Pascal Laborderie, professor of information and communication sciences at the Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne - Centre d’études et de recherches sur les emplois et les professionnalisations (CEREP), is a specialist of educational film. He has published Le cinéma éducateur laïque (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2015) and coordinated La Ligue de l’enseignement et le cinéma (avec F. Gimello-Mesplomb et L. Souillés-Debat, Paris, AFRHC, 2016) as well as Les ciné-clubs à l’affiche (avec D. Auzel, Arles, Éd. A. Bizalion/Cinémathèque de Toulouse, 2018).
Pascal spent the morning on 20 May 2019 with the ERC BodyCapital research group, of which he is an associated member, to present his ongoing research on wine growing and tasting culture as presented on French television.
Following the inclusion of “The Champagne Hillsides, Hauses and Cellars” and “The Climats, Terroirs and Burgundy” on UNESCO’s World Heritage List, recent years have been rich in the production of documentary and docu-drama films on wine-growing and oenological themes. This paper proposes to examine how the consumption of wine is portrayed in these films, which participate in the perpetuating of stereotypes, yet also contribute to a new discourse on wine.
The study is focused on a corpus of films principally consisting of the episodes of the French television programme Les racines et des ailes, and in particular the shows series titled “Passion patrimoine” broadcast over the last decade (2008-2016), but also important documentary films of the same period, such as: Les Temps changent (M. Milne, J.C. de Revière, 2008) and Resistance naturelle (Jonathan Nossiter, 2014).
Generally, these films follow the current trend towards catastrophism, which consists in representing heritage as a fortress that would be shaken by the upheavals of our time. The paper will consider different variations on this theme, whether they are politically rooted in a certain conservatism, as a withdrawal of identity, or whether they reflect a form of progressivism, or alterglobalism.
Above all, these films contribute to the construction of a communicative space to "eat well and drink well", which is a counter-culture to dominant discourse. From this perspective, wine tasting is torn between two discourses, one aesthetic and heritage-related, the other sanitary and technical, which are increasingly difficult to reconcile.
One year later, this research was published!
