The audience as an expert Lecture by Jean-Marc Leveratto, Pr of Sociology, University Paul Verlaine, Metz (France) Firenze, Facoltà di Scienze Politiche, 28 avril 2006

1. Consumption and « consumerism » In France, the sociology of cultural consumption (initiated by Joffre Dumazedier, 1962, and boosted by the work of Pierre Bourdieu, 1969) has been, for a long time, left aside. The history and sociology of artistic professions (Raymonde Moulin, 1984, Nathalie Heinich, 1993) has become for twenty years, since the 80s, the main trend in the sociology of culture (rebaptized for the occasion “Sociology of the Art”, cf. Heinich, 2004) As a consequence, there are very few sociological studies on the cultural consumption and particularly on the so-called “mass culture” consumption. For example, in the last conference organized by the French Minister of Culture on “Cultural Audiences” (Les publics de la culture, 2002), there were, among approximately fifty papers, only one paper on cinema audiences — written by myself with Fabrice Montebello — and no paper at all on television audiences (!) There are many reasons to this lack of interest towards the « Mass Observation » : A) the professionalization of the cultural statistics. Figures on the national cultural consumption are now regularly produced by a special service of the French Minister of Culture (The Departement des Études et Prospectives, DEP). But this service focuses its observation on the public sector and on the social characterization of its audience B) The « republican elitism » cultural policy. This ideological context favours the instrumentalization of the sociology of culture by cultural professions in search of public funds. The work of Pierre Bourdieu (1979) is thus often used to argue the cultural incompetence of the ordinary consumer and his alienation by the film and television industry The linguistic evolution of the term « consumérisme » (consumerism) in French is typical of this elitist vision. As an anglicism introduced in the 70s, it first meant the « action of the consumers to protect their interests» (see Dictionnaire des anglicismes, Larousse, 1982). Its official meaning has not changed (see Robert, 2000). Yet it is now used by the French intellectuals as an equivalent of the italian « consumismo » to refer to the unbridled consumption of the ordinary people; This vision of consumption mixed with the idea of cultural domination is an intellectual obstacle to the sociological expertise of the movies reception in France. The observation of the

consumer’s behavior is sacrified to the idea of pre-constructed audiences explaining both the sucess and the fight between two types of cinema, for the mass and for the happy few, « cinéma d’acteurs » and « d’auteurs » for exemple (Pierre Bourdieu, 1979). This sociological vision of movies consumption erases, in the name of the power of the industry and of the class struggle, the uncertainty of the success of the films (a lot of them are commercial failures) and the evaluation that is made case by case by the consumer of the quality of the film.

2. The Sociology of Artistic Quality The sociology of artisty quality (Leveratto, 2000) choses to study cultural consumption from the point of view of the evaluation of the qualities of a cultural product. This point of view is peculiarly relevant for understanding the dynamics of the movies market, as Ian C. Jarvie has emphasized in his book, Towards a Sociology of the Cinema (1970). He points out the « preconception […] that evaluation comes up only when critics view films ». On the contrary, « evaluation is a constant process which goes on throughout the life of the film, from its conception, through its production, to its first release and even after that — when its age qualifies it for consideration as having “classic” status and thus open to reevaluation ». Talking of film evaluation is thus talking of « several groups of people », including the « people in the industry itself » and « the cinema-going public » (Jarvie, 1970,179). Katz and Lazarsfeld were the first to explore the making of the audience opinion on a movie (« Movie leaders » in Personal Influence, 1955) and to study the way a knowledge about films is transmitted by the word of mouth. But the consumer’s evaluation is a more complex phenomenon that the simple product of the personal influence of a leader. It is the assessment of the quality of the film based on my own experience of the film, an assessment made by comparison with other films. Considering the “sociotechnical” contruction of the performance — I can watch a classic alone on my TV, take my girl-friend to the movie at her own choice, bring my family to see the last blockbuster, etc — this evaluation combines, for each consumer, different kinds of cognitive and affective ressources. His opinion will be based non only on his films’ memory, but will also mobilize readings (of books, of reviews, of newspapers), programs (of radio, of TV), school studies, conversations, etc. It will, in the same time, take in consideration the way the film enhances, through the emotions it produces the strength of social ties, including the « weak ties » (Marc Granovetter, 2000) that link the consumers together. It means that the ordinary evaluation of a film : — Is a rating on a scale of quality rather than a characterization in terms of yes or no — Always relates, explicitely or not, this rating to a social form of viewing ( family, adult single, couple, classroom, etc)

This explains the morphology of the cognitive equipments offered to the customers by the national or the local press. These equipments usually combine : — a measure of the general quality of the film, that takes the form of the rating of a certain quantity of stars (for example the « fourth star to BOMB rating system » of the Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide used by a lot of American consumers) — the classification of the film in a category that indicates the type of pleasure it proposes, and therefore the social configuration and extension of its normal audience (for example, in the USA, the MPPA ratings : (G) general audiences, (PG) and (PG-13) parental guidance suggested and strongly cautioned, (R) restricted for children under 17, (NC-17), No children under 17) In summary, the consumer’s choice cannot be reduced to the preference expressed for a style of films versus another style of films, ie to the affiliation to an ideological community. It’s the common effort to find a film fitting with the situation I want to live, and to reduce as far as possible the uncertainty on the quality of the film I am going to view. In other words, studying the consumer’s evaluation means studying the organization of a national market, which is the only way to consider in the same time the different states of the consumer, and the complete ranges of the social moments films help to build. The acting of the evaluation by the audience consists, by the fact, in the selection amoung the hundred of films running not only in the theaters, but also on TV, and the thousand of DVDs offered on location or sold in shops. From this point of view, the audience is an actor of the quality of the cinema, the consumers promoting on the basis of their knowledge the films they have experienced as quality films. And that, in the case of the cinema, this actor than can be used by the consumer as a « quality signal », just like the other actors (critics, professionals, experts) used to anticipate the artistic quality of a product (B. Rouget, D. Sagot-Duvauroux, 1996).

3. The Anthropology of Cultural Reception The pleasure, undestood as the excitment resulting of my personal involvment in a « mimetic activity » (N. Elias-E. Dunning, 1994) is the central issue of the sociology of leisure. Even if this involvment, in the case of the film, seems purely mental, the reception of a film is a social situation based on corporal event, as « every state of conscience, useful, unuseful, harmful, determines a bodily activity » (W. James, 1880) The birth of the film market means the shaping of the pleasure brought by the film, by the incorporation of a individual discipline (a « body technique », Marcel Mauss, 1934) and the codification of the technical power and of the social value of the commodities offered by the market. In Le cinéma en France (2005), my colleague Fabrice Montebello proposes the first historical analysis of this process, that he calls the « national history of the world cinema ». Considering in

the same time the technical change of the films and the intellectual evolution of the people, through the interactions between professionals and audiences, he clears up the cultural making of a national movies market in France. This process combines two types of intellectual elaboration of the film quality, by A) cristallization and byB) politicisation of the consumer’s behavior (Trepos, 2002) A) Cristallization is the usual way a personal experience generates cognitive ressources (names, titles, technical familiarity, conventions, etc) and forms of classification allowding the characterization and the proper qualification of the films offered by the market The fixing of the “feature film” standard in the 20s has given birth to a practical sense (P. Bourdieu, 1984) of film quality, relying on the sizing up of the spectacle (the A, B, C classification of Adolphe Zukor, founder of Paramount, or the A-B distinction of William Fox, founder of the XXth Century Fox) and on the testing of its composition, « Names, Story Value, Picture Sense, Box Office Appeal » (see Bachlin, 1947, Bruce Austin, 1963) This evaluation is, through the image of the body experienced with the film, anchored (E. Goffman, 1974) in the customer everyday’s life. The viewing of a film is, at the same time, a spontaneous technical testing and an ethical experiment, through the way the situation moves me. The evaluation mixes the technical quality of the film and my affective reactions used to certify the ethical value of the film (Leveratto, 2006). B) Politicization is the collective action to organize the uses of the movies, so as to reduce or to prevent « risks » or « dangers » attributed to the cinema. The best example of politicization is, of course, the State intervention to protect the local cinema industry. In France, for example, a short time after the birth of the talkies, the defence of the « French Quality » of the cinema leads to the creation of the Festival de Cannes and the Centre National du Cinema. This National Agency played an important role in producing the young « auteurs » de la Nouvelle Vague (see F. Gimello, 2003) The Luxembourg is an interesting contemporary case. Following the example given by the French State, the State of Luxembourg finances today the building of a national film industry, using the financial opportunities offered by Europeans cultural funds. This two cases brings very good examples of a form of politicization of cinema consumption linked in the same time to the political hegemony of native middle classes and to the pressure of local cultural industries In Luxembourg, the shooting of films in native language and with native actors and technicians is of course an argument to bring state subsidies to a local industry able to offer interesting shooting opportunities to international productions and, especially, american blockbusters. As to France, foreign observers must pay attention to the mismatch between the official discourse and the effective managment by the State of the national market of entertainement. The famous

Mexico discourse of Jack Lang against American Imperialism was made the same year, 1982, when the French State allowed the privatization of radios and televisions, which shortly brought, of course, an internationalization of the programs. In this sense, the French contemporay fight inside the EU for the « Cultural Exception » expresses more the corporate interests of the French industry of entertainement than the aspirations of the day-to-day consumer. For two main reasons : — French programs represents still the major part of the day-to-day consumption of films in France (Montebello, 2005) — The french consumer is, on the whole, an educated consumer, attracted by the now “classical” quality of american films and the “modern” quality of american serials and series (Wrinckler and Petit, 1999).

4. History of cinema and cultural consumerism : new issues Robert Butsch proves, in The Making of American Audiences (2000), the sociological interest of the history of the audiences. He shows how audiences made themselves through their practises and how they differ from the passive audience made by contemporary discourse. Entertainment has become since the mid of the 20th century, because of the dispersal of audiences from theaters to their home, rather a private experience than a public occasion This individualization of entertainment does not means, however, the destruction of social ties, but their evolution according to the transformation of the public space, that became « heterotopic » (M. Foucault), i.e. mixing real and virtual places. It doesn’t mean neither a loss of the sense of reality but rather, because of the expansion of media literacy, a growth of the personal ability to control the power and meaning of the images. We can talk in this sense of a “protoprofessionalization” of the movies consumers. Abram de Swaan (1995) calls « Protoprofessionalization » the cultural effect of the professionalization of social and cultural activities. According to this model, the professional can’t be effecient and reknown as a professional if he doesn’t share a part of his technological knowledge with the costumer, allowing him to undertsand and obey to the suggestions of the professional. History can help us to test this vision of the evolution of the consumer’s behavior A) on the local and B) on the national level : A) The survey of a local cinema audience on three generations since World War II brings confirmation of this process. It was made in the eastern part of France, precisely in Longwy, a town that was once the capital of the French steel production.

It shows: 1) In the 50s, the passion of cinema shared by an immigrate working class whose some young members worshipped in the same time « Joseph Staline and Humphrey Bogart » (Montebello, 1993), a passion enhanced through the viewing of the television in the 60s. 2) The birth in the 80s, through the transmission of the passion to their children, of a local « ethnic heritage » invented and legitimized by the second generation, and materialized by the success of the local Italian Film Festival (Leveratto, 2003) 3) The contemporary normalization of a « Quality culture » of cinema shared by the younger through the school and the Internet (Kasprowicz, 2005) B) At the level of the evolution of the national market, the two phenomena — individualization and protoprofessionalization — can be observed in the making of the cinema audiences in the USA as well as in France. Three historical stages of censorship (Caïra, 2003) materialized, for example, the conquest by the consumers of their cognitive autonomy and of their moral self control. In the USA, lists of forbidden films gave place, in the 30s, to the famous Code of production, and in the 60s to the parental classification. In France, the three stages are a little bit different, because of the croll of the industry at the beginning of the 30s. The second moment was thus operated by a confessional agency, the Office Catholique du Cinema, which created a moral rating at the attention of the christian families (Leveratto, 2003). The third — the parental classification — was decided and operated by the State after World War II. But in the two cases, the cultural making of the local market,in the same time, generates a personal discipline and a technical knowledge whose incorporation allows the autonomy of a « outer-directed » customer (Riesman, 1950), able to enjoy not only action, but references in the film to the history of cinema. My colleague Laurent Jullier diagnoses, for example, the effects of the technical training of the consumer through the birth in the 80s of a « post-modern style of action films » (Jullier, 1997). As seen before, the ethnographic approach of cinema audience can help us to confirm this optimistic view of the behavior of movies audiences. — The Internet brings, for example, confirmation of the fandom as a form of cultural consumerism. Internet allows direct observations on young active viewers sharing their opinions as consumers aware of the “tricks of the trade” and using the films of their favourite stars as a tool with wich to mould their social identities (Kasprowicz, 2006) . — Ethnographic studies of women TV viewers (Seiters, 1989) come to the same conclusions. Inattentiveness once analyzed as a characteristic of the working class of the 60s take a new meaning. « Inattention demonstrates viewers’ independence from and yet familiarity with television text » (Butsch, 2000, 288)

As emphasized by Martin Barker, these findings « provide a significant empirical test for some of Bourdieu’s claims about the relative separation of taste cultures in the contemporary society and his proposal of a correlation between class status and cultural consumption » (Austin and Barker, 2003, 153). That is not to say, of course, that we must deny the reality of a class stratification. But that we must escape to the elitist vision of « popular » consumers as unable to manage their cultural consumption, and to the radical vision of commercial movies as unique means of cultural domination. The ethnographic studies showing the ability of these movies « to make viewers culturally mobile or permeable, that is open to new cultural experiences » (Austin and Barker, 2003, 153) brings therefore confirmation that « every man is an intellectual » (Gramsci). . Cultural consumerism is thus a way to understand the « intimate dialectic between incorporation and resistance » that, according to Raymond Williams, that characterizes the shaping of the pleasure by the spectator.

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