LaFayette, We Are, Um… Absent

[TygrBright]

American commentators in a variety of media and representing a suprisingly broad segment of the left-right spectrum have been enjoying themselves mightily, pontificating about What’s Wrong With The French, as evidenced by the civic furor over Chirac’s modest proposal to create a two-tier employment system in La Belle Patrie. While a few have jumped onto the leftist bandwagon, expressing umbrage over the “rightist” French government’s attempt to institutionalize a two-class employment system, most have been treating themselves to a veritable orgy of superior smirking over the lazy Frogs’ determination to possess AND eat their cake-er-croissant.

Why do Americans feel so blissfully entitled to make simplistic generalizations about France and the French? What is it that gives us this smug assurance that we have fathomed the depths of something labeled the “French National Character,” as though every French person were indistinguishable from her/his neighbors, like a row of little souvenir dolls sold at the Epcot Center gift shop, complete with baguette and bottle of vin ordinaire and a jazzy little beret?

Not that the French don’t do their part (and then some) to provoke American reaction, with their stubborn insistence on wending their own way through the escalating complexities of a shrinking, globalizing world culture, clinging determinedly to their national identity. They seem to take particular glee in vigorously rejecting all the adaptations to Americocentric global acculturation that we patiently proffer for their own good. Their obstinate resistance to the Pax Americana might be less mock-worthy were it not so intimately coupled with their apotheosis of Francocentric cultural traditions that are incomprehensible, if not antithetical, to Yankiedoodledom.

Just today I waded through a column by Roger Cohen, columnist for The International Herald Tribune, which displayed intellectual contortionism of no mean order in service to the belief that We Have The Europeans (including the French) Taped. To be sure, the most egregious silliness was in the form of a quote from one Robert Paxton, characterized as “a historian of France”(!) who made the startling assertion that while “Americans are always at the new frontier, risking all, at least in our imaginations,” the French “have not had a new frontier since the Middle Ages.”

Well.

Alsace, Lorraine, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Canada and Louisiana aside, what does Mr. Paxton the “historian of France” consider a ‘frontier?’ Apparently the overthrow of a tyrannical kleptocratic monarchy, the formation of a viable republican government, the rise of military dictatorship that conquered most of Europe and North Africa, the loss of that Empire within a single generation, the recovery and reestablishment of a constitutional representative government, the development of the world’s premier civil engineering tradition and the construction of the Suez Canal, the development of unprecedented public health infrastructure, etc., don’t qualify.

Achievements like the Code Napoleon (still one of the most rational and consistent bases for legal process in spite of its anachronistic lacunae,) the supernally civilized contributions to world literature and philosophy of Montaigne, Voltaire, Descartes, Rousseau, etc., were apparently a flash in the pan, the last post-Medieval flowering of French civilization. Of course, such a conclusion requires the modern “historian of France” to ignore the existence of Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Claude Levi-Strauss, etc., not to mention the contributions to world civilization made by the likes of Claude Malhuret (of Medecins Sans Frontiers), Jean Dausset, Luc Montaignard, and the pioneering work in renewable energy of the French research establishment.

It is, seemingly, all too easy for Americans to ignore such inconvenient realities and instead to focus on the things we find baffling, antithetical, or ridiculous about French culture. That’s more of a reflection on our own provincial, nativist sins than on the shortcomings of Gallic culture, politics etc. Their worst offense seems to be (gasp!) they don’t want to work! “Work,” that is, in the American definition of “work,” which entails obsessive identification with our jobs, a grinding drive to acquire sufficient cash flow to buy ever more stuff we will end up throwing away soon, and an uneasy fascination with the mythical promises of unchecked capitalism for our own individual (and family) benefit.

The French, in common with many other European states, appreciate jobs that provide them with the opportunity to satisfy creativity or craftsmanship, endure jobs that don’t provide such opportunities, and focus their real lives and identities on family, home, culture, recreation, religion, etc. In making the choice to structure an economy that permits people to do this while maintaining themselves economically, they have prioritized quality over quantity, a concept alien (and, apparently, highly threatening) to American economic and social wisdom. They have chosen to live with the very real downsides of that prioritization, just as Americans have chosen to live with the downsides of unchecked economic Darwinism.

In portraying France as economically stagnant, risk-averse, steadfast in opposition to change (or at least the kind of change Americans consider ‘progress,’ economically speaking,) American critics conveniently ignore the achievements of French engineering and architecture, agricultural research, medicine, and any number of other fields where advances pioneered by French researchers and companies are making modern life just a little more sustainable. French energies are directed at finding ways to enjoy the best fruits of technology while minimizing the damage to the environment and to the values of a family- and community-centered culture. American energies are directed toward maximizing profit through innovation.

Yes, such choices carry negative consequences, and yes, France has serious social and cultural problems for which no effective solution is yet proffered. Why does this give America license to be smug and condescending about their problems? As a dear friend quotes her granny’s homespun wisdom, “Don’t be looking in other peoples’ kitchen windows when your own sink is full of dirty dishes.”

Disclosure: TygrBright’s ancestry includes French Canadian immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally, and she has been known to eat brie on occasion, but has never smoked a Gauloise or bothered to see La Femme Nikita.

[Peanutcat]

1. Oh the irony! The IRONY!

So why are you assuming all Americans feel the exact same way about the French, hmmmmmmmm?

[TygrBright]

3. Yer right... Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa...

...I can only plead laziness and a certain presumption upon literary license that no one would actually want to read the PRECISELY EXPLICIT version. But since that lack of precision appears to offend you, here it is, just for you... my penance for presumption:

LaFayette, We Are, Um… Absent

American commentators in a variety of media and representing a suprisingly broad segment of the left-right spectrum have been enjoying themselves mightily, pontificating about What’s Wrong With The French, as evidenced by the civic furor over Chirac’s modest proposal to create a two-tier employment system in La Belle Patrie. While a few have jumped onto the leftist bandwagon, expressing umbrage over the “rightist” French government’s attempt to institutionalize a two-class employment system, most have been treating themselves to a veritable orgy of superior smirking over the lazy Frogs’ determination to possess AND eat their cake-er-croissant.

Why do American commentators in a variety of media and representing a suprisingly broad segment of the left-right spectrum who have been enjoying themselves mightily, pontificating about What’s Wrong With The French feel so blissfully entitled to make simplistic generalizations about France and the French? What is it that gives us this smug assurance that we have fathomed the depths of something labeled the “French National Character,” as though every French person were indistinguishable from her/his neighbors, like a row of little souvenir dolls sold at the Epcot Center gift shop, complete with baguette and bottle of vin ordinaire and a jazzy little beret?

Not that the French don’t do their part (and then some) to provoke American commentators in a variety of media and representing a suprisingly broad segment of the left-right spectrum who have been enjoying themselves mightily, pontificating about What’s Wrong With The French’s reaction, with their stubborn insistence on wending their own way through the escalating complexities of a shrinking, globalizing world culture, clinging determinedly to their national identity. They seem to take particular glee in vigorously rejecting all the adaptations to Americocentric global acculturation that we patiently proffer for their own good. Their obstinate resistance to the Pax Americana might be less mock-worthy were it not so intimately coupled with their apotheosis of Francocentric cultural traditions that are incomprehensible, if not antithetical, to Yankiedoodledom.

Just today I waded through a column by Roger Cohen, columnist for The International Herald Tribune, which displayed intellectual contortionism of no mean order in service to the belief that We Have The Europeans (including the French) Taped. To be sure, the most egregious silliness was in the form of a quote from one Robert Paxton, characterized as “a historian of France”(!) whose startling assertion that while “Americans are always at the new frontier, risking all, at least in our imaginations,” the French “have not had a new frontier since the Middle Ages.”

Well.

Alsace, Lorraine, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Canada and Louisiana aside, what does Mr. Paxton the “historian of France” consider a ‘frontier?’ Apparently the overthrow of a tyrannical kleptocratic monarchy, the formation of a viable republican government, the rise of military dictatorship that conquered most of Europe and North Africa, the loss of that Empire within a single generation, the recovery and reestablishment of a constitutional representative government, the development of the world’s premier civil engineering tradition and the construction of the Suez Canal, the development of unprecedented public health infrastructure, etc., don’t qualify.

Achievements like the Code Napoleon (still one of the most rational and consistent bases for legal process in spite of its anachronistic lacunae,) the supernally civilized contributions to world literature and philosophy of Montaigne, Voltaire, Descartes, Rousseau, etc., were apparently a flash in the pan, the last post-Medieval flowering of French civilization. Of course, such a conclusion requires the modern “historian of France” to ignore the existence of Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Claude Levi-Strauss, etc., not to mention the contributions to world civilization made by the likes of Claude Malhuret (of Medecins Sans Frontiers), Jean Dausset, Luc Montaignard, and the pioneering work in renewable energy of the French CEA.

It’s apparently all too easy for American commentators in a variety of media and representing a suprisingly broad segment of the left-right spectrum who have been enjoying themselves mightily, pontificating about What’s Wrong With The French to ignore such inconvenient realities and instead to focus on the things we find baffling, antithetical, or ridiculous about French culture. That’s more of a reflection on our own provincial, nativist sins than on the shortcomings of Gallic culture, politics etc. Their worst offense seems to be (gasp!) they don’t want to work! “Work,” that is, in the American definition of “work,” which seems to involve obsessive identification with our jobs, a grinding drive to acquire sufficient cash flow to buy ever more stuff we will end up throwing away soon, and an uneasy fascination with the mythical promises of unchecked capitalism for our own individual (and family) benefit.

The French, in common with many other European states, appreciate jobs that provide them with the opportunity to satisfy creativity or craftsmanship, endure jobs that don’t provide such opportunities, and focus their real lives and identities on family, home, culture, recreation, religion, etc. In making the choice to structure an economy that permits people to do this while maintaining themselves economically, they have prioritized quality over quantity, a concept alien (and, apparently, highly threatening) to American economic and social wisdom. They have chosen to live with the very real downsides of that prioritization, just as Americans have chosen to live with the downsides of unchecked economic Darwinism.

In portraying France as economically stagnant, risk-averse, steadfast in opposition to change (or at least the kind of change Americans consider ‘progress,’ economically speaking,) American commentators in a variety of media and representing a suprisingly broad segment of the left-right spectrum who have been enjoying themselves mightily, pontificating about What’s Wrong With The French conveniently ignore the achievements of French engineering and architecture, agricultural research, medicine, and any number of other fields where advances pioneered by French researchers and companies are making modern life just a little more sustainable. French energies are directed at finding ways to enjoy the best fruits of technology while minimizing the damage to the environment and to the values of a family- and community-centered culture. American energies are directed toward maximizing profit through innovation.

Yes, such choices carry negative consequences, and yes, France has serious social and cultural problems for which no effective solution is yet proffered. Why does this give American commentators in a variety of media and representing a suprisingly broad segment of the left-right spectrum who have been enjoying themselves mightily, pontificating about What’s Wrong With The French license to be smug and condescending about their problems? As a dear friend quotes her granny’s homespun wisdom, “Don’t be looking in other peoples’ kitchen windows when your own sink is full of dirty dishes.”

Disclosure: TygrBright’s ancestry includes French Canadian immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally, and she has been known to eat brie on occasion, but has never smoked a Gauloise or bothered to see La Femme Nikita.

Thereya go, with my compliments.

contritely,
Bright

[Peanutcat]

5. Thanks!

:evilgrin:

[Alcibiades]

2. If the French did not exist

We would have to invent them. America is at once a melting pot and tinged with xenophobia, which isn't contradictory at all, when you consider that the purpose of a melting pot is homogenization. The French have some natural advantages that serve to render them the perennial whipping boy du jour: first, they are the traditional nemesis of the British, and we have always liked to style ourselves, on some level, as the descendants of Britons (although it's not true for many, or perhaps most, of us); second, they are a country within our "peer group," i.e. an advanced industrial democracy, so we seem not to be comparing apples to oranges or picking on the little guy (something we like to think is unamerican but which is actually deeply American); third, and this is related to the second point, we can pick on the French because they are white Europeans (though that's less the case now than ever before), and we can therefore exercise our xenophobia without also being vulnerable to charges of racism. Also, the French take themselves quite seriously, and take Frenchness quite seriously. Americans who poke fun at the French--at least, those of us who do it in good humor--do it for the same reason why we teased our siblings as children: because it bothers them. If it didn't bother them, I doubt the custom would long endure.

The whole anti-French thing is cool-aid for the unlettered and uncultured. The people who are spreading this are not. They are certainly guilty of hypocrisy, because they know better. Moreover, my own experience shows that rich Republicans are more likely, not less, to do things such as vacation in France and enjoy French products.

For many of us, this wave of Francophobia has a certain frisson that is inherited. My own Huguenot ancestors fled France in 1688, fleeing the loving embrace of his most Catholic majesty and the auto de fe. We bear an ancestral grudge that is, by now, half a joke, but we remember St. Bartholomew's day nonetheless.

Finally, this transatlantic misunderstanding goes both ways. Far from being the perceptive reader of American psyche that he is often held to be, I submit to you that Tocqueville was a fraud, that his "Democracy in America" (now finally available in an unabridged translation) reveals far more about his agenda than it does anything essential about the American character. Have you read Jean Baudrillard's America? Profoundly craptastic! It's full of the same hoary shibboleths that Europeans have believed about America for generations, which only their own deeply-rooted sense of intellectual superiority prevents them from acknowledging as prejudices.

[Burning Water]

4. I've

smoked a Gauloise or two, :smoke: and I've had brie. I love escargot :9 . So I'm guessing that I'm as qualified to pontificate about the French as anyone. And, as an American, naturally I'm qualified to pontificate about America. ;)

Americans are every bit as qualified to generalize about the French as the French are about Americans. No more; no less.

[kskiska]

6. Bravo! Vive la France!

Great article! I love France and have had wonderful experiences over there.

[JimBee]

7. The French

I enjoyed your article. It was well written and makes an accurate point. Our derision over things French isn't exactly without merit. My generation grew up appreciating the French because we are told that without them our nation wouldn't have gained independence.

We then pay them back with blood with World Wars 1&2, and they have the Gaul (pun intended) to exercise a free national will and occasionally disagree with America. Those Ingrates!

Seriously though many Americans feel that there should be more unity between the French and us because of our coming to each others aid in the time of crisis.

And in all honesty, is ridiculing the French any different than the Republican lambasting that this site gets into? Odds are there are a few decent Republicans out there.

[MikeH]

8. Hitler hated the French

There seems to be something about the French, and the French character, that Nazis and right-wing types, whether German or American, love to hate.

[Spinoza]

9. Hitler

(as you say) hated the French, despised the Poles and Russians, laughed at the Americans, but admired the English.

[Ravachol]

10. Well, nice text.

Receives my french (canadian) approval. ;) I felt your own generalizations were of a sarcastic and humorous nature, to further ridiculize their (media/repugs/etc.) idiocy and francophobia.

Note: It's "Médecins Sans Frontières". ;)

[TahitiNut]

11. I was thinking about the difference between the national anthems of the US

... and France the other day. I thought the differences were very noteworthy - particularly in evoking a model of a patriot. Let's review ...

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen thro' the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner: O, long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash'd out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O thus be it ever when free-men shall stand
Between their lov'd home and the war's desolation;
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserv'd us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust!”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Now, what's the person doing who's voicing these stirring words? Is he fighting? Is he tending to the injured and maimed? Is he assisting in the battle in any way? Nope. Hell ... he's not even sticking his neck out enough to look for himself. He's asking someone else to do it for him. Who's he asking? His servant? It seems to me he's become some sort of model for "American patriotism" today. Somebody else does the fighting and dying ... and this guy, sitting well under cover, "trusts" God and not himself or those who're fighting and dying. Some model.
:puke:

Now, let's review the La Marseillaise (English translation) ...

Arise children of the fatherland
The day of glory has arrived
Against us tyranny's
Bloody standard is raised
Listen to the sound in the fields
The howling of these fearsome soldiers
They are coming into our midst
To cut the throats of your sons and consorts
To arms citizens
Form you battalions
March, march
Let impure blood
Water our furrows

What do they want this horde of slaves
Of traitors and conspiratorial kings?
For whom these vile chains
These long-prepared irons?
Frenchmen, for us, ah! What outrage
What methods must be taken?
It is we they dare plan
To return to the old slavery!

What! These foreign cohorts!
They would make laws in our courts!
What! These mercenary phalanxes
Would cut down our warrior sons
Good Lord! By chained hands
Our brow would yield under the yoke
The vile despots would have themselves be
The masters of destiny

Tremble, tyrants and traitors
The shame of all good men
Tremble! Your parricidal schemes
Will receive their just reward
Against you we are all soldiers
If they fall, our young heros
France will bear new ones
Ready to join the fight against you

Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors
Bear or hold back your blows
Spare these sad victims
Who with regret are taking up arms against us
But not these bloody despots
These accomplices of Bouillé
All these tigers who pitilessly
Are ripping open their mothers' breasts

Sacred Love for the Fatherland
Lead and support our avenging arms
Liberty, cherished liberty
Join the struggle with your defenders
Under our flags, let victory
hasten to you virile (or manly) force
So that in death your enemies
See your triumph and our glory!

We shall enter into the pit
When our elders will no longer be there
There we shall find their ashes
And the mark of their virtues
We are much less jealous of surviving them
Than of sharing their coffins
We shall have the sublime pride
Of avenging or joining them

Now this is someone who's got some skin in the game! This ain't no spectator. This is someone who knows that democracy isn't a spectator sport and it's not about a piece of cloth (made in China) or "trusting" in anything but the will to fight together against those who'd dare take their liberties! They know who they're fighting! They know why they're fighting!

Our anthem is about being spectators. Theirs is about having skin in the game.

Viva la France!