On world stage, France's role is audience favorite

As the US undersecretary of State for public diplomacy returns home from her first foreign trip burnishing America's image in the world, she might feel a touch of envy at the glowing international reputation that France enjoys, highlighted in a recent study by the Project on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).

In the survey of people in 23 countries across the globe, a majority or plurality in 20 described France as exerting a positive influence on world affairs. The US, by comparison, is seen as having a negative impact by majorities in 15 countries.

"France is seen as a countervoice to the US," says Steven Kull, director of PIPA. "It becomes a rallying point for all those who don't want to follow America's lead."

Certainly, Paris appeals in part precisely because it is not Washington. But it goes beyond that. From the streets of Shanghai to Berlin, Monitor interviews found that the French flair for the finer things in life has a special cachet.

French movies are admired worldwide for their subtlety and depth; French fashion houses dress the rich and powerful worldwide; and the lure of French art and cuisine fascinated foreigners long before Paris stood up to Washington politically.

"We [Germans] look on with wonder at France's cultural influence in the world," says Henrik Utterwede, deputy director of the German-French Institute in Ludwigsburg. "And we are a bit jealous of it, as well."

On top of that, says former French foreign minister Hubert Vedrine, France is so admired because "many people think France is a country that tries to correct the imbalances of today's world, such as the excessive power of the United States."

Or, put another way, "The French willingness to stand up and be a rooster, to take a stand and get up someone's nose, is a big strength," says Doug Miller, head of GlobeScan, the international polling firm that carried out the survey with the University of Maryland's PIPA.

France's global popularity - except in America, the only country where a majority of respondents called French influence negative - "is really a question of image," cautions Alain Frachon, editor of "Le Monde 2," a weekly magazine. "France does not weigh very heavily in international affairs," he argues, "and it does not set a very great example" as a major arms exporter, a not especially generous donor to developing nations, and a defender of outmoded economic policies.

Most people, however, "do not follow foreign policy very closely, and these things come down to a few images and symbols," points out Mr. Vedrine.

The most symbolic recent moment came in the buildup to the Iraq war, which France vehemently and vocally opposed. "The very, very strong position that France took on the side of global public opinion explains the figures" in the poll, says Mr. Miller.

"France was speaking for the world; [French president Jacques] Chirac stood up and that's what leadership is," Miller adds.

The symbolism had practical effects, suggests Mr. Utterwede. For years, Germany resisted French efforts to enlist it as a counterweight to Washington. But some of France's fierce individuality has rubbed off on Berlin, says Utterwede. "There is this idea of friendship [with Washington], yes; obedience, no. There is a sense of emancipation in German foreign policy that can almost be considered 'Francophonization.' "

France's stand had effects on the other side of the Atlantic, too, where Americans expressed their anger or their disappointment by ordering "Freedom Fries." It became cool to dislike the French (52 percent of Americans believe French international influence is negative), especially because many felt the French owed America gratitude for liberating them from the Nazis and then defending them against the Soviets.

"France has become popular merely by defining itself in opposition to the United States under the Bush administration," critiques Jacquelyn K. Davis, executive vice president of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis in Washington. "The French are attempting to jealously guard their remaining power and influence by criticizing and tearing down US policies."

Not that such perceived disloyalty is new. "France has been cultivating its discordant voice since [former French president Charles] de Gaulle argued that we did not have to line up behind one or other of the superpowers," recalls Mr. Frachon.

As the first Western nation to recognize Communist China, France won a special place in Chinese hearts (72 percent of Chinese respondents saw French influence as positive).

Beijing also warms to French policies, such as its failed crusade earlier this year to end a 16-year-old EU ban on arms sales to China, and its support for China's push to unify with Taiwan.

For ordinary Chinese, however, the Parisian pull appears to be more cultural. "Well-educated people in Beijing like French films more than American films now," says Wang Qing, a specialist in French cultural exchanges for the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries. "In French films we can see something more sophisticated."

Asked why the Chinese liked France, Wang Li, a woman in Shanghai, replied simply, "The French have money and good culture."

That impression has no doubt been boosted by the "French Culture Year" that recently featured more than 300 art, dance, and musical events around China. But that's small potatoes compared to the 60 years of French efforts to promote their relationship with neighboring Germany after fighting three wars in 70 years.

Those efforts have paid off. The hundreds of thousands of community, school, business, and cultural partnerships that have sprung up on both sides of the Rhine since the end of World War II have helped convince 77 percent of Germans that France plays a positive role in the world, according to the PIPA study.

German respect for French culture is deep. "They have a special feeling for design and art that makes them highly influential in the world," says Anete Bajrami, a newly qualified architect.

On the other side of the world, similar feelings inspire Stanley Peskin, owner of an independent video store in the comfortable Parktown North neighborhood of Johannesburg, South Africa.

"It has got the best ballet company in the whole world and some of the great film directors and novelists," enthuses Mr. Peskin. "The French have been fantastic."

While few of the people questioned in a brief survey of Johannesburg residents this week mentioned politics, their generally positive views of French design, culture, and food supported the survey's conclusion that 69 percent of South Africans consider France a welcome influence.

The South African government's interest in France should be seen in the context of Pretoria's relationship with the European Union, says Prince Mashele, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, a think tank in the capital.

"France is a key player within the European Union. South Africa has trade agreements with the European Union," Mr. Mashele explains. "It makes sense to maintain good relations with key players."

France's European identity is central to its popularity, suggests Dr. Kull, of PIPA. "France is most associated with the European Union, which has an even more positive rating than France," he says. "The EU is seen as using soft power and diplomacy, drawing other countries towards it, while the US uses more hard power and direct pressure, imposing its will."

Though France is still a medium world power, with a UN Security Council seat, a nuclear weapon and a worldwide network of alliances, says Vedrine, "and though France is often pretentious and grandiloquent, she is not threatening."

Paris could do more to build on its advantages, he adds, "listening more and seeking compromise. We could use our trump cards better."

GlobeScan's Miller also thinks France should be looking to the future. "Country branding is becoming a vital part of the economic future," he argues. "France clearly has a big advantage to grow from, but if they are not trying to take advantage of that they do so at their own risk and peril."

The trouble, says Vedrine, is that "our economic and social model is not working so well, and that will reduce our influence in the future.

"For the time being, though", he adds, "France still enjoys a gigantic power of attraction."

This article is a load of bull :)

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We are widely criticized among Europeans for what they call our cultural and economic hegemony. They decry our pop culture as vulgar and commercial, and in fact, it often is. McDonald’s are now everywhere on the European continent, and we are reminded what horrible, fattening food it is. Agreed.

What doesn’t seem to get through their anti-populist, anti-American blinders is that basic economic principle of supply and demand. I suppose we shouldn’t be too shocked to hear this. The birthplace, intellectual home and last bastion of Marxism has always had a tough time with economic reality.

They also have a tough time with democracy, and the idea of people – you know, the masses – making their own decisions. And the thing that breaks the heart of every European elitist is the inescapable fact that McDonald’s and Cheers are huge in Europe, because their own people can’t get enough of it.

I have never been to France myself, but I would presume that daily life there does not consist of squads of heavily armed US Marines rounding up the terrified population, herding them into McDonald’s at gunpoint, and shaking their last euros out of them. When France passes laws saying that some minimal percentage of their television programming must be produced in France, then that is an admission – and it must be, if you will pardon the pun, a galling one – that huge numbers of their people prefer our culture over their own.

Fact is, dreadful or not, McDonald’s is not subsidized by the US Department of World Hegemony. They are a business concern. The day European customers stop eating at McDonald’s, the McDonald’s will go away.

But they do not. They are growing like mushrooms. American television programming has to be legally constrained. I suspect that Spider-Man out-drew more Europeans in a weekend than all of the films of Truffaut's did in the United States over forty years. This is telling them something, and what it is telling them is that our culture has a greater hold over the imaginations of their own people than theirs does.

To the Average French Citizen, I imagine Spider-Man, Cheers and McDonald’s represent more or less what they do to Americans: a fun couple of hours, a few laughs, and something quick to scarf down when you’re in a hurry. Big deal.

But to the deep-thinking elites of Europe, these trends are catastrophic, and terrifying. For it shows them, yet again, that a mob of boorish, unsophisticated, common brutes – that’d be us – is able to produce art and music and culture that cleans the clock of any nation that lets it in the door.

Spider-Man and McDonalds, and the long lines of their own countrymen waiting eagerly for a taste of them, prove to them daily that the European cultural superiority that they so deeply believe in is…how do we say this delicately?…uh, wrong.

So, are we being an hegemony? Are we using some “authority over others” to force our cultural and political will on unsuspecting, defenseless people? Or do those people, from their own free will, choose to enjoy American movies and food and music and television because it has somehow managed to tap into the human spirit, into a sense of playfulness and freedom and above all, optimism --- things that all people crave, and that their own dark, brooding, pessimistic outlets have failed to deliver? Are these common Europeans being brainwashed by the orbiting Yankee Mind-Control Ray, or is the idea of a place where everybody knows your name or a beat-up teenage kid who can fly through canyons of skyscrapers on gossamer webs something that just about everyone wants to be a part of?

I studied film in college. I sat through Jules et Jim, The Bicycle Thief, 1900, Satyricon and The Grand Illusion. Watching them was work. I enjoyed just about all of these and many other mov -- sorry, films -- and I am a better person for having seen them, but some of them – like a recent Polish entry in the Academy Awards, “Life as a Fatal, Sexually Transmitted Disease,” well, that approached prolonged oral surgery in terms of its enjoyment value.

You don’t have to have the vast intellectual reserves of a French Minister of Culture to understand why our movies and music have such appeal abroad. They are, more often than not, each small ambassadors of freedom and optimism. From James Dean to Brad Pitt, Americans are cool; cool because they don’t spend their evening sitting around bumming cigarettes and discussing global warming. They have bad guys to fight and motorcycles to ride, vast stretches of open road to get lost in and a disdain for any authority whatsoever. Where the European hero is a deeply conflicted soul lost in an existentialist nightmare, the American counterpart is a member of a rag-tag group of Rebels flying out to destroy the Death Star. Or a no-nonsense cop who plays by his own rules. Or an ordinary person, who, as the result of chance (Spider-Man), determination (Batman) or accident of birth (Superman), uses amazing personal power to aid the weak and fight evil.

These are our myths. They lack the patina of history that elevates those of the Greeks and Norse and countless other mythologies. But they are not created in a vacuum. These stories come from our common heritage and our common beliefs. Our heroes are what we make them, and for this country, the most successful have been young men and women thrust into extraordinary circumstances, who fight evils and monsters and never, ever use their powers for personal gain.

Yes, these are fantasies. No, of course real Americans are not so altruistic. But these are the standards we create for ourselves, and these American heroes represent what we represent as a nation. Action over endless discussion and moral paralysis. Rebellion against authority. Defense of the weak and helpless. And most of all, the optimism of the happy ending.

We get a lot of criticism from our betters about how shallow and mindless the Hollywood ending is. Fair enough. It does turn its back on the untidiness of reality. But it is also an expression of how we would have things turn out in a perfect world, a world where freedom and justice triumph and reign. These are the things we believe in, and these are, not surprisingly, immensely attractive to the rest of the world.

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