#angouleme2016

Going on a field trip has its pros and cons. Mostly, phantoms from past experiences will most probably haunt the scounting soul of each and every nutcase.

It should nonetheless be noted: this would be the first GNOZO field trip, maybe just because of the press registration process I’m about to take delicious advantage of.

Angoulème is a strange town; in itself, it is a phenomenon, some sort of microscopic comic books mecca which activates itself once a year, just like all the other de-centralized culture festivals that spread all over the french countryside. Yet no other such ritual intends to be so democratic.

The problem with french people, when it comes to cultural products, is that they feel the need to divide the production neatly. The french are pretty glad to maintain their worldwide influence, when it comes to culture: not much money to loose, and much to gain. In fact, for a country that has lost most of its colonial benefits, it seems they have found the way to creating a new type of industrial economy: state-sponsored culture.

So comic books, or rather “bande dessinée”, comic strips, are a mainstream tool that the french cultural industries have learned how to use over the 20th century. Different in shape from its american or japanese cousins “comics” and “manga”, the french comic strips are printed on thick and costly paper, sealed in a heavy and solid cardboard cover. Except the comic strip oriented press.... which alone has the right to dismiss those pseudo-esthetic requirements.

It feels like the french representation of comic books is like the saudi representation of elite male citizens: the heavier, the fatter, the greasier, the more expensive.... the better. If a comic book is printed bigger, it will cost much more and- well, that’s pretty normal. An industrial print of a big block-buster comic book will be more expensive than an artist-printed book, even though the latter is only produced in small series. Again, value is relative, and the more fat the industry is, the more money it can claim for its products, in the confinements of full-fledged legitimity.

The fact that my neighbours are from Holland reminds me of my one and only trip to Angoulème in 2015. One year later, the same feeling on the train: this is a field trip. This differs from the Arles photo festival and from the Avignon theater festival; all these french countryside-culture-capitals starting with the letter A may have a democratic feel to them... but the huge, big, greasy fat dutch people who are sitting next to me seem to obey to another set of rules.

The world is full of geeks; geeks are not a minority anymore, they’re like a new gender. Nevermind their sexual habits, these dutch geeks feed themselfes endless crappy snacks on the train, passing around chips, chocolate bars,  and laughing heavily to the coarse sounds produced by their language.

Some girls, some boys; boys have heroic-fantasy-long hair and book-rat glasses; they are wearing pseudo-classy  wannabe-suits and the grease perspiring from their faces scares me. Those are the people who go to Angoulème. Those are the democratic loads of people who rent hotels in that little city, watering the pointless local tourism wormhole. Their fancy seems to enjoy being adults while being children at heart. But children do not eat that much junk, nor do they laugh with so much grease in their smiles.

These are examples of modern youth gone old by mistake; maybe they even own a small comics company in the Netherlands, manage to act as perfect merchants and make a good living out of the whole “comics” scene. 

This is my own personal gift from the universal magnet, foretelling me how full of shit the establishment taking advantage of the “most democratic medium” industry really is. 

If anyone needed proof, evidence, or indications of this wrecked roten state of the scene, they should be reminded that french comics artists Riad Sattouf and Joann Sfar accused the jury of the Grandiozo Prize of Magnificent Angouleme’s Cultural Authority of being down-to-earth sexists.

For no woman was nominated for the grand prize; on the other hand, several geniuses (Alan Moore, to say the least) were nominated without being awarded anything. Instead, the golden beef-steak went to a despicable belgian artist called Hermann, who contributed to the painful re-orientation of the continental “ligne claire” dogma (Tintin’s Hergé coined that term in order to describe the simplicity of his universe’s features) to a soft, cowardly untalented realistic tendency. Let’s give the old man a break, and point our nosey fingers to the organizers, who are probably a group of 60 year old rich male businessmen whose secondary occupation (after making money) is to collect original art from the comic books they enjoyed as children.

Angoulème 2016 promises to be something like a bad restaurant with unexplainably high prices: it is a semi-guided tour for the wealthy members of the french/european/international comic book community. A paradise for the press, maybe, and a good way of exploiting the sleepy masses’ wallets. Indeed, in order to get a peek at the comic book fair, isn’t it obvious the establishment should charge the ideologically enslaved population which restlessly supported the evolution of that particular bubble-shaped economical instrumentalization of cultre.