Page 22 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

6 Policy and Industry

percent market share it holds worldwide, the US attained just 59.1 percent
of the market in 2007 in Europe. So protection does seem to nurture domes-
tic fi lm production.
Critics of the policy of cultural exception argue that protection will

eventually weaken French film production. By not competing, French fi lm-
makers lose the impetus and means to make their products better. This,

the argument goes, accounts for why only one in five French fi lms gets
exported to the US and why, of the top 25 films by box office gross in

Europe in 2007, only one film – La Mome , which never made it to the US

– was French (nineteenth place). Protection, the argument goes, also
decreases an industry ’ s chances of competing successfully in the world
market. Europeans are nowhere near attaining the 85 percent global market
share US fi lms routinely secure.
But it is worth noting, nevertheless, that European film production is

gaining in strength rather than weakening as a result of these policies. In
2005, Europeans made 789 films, up from 761 in 2004. During the same

period, American film production fell from 593 to 453 films. The average

annual increase in public funding for audiovisual production in Europe
during this period was 10 percent. So there seems to be no correlation
between government subsidies and a weakening or loss of industrial
vitality, as the critics of the policy suggest. Moreover, the anti - exception
argument fails to take culture into account as a reason for why Americans
do not watch or want to watch French films. French film culture is less

committed to mass audience conventions that make films popular in

America, and American culture, which is deficient in the way it sensitizes

students to foreign cultures, may account for why Americans fi nd European

films in general to be too alien and too difficult to comprehend. They are
not “ entertainment. ”

Nevertheless, the fact that so few French films are as popular with
French viewers as US films suggests that the greater funding available to

American filmmakers does pay off at the box office. The continued, unbro-
ken skill development that is the legacy of the US ’ s industrial history in
film production (no wars shattered the US industry and skill development

continued through World War II, drawing on expatriate Europeans such
as Fritz Lang, Jean Renoir, and Alfred Hitchcock) gives American fi lms an
edge even with “ loyal ” French viewers. The differences in popularity are
not extreme, however. French fi lms such as Taxi 4 and Ensemble, c ’ est tout
( Together, It ’ s Everything ) earned only slightly less ($5.3 and $3.3 million