Frédéric Martel


Frédéric Martel is a French writer, researcher and journalist. His most famous books are The Pink and the Black, Homosexuals in France since 1968, Mainstream and In the Closet of the Vatican, a New York Times bestseller.

Biography

Frédéric Martel holds a PhD in social sciences and four graduate degrees, in philosophy, social science, political science and public law. He was the head of the book office at the French Embassy in Romania and a "chargé de mission" at the French ministry of culture. After being advisor to the former Prime Minister Michel Rocard, he served the Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, deputy-Prime minister Martine Aubry, as her speech writer. From 2001 to 2005, he was "cultural attaché" at the French embassy in the US. He has also been a visiting scholar at Harvard University and New York University.

Books

His most famous books are The Pink and the Black, Homosexuals in France since 1968, Mainstream, "Smart" and De la culture en Amérique, a book about cultural policies and industries in the United States, which was featured on the cover of the New York Times art section in 2006. NYT's journalist Alan Riding wrote : "In Culture in America, a 622-page tome weighty with information, Martel challenges the conventional view in France that culture financed and organized by the government is entirely good and that culture shaped by market forces is necessarily bad".
On February 21, 2019, Martel published Sodoma. Published simultaneously in eight languages In the Closet of the Vatican has been an instant best-seller. Based on testimony by 41 cardinals, 52 bishops, 45 nuncios and ambassadors and hundreds of priests, the book suggests that a large majority of priests and bishops in the Vatican, including those who make the most homophobic and traditional speeches about morality, are homosexuals, practicing or not. "The Corruption of the Vatican’s Gay Elite Has Been Exposed" wrote, in a long piece for The Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan. The book was praised by Colm Tóibín, the former head of Dominicans order Timothy Radcliffe, the British historian Sir Diarmaid MacCulloch and dozens of scholars and specialists. The book has been translated into more than twenty languages; it was a bestseller in a dozen countries and a New York Times bestseller.
Martel wrote, or currently writes, for numerous publications in France and elsewhere |L'Express], Le Point, Le Monde, Dissent, The Nation, Haaretz and ''Slate and produces its own radio show, "Soft Power", a weekly live [talk show on the entertainment, the medias and "the internets" for the French national public radio station France Culture.
Additionally, he has had high-level academic activities by giving conferences in major American universities, universities in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Hong Kong, China, Japan, India, Egypt and by teaching, from 2005 to 2014, at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris and at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Paris. In 2008–2010, he was a researcher for the French Foreign Affairs' Analysis and Forecasting Centre and he founded the research web site of the Institut National de l'Audiovisuel regarding creative industries and medias around the world.
In January 2020 he was elected a professor at Zurich University of the Arts. He was then appointed head of research of the Zurich Centre for Creative Economies.

Main publications

Frédéric Martel is the author of twelve books:
  • Philosophie du droit et philosophie politique, LGDJ, 1995
  • Le rose et le noir: Les homosexuels en France depuis 1968, Le Seuil, 1996; English translation: The pink and the black: Homosexuals in France since 1968, trans. Jane Marie Todd, Stanford University Press, 2000,
  • La longue marche des gays, coll. "Découvertes Gallimard", série Culture et société, Éditions Gallimard, 2002
  • Theater, Sur le déclin du théâtre en Amérique et comment il peut résister en France, La Découverte, 2006
  • De la culture en Amérique, Gallimard, 2006
  • Mainstream, Enquête sur la guerre globale de la culture et des médias, Flammarion, 2010
  • J'aime pas le sarkozysme culturel, Flammarion, 2012
  • Global gay: Comment la révolution gay change le monde, Flammarion, 2013; English translation: Global gay: How gay culture is changing the world, MIT Press, 2019
  • Smart: Ces internets qui nous rendent intelligents, Flammarion, 2015; English translation: Smart: The digital century, HarperCollins, 2018
  • Sodoma: Enquête au cœur du Vatican, Éditions Robert Laffont, 2019; English translation: In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy, Bloomsbury, 2019,

    Film and TV documentaries

Yves Jeuland's movie Bleu, Blanc, Rose was based on Frédéric Martel's The Pink and the Black and Frédéric Martel has also codirected the documentary De la culture en Amérique with Frédéric Laffont and Global Gay with Rémi Lainé. The Global Gay documentary received the "Grand Prix" by the World Organization Against Torture, OMCT, in Geneva, 2014.

Distinctions

  • Chevalier dans l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
  • Digital Shapers 2020.