Posted on 02/23/2003 3:03:38 PM PST by Chi-townChief
For some Americans, hating the French was a full-time occupation long before Jacques Chirac and his merry men began shooting poison-tipped arrows at George W. Bush's best laid plans for Iraq. Our tourist trade has long enjoyed characterizing French people as rude and snobby--and, of course, mocking them for idolizing the Nutty Professor.
But these days, you don't need to belong to that club to take pot shots at the "weasels," as one of New York's dailies calls our sort-of allies (who form an "axis of weasel" with the less-fun-to-insult Germans). Americans are fighting mad at the French for not being fighting mad. There is talk of boycotting all things French as payback--even putting trade restrictions on Evian and Perrier and French wine. Dominique de Villepin, the fork-tongued foreign minister, no doubt is being fitted for a wax museum figure, to stand alongside Cardinal Richelieu's. Or at least Inspector Clouseau's.
Even knowing all this, I was shocked when the counter person at a McDonald's said I couldn't get French fries, a slab of "hash browns" would have to do. If French fries were on the hit list (which, OK, they can't be) imagine what else we would be forced to give up as America's bad feelings toward France intensified.
I saw the history of French pop culture flash before my eyes. There went "Breathless" and "Rules of the Game," Jeanne Moreau and Yves Montand, Erik Satie and Stephane Grappelli. There went--say it ain't so, Marceau--Brigitte Bardot!
From here on in, we true blue Americans would have to alter the lyrics to some of our favorite Paris-themed songs ("April in Nazareth"? "I Love Caracas"?), trade in our red Can-Can shoes for black sabre dance boots and dream about running off with the Greek Foreign Legion. Sadly, we and our kids would have to bid adieu to Babar and ... Pepe Le Pew?
And what of our budding love affair with "Amelie" star Audrey Tautou, France's greatest recent contribution to international box-office relations? It's as good as cooked, oui? "With expressions that take two forms--wide-eyed and downcast--she seems hardly capable of stretching," wrote Sun-Times critic Hedy Weiss in reviewing Tautou's latest effort, "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not." No one was spanking Tautou like that when she first turned those luscious orbs on us.
Now I'm as capable as anyone of flicking spitballs at the French. Every time I hear Edith Piaf played in a French restaurant, I want to lock the proprietor in a room with an endless quivering loop of "La Vie en Rose." And as much as I prize French cinema, I have it in for those whimsical commercial farces the French turn out--like the ones Hollywood was rushing to remake a decade or so ago. (You can blame the decline of Martin Short's movie career on the long-forgotten "Three Fugitives" and "Pure Luck.")
But let's get serious. To cut off or ignore French culture, and German culture too, would be to spite our face. To do so would be to confuse the world of art, which strives to build bridges of universal understanding, and the world of politics, which is geared toward playing favorites--or, in the case of France, playing to the cheap seats by puffing itself up as a nation that will never be dictated to by the big, bad U.S.A. Even if the U.S.A., like the good guy who unties the distressed damsel from the railroad tracks, has made a habit of saving it from extinction.
To do so also would be to assume that the average French citizen is necessarily in line with Chirac any more than the average American citizen is behind Bush. Just because Dominique de Villepin proposed having Iraq draw up its own laws against having weapons of mass destruction doesn't mean that Jean Doe is in need of psychiatric examination, too. Just because a crackpot topped the French bestseller charts with a book that claimed the United States conspired with Osama bin Laden to attack itself on Sept. 11 doesn't mean that sane Parisians are buying into that notion.
Among the Parisian sane is a filmmaker friend of mine who, like many of us, is torn over how the Iraq threat should be handled and what stance her country should take in the conflict. "There's so much confusion, it's like being in the middle of the ocean," she said. Many French people are put out by the kind of sentiment expressed by a recent front page in the New York Post, which ran photos of Normandy cemeteries where American soldiers who helped liberate France are buried under the headline, Cowards Should Look To These Grave Reminders. My friend didn't dismiss it out of hand.
"It hurt me to see that," she said. "But in a way, it's true. The French are very good at being afraid. It's possible to see their position [on war in Iraq] as taking the easy way out. But you can see the other side of the argument, too. Opposing this war may be a good thing. There are no clear cut good guys and bad guys anymore, no division of east and west. It's just so sad that we used to be such good friends and now we hate each other."
At times like this, it's good to focus on the friendship between America and France as it glows through the history of the movies. Every time you see a film noir, be aware that the French named the genre out of a love for the stark black and white American crime dramas of the '40s. Every time you see one of Jacques Demy's glorious '60s musicals ("The Umbrellas of Cherbourg," "The Young Girls of Rochefort") or any number of French thrillers, be aware that they sprung from an abiding love of Hollywood.
Defy the winds of politics by going out and seeing a French film today! Go see a German one, even! If you must, you can even put on an Edith Piaf record! Just as long as I get my French fries the next time I go to you know where.
To borrow a phrase, MAN!! WHAT AN A--HOLE!!!
You think he's encouraging people to see landmark German films like The Eternal Jew or Triumph of the Will? The French New Wave cinema movement was more known for style than for substance.
Werner Herzog made some decent "German" films (although Klaus Kinski was generally speaking in English on the set) and has since immigrated to the United States.
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