Alex Hughes. Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture

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488

Famed above all else for her role opposite

Jean-Paul Belmondo in Godard’s A bout de

souffle (1959), Seberg had already appeared

in Otto Preminger’s adaptation of the

Françoise Sagan novel, Bonjour tristesse in

1958. Her brand image as the young Ameri-

can woman in France was further consolidated

during her marriage to the novelist Remain

Gary. Her career did not sustain its early mo-

mentum and her radical views earned her per-

secution from the FBI—she committed suicide.

KEITH READER

Further reading

Ross, K. (1995) Fast Cars, Clean Bodies, Cam-

bridge, MA and London: MIT Press/Octo-

ber Books (a fascinating reading of the pe-

riod of modernization of which Servan-

Schreiber and Giroud are shown to have

been key proponents).

service industry

The service industry in France employs two-

thirds of the country’s workforce, in a wide

range of activities. It is currently affected by a

series of changes and conflicts. On the one

hand, the concentration and ‘rationalization’

of activities oppose large-scale networks to tra-

ditional, small-scale providers who fight for

survival with little success. On the other, the

considerable importance of ‘public services’ is

now threatened by a process of liberalization

and market deregulation.

The service industry is a heterogeneous,

unevenly developed sector, grouping activities

with little in common. These range from per-

sonal services and traditional retail activities

or religious organizations to large-scale ‘pub-

lic services’ such as health, education, public

transport, police, and also fast-changing ac-

tivities such as financial services, mass-retail-

ing hypermarchés (giant supermarkets), me-

dia and telecommunications, transport and

services to enterprises, increasingly integrated

or controlled in large corporate entities. All

these activities have gone through an acceler-

ated modernization process, which has

brought in its wake considerable social, eco-

nomic and cultural upheaval. Trade has been

particularly affected. The dense network of

service industry

490

retail shops and associated support crafts (ar-

tisans)—which, up to the 1960s, constituted

the socioeconomic backbone of rural areas

and generated a large proportion of urban

employment—is now largely destroyed. The

continued urbanization of the country and

industrial mass production coincided with

changes in trade patterns: hypermarchés and

shopping malls have now swamped the out-

skirts of urban areas. Hypermarchés, which

sell anything from food to computers, are an

established part of French culture, and groups

such as Mammouth, Leclerc, Continent and

Intermarché have become household names.

In 1993, they controlled 55 per cent of retail

trade, including 74 per cent of all food sold—

a considerable proportion for a country prid-

ing itself on food traditions.

The crisis affecting traditional service trades,

artisans and shopkeepers has given rise to a

number of populist protest movements, always

anti-state (their main target is usually tax of-

fices) and conservative-leaning (sometimes be-

longing to the extreme Right). The Poujadiste

movement (from the name of its founder,

Robert Poujade) in the 1950s, and the

corporatist shopkeepers union CID-UNATI,

which organized violent protests in the late

1960s, are the best-known examples of such

protest movements. These movements did not

significantly alter trends, and neither have the

legal limits imposed since 1973 (the Royer act)

on the installation of hypermarchés.

Another important change concerns ‘pub-

lic services’. Many of these, such as health,

education and social services, are controlled

by central administrations, and their employ-

ees (such as teachers) have civil servant status.

Other service industries (such as the post or

telecommunications), although commercial in

nature, are considered as ‘public services’. The

concept of public service, which has been part

of the political culture of the ordinary citizen,

is losing its relevance: since the mid-1980s,

deregulation and competition rules, partly

pushed by the European Union’s increasingly

insistent free-market programme, are trans-

forming the nature of these services and are

enlarging the scope for market-based provi-

sion, as shown particularly in areas such as

telecommunications.

FRANÇOIS NECTOUX

Further reading

Eck, J.-F. (1992) Histoire de l’économie

française depuis 1945, Paris: Armand Colin

(this covers the development of the service

industries in not too complicated language)

Seuil

Publishing house

Éditions du Seuil was founded in 1935 by

Henri Sjöberg, who was joined by Jean

Bardet and Paul Flamand later in 1937. In

1945, it established itself by publishing the

work of several authors with reputations as

‘left-wing catholics’. It gained further renown

during the 1960s and 1970s for publishing

the work of literary and critical theorists such

as Roland Barthes, Tzvetan Todorov and

Gérard Genette in collections such as ‘Cri-

tique’. In 1971, Seuil launched a series of

cheap editions, ‘Points’, and it has interests in

the reviews Communications, Esprit, La Re-

cherche and L’Histoire.

MARTYN CORNICK

Further reading

Sur le Seuil, 1935–1979 (1979), Paris: Éditions

du Seuil.

Martin, H.-J., Chartier, R. and Vivet, J.-P. (eds)

(1986) Histoire de l’édition française, vol.

4, Le Livre concurrencé 1900–1950, Paris:

Promodis (essential reading).

Seuil

491

Seyrig, Delphine

b. 1932, Beirut, Lebanon;

d. 1990, Paris

Actor

Also known as Beltiane, Seyrig is one of

France’s great but underestimated actors. Re-

nowned for her extraordinary voice and de-

livery, her stylized performance was both gra-

cious and intense. An international star, she

was at ease on both stage and screen. She took

on primarily contemporary theatre roles (plays

by Beckett, Stoppard and Cixous) and equally

challenging parts in auteur cinema (Resnais,

Duras, Buñuel, Ottinger). Her film roles delve

into questions of the unconscious and memory

(Resnais’s L’Année dernière à Marienbad of

1961), expose bourgeois hypocrisy—Buñuel’s

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Le

Charme discret de la bourgeoisie) of 1972—

and speak out strongly for the feminist cause,

which is a rare phenomenon among French

screen stars (for example, Duras’s India Song

of 1975, and Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne

Dielman, 23 quai du commerce 1080

Bruxelles of 1975).

SUSAN HAYWARD

See also: cinema; francophone cinema: Belgium

Sheila

b. 1946, Créteil

Singer, real name Annie Chancel

The archetypal ‘manufactured’ pop star, Sheila

had her career carefully plotted for her by the

impresario Claude Carrère. Marketed as the girl

next door, a fashionable but respectable French

teenager, Sheila had a string of hit recordings in

the 1960s when she mimed her records on tel-

evision (her first live concert appearance was at

the Zénith over twenty years after her career

was first launched). Hit songs include L’École

est finie (School is Out), Ma première surprise-

partie (My First Party) and C’est toi que j’aime

(You’re the One That I Love).

IAN PICKUP

Further reading

Cottenet-Hage, M. and Imbert, J.-P. (eds)

(1996) Parallèles: anthologie de la nouvelle

féminine de langue française, Quebec:

L’Instant même (seventeen stories by women

writers from Colette to the present, each

accompanied by a critical commentary).

Gratton, J. and Le Juez, B. (eds) (1994) Mod-

ern French Short Fiction, Manchester: Man-

chester University Press (an anthology of sto-

ries from the 1830s to the present, with an

informative introduction in English).

Grojnowski, D. (1993) Lire la nouvelle, Paris:

Dunod (an accessible, reliable introductory

guide to the history, poetics and thematics

of short fiction).

Pujade-Renaud, C. and Zimmermann, D. (eds)

(1993) 131 nouvellistes contemporains,

Levallois-Perret: Manya (the views of over

a hundred writers on the significance of

short fiction in the 1990s: invaluable

insights).

Signoret, Simone

b. 1921, Wiesbaden, Germany;

d. 1985, Paris

Actor, real name Simone Henriette

Kaminker

Signoret changed her name during the Occu-

pation (1940–4). A committed woman of the

Left (which saw her banned from the United

States in the 1950s), she had both star and anti-

star qualities. Her multifaceted nature made

her attractive to men and women alike. Her

incendiary eyes, long slim legs, heavy voice and

lisp were matched by her image of independ-

ent womanhood. While her roles place her as

victim—for example, Yves Allégret’s Dédée

d’Anvers (1947) and Becker’s Casque d’Or

(1952)—in her performance style she acts as

agent of desire. One of the few women stars to

sustain a film career into old age, she was still

delivering stunning performances when blind

and ravaged by the effects of cancer, as in

Moshe Misrahi’s La Vie devant soi (1977).

SUSAN HAYWARD

Further reading

Britton, C. (ed.) (1993) Claude Simon, Lon-

don: Longman (a collection of reprinted

essays by leading Simon scholars; contains

bibliography).

situationism

The intellectual and political movement

dubbed situationism, a descendant of Dada

and Surrealism, worked against the passivity

of the ‘society of the spectacle’ (the title of Guy

Debord’s 1967 text, La Société du spectacle),

and aimed at nothing less than the revolution-

ary overthrow of bourgeois art, politics and

society from within. The Situationist Interna-

tional, founded in 1957, lasted until 1969 and

was rent by expulsions and dissensions, not-

withstanding which the work of its best-

known members, Debord and Raoul

Vaneigem, had a major influence in May 1968

and has attracted renewed interest in the wake

of postmodernism and of Debord’s 1994 sui-

cide.

KEITH READER

Further reading

Plant, S. (1992) The Most Radical Gesture: The

Situationist International in a Post-Modern

Age, London and New York: Routledge (the

only major study in English).

slang/argot/verlan

Argot or slang goes back to the secret language

of the medieval underworld, the jargon of the

criminal classes, for which documentation ex-

ists as early as the fifteenth century. By the

nineteenth century, argot had become wide-

spread, confused with the spoken vernacular,

particularly of the working classes.

Essentially, argots are social dialects, usu-

ally belonging to an urbanized group: they in-

clude the speech of trades and professions, stu-

dent groups, the army, and in the late twenti-

eth century, the younger inhabitants of certain

banlieues (suburbs).

Argot is a parasitic development of lan-

guage in so far as it consists in the substitu-

tion of parts of the spoken lexis according to

predetermined rules: the basic phonic system,

the syntax and morphology are not affected,

except for word formation.

One attractive aspect of argot is the free

development of metaphors, such as la cafetière

(coffee pot)=head (cf. ‘mug’ in English); le

mouton (sheep)=police informer (cf. ‘grass’,

‘snout’); les rosbifs (roast-beefs)=the Brits; se

poivrer (be peppered)=get drunk (cf. ‘get rat-

ted’, ‘tight’). Such metaphorical creation is

ongoing and subject to quite rapid attrition,

so that the new vocabulary of one generation

may seem very dated to the next. It is note-

worthy that in the choice of metaphors, as in

much of argot, there is a strong pejorative to-

nality and often a coarse humour.

Other typical devices in lexical creation are:

• truncation, e.g. jar=jargon (slang); clandé=

maison clandestine (brothel); charr=charriage

(bluff, joke); ricain=américain; and

situationism

495

• parasitic suffixation, the addition of an

unnecessary suffix, more to disguise a word

than to modify it, e.g. fortiche=fort

(strong); raidillard=raide (1,000-franc

note); matouser=mater (spy on). In many

cases, other transformations take place, e.g.

dodo—clochard (tramp, bum); perniflard=

Pernod; rencard=rendez-vous; cinoche=

cinema. Again, we may note a pejorative

tonality in such suffixes, e.g. -ard, -aille, -

oche,—-ouser.

The best-known type of argot is verlan, dat-

ing from the 1950s, although the feature of

inverting syllables is found early in the nine-

teenth century: verlan is thus the inversion of

l’envers (reverse, back to front). This is sig-

nificantly different from English back slang,

e.g. yob, kool.

Although verlan can seem to be easy to de-

cipher (e.g. féca=café), some examples are less

obvious—e.g. meuf=femme, and beur (born in

France of North African immigrant parents)

is explained as an inversion of Arabe but with

a change of vowel. Moreover, a major com-

municatory difficulty resides in the uncertainty

as to which words are verlan forms; as a re-

sult such speech can retain something of the

secret code of argot.

Other forms of argot exist: largonji=jargon

in which T replaces the initial consonant,

which is placed at the end of the word, e.g.

lacsé =sac (bag); en loucedé=en douce (qui-

etly); le loucherbem (butchers’ slang) is a par-

ticular form of largonji; le javanais uses the

parasitic infix -av-, e.g. baveau=beau (hand-

some), javardin=jar din (garden).

Argot words can achieve respectability, e.g.

cambrioleur (burglar) and rossignol (skeleton

key), but most remain on the fringe of the sys-

tem. Note, however, the many writers from

the nineteenth century onwards (Balzac,

Hugo, Zola, Céline, San Antonio) who make

regular use of argot.

Jo REED

Further reading

Guiraud, P. (1969) L’Argot, Paris: PUF (a use-

ful introduction).

soap

Soap opera is not France’s forte. After the fail-

ure of two 1980 attempts, Châteauvallon and

En cas de bonheur, July 1991 witnessed the

launch of a third attempt to get soap right—

Riviera, a collaborative production between

TF1 and an American company (EC Televi-

sion). Due to run for a trial year, by January

1992 it had disappeared off the screen. The

only other attempts, though they are much dis-

liked by their target teenage audience, are the

Americanized teen soaps produced by the ma-

jor independent children’s TV production

company Club Dorothée. These programmes

are pastel-shaded versions of an imagined

French-Californian space (e.g. Hélène et les

garçons, Les Filles d’à côté). Furthermore,

because they are a hybrid between soap and

sitcom, they fail to satisfy the codes and con-

ventions of either genre and so cannot be taken

seriously as either.

The soap of the 1990s was the supposedly

French soap Riviera, which was in actuality a

multinational affair. A third of the mostly very

rich ‘soap community’ were American; produc-

tion practices were also American. To keep

production costs down, and with an eye to

English-speaking markets, the soap was shot

in English and dubbed in French. This mar-

keting strategy did not pay off. If English au-

diences do not like dubbed products, French

audiences like French soap masquerading as

an American product even less. Undoubtedly

the overAmericanization of the product in

terms of its look and its consequent lack of

cultural specificity caused it to fail with French

audiences. However, Riviera did have strengths

and should not be deemed a total failure. The

strengths lay in its narrative strategies. The

storyline focuses around the wealthy de

soap

496

Courcey family (whose business is perfumery

and whose name dominates Riviera society)

and their arch-rival, Diego Marquez (an

arriviste), a property speculator who plots the

family’s downfall (la vieille France clashes with

the nouveaux riches). Meantime, Marquez’s

wife strives to be accepted by the upper ech-

elons of society, and both husband and wife

fail in their ambitions. Woven into this fabric

are further intrigues: an illegitimate son, in-

cestuous love, orphaned twins with identity

crises, sibling rivalry and, finally, Oedipal tri-

angles between father, son and daughter. Eve-

ryone in Riviera has a secret, a past or an il-

licit passion—true melodrama French-style.

Riviera succeeds also in achieving spectator

identification, in so far as the various storylines

of crises, crime and mystery do intrigue the

viewer, thanks to a multiplicity of subjective

points of view. Further practices to stitch the

audience into the plot are the representations

of gender in the form of stereotypes (including

the battle of the sexes) and representations of

sexuality (especially as taboo) which both re-

pel and attract the viewer. Thus we see men as

wheeler-dealers and women as schemers—

stereotypes we love to hate. That men are

morally and sexually weaker is a generic fic-

tion of soap, but one that pleases the female

viewer, as must the representation of women

in control of their own sexuality. Enigma is

the soap of the masses. However, hybridity as

exemplified (culturally and linguistically) by

Riviera counters too many generic codes to

permit the suspension of disbelief and, ulti-

mately, lack of familiarity breeds discontent.

SUSAN HAYWARD

See also: romantic fiction; television; video

imports

social policy

Social policy covers a broad field of analysis,

from the formulation of policy objectives, and

measures to achieve them, through to the pro-

vision of social protection and minimum stand-

ards of income. Social policy is not, however,

a neutral or autonomous area of public policy.

Its parameters vary according to the ideology

of the governments in power and their priori-

ties, and they in turn cannot act independently

of domestic and, increasingly, international

pressures. Nor can social policy be properly

understood in isolation from economic policy:

it may be constrained by economic forces, or

it may serve to modify or counteract the ad-

verse effects of the economic system.

France has long been recognized as a highly

centralized and bureaucratic state, with a con-

cern for social justice, equality and solidarity

as a legacy of its Republican tradition. The

social security institutions which developed

over the postwar period as the main vehicle

for the delivery of social policy are, however,

characterized by their decentralization, au-

tonomy, pluralism and corporatism. Propos-

als from ministers for social reform, whatever

the political persuasion of the government in

power, rarely meet with consensus; strikes and

protest movements have become common fea-

tures of the social landscape, signalling the

opposition to change by strong interest groups

intent on defending their acquired social rights.

In the phase of postwar reconstruction, the

social security system was able to develop in a

climate of economic growth. Its primary aim

was to protect an expanding labour force and

to enable workers and their families to main-

tain their standard of living, rather than tack-

ling residual problems of poverty. The deci-

sion, taken after a long process of negotiation,

to opt for an employment-related insurance

system meant that national solidarity and uni-

versality were not dominant guiding princi-

ples. Occupational groups were allowed to

retain their own well-established insurance

schemes. Although coverage was gradually

extended to the whole of the non-working

population and to socio-occupational groups

not initially entitled to protection under the

general scheme or schemes operating for par-

ticular categories of employment, different con-

ditions and levels of benefits applied. Nor was

unemployment integrated into the social secu-

rity system; a separate employment insurance

social policy

497

scheme was instituted only in 1958 for work-

ers in industry and commerce (associations

pour l’emploi dans l’industrie et le commerce,

ASSEDIC).

Despite anomalies in coverage, by the late

1970s, it could be claimed, with some justifi-

cation, that the French population was pro-

tected from the risks of ill-health, disability,

old age, unemployment and family responsi-

bilities. Social policy had been less successful

in reducing social inequalities, particularly with

regard to old age, where income inequality was

greater than among the working population.

From the mid-1970s, policy-makers were,

however, facing new social problems, as the

country went into economic recession. At the

same time, the growing population in retire-

ment was imposing an increasing burden on

the working population in the absence of fully

funded pension schemes. Rising unemployment

created a severe drain on resources, social se-

curity slid into deficit, and new forms of pov-

erty and social exclusion began to emerge.

The social policies pursued by the left-wing

governments of the early 1980s involved high

levels of spending: the Left had pledged them-

selves to increase the minimum wage and

minimum income for older people, to raise

family allowances, housing and unemploy-

ment benefits, to lower retirement age and re-

duce working hours. A period of sounder fi-

nancial management followed in response to

the funding problems that ensued. By the end

of the decade, additional sources of income

were, however, still needed to ease the ever-

growing deficit without imposing a heavier

burden on employers: one of the solutions was

to raise a tax across all sources of income (con-

tribution sociale généralisée, CSG), and this

was followed in 1996 by an additional levy

(rem-boursement de la dette sociale, RDS).

By the early 1990s, spending on benefits and

social services had reached over 30 per cent of

gross domestic product (GDP), representing a

substantial increase since the early 1970s. The

share of the social budget devoted to old age

accounted for nearly 43 per cent of the total,

and health for almost 27 per cent. Despite at-

tempts to spread the burden of contributions,

employers still paid by far the largest share—

over 50 per cent—as part of the wage pack-

age. A number of the policies introduced to

alleviate unemployment involved exempting

employers from social insurance contributions

as an incentive to take on unemployed people.

A more innovative work-related scheme

(revenu minimum d’insertion, RMI) was in-

troduced in 1988, to lessen the impact of un-

employment: it provided a minimum income

for unemployed people aged over 25 in return

for an agreement to undertake some form of

training or work placement to facilitate their

re-entry into the labour market.

The growing awareness by governments of

new sources of poverty and social exclusion,

combined with the need to meet the demand

for a high standard of social benefits and serv-

ices, while containing spending, has led to a

shift in the focus of social policy towards a

more solidaristic approach, based on social

justice. This does not mean that retrenchment

of social spending has disappeared from the

social policy agenda or that proposals for radi-

cal reform of the social protection system will

receive unqualified support from the social

partners, but it does imply that central gov-

ernment is exercising stronger control over the

policy-making process and seeking to instil a

greater sense of social responsibility among the

population at large.

LINDA HANTRAIS

Further reading

Ambler, J.S. (ed.) (1991) The French Welfare

State: Surviving Social and Ideological

Change, New York and London: New York

University Press (a collection of thoroughly

argued chapters on various aspects of

French social policy).

Hantrais, L. (1996) ‘France: Squaring the Wel-

fare Triangle’, in V.George and P. Taylor-

Gooby (eds) European Welfare Policy:

Squaring the Welfare Circle, London:

social policy