Buying brilliance

France could only sustain a few centuries of cultural preeminence -- its well of genius is in danger of running dry. Or so a few disgruntled freelance artists might lead you to believe, after their union tweaked its generous rules on unemployment insurance.

The striking artists, called intermittents, have expressed a fear that French culture may become a "Star Academy" culture, referring to the hit reality television show in which attractive youths strive for pop-stardom. It is the government's responsibility to encourage the creation of art by putting money directly in the artists' pockets in between projects, they claim.

The French train system is living proof that government subsidies can be quite effective -- just compare France's extensive, timely, and efficient train network to Amtrak. But public transportation and cultural vitality is not the same thing -- how far should a government go in financially supporting its artists? Is it even the government's place to subsidize creativity?

This debate has become increasingly visible in French cultural life since this summer. I happened upon one of the union's demonstrations during my first few weeks in Paris, when a mass of eccentrically dressed, pot-and-pan banging demonstrators was blocking my metro stop. It looked more like a parade than a protest.

The shopkeepers in Saint-Germain were all standing in the street with arms folded, watching as their afternoon business was swept away by the tide. When I asked one about the scene, she rolled her eyes. "Actors," she said. "They say it's about wages but they're really just trying to get people to look at them."

An occupational hazard, I suppose.

The intermittents are a special class of workers -- ranging from theater directors to birthday-party clowns -- who some might say have found a cozy loophole in the French system. They often work only a few months per year, and the rest of the time they live off unemployment insurance provided by the state.

Over the past ten years, the number of these workers has doubled to 100,000, as has the expense of supporting them. In 2001, the French state paid 800 million euros in unemployment indemnities.

The recent troubles started in July, when the rules were tightened on who was eligible for unemployment benefits to try to limit abuse of the system. The policy still remained the most generous in the world, according to The Independent newspaper in Britain.

But the reforms led to an outcry from the art world -- or at least those who depended on the indemnities for a good part of the year. The intermittents showed that they, too, could eat away at French culture by striking and causing the cancellation of a number of summertime arts festivals.

And recently, the grievances of the intermittents were brought to six million French television viewers -- fully ten percent of the country -- in a particularly direct way: on Star Academy itself. Two actors and two directors found their way onto the stage of the live program with a banner that at first seemed undecipherable.

Fortunately, the program's host came to the rescue: "You could at least put your sign the right way up," he instructed the intruders. Duly executed. The sign read "Eteignez vos t?©l?©s" ("Turn off your TVs").

Though the demonstration remained peaceful, the shock proved to be too much for a number of children in the audience, who started crying during the interruption. The reaction of the general public has been less dramatic, however.

Indeed, it is hard to have sympathy for the strikers and protesters when some of them are indeed abusing an already-generous policy. And these actors and directors already make their livings in a fashion that tends to inspire envy in the rest of us.

I still find this recognition that the artists cannot live on creativity alone a rather noble -- if slightly misguided -- commitment to art on the part of the French. The way the French see it, the dearth of modern-day Medicis necessitates state support of those who keep the culture vibrant.

Though it sounds crass, money can be the single most important thing an artist can possess (aside from talent, perhaps). But in her famous meditation on women and fiction, A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf contests even this: "It may seem a brutal thing to say, and it is a sad thing to say: but, as a matter of hard fact, the theory that poetical genius bloweth where it listeth, and equally in poor and rich, holds little truth."

What writers need to produce great literature, Woolf says, is to be released from the daily battle of providing for one's basic needs. "That is it," Woolf writes. "Intellectual freedom depends on material things. Poetry depends on intellectual freedom."

By financially supporting freelance artists between projects, the French government gives them the means to produce meaningful work. The details may need ironing out, but the idea is to be admired: give a few thousand artists rooms of their own, and the galleries and theaters will reap the benefits.