Author: M. Miller

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Summer Lessons Day 12: Figures and Registers

Nicolas Hulot and Emmanuel Macron

Oh, no! Vacation is over and I have to go back to work tomorrow morning. That means if I don’t write up the last two days of my summer lessons now, they’ll likely get buried in the onslaught of quotidien concerns that no doubt are currently overflowing my corporate Inbox (I’m afraid to look …).

Thursday’s course with Léo was a bit non-standard – quite literally. French teachers, dictionaries, and linguistic theorists pay a fair amount of attention to the idea of linguistic register. Some subsets of a language are only “appropriate” to use in certain situations which are typically characterized by their degree of formality. There are dozens of recognized subsets (see the International Organization for Standardization’s ISO/TR 20694:2018(en) A typology of language registers if you’re a real glutton for punishment), but the main three that figure in French are soutenu, standard, and familier:

  • Soutenu is the language of high literary texts, academic scholarship, and legal documents. It has a rich vocabulary, flowery figures of speech, and complex grammatical constructions.
  • Standard is the language of business documents, office conversation, banking, government publications, newspapers, non-fiction books, traditional classrooms. It uses clear wording, simpler grammar, and unimaginative language.
  • Familier is the language used with friends and family. It is rich with popular idioms, truncated words, incomplete sentences, slang, and sarcasm.

Thursday we left standard behind and focused on the other two.

Soutenu (mais Insupportable!)

To illustrate soutenu, Léonard had me read an ironic blog post by Samuel Gontier about the resignation of Nicolas Hulot. The piece comments on a rather tangled situation, with which by some unlikely coincidence I was already very familiar. Nicolas Hulot is a writer, journalist, and politician who is very well known in France as one of the foremost advocates of environmental and ecological issues. When Emmanuel Macron was elected president in 2017, Hulot agreed to serve as his “Minister for Ecological Transition and Solidarity”. This was intended as a signal that Macron was serious about addressing environmental issues, and the French Greens had high hopes that such a high profile appointment would translate into real progress.

It so happens that I was in France in August 2018, fifteen months later, when I tuned into France Inter’s regular morning radio news broadcast. As I got ready for my day, I heard Nicolas Hulot appear as the guest in the daily interview slot with hosts Nicolas Demorand and Léa Salamé. After complaining about the Macron government’s foot-dragging or even retrograde progress on the environment, Nicolas Hulot said he was not satisfied and felt like he was being used as a fig leaf. At that point Mme Salamé asked “Will you stay?”, and the minister replied by announcing his resignation on the spot, on live radio. Apparently neither the hosts nor the French President knew that this action was coming, and both were taken as much by surprise as the listening public.

But not me – I wasn’t all that surprised. Not that I had an inside track on anything, I just had no preconceptions. Maybe French Ministers resign live on air all the time? Maybe the whole thing was planned in advance and the hosts were in on it? Maybe the writing was on the wall and any knowledgable follower of French politics knew this was coming (just as nobody could have been surprised when scandal plagued Andrew Cuomo resigned as New York Governor last week – though Hulot’s case did not involve any scandals). What did I know?

But it turns out that this was a big deal. My French host had also heard the broadcast and thought it remarkable. So did other news outlets, and the story was all over the news for several days. “Environmental champion resigns, preserves his integrity, blasts Macron” was the basic headline. Next, however, France Inter started patting itself on the back mightily for being the messenger in this drama. Léa Salamé rehashed the moment in the next morning’s show (I heard that one, too), and later sat for an interview (which I also heard) with another member of the station who did an “On the Media” style introspection on how the moment came to be, what it meant for live radio journalism, what special rapport the three participants shared in the making of history.

All of this was a bit too precious for media critic Samuel Gontier. He skewered all this self-congratulatory pretentiousness with a faux-serious piece of his own. It was so full of soutenu constructions that my teacher Léo could use it as atlas of literary figures of speech. Many of them have names that come directly from Greek, and so are cognate with the comparable terms in English rhetoric. The devices we discussed were myriad: la gradation, l’hyperbole, l’euphémisme, la litote, l’anaphore, l’énumération, le parallélisme, la répétition, l’allégorie, la comparaison, la métaphore, la personnifcation, la métonymie, la périphrase, la synecdoque, l’antithèse, le chiasme, l’oxymore, l’ellipse, l’épiphonème. I don’t know that it was all that valuable to remind myself of the names of each technique, but it was fun to locate examples of many in the text. Not sure how much fun it would have been had I not known all the context deeply.

Familier (… or Hiéfamil ? )

After all that high dudgeon it was time for something more casual. A lot more casual. We looked at two aspects of the familier register: verlan (neologisms made by inverting syllables within a word) and colorful idioms.

I was already fairly familiar with verlan as a concept, but I learned several things about its history from the video. There was also an example of the French rail company trying and utterly failing to use verlan in an ad-campaign, rewriting «C’est possible» as «C’est blessipo». This did not go over well: turns out corporations making neologisms is not cool. It reminds me of a failed attempt by Google to introduce the availability of “stickers” in its messaging app by sending users a text saying that “Stickers are lit”. I had no idea what “lit” meant, but it turns out that’s what the cool kids were saying at the time. Since Google was far from being a cool kid at that point, the campaign fell totally flat. I’m pretty sure my hiéfamil is equally clunky.

Finally, we looked at a standard article about Grant Wood’s famous painting and then a familier comedy video parodying same. The figures come to life and give each other grief for their expressions (the literal once on their face, not the idiomatic ones in their mouths). Even if you can’t understand the French, it’s fun to watch how well the actors recreated the poses of the painting. Give it a play!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpFw5LBdIr8&t=11s
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Manual Entry: J’ai perdu mon corps

In addition to taking lessons this week, I’ve been watching a bunch of French movies. The latest of these is J’ai perdu mon corps, another from the list of films that Léo introduced me to on Tuesday. Released in 2019, it is an unusual and imaginative 80 minute animated feature voiced by a collection of actors unfamiliar to me. There is some dialogue, but also long uninterrupted stretches of music backing the animation. There are three principal characters: a young man, perhaps 20, born in Morocco but living in France; a young woman of the same age who works at a library and helps her ailing uncle; and a severed hand that has become active and escaped from a hospital lab freezer. Oh yeah, now might be a good time to translate the movie’s title: “I Lost My Body”. It’s based on a novel Happy Hand, published 2006.

The hand never interacts overtly with the other two characters, but spends a fair amount of time skittering around on five fingers, traversing floors, stairs, escalators, metro rails, building gutters, and a blind-man’s piano. The hand doesn’t speak, which partially explains the long scenes without dialogue. Other wordless scenes are reminiscences of better days: the young man was orphaned at age 10 and thinks of his parents often. The hand recalls when it ran through the sand, played the cello, or felt a snail. The story that plays out with all these scenes is not a happy one. How could it be when one character witnessed his parents death in a car crash, and the other witnessed its originating industrial accident, uh, first hand. But seeing all this tragedy playing out before me and learning eventually how the stories connect was unexpectedly heavy.

J’ai perdu mon corps won a slew of awards when it was released, including the 2019 Cannes Festival Grand Prize and 2020 César Prizes for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Score. The critics loved it, but it seems to have been a financial flop. It grossed just $1 million, while costing $5 million to make. Netflix picked it up and re-dubbed it with English audio (easy to do with animated features, I understand), which again makes me wonder about modern movie economics. There were no French closed-captions available, so I watched it on Netflix with French audio and no subtitles. The language was pretty easy to follow, and what I missed was not critical.

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Can’t Touch This !

You’ve likely heard of Omar Sy as the star of the Netflix series Lupin, and I just wrote a post about a recent submarine film he appears in, Le Chant du loup. But the film that really jump-started Sy’s career was Intouchables (2011), a blockbuster odd-couple story about Philippe (played by François Cluzet), a wheelchair-bound invalid , and Driss (played by Omar Sy), the home health-aid he hires for round-the-clock care and companionship. The two men come from different worlds. Philippe is an enormously wealthy, cultured, white, fifty-year-old Parisian who lost the use of all four limbs in a paragliding accident and then lost his wife to illness. Driss is a twenty-something jewel thief recently released from prison, Black, broke and living in the housing projects of the banlieue. He has no qualifications to be an aid, but shows up to interview for the post in order to satisfy some requirement to qualify for unemployment benefits. Philippe refuses to sign the relevant form (noting ironically his paralysis) but instead hires Driss for the job.

Philippe obviously likes Driss’s bluster, broad smile, and joie-de-vivre, but he later explains to a concerned brother that the main reason he hired Driss is that there was no pity in his gaze when he looks at Philippe. Driss doesn’t treat him like a fragile thing, a freak, or a benefactor to be indulged. Tending Philippe is just a gig that eventually becomes hanging out with a friend and pushing that friend back into the world. Philippe in turn has a chance to educate Driss and introduce him to music, art and literature. I can imagine a story like this falling flat, but this instance manages to avoid obvious tropes, is well paced, has funny dialog, and evolves multiple times to remain fresh.

Still, the film only succeeds because of Omar Sy’s exuberant performance of Driss. And succeed it has: it was the top film at the French box office for 10 weeks in a row in 2011, had an international release in 50 countries, and eventually grossed $440 million in theaters (annoyingly, there are no French closed-captions available in the Netflix version, and you can’t de-activate the English sub-titles. I had to block the bottom third of my screen to avoid being distracted). Its production budget was only $10 million, so it was a financial home run. Maybe that’s how the movie industry operates: they can’t differentiate in advance a film that will barely break even like Le Chant du loup from a film that will pay for itself dozens of time over like Intouchables. Funny business.

One last note about the title, «Intouchables». The word has two surface meanings, but I think there is a third irony hiding just beneath. The literal meaning of the adjective is “that which should not be touched.” You could imagine this applying to something fragile, possibly Philippe, or to something dangerous or odious, like Driss. The second meaning is “someone who is out of the reach of the law, who cannot be sanctioned.” This meaning is apparent in the opening scene of the film: Driss is driving a fancy sports car at night through the streets of Paris, speeding and ignoring traffic signs, while Philippe is in the passenger seat grinning madly with the thrill. When the cops eventually stop him, Driss asserts that his patient is having a seizure and needs to get to the hospital urgently. The cops are unconvinced, but between Philippe’s acting and the wheel chair in the trunk, they agree to escort them to the hospital. Uncomfortable, the police drive off once they’ve arrived, at which point our heroes laugh and drive off themselves. With a handicap like this (and a billion dollars in the bank), you can get away with anything!

But the third meaning is (only slightly) subtler. Driss only showed up and applied for the job because he needed to go through the motions in order to collect unemployment. The French phrase for this is «toucher des indemnités chômage», as «toucher» can mean “to collect”, “to draw” (e.g. a salary), or “to receive” (e.g. a stipend). So by hiring Driss instead of validating his form, Philippe prevented him from collecting unemployment funds, thus rendering them «intouchable». The first two meanings come across in the English title (“The Intouchables”), but the financial meaning likely does not.

See? Totally worth studying a foreign language to pick up on small details like that.

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Subwoofer: Le Chant du loup

The Wolf’s Call (aka “sonar”)

I had a chance to watch one of the films that Léo introduced me to on Tuesday: Le Chant du loup a 2019 submarine movie starring François Civil, Reda Kateb, and Mathieu Kassovitz. Omar Sy and polymath Alexis Michalik also appear in supporting roles. I recognized Civil, as he plays Hippolyte Barneville in the series Dix Pour Cent. Le Chant du loup didn’t make much of a splash in France, and box office receipts only covered 60% of production costs despite being in theaters for 21 weeks. It didn’t have theatrical releases outside of France, though that might have been fallout from Covid. I watched it on Netflix; I wonder how much of the revenue for movies like this comes from post-theatrical streaming services.

I have an odd relationship with submarine fiction. On the one hand, I feel like I know the tropes by heart: close quarters, limited communications, critical sonar and radio operators, torn or tyrannical captains, mystery sounds, incomplete information about the ocean and its natural or man-made inhabitants. I must have seen this story a million times. On the other hand, I don’t think I’ve seen enough submarine movies to exhaust the fingers on said hand. There’s Hunt for Red October, U-571, … uh, maybe that’s it? Maybe I’ve read a ton of submarine fiction? Patrick Robinson’s Nimitz Class, some scenes in Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, … uh, the novel of Red October…

No, It’s not that I’ve seen or read lots of these. Just to be sure, I consulted Wikipedia’s list of 150 submarine movies, and indeed I’ve seen just the two. So why does Le Chant du loup seem so familiar? I think it must be that Hunt for Red October is so iconic that the other works can’t help but echo it with slight variations.

In any event, Le Chant du loup is OK, but extremely predictable to anyone who has seen or read Tom Clancy’s masterpiece. At first I tried watching the film with audio only, but found I was missing too many of the particulars and just relying on my guesses of how the story must be going. After 30 minutes of this I turned on the French closed-captions and restarted from the beginning. Smooth sailing from there, as the language is not difficult when read; some combination of the speed, the informal delivery, and the loud music/sound effects made it hard with no closed captions.

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Summer Lessons Day 11: Concordance des temps, Langage familier

Whatever you do, don’t look back!

Wednesday’s lessons were with Sofia once again, and as before we covered a ton of ground. We reviewed that bête noir of advanced grammar the Concordance of Tenses, and also looked at indefinite determinants. We also did a bit of reading comprehension around French beliefs in pseudo-sciences and bogus medicine. But the majority of the time was spent on oral comprehension of more difficult language: fast, informal, mumbled, and even (gasp!) Québecois! Oh, and we did another timed writing exercise to round it out.

Grammar first: when I hear “indefinite determinant”, I usually think of a matrix with a mix of positive and negative eigenvalues. But that’s not what we studied during the lesson. Instead we looked at words like “some”, “few”, “most”, “all”, or “no” – words which give a vague sense of quantity without being specific: “Few children like spinach”. If you think about it for a moment, it’s obvious to English speakers that there’s a natural order of these: “no” < “few” < “some” < “most” < “all”. There’s likely other words you could fit in there somewhere as well (e.g. “several”, “many”).

How about in French? That was the subject of the mini-lesson on indefinite determinants. French has the added wrinkle of using different words for singular concepts and plural collections. Here’s the rough ordering for singular quantities:

{aucun, nul, pas un} < {un, l’autre} < {quelque, quelconque} < certain < maint < { chaque, tout }

For plural quantities, there’s other words like «divers», «différents», and «plusieurs» that figure in the mix as well. I didn’t quite catch all the nuances on when to use the singular version and when the plural version, but interesting and worth more study.

After the grammar work it was on to oral comprehension. We started with a video about the painting “Orpheus and Eurydice” by Peter Paul Rubens. The original is in the Prado museum in Spain, but YouTuber Manon Bril has a poster on her apartment wall. When she made this video, Bril was still a PhD student in modern history and writing a thesis on the portrayal of Athena in the 19th century (explained in only 180 seconds here). But she already had a side gig of making videos about famous artwork. Her style is irreverent, fast, choppy, and with a lot of asides, so it’s a decent challenge to understand. I was helped by the recent popularity of the musical Hadestown, though it took me forever to figure out that “AH-dess” was the French pronunciation of Hades (“HEY-dees” in my dialect).

Next up was a long journalistic piece about whether Instagram photos, and specifically the wide spread use of photo filters and photo manipulation apps like Facetune, are driving people to make more changes their actual bodies. Apparently, ordinary people are not only getting unhappy that they don’t look like the glamorous celebrities they see on TV or the internet, they are getting unhappy about not looking like the modified selfies that they themselves create and post to social networks. Having gotten used to the doctored photos, they now go to the doctor to augment their bodies. That all sounds pretty terrible to my ears, but it sounds even worse when explained in a thick Québecois accent. And worse still, when discussed by Québecois students at community college with bad microphones and no training in communications. Quite a listening challenge for me.

After discussing what I did and didn’t understand from the Instagram story, it was time for written production! Same conditions as before: 25 minutes, no tools or reference works, 250 words. The prompt was «Selon toi, qu’est-ce qui construit l’idéal de beauté d’une société? Penses-tu que notre idée de la beauté a tendance à s’harmoniser? Pourquoi?» (“In your opinion, who dictates the notion of beauty in a society? Do you think our ideas of tend to converge? Why?”) Here’s my response, together with Sofia’s corrections (I didn’t do any further self-correction after the 25 minutes were up).

Version originale

Quand on parle de la beauté, on pense souvent des idées, ou philosophiques ou artistiques. Mais en outre il y a aussi des phenomène moins raffinés: la puissance politique, la commerce, et la communautarisme. Un partie de ces dynamiques pousse en direction d’harminosation, mais une autre part pousse vers la diversité.

Dans les société aristocratiques, les nobles ou les gens de haute classes s’ornent avec les vêtements distincts, les perruques, le maquillage, etc. C’est un manière d’afficher leurs richesses, mais ça devient un standard pour la beauté. Souvent les gens dans la classe moyen essaient d’imiter cette mode soit pour faire entrer dans la société de la classe haute, soit pour emprunter pour eux-même le parfum de pouvoir. Évidement les nobles et les riches sont tous beaux, et ainsi cet imitation des nobles pèse vers l’uniformité de l’idéal.

En revanche, il y a souvent des mouvement politiques en opposition et dont le sentiment contrarien jaille au niveau aesthetique. Donc ils forment leurs propres idéal de beauté qui existe justement pour les differencier avec les élites. De cette manière chaque communauté genère une nouvelle idée de la beauté.

Enfin, au fond de tout est toujours l’argent. Les commerçants ont deux strategème possible. On peut déclarer: «Vous devez acheter ceci et cela pour être beau, tout le monde le fait.» Ou …

Version corrigée

Quand on parle de la beauté, on pense souvent à des idées, soit philosophiques soit artistiques. Mais en outre il y a aussi des phénomènes moins raffinés: la puissance politique, la commerce, et la communautarisme. Une partie de ces dynamiques pousse en direction de l’harmonisation, mais une autre part pousse vers la diversité.

Dans les sociétés aristocratiques, les nobles ou les gens de la haute bourgeoisie s’ornent avec des vêtements distincts, des perruques, du maquillage, etc. C’est une manière d’afficher leurs richesses, mais ça devient un standard pour la beauté. Souvent les gens dans la classe moyenne essaient d’imiter cette mode soit pour faire entrer dans la société de la classe supérieure, soit pour emprunter pour eux-même le parfum de pouvoir. Évidemment les nobles et les riches sont tous beaux, et ainsi cette imitation des nobles pèse vers l’uniformité de l’idéal.

En revanche, il y a souvent des mouvements politiques en opposition et dont le sentiment contraire rejaillit au niveau esthétique. Donc ils forment leurs propres idéaux de beauté qui existent justement pour les différencier des élites. De cette manière chaque communauté genère une nouvelle idée de la beauté.

Enfin, au fond de tout est toujours une question d’argent. Les commerçants ont deux stratagèmes possibles. On peut déclarer: «Vous devez acheter ceci et cela pour être beau, tout le monde le fait.» Ou …

You don’t have to look too closely to notice I made tons of errors around the masculine / feminine gender of nouns. Sofia says the best way to practices that is with any of innumerable online quizzes. Just a few minutes each day, she proposes. I prefer to be lazy and just read and listen a whole bunch more, but she’s probably right.

Last order of the day: identify and understand spoken slang! I found this pretty much impossible. Here’s a short sketch about a patient who visits the doctor to try to get an excuse note for work, when in fact he’s perfectly well. The doctor sees this everyday and tries to make the visit as onerous as possible. Here’s just a small sample of the words and expressions that I was supposed to catch, but which totally went over my head:

«se bouger le cul»: se dépêcher
«un branleur»: un fainéant
«la flemme»: un manque d’envie
«s’être blindé»: avoir réviser sur un sujet

Note that «blindé» by itself just means “very rich”, which is not the same as «s’être blindé»

It’s always good to know one’s limits, and I’ve pretty clearly hit mine. I guess that’s what separates a student in a C1 French course from a student ready for level C2.

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Summer Lessons Day 10: Enchaînement and Bandes Annonces

Illustre inconnue de TV5Monde

Lessons with ILA continued today with Léonard, whom I worked with for the first time today. After a short get-to-know-you discussion, we moved on to an exercise (freely available) from TV5Monde centered around a short video sketch: Illustre inconnue (unrelated to a 2014 film of the same name). It’s a cute farce about an aspiring actress and a scheme gone wrong. It shared a lot of the vocabulary with Dix Pour Cent, which helped my comprehension.

Next we dove into a grammar topic I found extremely helpful, how to link ideas in an essay / speech / argument (l’enchaînement des idées). He presented these grouped by their function.

  1. Expressions that mark an enumeration: d’abord, premièrement, en premier lieu; ensuite, deuxièmement, en second lieu; enfin, dernièrement, en dernier lieu, finalement; d’une part … d’autre part; en somme, pour conclure.
  2. Expressions that add to or extend an idea: en ce qui concerne; non seulement … mais; de plus; en outre; par ailleurs; de même; ensuite; d’autre part; aussi (à l’intérieur d’une phrase); également.
  3. Expressions that concede some ground in an argument: pourtant; toutefois; cependant; néanmoins; mais.
  4. Expressions that introduce an explanation: en effet; car; c’est à dire.
  5. Expression that introduce an example: ainsi; pour ce que est de; par exemple; quant à.
  6. Expressions that place ideas in opposition: en revanche; au contraire; par contre.
  7. Expressions that indicate a consequence: c’est pourquoi; en conséquences; d’òu; par conséquent; ainsi; alors; donc; aussi (au début d’une phrase).
  8. Expressions that indicate a refutation: certes … mais; bien sûr … mais.

I’m tempted to create an analogous grouping of expressions in English without aiming for a one-to-one translation within each group

As a quick understanding check, we did a James Bond-themed fill-in-the-blank exercise from École Suisse. Then we dove a bit more deeply into ways to express opposition using expressions function as different parts of speech:

  • conjunctions: alors que; tandis que; si (+ indicatif).
  • adverbs: au contraire; à l’opposé; inversement; en revanche; par contre.
  • prepositions: contrairement à; à l’inverse de; à la place de; au lieu de.
  • other: quant à + nom/pronom; pour ma (ta / sa / …) part; de mon (ton / son / …) côté); en ce qui me (te / vous / les / …) concerne.

Whew! Lots of grammar. I will have to find ways to practice using these. Just having lists and categories won’t get me that far, I suspect.

From the rest of the lesson we covered lighter fare. First Léonard introduced four movie posters and asked me to speculate on the nature of each film based just on the poster:

It was a fun exercise. Next he had me watch the trailer of each film and then revise my opinion after each one. Here they are:

Finally, he asked me to write a paragraph or two comparing these four films. Given I had only 10 minutes remaining and only posters and trailers to go on, my writing was pretty junky. I’ll post it here to keep myself honest, but it’s full of mistakes:

Cet après-midi mon enseignant de français m’a proposé quatre films: Énorme, Le Chant du loup, Les Misérables, et J’ai perdu mon corps. C’est une collection tellement variée. Les deux derniers abordent des thèmes sérieux. En revanche, Énorme et Chant du loup sont ciblés vers des gens qui veulent seulement s’amuser sans refléchir. Énorme imagine une situation assez commune en couple: tandis que l’homme veut être papa, la femme s’oppose à l’idée. Il trafique sa pilule, ainsi une grossesse arrive.

Autant Énorme est drole, autant Chant du loup est intense….

That about wraps up Day 10. I have to confess, I’m starting to get worn out with these intensive lessons. But I’m sure I’m still learning, and I am enjoying myself, so onwards to Day 11!

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Summer Lessons Day 9: La Peine de Mort, Hiro

Happy Monday! On this first day of of the third week of my French Staycation I worked with a new teacher, Sofia, as part of my package of lessons from ILA in Montpellier. We covered an awful lot of ground in four hours, and I’m looking forward to working with Sofia again twice more this week.

After basic introductions we took as our jumping off point the mechanics of making verbal tenses agree between clauses. This sounds like a fairly dry grammatical point, but Sofia did a great job of weaving it into many different activities:

  • Converting direct discourse to indirect discourse: Converting “‘If don’t all get vaccinated, the pandemic will last longer’, said French President Macron.” to “French President Macron said that if we didn’t all get vaccinated the pandemic would last longer.” We reviewed the rules and did some online exercises.
  • We watched a video of woman-on-the-street interviews about what eating will be like in the future, then it was up to me to relate what each person said using this indirect discourse technique. One of people interviewed brought up science-fiction writer René Barjavel, whom I had not heard of. He wrote La nuit de temps, which apparently involves people eating only gel capsules. I’ll have to add it (and also his L’Enchanteur) to my reading list.

Next we turned to vocabulary and mechanics for expressing ones opinion about something. We started with a heavy subject (capital punishment) and then moved on to the efficacy of a French ad campaign and finally a news story about an unusual gathering in Spain.

  • First we read together a famous speech against the death penalty by Victor Hugo in the National Assembly in 1848. The official transcript records at times reactions and heckling, and from which side of the aisle it arose: “«Nous l’abolirons!» (Agitation.)” or “«…renversez l’echafaud.» (Vif assentiment sur plusieurs bancs.)” Pretty funny. Sofia noted a neat rhetorical trick that Hugo uses, invoking “the will of the people”, when (then as now) it was in fact the elite who reliably opposed capital punishment while the majority of the public often supported it.
  • After that, we watched a modern, teen-produced video about the eventual end of the death penalty in France in 1981. Sofia introduced it by noting that the speaker was an amateur who mashed his words a bit, and that this was a deliberate challenge for oral comprehension. I actually had little difficulty understanding him aside from not catching the name of Mitterand’s first Justice Minister (Robert Badinter). It helps that I had studied much of this history in French lessons over the last five years (don’t remember which ones). One of the earliest George Brassens songs (Le Gorille) is about the brutality of the death penalty, though it’s not apparent until the final verse: 
La suite serait délectable
Malheureusement, je ne peux
Pas la dire, et c'est regrettable
Ça nous aurait fait rire un peu
Car le juge, au moment suprême
Criait "maman!", pleurait beaucoup
Comme l'homme auquel, le jour même
Il avait fait trancher le cou
Gare au gorille!
  • Next, Sofia asked me to write on the spot 250 words about the death penalty in the US, and about my opinion. She gave me 25 minutes to do it. I didn’t do a great job of managing my time, and spent way too much of it researching the facts of the subject instead of writing the response. Here’s the very rushed 293 words I produced. It turns out it’s a lot harder to write at speed, and without frequent recourse to resources like Linguée or Larousse. Here’s my first draft produced under time pressure, and the version with Sofia’s corrections applied.

Version originale

Aux États-Unis, la peine de mort reste légale au niveau féderale et aussi en 27 sur 50 des États individuelles (mais en trois parmi eux le gouvernor a imposé une pause légale d’une durée indefini). Il y a chaque année une trentaine d’executions judiciare, dont les plupart sont ordonnées par un gouvernement d’un État. De 1970 à 2020, il n’y avait aucune execution au niveaux fédérale, mais ça a changé pendant la campagne de reélection de Donald Trump en 2020. Il a ordonnés 13 executions dans les dernières douze mois de son mandat. Le dernier incuplé exécuté par l’État a été le 16 janvier 2021.

Dans les années 1990, le president actuel, Joseph Biden, a championé les projets (devenues lois) qui punissaient quelques crime avec cette peine, mais pendant la campaigne de 2020 il a adouci sa position. Malgré un absence d’execution après son instauration, il a évité à faire une prononcement claire sur sa position. Dans l’état ou j’habite, le Massachusetts, la dernière execution a été achevé en 1947, mais la peine de mort n’était pas aboli jusqu’à 1984. 

Selon moi, la question de l’abolir ou garder la peine de mort est trop exagéré dans notre societé. Quant à moi, je suis contre la peine de mort, mais s’il reste disponible dans les cas les plus grave, ça peut exister sans trop de mal pour nos société. Il y a beaucoup plus d’injustice dans le comportement quotidienne de la Police, dans les abuses dans le système pénale, et dans les inégalité econimique. Pris ensemble tous ces injustice cause beaucoup plus de mort que les execution gouvernementale. Je préférais que les opposant de la peine de mort concentraient sur le sort de ce qui reste vivant que de lutter pour les plus culpable.

Version corrigée

Aux États-Unis, la peine de mort reste légale au niveau féderal et aussi en 27 sur 50 des États (mais en trois parmi eux le gouverneur a imposé une pause légale d’une durée indéfinie). Il y a chaque année une trentaine d’exécutions judiciaires, dont la plupart sont ordonnées par un gouvernement d’un État. De 1970 à 2020, il n’y a eu aucune exécution au niveau fédéral, mais ça a changé pendant la campagne de réélection de Donald Trump en 2020. Il a ordonné 13 exécutions dans les douze dernièrs mois de son mandat. Le dernier inculpé a été exécuté par l’État le 16 janvier 2021.

Dans les années 1990, le président actuel, Joseph Biden, a soutenu les projets (devenus lois) qui punissaient certains crimes avec cette peine, mais pendant la campagne de 2020 il a adouci sa position. Malgré un absence d’exécution après son instauration, il a évité de se prononcer clairement sur sa position. Dans l’état ou j’habite, le Massachusetts, la dernière execution a eu lieu en 1947, mais la peine de mort n’a été aboli qu’en 1984. 

Selon moi, la question d’abolir ou de garder la peine de mort est trop exagérée dans notre societé. Quant à moi, je suis contre la peine de mort, mais si elle reste possible dans les cas les plus graves, ça peut exister sans trop de mal pour nos société. Il y a beaucoup plus d’injustice dans le comportement quotidien de la Police, dans les abus dans le système pénal, et dans les inégalités économiques. Prises ensemble, toutes ces injustices causent beaucoup plus de morts que les exécutions gouvernementales. Je préférerais que les opposants de la peine de mort se concentrent sur le sort de ceux qui restent vivant plutôt que de lutter pour les plus coulpables.

Time for something lighter! Three closing pieces.

  • We watched and discussed a video about the creation of an advertising campaign for Decathlon sports: «Le sport rend le monde meilleur». Again, the theme was oral comprehension followed by expressing my opinion on a subject.
  • We read an article from the International Courier about a recent gathering of Rainbow Family (translated into French from the original in El Mundo), happening this year in La Rioja, a region of northern Spain. Think Burning Man, but with multiple chapters, more sex, less drugs, and topping out at 30,000 people. The one in La Rioja has only 100 or so. I’ll leave to my readers’ imagination my opinion on this subject.
  • Last item of the day, we watched a music video of a song entitled “Hiro” by singer Soprano. In it a 30 year old French man enumerates all the things he would do if he could travel back in time like Hiro Nakamura. This was a nice way of going full circle with the original grammar exercise – the whole song is phrased with hypothetical subordinate clauses: «Si j’avais eu le pouvoir de Hiro Nakamura, … J’aurais été voir mon grand-père une dernière fois, … J’aurais été accueillir Mahomet à Médine … J’aurais créé un gigantesque bouchon sous le pont de l’Alma.»

Whew! What a packed morning of lessons. Tomorrow I get to start anew with other teacher of the week, Léonard. I’m sure I’ll learn lots more.

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Je ne cours pas, je vole!: An Olympic reflection

I thought I was done writing for today having churned out three articles this morning already. But apparently my after-lunch coffee propelled me through the all-but-latest issue from L’avant-scène théâtre. They are still catching up from a roughly six month hiatus, so this issue is labeled «1er janvier 2021» despite having arrived in late July 2021, and despite featuring a play that had its opening run in late June.

Je ne cours pas, je vole! (“I don’t run, I fly!”) is another show that had a run at the Festival d’Avignon Off. I have no idea if it will get picked up by a production company for a subsequent Paris engagement. On the one hand, it was written by Élodie Menant and directed by Johanna Boyé, the same team that created the successful Est-ce que j’ai une gueule d’Arletty?, winner of two Molières in 2018. It was also sponsored in part by Théatre 13 and La Pépinière Théâtre, Paris outfits both. On the other hand, it’s not a great show (in my opinion) and is topical enough to give it a short shelf-life.

The show’s debut was perfectly timed to coincide with the Covid-delayed 2021 (né 2020) summer Olympics in Tokyo, as its subject is the motivations, obstacles, and psychologies of Olympic athletes. The main character is a fictional French track hopeful Julie Linard, but real-life personalities Usain Bolt, Haile Gebreselassie, Laure Manaudou and Rafael Nadal all appear as supporting characters with substantial air time.

Je ne cours pas, je vole! has decent mechanics, with interlaced scenes of training session, family discussions, tensions with her coach, internal monologues of self-doubt or dedication, and play-by-play narrations of competitions. The story line avoids being predictable, as it’s neither a straight shot to a cathartic payoff after all that hard work, nor a tragic downfall stemming from some fatal flaw. Julie has some setbacks in the 2008 Olympics, overcomes some difficulties with more than generic particulars, and ends up blowing past her best previous times while still falling short of the 2012 Olympic podium.

https://vimeo.com/572149196

The opening and final scenes feature Julie as a sports reporter covering the 2016 Olympic games. In the press conferences she asks various established champions questions that are a little too obviously aimed at herself as much as at those who are still competing. But the answers they give are varied, amusing, and original, and the answers that she eventually gives to herself are original and communicated to the audience with some subtext.

Overall there’s just not that much new or interesting here. By the very nature of their enterprise, track athletes are easily stereotyped as one dimensional, and this show doesn’t do much to move the audience off that preconception. Sure, Julie has a family, and a history of asthma, and some psychic dialogue with other great athletes of her time. But fundamentally, she runs in a straight line. She trains, she runs, she tries to run faster, she wins or she loses. Julie may feel that she flies, but this play never gets beyond just running.

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Summer Lessons Days 6-8: Toilets, cows, theater and vacations

My second week of online vacation lessons chez moi has come to an unexpectedly early end. I met with my teacher Dominique, furnished by the Institut Linguistique d’Adanet of Montpellier, France, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week. Thursday was a scheduled day off, but early this morning I learned that Dominique had to cancel our Friday session for unnamed reasons. I’m hoping to do one more week of classes with ILA and a different teacher, but we’ll see if that materializes – Covid is once again disrupting all sorts of activities in France.

Dominique is a devotee of French film and was the source of the recommendations for Molière and Le Prénom which I wrote about earlier. He suggested a few others (Cuisine et dépendence, Les Choristes, Knock) that I plan to watch in the coming weeks. Our classes were a familiar mix of reading short texts or listening to short audio, and then discussing them. There was a smaller amount of written production, and the grammar work was limited to one set of exercises on prepositions.

Here are some of the item we’ve looked at together.

  • Copier Cloner, a short animation about the folly of modern techniques for raising beef cattle:
  • Le théâtre à nu, a recent newspaper column reviewing three books about French theater (got that?): Sauver le moment , a memoir by actor Nicolas Bouchaud; Patrice Chéreau l’intranquille, a biography and analysis of this important director; and S’adresser à tous, a challenging critique of the historical breadth of French theater and its recent cooptation by the forces of capitalism or neoliberalism.
  • Vacances pour tous, une utopie qui s’éloigne, a recent newspaper column about the evolution of the French notion of vacation as an institution in and of itself, starting with the emergence from World War II, and detailing the involvement of workers committees, dedicated paycheck deductions, and the construction of government subsidized vacation housing. From the early 80’s or so it’s been downhill in the eyes of this columnist, as first independent mutual tourism societies and then for-profit businesses have moved into the industry, pushing out their more egalitarian predecessors and catering exclusively to the well-heeled. In the thick of the fourth wave of Covid in France, the author laments the possible death of French vacations for all.

    My homework for Friday morning was to write a brief summary of this article, but as our course was cancelled I have only my original version, without corrections from a teacher. I guess that will have to suffice …

Version originale

«Les vacances», un pilier de la culture française, comprend plusieurs éléments qui évoluent ensemble depuis 75 ans: la puissance des travailleurs par rapport à leurs employeurs, les lois qui s’appliquent au travail, l’infrastructure de transport et d’hébergement abordable, et la tradition nationale de quitter la maison annuellement. À partir de 1945, la société française s’organisait pour fournir à tous des jours de congé payés et des opportunités subventionnées de passer ses loisirs à l’extérieur. Au début, c’était les comités d’entreprise et les syndicats qui s’en occupaient, puis les associations touristiques, et finalement les sociétés commerciales. Mais au cours de cette évolution, le rêve solidaire d’un bénéfice pour tous a été perdu. Ceux qui ont de l’argent peuvent profiter des vacances, mais le créneau moins riche risque d’être abandonné. Plus récemment, la crise du Covid-19 a empiré la dérive.

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Molière (2007): un compte rendu

More vacation equals more French films! Tuesday night’s selection was Molière (2007) starring Romain Duris and Fabrice Luchini. It was very entertaining, without any particular need to be more than an intelligent bit of fun. In concept, Molière is nearly identical to the American film “Shakespeare in Love” (1998), which I also liked enormously (that script was co-written by Tom Stoppard and brims with wit). Each film tells a fictional story of a real genius playwright during a period before he had achieved greatness, and retro-fits various episodes from their great works (Romeo and Juliette, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, or Tartuffe as the case may be) into the imagined early life of the author. Thus we see a tragicomic “dramatic pre-construction” of how these masterpieces happened to spring from the mind of the luminary to be. Assuming one doesn’t take the enterprise at all seriously, it’s a fun romp.

Molière is cleverly written, sumptuously costumed, and luminously filmed in various French chateau and historic streets of Le Mans (200km southwest of Paris) as well as the gardens of Versailles. The characters are sympathetic and charmingly portrayed, especially by the two male leads. Fabrice Luchini, to whom I was first introduced to via a guest appearance on Dix Pour Cent, is a perfect mix of buffoonery, humanity, and hard-edged bourgeois pride. The two share one scene for the ages in which Molière (Duris), who has agreed to serve as an acting coach for the rich M. Jourdain (Luchini), demonstrates the difference between impersonating a horse, and looking like a man who is trying to look like a horse. No understanding of French needed to appreciate this gem:

As part of this week’s French classes (now with a new teacher, Dominique) I wrote a substantial, though incomplete, review of the film which we then edited together. Outside the first paragraph, there were not a lot of changes. I’m not sure if that means my French writing is getting better, or just that Dominique had little interest in the exercise (which I proposed, as it was so rewarding the previous week with Virginie). In any event, here’s the before and after drafts.

Version originale

D’où vient le génie? L’Einstein, le Shakespeare, le Michel-Ange? Sont-ils nés, tout finis, prêts à luir sur nous pour toujours?  Ou est-ce qu’il y a des enseignants, des formations, et des expériences critiques? Hormis les génies, quand il s’agit d’un quidam, est-ce que ses traits caractéristiques sont à lui dès sa première haleine, innés et immuables? Ou est-ce que la naissance d’une personne, dans une classe sociale aléatoire, avec une famille plus ou moins riche, n’a quasiment rien à voir avec sa moralité, sa gentillesse, ou ses accomplissements? Ce sont les questions que pose le film Molière de Laurent Tirard, sorti en 2007, avec Romain Duris et Fabrice Luchini.

Pour la majorité de ses scènes, Molière se situe en 1644, où Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (récemment nommé Molière et joué ici par Duris) avait 22 ans.  Mais dès que le film commence, les spectateurs voient Molière et sa troupe de comédiens en retournant à Paris après avoir sillonné toutes les villes et les hameaux de France pendant treize ans. Molière avait attiré l’attention de Monsieur, frère du roi, qui l’avait invité à s’installer dans le théâtre du Petit-Bourbon en 1658. Molière souhait de monter un spectacle tragique, ayant marre de la comédie en tout sa forme. Il a ras le bol de la farce, de la romance, et de la drôlerie. Il affirme qu’il a des choses sérieuses à dire, et que la tragédie est le seul moyen de les exprimer.

Malheureusement, sa troupe (dorénavant baptisée «Troupe de Monsieur), lui rappelle qu’autant qu’il est maître de la comédie, il est nul en tragédie. D’ailleurs, Monsieur, frère du roi, attend une comédie dans les jours suivants et Molière n’a pas le courage de le nier. Désespéré, il se résigne à jouer encore une fois une bêtise inepte et fade. Mais tout à coup, une jeune femme arrive avec une lettre urgente d’une femme mystérieuse qu’elle appelle «Maman». Molière lit la lettre et se rue à la rendre visite. Il la trouve gravement malade, probablement affligée de la consomption (la tuberculose). À ce moment-là, l’écran se fait noir et on nous apprends une transition temporelle avec les mots «Treize ans plus tôt…»

Nous sommes encore une fois à Paris, mais maintenant en 1644, et c’est à cette époque que la vraie histoire du film commence. Molière est interrompu en plein milieu d’une représentation tragique, en plein air, par des huissiers qui le mettent en état d’arrestation pour les dettes impayées. De coup, il est vite libéré par l’intercession d’un Monsieur Jourdain (interprété par Fabrice Luchini), un bourgeois friqué qui a besoin d’un maître dramatique. M. Jourdain embauche Molière et l’amène à chez lui, pour faire une combine saugrenue. M. Jourdain veut que Molière le forme à jouer comme comédien dans une petite pièce qu’il a déjà écrite avec le but de séduire Célimène, une marquise veuve. Mais il éxiste aussi une Madame Elmire Jourdain (incarné par Laura Morante), sa femme, à laquelle cette entreprise doit être cachée. Donc, Molière est déguisé en prêtre et présenté par M. Jourdain comme «M. Tartuffe» le nouveau précepteur de leur fille cadette, Louison. Mme Jourdain est fortement anticléricale, mais n’a pas de choix sauf à s’accorder à la présence de ce jeune homme à la maison.

D’ici, l’intrigue devient un peu alambiquée. M. Jourdain continue à s’emballer avec son enjeu de séduction de la marquise Célimène, pour lequel il demande l’aide de Dorante, un noble roublard et sans scrupule. Entre-temps, Mme Jourdain découvre que M. Tartuffe est un imposteur, mais aussi que sa plume et son esprit sont sans pareil. Les deux tombent amoureuses et forment une liaison cachée. Enfin, il y a encore une histoire d’amour entre Henriette Jourdain, la fille aînée, et un jeune homme Valère qui n’est pas de la noblesse. En outre, Dorante fait des manipulations pour que son fils Thomas se marie avec Henriette.

Version corrigée

D’où vient le génie? L’Einstein, le Shakespeare, le Michel-Ange? Est-ce que le génie est inné ou a-t-il besoin de s’élaborer avec de la pédagogie?  Ou est-ce qu’il y a des enseignants, des formations, et des expériences critiques? Hormis les génies, quand il s’agit d’une personne ordinaire, est-ce que ses caractéristiques lui sont propres dès sa première haleine, innés et immuables? Ou est-ce que la naissance d’une personne issue d’une classe quelconque, avec une famille plus ou moins riche, n’a quasiment rien à voir avec sa moralité, sa gentillesse, ou ses actes? Ce sont les questions que pose le film Molière de Laurent Tirard, sorti en 2007, avec Romain Duris et Fabrice Luchini.

Pour la majorité de ses scènes, Molière se situe en 1644, où Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (récemment nommé Molière et joué ici par Duris) avait 22 ans.  Mais dès que le film commence, les spectateurs voient Molière et sa troupe de comédiens en retournant à Paris après avoir sillonné toutes les villes et les hameaux de France pendant treize ans. Molière avait attiré l’attention du duc d’Orléans, le frère du roi, qui l’avait invité à s’installer dans le théâtre du Petit-Bourbon en 1658. Molière souhaite monter un spectacle tragique, en ayant assez de la comédie sous toutes ses formes. Il en a ras le bol de la farce, de la romance, et de la drôlerie. Il affirme qu’il a des choses sérieuses à dire, et que la tragédie est le seul moyen de les exprimer.

Malheureusement, sa troupe (dorénavant baptisée «Troupe de Monsieur), lui rappelle qu’autant qu’il est maître de la comédie, il est nul en tragédie. D’ailleurs, Monsieur, le frère du roi, attend une comédie dans les jours suivants et Molière n’a pas le courage de lui refuser. Désespéré, il se résigne à jouer encore une fois une bêtise inepte et fade. Mais tout à coup, une jeune femme arrive avec une lettre urgente d’une femme mystérieuse qu’elle appelle «Maman». Molière lit la lettre et se rue pour lui rendre visite. Il la trouve gravement malade (probablement affligée de la tuberculose). À ce moment-là, l’écran se fait noir et on nous apprends une transition temporelle avec les mots «Treize ans plus tôt…»

Nous sommes encore une fois à Paris, mais maintenant en 1644, et c’est à cette époque que la vraie histoire du film commence. Molière est interrompu en plein milieu d’une représentation tragique, en plein air, par des huissiers qui le mettent en état d’arrestation pour des dettes. Du coup, il est vite libéré par l’intermédiaire d’un Monsieur qui s’appelle Jourdain (interprété par Fabrice Luchini), un bourgeois très riche qui a besoin d’un maître dramatique. M. Jourdain embauche Molière et l’emmène chez lui pour élaborer un stratagème. M. Jourdain veut que Molière le forme à jouer la comédie dans une petite pièce qu’il a déjà écrite avec le but de séduire Célimène, une marquise veuve. Mais il éxiste aussi une Madame Elmire Jourdain (incarné par Laura Morante), sa femme, à laquelle cette entreprise doit être cachée. Donc, Molière est déguisé en prêtre et présenté par M. Jourdain comme «M. Tartuffe» le nouveau précepteur de leur fille cadette, Louison. Mme Jourdain est fortement anticléricale, mais n’a pas le choix sauf de s’habituer à la présence de ce jeune homme dans la maison.

À partir d’ici, l’intrigue devient un peu alambiquée. M. Jourdain continue à s’emballer avec son enjeu de séduction pour la marquise Célimène, pour lequel il demande l’aide de Dorante, un noble roublard et sans scrupule. Entre-temps, Mme Jourdain découvre que M. Tartuffe est un imposteur, mais aussi que sa plume et son esprit sont sans pareil. Les deux tombent amoureuses et forment une liaison cachée. Enfin, il y a encore une histoire d’amour entre Henriette Jourdain, la fille aînée, et un jeune homme Valère qui n’est pas de la noblesse. En outre, Dorante fait des manipulations pour que son fils Thomas se marie avec Henriette.

A final word about the costuming for this film: it’s really amazing! You can find a full gallery of Molière costume photos on the site of Pirates Cave, a small Dutch company that sells a wide range of period costumes. I don’t know that there’s any connection between the shop and the film, as the costumes for the film are credited to Pierre-Jean Larroque. But Pirates Cave does seem to have an extensive collection of photos, and presumably garments. Here’s a taste of the photos: