The Hypocrisy of Cultural Actors’ Independence

Cultural actors have been regularly mobilizing for some time against an alleged threat to their programming and creative freedom. But does this independence they claim really exist? An analysis of the relationships between culture and politics in local communities reveals a collective lie that, in my opinion, weakens the sector more than it protects it.

The Reality of Cultural Subjugation to Politics

Claiming that today’s cultural actors are independent from political powers, particularly in small and medium-sized towns or communities, strikes me as a lie. For anyone observing the functioning of local authorities from the inside (which is my case), the finding immediately imposes itself: everything that is programmed is generally validated by the mayor. This operating principle, which no one questions, constitutes the norm in all the cities I’ve been able to observe during my 35 years of experience in artistic projects, innovation, and cultural mediation.

This situation is fundamentally consistent with our democratic system. A political team is elected on a project that sometimes includes a cultural component. Elected officials therefore legitimately have the role of carrying out the cultural policy of their territory, since they were elected for that purpose. Noting that creation and programming are subjugated to politics even appears more democratic than the reverse. Because entrusting cultural policy decisions to non-elected individuals would amount to giving them the power to spend public money according to choices that may not correspond to voters’ expectations. As Michel Schneider analyzes in La Comédie de la culture (1993), “culture has always had the function of legitimizing political power in place, in a hall of mirrors where everyone finds their advantage.”

The real issue is therefore not that cultural actors are losing their programming freedom in the face of politics. Their real fear is the arrival of new elected officials with whom they don’t share the same political values, and who would ask them for programming choices contrary to their “convictions.” This legitimate fear is hidden behind a discourse on creative independence that masks reality: this alleged freedom doesn’t already exist. In large communities as in small ones, overtly left-wing programming in a right-wing municipality, or vice versa, wouldn’t last long. The director concerned would quickly be replaced. Cultural actors who believe they enjoy freedom are simply in political agreement with their elected officials. They confuse this alignment with independence.

Self-Censorship as Illusory Freedom

Local cultural actors regularly swallow bitter pills with their elected officials, we know this well, and it’s rather normal, it seems to me. Disagreements, obligations, compromises: this is the sector’s daily reality. Why then maintain a mendacious discourse when everyone knows that in fact, culture is subjugated to politics? This reality isn’t limited to local communities. At the national level, the mechanism is identical. Our representative democratic system deserves to be questioned: we vote to lose power. We elect people supposed to represent us, but who, during their mandate, act as they please with the carte blanche we’ve given them. As Étienne Chouard reminds us in his work on real democracy, “drawing lots was for the Greeks the true democratic principle, election being aristocratic” (Démocratie : histoire, enjeux et débats, 2011).

The most dangerous thing, I believe, isn’t the hypocrisy itself, but the lie that masks the lie about freedom. Cultural sector professionals claim they’re going to lose their freedom. But they’re not already free, not at all, not even today. An artist can certainly write their show as they wish, they believe, because in fact they know perfectly well the limits they must not cross, which is integrated even unconsciously. They know which subjects they cannot address, or that addressing certain themes would immediately discredit them. The game with censorship is indeed a game, not freedom, and everyone is aware of it. Even in the context of young people making films as part of cultural action projects in museums in left-wing cities, I’ve seen quite unimaginable censorship applied to amateur productions with very limited distribution, carried by mediation teams paralyzed by fear of sanction.

The history of American cinema illustrates this dynamic. During the application of the Hays Code (1934-1968), when censorship of cinematographic images was extremely strict, filmmakers played with these constraints to convey subversive messages while formally respecting the prohibition. Bertolt Brecht offers another powerful example. During his hearing before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947, he had to deny being a communist when he was one. Through subtle rhetorical play, he managed not to completely betray himself while satisfying his censors, who welcomed him to the United States knowing perfectly well he was a communist. Shared hypocrisy, agreed-upon lie.

In a different place, but perhaps not so distant, the mendacious logic is found in the very structure of the live performance sector in France. Companies take the form of associations, which are associations in name only: no real members, just presidents, treasurers, and secretaries most often acting as figureheads. This facade allows the artist who actually runs the structure to benefit from the intermittent entertainment workers’ regime. Everyone knows it’s a lie, funding public institutions first and foremost, but it’s the way the collective makes this sector work economically.

Let’s be clear: there is no programming or creative freedom, or very relative freedom, when funding comes from public money. Even if artists sincerely believe they enjoy this freedom, they unconsciously self-censor. Becoming aware of this reality allows us to position ourselves more justly and honestly, I believe, personally and collectively. This seems to me to enable building future institutions that are more solid, more sustainable, more sincere, by being more respectful of citizens through transparency about their contradictions, which are inherent to any system.

The Fear of Alternation and the Question of Image

Practicing professionals who believe they’re free in their structure are therefore simply in agreement with the politicians who employ them. What truly frightens them isn’t the far right as such, in my opinion. The pseudo-political posture of draping oneself in the fight against the far right masks their real concern: the possible inability to continue working due to the stigmatization of their affinities with former elected officials during a possible political alternation.

This fear also touches on their image. Postures are images, associations with symbolic places of power. In my opinion, if we’re really sincere, another unspoken fear haunts certain cultural actors: that their programming, their alleged artistic freedom, ultimately proves quite compatible with far-right politics... This discovery would bring to light what I would call artists’ flattery. Molière, who couldn’t hide that he was funded by the king, worked on his self-criticism on this subject in his very plays, and that’s what makes them fascinating, even today. This contradiction, these paradoxes were at the heart of many of his plays, without condescending posture but with real questions.

This lucidity and honesty are lacking today, I believe, among many live performance professionals who drape themselves in an image of “engagement,” when they’re sometimes only poor lackeys of power. We unfortunately saw this during the Covid period, when spinelessness in the face of authoritarian, incoherent, stigmatizing State decisions, destructive of democracy and freedom, were accepted dutifully, and even sometimes over-interpreted. For example, I saw cultural professionals checking people’s identity during the health pass era, when it was at that time strictly forbidden by law: these professionals not hesitating to practice denunciation and stigmatization on medical criteria, which is completely prohibited. They thought they were doing “good” by collaborating with a villainous and infantilizing State, even doing more than what was asked of them, and that’s the worst: instead of defending democracy and freedom, many of them were at the forefront of collaborating in the implementation of incoherent totalitarian policies, believing they were doing right. And this while those who wanted to force them, the State and its militaristic decisions, violated them by asserting that culture was “non-essential.” There was a form of general Stockholm syndrome, through the defense of the oppressors of democracy and the manufacturers of the health disaster, which was the State itself during that period. The French State had cut off any possible democratic treatment of this crisis through the state of emergency regime, enabled by the expression “we are at war,” which meant that decisions were made under the seal of national defense secrecy, as in a war situation. Let’s not forget that the restrictions on freedoms during the Covid period were, in France, more liberty-killing than those implemented during the German occupation between 1940 and 1945. And the stigmatization of the non-compliant part of the population (the “unvaccinated”) was politically very serious, even though their supposed “dangerousness” was an admitted lie from the start by the authorities, and it was later proven and re-proven that it was indeed a State lie (Covid vaccination never protected against virus transmission, which wasn’t a late discovery but an initial basis).

Back to the cultural sector: I suggest stopping lying, stopping lying to ourselves, and starting to dialogue with elected officials of all sides. If such great artist, who believes themselves very politically “engaged,” ultimately proves compatible with far-right cultural policy, which will happen more often than we think, let them assume it. Let them acknowledge that their work is aesthetic but doesn’t necessarily emancipate spectators in political terms, that they work in service of bourgeois reproduction, that it can even constitute a form of domination through art and aesthetics, and assume it as such.

Another paradox deserves to be noted: I’ve observed with astonishment, as a left-wing voter, that in certain communities, “right-wing” elected officials sometimes prove significantly more open to citizens than “left-wing” elected officials, particularly in the cultural field. Less invested in the symbolic power of the artistic and in the abstract defense of creation, they sometimes support more modest but more participatory projects. Some cultural professionals actually know this very well: they paradoxically fear that the right will ask them for more social work than what they were doing with the left. Terrible paradox... The right could ask them to actually do their work in its social dimension and stop protecting their domination, while the left maintains their authoritarian power.

Paradoxes and Perspectives: Toward Constructive Honesty

The fears of certain cultural professionals also include the fear of democratic evaluation of cultural projects. Behind support for creation often hides an absence of democracy in the allocation of immense budgets, for example for building renovations. Wouldn’t there be other projects to undertake than this eternal focus on buildings? I propose being lucid about who we are, without shame. Discovering that one is compatible with the far right has happened to many artists during the French Collaboration from 1940 to 1945. There are great films we still love today that were in complete agreement with the collaborationist regime with the Nazi occupation. Today, “engagements” and grand speeches abound. We’ll see what happens if power shifts to the far right, at the national or local level. We’ll see the postures and we’ll perhaps discover the true faces of some. I obviously don’t wish for this, but if we want to defend democracy through art and culture, let’s do it now, without hypocrisy. Let’s have the courage to question ourselves, we’ll only be stronger and more collective for it, without grand gestures.

I simply propose a bit of honesty right now. It would be more constructive. The current discourse antagonizes elected officials and harms the cultural sector as a whole, its social role so important to defend. Defending this role goes beyond protecting small individual powers draped in illusory freedom. The issue, in my view, is to begin questioning our symbolic privileges, to better serve cultural democracy.

This lucidity would allow us to ask the real questions: what culture do we really want to defend? The one that maintains positions of power or the one that truly emancipates citizens and can shift power? The current lie weakens our ability to honestly answer these questions and to build together, whatever our political disagreements, a more just and more democratic cultural policy.