, begins narrating the exhibition soon
comes to life: the envisaged visitors, ranging from casual passers-by to qualified
historians, will have a chance to discover German history while walking through the
various epoch halls. The exhibition begins on the upper floor with the time around 100 BC,
when the German-speaking area evolved from the merging of Roman civilization with Celtic,
Germanic and Slavic populations. Recently excavated objects bearing witness to the battle
in which the Germanic people defeated the Romans under Varus, will be the first exhibits
on view to the public. It is not the DHM’s intention to retell history, but rather to
make it a palpable experience with the aid of ”witnesses.” Ottomeyer is
convinced that these documents, photos, pictures, sound recordings and artefacts can tell
as much as words – but in a more lively manner. The spectrum ranges from medieval
manuscripts to a tent from the Turkish siege of Vienna and the famous little Trabi car.
However, the exhibits have to be genuine.
Only then do they possess the power to ”speak.” The DHM has collected 850,000
such silently eloquent witnesses, but not even one in a hundred has the chance of being
included in the new permanent exhibition. The exhibition on the upper floor will end with
1918 while, according to Ottomeyer, the ground floor will be reserved for the ”most
terrible of all centuries,” the twentieth. ”Theme rooms,” devoted for
instance to ”gender relations” or ”war and peace” are designed to help
draw comparisons between recurring questions in history. The museum team wants to apply
modern communications media like ”poison”: in such small quantities that the
dose has a healing effect. But there will be a virtual library where visitors can browse
through ancient manuscripts and 20 media stations with electronic lexicons or interactive
systems. And where does history end at the DHM? In the here and now: with a look at the
current news showing how the present is transformed into history – beginning at the
end of 2004.
(Text Courtesy: Deutschland Magazine,
Embassy of Germany, Kathmandu, Nepal) |
