Screen Agencies as Cultural Intermediaries:Negotiating and Shaping Cultural Policy for the Film and TV Industries within Selected Small Nations

本研究首次对七个欧洲小国的影视机构进行了大规模的比较研究。它评估了它们对我们电影和电视产业产出的影响，并基于之前对这些国家及其创意部门的研究。它加深和扩展了我们对创作内容的批判性理解，以及文化政策形成和制定的方式。银幕机构作为研究对象的价值在于它们对一个国家经济和文化目标的干预。通过他们的决策、资源分配和支持方案，他们可能对其国家的文化资产和产出行使重大权力。然而，这种力量及其应用的后果在很大程度上没有得到学者的承认，没有受到屏幕专业人士的挑战，观众也看不见。电影机构的目的是提高公共资金对基于电影的行业的有效性和效率，这是一个以其独特的公共价值形式而闻名的行业，但其固有的风险。代理模式已经成为一种合法的、可转移的政策结构，大多数西方国家都有某种形式的筛选代理网络。他们最明显的支持是他们对创意项目的直接资助，随着复杂形式的联合制作和联合融资在制作过程中变得越来越常态化，这一角色变得更加明显。在这里，该机构试图评估项目的风险，依靠其内部专家对什么将“出售”。通过这种方式，该机构代表政府及其纳税人成为该行业的投资者。另一个作用是提高国家在境外的创造能力的质量。在吸引好莱坞电影或大制作电视剧等利润丰厚的大规模外来投资方面，电影经纪公司发挥着主导作用。为了做到这一点，屏幕代理机构是政府在财政激励计划（例如英国的“高端电视税收减免计划”或爱尔兰的“第481条”）等领域的主要说客。最后，电影机构通常有保护和促进一个国家文化遗产的任务，包括其语言。电影公司扮演着文化看门人的角色，确保“合适”的故事被讲述给这个国家，不管它们的商业潜力如何。这可以通过其筹资战略来实现，也可以通过诸如技能发展或托管与该地点有关的屏幕档案等活动来实现。对个别机构进行了有价值的研究（参见Schlesinger等人2015年，Oakley等人2014年），对这些机构产生和嵌入的文化政策进行了有价值的研究（参见hesmondhhalgh等人2015年，Bondebjerg 2016年）。但是，如果把重点放在个别情况上，就失去了在这些机构的工作中辨别共性和区别的机会。此外，它限制了对文化政策和提供的跨国方法的全面理解。虽然个人背景很重要，但许多关于文化生产风险的挑战，全球电视和电影工业的竞争力，以及盎格鲁-撒克逊市场行使的权力，在本研究中的许多国家都是共同的。出于这个原因，我们特别借鉴布迪厄及其关于文化中介的著作作为理论基础，以便在文化生产过程中重新激活权力问题。由于票房、广告和许可费收入的市场较小，小国在其电影产业的可持续性方面面临着特殊的结构性挑战，正是权力的问题使我们把注意力集中在这些国家的背景上。在这方面，该机构承担着更重要的角色，既要迎合当地的期望，又要迎合竞争激烈但具有潜在价值的国际市场。

This study provides the first large-scale comparative study of screen agencies within seven small European nations. It assesses their impact on the outputs of our film and television industries and grows out of previous research of these nations and their creative sectors. It deepens and extends our critical understanding of the making of creative content and the ways in which cultural policy is shaped and enacted.The value of screen agencies as an object of study lies in their intervention in both economic and cultural goals for a country. Through their decision-making, allocation of resources and programmes of support, they potentially exercise significant power over their nation's cultural assets and outputs. Yet this power and the consequences of its application largely go unacknowledged by academics, unchallenged by screen professionals and invisible to audiences.The purpose of screen agencies is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of public funding for screen-based industries, a sector well known for its distinct forms of public value but inherent riskiness. The agency model has become a legitimated and transferable policy structure with most Western nations having some form of screen agency network. Their most visible support is their direct funding of creative projects, a role that has become more pronounced as complex forms of co-production and co-financing become increasingly normalised within the production process. Here, the agency attempts to evaluate the riskiness of the project relying on its internal expertise about what will 'sell'. In this way the agency becomes an investor in the industry on behalf of the government and its taxpayers.A further role is to promote the quality of the country's creative capacity outside its borders. Screen agencies play a leading role in attracting lucrative forms of large-scale inward investment such as a Hollywood movie or big-budget television drama. To do this screen agencies are key lobbyist of government in areas such as fiscal incentive schemes (e.g. the UK's 'High End TV Tax Relief scheme' or 'Section 481' in Ireland).Finally, screen agencies often have a mandate to protect and promote the cultural heritage of a country including its language. The screen agency acts as a cultural gatekeeper ensuring 'appropriate' stories are told about and for the country, irrespective of their commercial potential. This can be delivered through its funding strategy, but also activities such as skills development or hosting screen archives relevant to that locale.Valuable research has been carried out on individual institutions (cf. Schlesinger et al 2015, Oakley et al 2014) and on the cultural policies from which these agencies emerge and are embedded (cf. Hesmondhalgh et al 2015, Bondebjerg 2016). However, in focusing on individual contexts the opportunity to discern commonalities and distinctions in the work of these agencies is lost. Furthermore, it limits a comprehensive understanding of cross-national approaches to cultural policy and provision. While individual context is important, many of the challenges regarding the riskiness of cultural production, the competitiveness of the global television and film industry, and the power exercised by Anglo-Saxon markets is common to many of the countries in this study. For this reason, we specifically draw on Bourdieu and his work on cultural intermediaries as the theoretical basis in order to reinvigorate questions of power within the process of cultural production. It is this question of power that also focuses our attention on the context of small nations who face specific structural challenges relating to their sustainability of their screen industries due to a smaller market for box office, advertising and license fee revenue. Here, the agency assumes an even more significant role navigating local expectations and a highly competitive, but potentially valuable, international market.