places of/to worship

the french love to protect their culture and cultural heritage. in the most simple of ways, they have strict quotas on the amount of foreign television that they let into the country. although this does stimulate the french film and tv community and much locally produced content makes it to air in situ and outside of the hexagone, a lot of this content, to be very kind, is really just that content, fluff, and far from being future 'cultural heritage'. in this case i suppose it's more an example of the most 'high' or 'low' of f&tv making out of dodge (e.g 'C'est Gravida qui vous appelle' and '36 Quai des Orfèvres'. the latter being quite simply the worst french film i've ever seen.).

an example more befitting of the cultural heritage tag (the protectionism and preservation of all things truely république) would be the french government's obsession with buying authors' houses, especially should they be threatened with a redevelopment. you can visit the houses of, among many other, hugo, balzac, zola, mallarmé, and yourcenar. these authors clearly have a 'reason' to be heritage listed: their influence and renown are great through the french and non-french world. and no doubt part of making it on 'the list' has to do with the 'friends of associations' that would raise funds to purchase the houses and preserve these authors' patrimoine. but it makes you think, well what of today's authors, who will make the list with the support of their ardent group of follows keen to sanctify these sites of literary creation? from the dead: sartre? cayrol? and from the living: sollers? robbe-grillet (and his cacti)? houellebecq?

but there's a deeper force at work here that makes it possible, that is even conceivable. the spaces themselves and the slow evolution of towns and buildings. such an act of preservation would be impossible in a city like tokyo where a building's average life is only twenty years. such a quick rate of regeneration of space would possibly have an author having lived in 4 buildings in his or her life.

but even if you have the choice, what space should you preserve? the residence of the author at the moment of death, or the garrotte where he or she struggled and starved to produce the great work of literature? which has greater cultural weight? or is the question of kitch value, romantic value? what to remember and what to forget? what to preserve and what to tear down? how can you really know? and what about famous sites for films?