Producing the Post-National Popular: The Expanding Imagination of Popular French Films and Television Series

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'Producing the Post-National Popular' is an international network combining diverse research perspectives on the recent and growing phenomenon of mainstream French films' and television series' transnational popularity, as evidenced by films such as Amelie, The Transporter series, La Vie en rose, The Artist and Untouchable and television shows including Spiral, The Returned, Witnesses and Versailles. A major impetus of the project is to redress the balance of research on European screen and other products and cultures, currently heavily skewed in favour of 'art' over popular cultural artefacts and trends. In cinema in particular, European identity has been equated with high art at least since the 1960s New Wave, when France's internationally visible and influential auteurist filmmaking and criticism helped legitimise and shape Film Studies. This project seeks to widen the spectrum of French cultural identities reflected and constructed by the nation's audiovisual output by understanding these within a contemporary landscape that is not merely national but European. To this end, it draws on research being carried out in a variety of international contexts, with particular emphasis on France itself but also the UK and the USA, where relevant films and TV series have tended to be markedly popular. This is because recognising mainstream domestic products as widely seen not only at home but also abroad expands how we understand their scope of influence, notably by recognising their capacity to shape external views of the French nation in new ways.Beyond considering the production, circulation and reception of films and television series, the network also aims to reflect critically on practices for studying these in different national contexts. For instance, the late and still incomplete appropriation of 'anglophone' Cultural Studies methodologies in France can be seen to have contributed to the neglect of mainstream texts there. Outside France, meanwhile, practical difficulties sourcing critical materials such as reviews and the absence of linguistic competence are obvious factors in their under-privileging. This network seeks to unearth what other contingent factors may be limiting research into an area demanding scholarly attention, with a view to moving beyond these.The network's core team consists of Dr. Mary Harrod (Warwick, PI) and Professor Raphaëlle Moine (Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3, Co-I), both established scholars of French popular cinema, conceived transnationally; Professor Ginette Vincendeau (King's College London), an expert in French cinema and media culture across the board and Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres for services to French culture; Professor Phil Powrie (University of Surrey), specialising in French and other cinemas and the co-founding editor of the journal Studies in French Cinema; Dr. Alastair Phillips (University of Warwick), a scholar of French and East Asian cinemas with an emphasis on post-national approaches; Professor Kira Kitsopanidou (Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3), specialising in industrial approaches to French cinema and television; and Dr. Belén Vidal (King's College London), an expert on post-national European genre cinema.The project will combine cultural criticism, attendant to narratives' status as mediators of the social (for instance, national and transnational identities and attitudes towards these, including as they intersect with other identity categories), with aesthetic analysis, paying particular attention to how issues of ideology are linked to the forms adopted by cultural narratives. This requires drawing on varied specialist expertise, from visual and discourse analysis - including of contextual material - to quantitative analysis of market trends, alongside specific linguistic competencies and familiarity with socio-linguistic paradigms. One of its principal goals is to promote dialogue across these various disciplines and/or areas of knowledge.