[mtts]

According to the article they’re not buying the indeed fantastic French “BD” comic books but manga.

[rootsudo]

Manga is very good nowadays, I don't blame the kids. Go with what's in. It's culture.

[_rpd]

I think the hope was that the money would be used to support local cultural content/events since people in those enterprises have been hard hit by the COVID crisis.

[dfxm12]

Where are they buying the books? (sorry if the article mentions this, it's paywalled)

If it's independent stores, then I think that qualifies as a local enterprise hit hard by COVID, and fits in the spirit of the scheme, maybe even national bookstores can be considered thusly, too.

If they can give the money to Amazon, though, then maybe there's an issue.

[mcguire]

That's not bad either, unless they're under the weird delusion that the only valid culture in France is French culture.

(I personally find manga to be excessively drawn-out, even more than American comics, seemingly in order to sell more books. But that's me.)

[bsder]

This is as old as the medium.

Dickens was paid by the word. This is why "Tale of Two Cities" is a wonderful book with a gigantic pile of garbage in the middle.

(To be fair: The middle of "Tale of Two Cities" has some of my favorite scenes, but, boy, howdy, could it use an editor to chop out about 2/3 of it)

[codyswann]

More specifically, the article points out the money was supposed to be used to expose the kids to culture that they're not already exposed to. Instead, they're using it to buy more of the culture (magna) that they're already buying anyway.

[ithkuil]

Are you insinuating that manga is not culture?

[dfxm12]

They're insinuating manga is not French culture.