Crusader for the Arts

By Kenneth W. Banta

Flamboyant Minister Jack Lang draws mixed reviews

There was nothing modest about the idea, and when the 350 cultural superstars finally left Paris last week after a glittering two-day conference on Creation and Development, it was clear that there had been nothing modest about their deliberations. Lodged in luxury hotels at the expense of Franc,ois Mitterrand's Socialist government, the high-powered conventioneers gathered in the Sorbonne's venerable amphitheater to ponder their curious subject: cultural solutions to the world's economic crisis.

Under frescoed portraits of Diderot and Voltaire, luminaries ranging from Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Novelists Norman Mailer and William Styron and Actress Sophia Loren debated such topics as state control of the arts and the unemployment crisis. In between they supped at the Foreign Ministry and lunched with Mitterrand. So dazzling was the cast that even the stars sometimes seemed overwhelmed. Said Film Director Francis Ford Coppola: "The people here are incredible. It's like a college--a very good college." The meeting, Italian Theater Director Giorgio Strehler concluded grandly in his summation, had provoked awareness "of the need to create a new place for research, for creation, for hope."

But while rhetoric flowed freely, the conference fell notably short on productive debate. In his closing address Mitterrand called for a New Renaissance, claiming that "the originality of the French idea lies there, at the intersection of technology and creativity." From such high-minded but vague declarations the colloquium often descended into special pleading and ideological posturing. Novelist Mary McCarthy called on the French government to permit Poland's Radio Solidarity to broadcast in France. Feminist Kate Millett deplored the "severe lack of representation of women" at the meeting (85 out of 350). U.S. cultural "imperialism," particularly in the form of the internationally popular TV show Dallas, was repeatedly attacked. Not a few guests foundered on the generalities and the pretension. The grandiose talkathon, hinted one American participant, mainly "reflects how many people are still willing to accept a free ticket to Paris."

Such spectaculars have become a hallmark of France's lavish new investment in the arts, and the personal signature of Mitterrand's flamboyant and popular Minister of Culture, Jack Lang, 43.* Dapper in his close-cut suits, possessed of boyish good looks and dark curls that seem to stir women, Lang has ambitious plans for the arts in Socialist France. "Our goal," he says, "is to transform all of France into a cultural work site." The transformation of the budget has been dramatic. In 1981, under President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the Ministry of Culture received $500 million, or .47% of the national budget; this year the figure has shot up to $1.05 billion, .78% of the total (In contrast, Washington allocates only $500 million, or .06% of the federal budget, to the arts.) But Lang's campaign to rejuvenate France's cultural life has also depended on vengeful attacks on U.S. cultural "imperialism" that even many French intellectuals find embarrassing.

Whatever the merits of Lang's efforts, they have certainly been visible--and audible. Last year, for example, he decided that the French should mark the summer solstice with a national "musical festival" in which everyone would simultaneously pluck, pound, tingle and bow musical instruments as church bells rang and neighborhood salsa bands played. Right on cue, 5 million French joined in an exuberant celebration that banged on from 8:30 p.m. until well past midnight. Lang has filled the once empty courtyard of Paris' staid Louvre museum with exhibitions of new French fashions, displayed to the thump of disco rhythms. A troupe from the Comedie Franc,aise has played in the Paris subways. Still to come are an ambitious new "people's" opera house for the Place de la Bastille, a new ballet school for Marseille and a dance conservatory for Lyon. And, seemingly everywhere, there is Lang himself: listening to the raucous new-wave bands, paging through displays at the annual comic book exhibition at Angouleme, inspecting Grenoble's art museum.

Lang's evangelizing has boosted him to fourth place in popularity among the Mitterrand Cabinet's 35 ministers. That appeal, however, is due in part to his often gratuitous attacks on U.S. influences. For two years in a row, Lang has bypassed the American film festival at Deauville, a major annual event, to visit more obscure French art projects in provincial towns. In a burst of chauvinism that seemed calculated to stir Third World sympathies, Lang called, at a UNESCO conference last summer, for a crusade against U.S. cultural "imperialists" who "want to impose a uniform way of life on the entire planet." In response, Lang prescribes government subsidies for local talent, and favors requiring that 60% of films broadcast on French television be French produced. His attacks on American films, which dominate French television and movie houses, have astonished many cultural leaders in France. They argue that American influences have stimulated French creativity. Replies Lang: "All I'm doing is recognizing that the North American film industry is large and penetrates the European market. So who's declaring war on whom?"

His polemical style comes naturally. A lawyer by training, Lang founded the experimental World Festival of Theater in the northeastern city of Nancy when he was only 22. In 1972 he was called to Paris to revitalize the musty Chaillot theater. In the process of gutting he building's ornate interior during renovations, Lang created huge cost overruns and caused a scandal. Recalls a colleague Utterly: "He turned a great theater into a garage." Then Minister of Culture Michel Guy fired Lang, who capitalized on the insult by joining the Socialist Party. In 1978, Mitterrand, who was still leader of the opposition, made him his cultural adviser.

Lang's colleagues credit him with a brilliant overhaul of Mitterrand's dour image, thereby helping him win the presidency in 1981. Lang supposedly urged Mitterrand to undergo cosmetic dentistry to trim his protruding incisors, and inspired a soothing campaign poster that placed Mitterrand in a bucolic setting. The inauguration ceremonies were likewise choreographed by Lang. As Mitterrand slowly descended the steps of Paris' Pantheon with a rose, his party's symbol, in hand, the Orchestre de Paris played Beethoven's Ode to Joy.

The theatrical flourishes and Lang's high-profile politicking lead some critics to wonder how much France's tentative steps toward cultural vigor are really owed to his efforts. Preoccupied for decades with repairing neglected architecture and refurbishing its vast museums, France has only lately had the time to encourage contemporary arts. Yet it can be argued that Mitterrand's predecessors oversaw greater strides in the arts than anything Lang has yet produced. The most notable example: the Georges Pompidou Center, which opened in January 1977 and which, according to its former curator, Pontus Hulten, "has more than any change in government brought art and artists back to Paris."

There is little evidence to show that culture in France is on the spectacular rebound advertised by Lang. Although critics are impressed by a younger generation of painters, few of them are of international caliber. Despite an 800% increase in subsidies to the film industry, which has sparked a rash of new productions, there was an 11% decline in the number of feature films exported from 1980 to 1981. While Lang has been blasting U.S. television for imposing cultural uniformity, France's state-owned television has just bought 25 more installments of Dallas.

Lang responds that the essential change he has brought is one of mood. "For the first time in a long time," he says, "the intellectual, artistic and scientific worlds here realize that this is their government, that it's behind them." Whatever benefits a change in mood may bring Lang's rhetoric would be more convincing if it were backed by greater results. Meantime, less carping about pernicious foreign influences, and a moratorium on international conferences on culture, might add to his credibility.

--By Kenneth W. Banta. Reported by William Blaylock and Pamela Schirmeister/Paris

* Although the usual French spelling is Jacques, Lang's birth certificate actually says Jack--probably the result, he says, of Anglo-Saxon influences pervading France in 1939.

With reporting by William Blaylock, Pamela Schirmeister/Paris This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.