The Postmodern Farmer and the Production of Rural France in The Girl from Paris

This article examines contemporary representations of farmers in France in Christian Carion’s 2001 film, Une hirondelle a fait le printemps (The Girl from Paris), through the lens of rural sociology and Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of linguistic and symbolic markets. Although clichés of the peasantry still permeate collective imagery, a new picture emerges. The postmodern farmer manipulates symbolic values and helps shift the forces of the cultural market within which these values originate and are reiterated. This approach promotes a more complex and less romanticized understanding of the French countryside today.