Les jeux de rôles, les jeux vidéo et le cinéma: Pratiques sociales, reproblématisation de savoirs et critique

Abstract

Role-plays and video games represent significant recreational activities in our contemporary era, and are nowadays regularly associated with the cinema industry. Based on empirical work, this article seeks to question the creative process involved in making these products and how the public accepts and reacts to them. These creations can be the source of informal education in the sense that young people, in handling them, have to use their minds and abilities to understand them, and because the fictional scenarios they are based on, convey their contents (referring to social and political issues) worked out according to the assumed desires and representations of the "target audiences". That being the case, the question arises concerning the abilities which the young will need to call up to use the new creation when faced with it. The article underlines the fact that these abilities are socially grounded and that they are not common to the whole range of a given age group, or to all "young people". These abilities are not only directly determined by the social and educational background of each individual but also by what is esteemed by the peer group they find themselves in and by their educational level.