Am I to understand from this that the New York Times (and perhaps the bien pensant in the US) consider mere "comic books" some sort of gutter culture?
My last trip to Paris I spent a long time in these "comic book" stores. They are absolute goldmines with passionate and knowledgeable staff and incredible selections.
France has a long tradition of the "BD" (Bande Dessine = Comic Books) and a thriving community of illustrators and writers who make them. There are many great series which a lot of us French kids grew up with who had pretty intricate plots and were very well crafted.
I agree that sneering at Comic books as "not the culture we wanted" is BS. Culture is culture. French and Belgian comic books like "Asterix et les Gaulois" or "Tintin" or "Gaston La Gaffe" etc... are great works of comedy and art just like anything else.
From the article, it doesn't seem like the money is going towards French + Belgian comics either. I am not French, but Asterix and Tintin comics were widely sold in translated versions in my country and across the world.
But mine was also the pre-Internet era, where we'd spend small fortunes on comics and magazines because we had nothing to offset the boredom. With always-on Internet, that's just not a reality now.
I guess they are unhappy about teens buying manga? Real question is why French comic book artist aren't selling in Japan? There's a lot of Japanese tourists in France, that doesn't sound too far-fetched.
I think the hope was that the money would be used to support local cultural content/events since people in those enterprises have been hard hit by the COVID crisis.
Where are they buying the books? (sorry if the article mentions this, it's paywalled)
If it's independent stores, then I think that qualifies as a local enterprise hit hard by COVID, and fits in the spirit of the scheme, maybe even national bookstores can be considered thusly, too.
If they can give the money to Amazon, though, then maybe there's an issue.
More specifically, the article points out the money was supposed to be used to expose the kids to culture that they're not already exposed to. Instead, they're using it to buy more of the culture (magna) that they're already buying anyway.
The impression I got from the article was that the author described comic books as separate from "highbrow arts"... but beyond that I got no impression of any of "gutter culture" implications.
I honestly just thought of it as an interesting article about what happens when you do the thing they describe. Not any particular judgment.
My last trip to Paris I spent a long time in these "comic book" stores. They are absolute goldmines with passionate and knowledgeable staff and incredible selections.