Still, I’m not convinced most Americans would want to live life the French way even if they were exposed to it. My wife, an American, finds the ‘petit plaisir’ a waste of time, and finds that the French don’t make the most out of their vacations. She’s the physical type, in that she expects to go water-skiing, scuba-diving, and exercising rather than just sit at a cafe chatting away while enjoying the ambiance (something I would rather do myself).

Michael makes an interesting point about France’s economy, namely that it is one of the most prosperous in the world. I argue in my blog that it’s more a case histrorical luck than actual validation of the French economic model. Through a combination of favorable demographics, the massive rebuilding after WW2 and the general backwardness of the rest of the world during most of the post-War period, France took advantage of its position to rise. But since the early eighties, the French economy has been relatively stagnant, and structural unemployment has stayed the same give or take a few percentage points for the last twenty years. The French economy has calcified for quite a long time, but that doesn’t mean that people get poorer, only that upward mobility ceases to exist for most at the bottom and no one in the middle ever becomes fabulously wealthy.

What’s also left out in this thread is the existence of the French ideal of America. The longing to be in America as a free-spirit peppers French literature, song and their films. Jack Kerouac probably garners more attention in France than in the U.S., and Johny Halliday, France’s most beloved rocker, carefully markets himself as Harley-riding rebel, covering country-rock songs. These examples don’t describe the reality of America as we know it, but as an ideal place in the dreams of the French who at times feel constrained by the traditions and social expectations that define what it is to be French.

France has been taking it on the chin culturally.

In cinema French films are tremendously overshadowed by Spanish filsm. The only real international hit the French have had in the last decade is Amelie, meanwhile Spain and Mexico have each had quite a few. Ask an American cinema-phile to name a famous Spanish Director and they’ll quickly say Almolvodar. OK, how bout a French one? umm… Pierre something???

The same goes for wines. California, New Zealand, Australia and Argentina are breaking records for production year after year while French wine consumption has been going down, not only abroad, but in France itself. My guess is the best wine comes from California where modern practices are applied with very open minds not just to lower costs, but to increase the quality of the wine.

Wine and film are only a couple of examples. I’m sure there are more. France isn’t just getting beaten at mass-produced low-brow American fare, it’s getting beaten at it’s own game.

France’s over-regulation is now affecting even their most precious industries and I’m sure the French are aware of this. It might account for why they’ve been in such pissy moods the last few years.

France is playing old-fashioned balance-of-power games to cut the largest player down a bit. It’s not personal, just business. Talleyrand and Metternich would recognize it immediately. It galls me most that they maintain the formal posture of a NATO ally while working against us. Nobody trusts a double agent.

… the French are proud of their art, yet America produces the most popular films in the world? (Hollywood)

… the French are proud of their cuisine, yet America produces the most popular “food” in the world? (McDonalds; note the scare quotes on “food”.)

… and so on.

Of course the French hate us. Everything they take pride in doing for the elites, America mass-produces and the “common man” gobbles it up.

…..”A recent study published by French history professor Barbara Lefebvre and journalist Eve Bonnivard concludes that French college textbooks are generally biased against globalization, deeply anti-American and somewhat complacent towards terrorism. French students are taught to approach the future with foreboding and skepticism of market forces. Not surprisingly 76% of French between the ages of 15 and 30 hope to become government employees.

President Chirac seems to relish every opportunity to repudiate the so-called “Anglo-Saxon” caricature of crass, uncaring capitalism and competition. What is this Anglo-Saxon paradigm? Britain has a nationalized health-care system and strong labor unions. Meanwhile, non-Anglo-Saxon, social democratic Sweden has dramatically cut its public debt and Finland achieved low unemployment and a high rate of R&D spending while undertaking economic reforms.

Nevertheless, Mr. Chirac overlooks these successes and draws attention to the external threats to France’s quality of life and l’exception francaise. Consequently” …..

more: this link

http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=
publication_details&id=3960

The french system is “a prideful desire for primacy amongst men”, people are pawns, it is all about a so called elite. The french economy is not very dynamic. The Democracy is not achieved in the sense: politicians are lifelong politicians, coming from the bureaucracy; this bureaucracy inherits from the monarchic absolutism a strong tradition of dominance, of over ruling the country.
@ Ginny: “I have my doubts that their economic system is one we want to emulate, however. I’m quite sure their particular guest worker program is not the solution to our own immigrant problems.” you are right, it doesn’t work, it is based on subsidizations, massive. Yes there is the “art de vivre”, culture, cooking and a language that enables subtleties in the domain of Diplomacy. In my opinion it is a little bit short as regards the problem we have.
@ Shanon love: You are right when you compare the french and the japenese elitist systems both are hierarchical. Do not, never buy into those hierarchical view of hulman relationship.

But Michael Blowhard points out something that this blog has rarely focused on — since we like to talk about economics, technology and warfare more than cultural stuff most of the time (with Ginny being the exception) (Though I did have This one on French culture.). But another aspect of the relationship has been the often grudging recognition among Anglophones that the French have a genuine talent for making life pleasant and amusing and tasty — often to the point of decadence. But there is no denying that on these matters, the French have usually over the centuries been way ahead of us. And they do not have a speck of guilt about it, and they do not have a nagging sense that they should be working when they are indulging in their refined sensuality. And they do seem to get away with more socialistic practices than we could tolerate without choking themselves to death. And this mixture of bilateral, mutual envy and disdain for each other is also a permanent feature of our lives together.

What bothers me is the record of revolutionaries in the twentieth century trained in France; they found such ideas congenial. When they returned to their home countries, tragic quantities of blood were spent. As a superpower balancing various needs, we have no doubt been complicit in some quite unattractive governmental activities. But France’s distinctions between the “reason” of the elites and that of the common man encourages seeing the plebes as pawns in a broader and more systematic way. It works against a basic American vision – that of Whitman’s “For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead.” We retain that sense that spark lies in all of us. We are less likely to believe, as Diderot did, that “the common people are incredibly stupid.” (Thus, of course, leads us to wonder at the EU.)

The division between those who feel aligned with France & those who find Britain more compatible is very very old here, but, generally the British vision wins out.

The giving-the-French-advice thing is just a reflex I can’t intuitively connect with. I think about the two countries as people. We’re doing OK, if with problems. They’re doing OK, if in different ways and with different problems. And when I have an acquaintance who — to all appeareances — is doing well-enough and is fairly happy with how things are going, the last thing I tend to think such a person needs is my advice.

Your point of course is different — it’s that we should laugh in their faces when they sneer and us and offer us advice. And I agree with you completely about that.

We’re suspicious of art, culture, sophistication

No, American’s are suspicious of elitism.

Our cultural problem with France is that as a matter of deep culture, the French do not truly believe in equality. In every relationship, there is a superior and an inferior. One side dominates and the other submits. This leads to an inability of those with near equal power to cooperate effectively. All the great French failures of the last few centuries have occurred because various powerful groups and individuals could not effectively cooperate because they could not agree on who be on top.

The Anglosphere and Americans in particular have a much different attitude towards cooperation. Ours is a culture born of ruthless frontier pragmatism in which the refusal to cooperate to solve an immediate problem is a sign of selfishness and immaturity. The French refusal to cooperate until a social pecking order has been established just seems bizarre to us. If they acquire what they consider a dominate position they act arrogant and condescending. If they they acquire a subordinate position they act petulant and resentful.

The French dominance in artistic matters is the result of centuries of using the arts in their social status competition. Consensus about what constituted great art, fashion and food became group signifiers used to maintain strictures of class and ethnicity. Admiring the French for their art is like admiring the Japanese for lopping off heads with swords. Each is the result of the efforts of an elite to maintain themselves.

Americans are never going to buy into the French hierarchal view of human relationships. We are never going to truly get along.

Ginny — I think you’re right that we’d do well to be wary of France’s approach to economic policies! (Although I think there’s almost always something to be learned by inspecting how other successful countries manage their affairs.) At the same time, I think it’s interesting how well France has done for itself while ignoring our advice. A globe-hopping businessguy I know just came back from Paris. Ate great, worked hard, had a lovely time. “I don’t know how they do it,” he said. “According to all our theories they shouldn’t be doing as well as they are. But somehow they just keep rolling along.” Interesting, no?

Jonathan — I think that’s very shrewd! I think there’s another thing about France too. (Not saying that Shannon is succumbing to this, btw. Just a general observation about a tendency some Americans show to go after France out of all proportion to her importance to us.) There’s something about France that just galls us. What is it? I’m just guessing, but I think it may have to do with a kind of cloddish self-defensiveness we have. We’re populists, people of the people, darn it — real folks. We’re suspicious of art, culture, sophistication. And art, culture, and sophistication are what France is all about. (Whether they do it well or not to one side …) Not only that, but they’re proud of it, and they get a lot of uot of it. (They really do, too.) By everything we value and believe, they should be misersable, as well as an economic failure. But they’re probably more pleased with their lives than we are with ours, and they’re an economic success. Something major doesn’t compute. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. So we return to the France thing over and over. For one thing, we feel a little defensive, surly, and put down. For another — well, crap, they just shouldn’t be as prosperous and pleased with themselves as they are, darn it. Yet year after year they role on, drinking coffee and wine, having affairs, turning piroueets, turning their noses up at us, and to all appearances having a really good time of it.

But I’ve taken things too far off-topic. Apologies.

It seems dangerous to ignore them. And, yes, if they do something well (they know how to cook and how to dress) we need to appreciate their strengths. I have my doubts that their economic system is one we want to emulate, however. I’m quite sure their particular guest worker program is not the solution to our own immigrant problems. (It’s always nice to see a visitor from such an interesting blog.)

Michael,

Are you generally in the habit of affirming in every particular what you deny in general?

Why should virtually anything the French do bug us one way or the other? They aren’t that significant, and little that they do has any impact on us. So they act superior. Why not let ‘em? It’s not like it gets in our way.

I guess there are two points I’d make. (And I’m no France-Sweden lover, believe you me.) One’s that the French, at least as I knew ‘em, really really enjoy being French. (The whole cheese-eating, sneering-at-the-US, affairs-in-the-afternoon, going-on-strike-every-six-months thing.) They get up in the morning looking forward to being French. Things may have changed since. But you almost never see a French person who’s jittery or overstressed (let alone a fat nervous overeater) in the American way. They’re generally speaking getting something out of life that’s a big mystery to most Americans. I submit that, so far as this goes anyway, we shut up and learn. Oh: hey, we used to. Americans used to go to France in large numbers and return convinced that they’d learned a lot about l’art de vivre. I was one of them, come to think of it.

The other is the attitude towards economics. Hard though it is to believe, not only do the French think we’re full of it, they’re pretty pleased about how they go about things. And in many ways they’re right to be pleased. They were a very poor, defeated nation in 1945. By 1990 they were rich and dynamic. And they didn’t do it by following American advice, or by paying much attention at all to what they view as Anglo-American economics. They went about getting rich in their own way, and it worked pretty darned well. Can we point out flaws and gaps? Sure. As if we don’t any that can be picked apart?

I dunno, my own tendency is to giggle over their arrogance, not take it too seriously, and marvel at the way they seem to do awfully well for themselves. Honestly, it goes further than that. I think that French success (relatively speaking) throws a lot of conventional economics into question. Maybe some of what we take to be absolutes really aren’t that absolute after all. In any case, I’m pretty sure the French aren’t going to be listening to us or taking our advice. Or if they do, they’ll make of it something that suits them. And it’ll probably work out pretty well.

To repeat: I’m not saying this as a particular fan of France, let alone as someone who wants America to emulate France. But, come on, they’re a pretty impressive culture, and even a pretty impressive economy.

“Progressive” as in people in America who call themselves “progressive” will often point to Canada, France, and Sweden as exemplars. For well known real world examples of “progressives” consider Michael Moore or Jeremy Rifkin.

“French” is another word for “progressive”. Substitute “Swedish” or “Canadian” as facts dictate.

Don’t take it personally. Unless the shoe fits.

A second critical take comes from “A Collective Loss of Europe’s Will”: Daniel Johnson notes that “the Bush administration should be worried that Europe is in such disarray on the very issue that should be uniting the West.” Noting differences with the lead-up to WWI, he contends the last week has shown us much: “April 10, 2006, was not so apocalyptic, but its symbolism is nonetheless potent.”