Sweet France, dear village of our childhood. On television, shows in the heart of rural areas garner very good audiences. After “The Favorite Village of the French”, “A Sunday in the Country” or even “L’Amour est dans le pré”, the towns of France and those who make them come to life will be highlighted in “La France des Villages”, this Wednesday at 9:10 p.m. on France 3. The opportunity to land in the hay in order to better understand everything that links the French to their hamlet.
“Home base”
On this back-to-school Wednesday, Sophie Jovillard, who has been on “D’Escapées Belles” on France 5 for twenty years, is launching “La France des villages”. “This new collection shows a France that innovates and protects,” explains the presenter. A united France which stands together to preserve its heritage, its local cultures, its traditions... It is the beating heart of the country and showing this reality, at this moment, I find that it does a lot of good. »
A program which will, without a doubt, make its nest in the French audiovisual landscape. Because viewers have been loyal to “made in local” television programs for many years now. For Sophie Jovillard, who grew up in Beaujolais, the village symbolizes, for the French, an “authentic place, back to basics”.
Gilles Laferté, sociologist and research director at INRAE, goes further. For him, the strong bond of the French with their hamlets has “biographical and trajectory causes. Many French people have one, two, three generation roots in these areas. They can often be materialized by a family home, there is a place of attachment. »
A “heritage” story
This connection of the French with the villages has as its roots “French industrialization, which is much later than in the rest of Europe, notes the sociologist, specialist in the French countryside, social classes and rural territories. France had a lot of farmers in the 1950s, and this story carries a lot of weight. A story that could be described as 'heritage', also unique in France, because the country is the first to carry this desire to make spaces heritage. »
Sophie Jovillard assures us that “we should not only see the heritage in the village. It is also a living, multi-generational heritage, which draws on ancestral traditions and know-how. » Among its know-how, gastronomy. “France has built a national gastronomy which has been spread throughout the world via the influence of French catering, again from the 19th century. »
The alternative to big cities
The French's love for their village is also reflected in travel and “multi-residential”. There is “a desire among families to return to their villages and continue the traditions of their parents and grandparents,” assures Sophie Jovillard.
In its annual barometer “The French view of small towns” published before the summer, the National Agency for Territorial Cohesion (ANCT) indicates that 62% of French people who do not currently live in a small town could consider moving there in the future. In the ANCT 2024 barometer, the main motivations put forward are tranquility (60%), proximity to nature (48%) and larger accommodation with a garden (45%).
“It is true that there is a whole part of the contemporary construction of rurality which is extremely positive, coming from another way of life which would be opposed to the big city, which would offer a new freedom in concrete relation to work, to food, and today with the whole environmental cause of the central State”, adds Gilles Laferté. But the expert insists on the fact that “the images of rurality are extremely plural”.
An idealized space?
He continues: “There are positive images broadcast by certain television shows, but it’s not just that. There are very negative images, particularly in the news, around the demands of farmers, schools, poverty in the agricultural world. There is also boredom, emptiness, the vote for the National Rally…” Sophie Jovillard, who advocates authenticity and human contact in her collection “La France des villages”, does not hide the difficulties of these territories.
“We must fight against the desertification of villages,” she concludes. We should not see our country only through its capital and its big cities. There is a fight so that businesses and schools do not close, for the restoration of the chapel, to unite so that cultural associations continue to organize local festivals. This is why the ''La France des villages'' collection has its place and why it may never end. »
