Does Success Determine the Value of a Cultural Work?

One of the recurring obsessions of European conservative parties is the criticism of public subsidies for the cultural sector. Why, they ask, should works that are unable to find their audience on their own receive public funding? Yet, in a media environment increasingly shaped by major American platforms, supporting national audiovisual production goes far beyond a matter of aesthetics. Funding cultural narratives means shaping attitudes and behaviours – and ultimately reinforcing national sovereignty.

Every spring in Lille (Nord), the Séries Mania festival, whose 2026 season concludes this Friday 27 March, brings together thousands of spectators, professionals and creators to celebrate television series from around the world. Now the largest event dedicated to TV series globally, the festival attracted more than 108,000 visitors and nearly 5,000 professionals from 75 countries in 2025. It is also heavily supported by public funding, including contributions from local authorities, the Centre national du cinéma (CNC) and the European Union (EU).

Away from the red carpets, however, the National Rally (RN) has criticised this type of investment, advancing a simple argument: culture should operate like any other market. If a work finds an audience, it will survive; if not, it will disappear.

This view overlooks a crucial point: cultural production is not merely the creation of economic goods. It also constitutes an ecosystem of narratives, that shapes how a society understands itself and how it imagines its future.

The Market Does not Measure Everything

The RN’s argument rests on a logic of immediate profitability. Yet series such as Dix pour cent (2015–2020), Lupin (since 2021), Borgen (Denmark, 2010–2022), or La Casa de Papel (Spain, 2017–2021) are more than products: they act as collective mirrors. Their social impact often extends well beyond their immediate commercial success, whilst sometimes forming part of a long-term international influence, frequently amplified by American platforms.

Research in cultural economics has long since shown that cultural goods generate a wide range of positive externalities. These include not only the strengthening of language (a pet peeve of the RN), but also cultural transmission, innovation, inspiration and international visibility.

For example, a UNESCO report on cultural and creative industrie s during the Covid-19 pandemic highlights that these sectors generate not only economic revenue but also significant social benefits, particularly in terms of education and cultural participation.

Festivals, such as Séries Mania, along with public support mechanisms facilitate these broader effects which the market alone struggles to recognise.

The Culture of Attitudes and Behaviours

For several decades, social scientists have examined the impact of narratives on individuals. Research on ‘narrative transportation’, developed by my colleagues and me, shows that stories can influence attitudes and behaviour when audiences become immersed in them. In such states of immersion, viewers are more receptive to the ideas and values conveyed by the story.

Our research demonstrates that narratives shape persuasiveness, emotions, and attitudes. More broadly our work on storytelling and its reception suggests that narrative engagement can have lasting effects on decisions and behaviour.

These insights extend far beyond commercial communication. They suggest that media narratives help shape collective representations, whether social values, visions of the future, or collective identities. As captured by a maxim often attributed to the Hopi, an indigenous people of North America:

”The one who tells the story rules the world.”

In other words, controlling narratives means shaping how a society understands reality.

Cultural events also fulfill an important civic function. Research on immersive cultural experiences, shows that shared stories create meeting places across regions, generations and social backgrounds. They offer common ground where narratives circulate and where audiences can engage with contemporary issues through fiction.

The Cultural Infrastructure of Democracy

In an era marked by media fragmentation and political polarisation, such places play a crucial role in supporting cohesive democracies.

Ultimately, the issue is not simply one of funding an industry. It concerns a society’s ability to maintain what might be called a form of narrative infrastructure.

Like physical infrastructure (roads, digital networks, etc.), this infrastructure is largely invisible. Yet, it enables the circulation of ideas, imaginaries and identities. Far from being a luxury, it is a condition for collective sense-making.

Research into the role of narratives in imagining futures shows that stories profoundly shape how societies interpret social and political events. More broadly, studies of collective imaginaries highlights how cultural representations help influence the ways societies envisage transformation and change.

Weakening the institutions that support cultural creation therefore does more than reduce the number of works produced. It also limits the diversity and availability of narratives.

Producing Narratives: a Form of Sovereignty

Supporting audiovisual creation in this context means supporting a country’s capacity to produce its own stories. It is therefore a matter of sovereignty.

Harvard political scientist Joseph Nye popularised the concept of soft power: a country’s ability to influence others not through coercion, but through cultural and symbolic attraction. The United States has long exercised this form of influence through Hollywood and television. More recently, South Korea has strenghtened its global presence through films, music and TV series, a phenomenon often referred to as the “K-wave” or hallyu). Japanese anime are similarly cited as powerful vehicles of narrative influence.

Cultural industries also represent a significant share of the French economy: 2.9% of GDP in 2024, over €100 billion in revenue and around 586,000 direct jobs. As highlighted in the United Nations’ “Creative Economy Outlook“, these sectors also contribute to the country’s international influence. At a time when production budgets increasingly favour easily exportable formats, institutions such as the CNC in France or the European Film Forum therefore play a strategic role.

In this context, sharply reducing cultural funding can have a paradoxical effect: it weakens a country’s ability to produce and distribute its own narratives, precisely when American platforms are becoming even more dominant in shaping global content flow. Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat captures this dynamic succinctly:

“Afghanistan doesn’t have a film industry and it’s always misrepresented by the films that are being made by international film-makers. The only type of film-making that is expected is a war drama.”

Funding Stories also Means Funding a Collective Identity

In the short term, cuts to cultural funding may appear to be ordinary budgetary decisions. In the longer term, however, the issue becomes one of narrative sovereignty: who produces the stories that circulate within a society?

Stories do more than just entertain: they help weave the fabric of democracy. Festivals, institutions and support programmes sustain the spaces where stories can be produced, explored, and shared.

In a media landscape dominated by a small number of major American platforms, cultural policy often acts as a counterbalance. It helps preserve French and European voices, perspectives and formats.

In other words, cultural policies do not simply fund films or TV series. They support an ecosystem in which stories are created and circulated and which contributes to the construction of a collective identity. When this ecosystem is weakened, a country does not merely lose an industry. It risks losing part of its capacity to narrate the world, and to narrate itself.

This article is republished from T he Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.