Culture – Page 3 – Monsieur Miller

2021-07-07

Diary 2021-07-07

I went on vacation last week, so this is an update on various French activities here and there.

This morning I listened to a couple of episodes of the Français Authentique podcast: Faire chou blanc and Je ne progresse plus en français. Que faire? (can’t find a link). They are slow and simple, but not too simple. Decent mindless content while walking, good for reinforcement.

Yesterday I took the placement exam for my 2-week course in August with ILA (Institut Linguistique Adenet) in Montpellier. The school is in Montpellier, but I will be in my living room doing the course by video conference. Traveling to France in summer 2021 was too daunting for post-pandemic me. The test had 100 questions, multiple choice, with an “I don’t know” option for each one. The instructions exhorted me not to guess, for my own benefit, as it’s a diagnostic instrument. Most of the questions were about grammar, 10 or 15 were about oral comprehension, and a handful were about vocabulary. I’d say 60 or 70 felt automatic, another 10-20 required deliberate application of a rule I knew, and the rest were either unknown to me or involved a forgotten entry in a rarely used part of the conjugation table of an irregular verb.

Speaking of Montpellier, one of the other guests at the inn where we was staying was a French woman who had lived all her life in Montpellier before coming to the US some 10 years ago. Had a nice conversation with her. She runs a library-based French conversation group in Pittsburgh.

On vacation I finished the next 1931 Maigret novel, Le chien jaune. It started fairly vaguely, with scattered episodes only loosely connected, and making barely an impression on Maigret. Eventually it all came together to a satisfactory, if not gripping, resolution.

I read a short play, Un pas après l’autre, which appeared in L’avant scène théâtre , numéro 1493, December 2020. Somehow it was only published in July, though it reached me in June? Whatever. Two middle aged sisters with funny rapport, a failing haute-couture shop, a son recovering from PTSD after time in prison for a homicide he was convicted of while a juvenile, which he insists he didn’t commit, a fashion designer intern, a contest for newcomers to the field. Good dialogue, nice character development, then the play ends suddenly with not much story or dénouement. Pity, I liked the set up.

Finally, I had my regular weekly French lesson yesterday with Nora. A lot of it was my relating the story of witnessing a car accident during our vacation, and of various parties’ assisting the driver. Vocabulary words or expressions that came up:

pluvieuse, pluvieux, le brouillard, s’allonger, un ruisseau, renverser, un fuyard, le dénivelé, accroché, fixé, un virage, faire un tonneau, ça nous a pris, elle s’est précipitée, elle s’est ruée, elle s’est hâtée, à portée de voix, à portée de vue, je suis retourné à ma voiture, j’ai repris ma voiture, le caissier/la caissière, les secours, il a eu l’air de, une trousse de premiers secours, il enchaînait, il tremblait, saigner, une hémorragie, un rapport, informer, civière, civet, il réussissait à marcher, un coussin gonflable, bousillé, nous n’étions pas pressés, nous n’avions pas de presse, on s’est mis d’accord, du travail dans le vide, découler.

I think that’s it. All done with vacation, back to ordinary life. Probably less French activity.

2021-01-232021-01-23

Tertullien – a theatrical monologue against theater

Cover photo of Tertullien, by Harvé Briaux, published by L'avant-scène théâtre

For my 50th birthday last month, I received a subscription to the publication “L’avant-scène théâtre”. They produce and mail to subscribers 20 issues a year, in a form factor that is more like a small book than a magazine. Each one is devoted to a show that has recently played on the French stage, and includes the full script as well as some articles, interviews, and tidbits about it. Think of it as an extended program from the theater, but bundled with the script. I have seen them on sale at shows I’ve attended in France, and purchased one or two on site (they are not free, unlike most programs in American theaters). The magazine has an interesting history dating back to 1899.

The first issue of my subscription arrived this week in a quaint airmail envelope from Paris. This number is for the one-man show Tertullien, written and performed by Hervé Briaux. It debuted at Théâtre de Poche-Montparnasse, Paris, in January 2018. I guess with the Covid pandemic keeping Paris theaters dark, there hasn’t been much new material to cover of late, so they are going back to second and third tier productions. Tertullien is a thin volume, roughly 4″ x 7″, with 64 pages of plain paper and black-and-white text. There are no pictures other than the front cover. Inside, there is a 10 page preface article about the show, followed by an unannotated text – an uninterrupted monologue by the sole, eponymous character of the work. It was a quick read that I managed in two sittings.

I saw an unrelated show at Théâtre de Poche-Montparnasse in 2014. A cozy space.

Tertullien the play is actually a modern adaptation of the treatise De spectaculis (“On the Spectacles”) by Tertullien the man. Tertullien was a Roman, born in the 2nd century A.D. into a family of pagans in Carthage. He grew up well educated and became a lawyer before converting to Christianity and becoming a fundamentalist, puritanical zealot. He is known to have written over 40 works, many of which survive to this day. I had never heard of him before, nor read any of his works, but apparently he was unwaveringly severe, an extremely black-and-white thinker.

The play is an attempt to take the argument of De spectaculis and present it in modern terms for the modern audience. The argument is: Theater is demonic, as are horse races, gladiator fights, the Olympic games, and competitive sports. Theatrical productions are the work of the Devil. They corrupt old and youth alike, they feature prostitutes and wastrels, and they reify our basest instincts. They are also idolatrous, because they involve actors pretending to be other people who they are not, and since people are made in the image of God, the actor makes of themself an idol (an effigy of man = an effigy of God). So shun the theater, and instead dream of the glorious day when Christ returns and all involved in the theater — playwright, cast, crew, and audience alike — will be tortured horribly in Hell for eternity. Now that’s entertainment.

Did I mention that this Tertullien guy was a bit extra?

There’s an obvious irony in putting this unbridled denunciation of the theater into the mouth of a character on the stage. But there’s no breaking of the fourth wall here, at least not in the text (a director/actor could add a physical wink, I suppose). No acknowledgement that the listener is in a theater, or the speaker is treading the boards. In an article appearing as a preface in the volume, Daniel Loayza asserts that the play forces us to re-examine why we do go to the theater, why we do find it valuable and rewarding. But there’s nothing about that in the play itself. No second voice offering rebuttals, no self-doubt lurking under the surface of the 40 page diatribe. Nope. Just your routine fire and brimstone.

The closest that you get to a refutation is a strawman that Tertullien-the-character offers (translation mine):

Maintenant, je veux bien admettre, là, devant vous, que parfois, dans certaines pièces de théâtre, on peut trouver des choses simples, douces, agréables, belles même, parfois même honnêtes, parfois même… Mais, inutile d’aller plus loin, j’ai senti, dès mes premiers mots, que quelques-uns d’entre vous ont poussé un soupir de soulagement, mêlé d’une approbation secrète.

Mais au nom du Seigneur! Réfléchissez! Croyez-vous que si je voulais vous empoisonner, je mélangerais mon poison avec de la merde? Non! Je le mélangerais avec des mets savoureux et bien assaisonnés. Je les accompagnerais de liqueurs douces et agréables. Quand on veut empoissonner les gens, on enrobe de douceurs ce qui va les tuer. L’Autre n’agit pas autrement.

Tertullien, par Hervé Briaux

Now, I will readily admit, here, in front of you, that sometimes, in certain plays, there may be found something simple, sweet, pleasant, even beautiful, sometimes even honest, even… Well, no use going on with that: even with my first words, I felt some of you breathe a sigh of relief, mixed with secret agreement.

But good God, don’t you see?! Do you think that, if I wanted to poison you, I would mix my poison into shit? No! I would put it into the most delicious dishes, wondrously spiced. And I’d serve them with refreshing, sweet drinks. When you want to poison someone, you sugar coat the thing that’s going to kill them. The Devil acts no differently.

As an exercise in maintaining my French comprehension, Tertullien was good to read. Beyond that, it’s a bit too didactic for my tastes. It has been 11 months since I last saw a show in the theater, and with Covid still raging it will be many months more until I can go again. When I do, I will relish it greatly, with only a little thought to the possibility that poison lies beneath the overt theatrical goodness. But I do hope the script will be better than Tertullien. Or if not, that it will be in French.

P. S. Literally minutes after I posted this article, the mail brought me two more issues of L’avant-scéne théâtre (the two October 2020 issues, oddly). Guess I better get started on my next blog post…

2020-09-202020-09-21

Amuse-bouches 2020-09-20

There are only 24 hours in a day («On peut pas être au four et au moulin»), and it turns out that every hour I spend writing about my French activities is an hour I don’t spend on doing those activities. Here’s a collection of brief items about French activities I’ve enjoyed recently but haven’t made time to write up until now.

Chagall: Scandale à l’Opéra de Paris

In a recent French lesson I was assigned to watch the short video named «Chagall: Scandale à l’Opéra de Paris». In 1962, artist Marc Chagall was commissioned to create a new painting on the ceiling of the Palais Garnier opera house. I first visited this building in 2013 and absolutely adored it. The main amphitheater is spacious and restful, and the grand staircase in the entryway is stunning. The Chagall ceiling is OK too.

Fred Vargas: Les Evangélistes

Fred Vargas is a well-known French author of detective novels (polar or rompol). She’s been writing since the mid-1980’s and continues to publish new works (I think Quand sort la recluse (2017) is her most recent work). I first came upon her work in 2013 in a Paris bookstore and like it enough to stock up on a bunch of her books that have sat on my shelf unread. When I finished Pietr-le-Letton I needed a next read, and my daughter randomly pulled Vargas’s Sans feu ni lieu from the shelf. It was super accessible (a big change from the Simenon), and I read it in just 10 days or so. It turns out that it’s the final book in a short trilogy, though they are really only loosely linked. So I went back and read the first book Debout les morts, and am now a couple chapters into the middle book, Un peu plus loin sur la droite. For some reason, the first and second books of the series are harder for me to read than the third: maybe her writing style changed, or something else is at work.

The common thread is a household of three historians and an ex-police officer. The historians are named Matthias, Marcus, and Lucien, and the officer christens them St. Matthieu, St. Mark, and St. Luke, or “the evangelists”. In the first book, these four are the primary protagonists and detectives. In the final book, the detective is Louis Kehlweiler, another former police detective who knows evangelists, who themselves appear only briefly. The start of Un plus loin features Kehlweiler again, so I’m expecting the historians will be scarce again. We’ll see.

Mots Fléchés

I enjoy crossword puzzles and am reasonably skilled at them in English. The New York Times daily puzzle only gets interesting for me on Thursday or so. I figured that French crossword puzzles would be a good way to exercise my brain and build vocabulary. That may be true (though crossword puzzle words are their own odd sub-domain), but I completely underestimated how much command of the language is required to do this task. En français, je suis nul en mots fléchés!

The kind of puzzles I’ve been working on are called «mots fléchés». They look something like this

4,40€ well-spent at a news kiosque in Bordeaux

They come rated in levels 0-7. Level 4 is completely beyond me. I took me months to get past level 0, and I’m now working my way through the booklet shown above, labeled level 1-2, which I picked up in a news kiosk in Bordeaux. I feel like I’m about at the point where it is transitioning from level 1 to level 2, and boy am I struggling. In the heart of level 1 I was was able to get through one or two per night reliably without a dictionary, but it would take me well over an hour. Now I’m at an hour or two to get 75% of a puzzle completed. Here’s my current grid:

The answers are all in the back of the booklet, so I’m only as stuck as I let myself be. Often the problem is not that I don’t can’t think of a word to match the clue, but that I just don’t know what the word in the clue means. Here, I think I know what the clue words mean, but perhaps not all the solution words. My knowledge of gourdes is limited, even in English.

You can find lots of print puzzles like this at https://www.megastar.fr/fleches. If you click into each offering, each title offers a sample puzzle you can download like this, this, or this. They also sell printed booklets individually or by annual subscription. Six issues cost 25€, plus an additional 15€ for mailing to the US. I have enough supply to last me a while, so haven’t tried this yet. You can also play online with, for example, daily new grids at a variety of difficulties from the site Notre temps.

Les Hérietier

The French Cultural Center runs a film club that meets monthly to discuss in French films. I had hoped to attend the September session, which featured the 2014 film Les Heritiers. Not sure how they typically run things when not in the midst of a pandemic, but for this session we were asked to watch the film on our own in advance, then come prepared to discuss it in French. I watched the first 40 minutes of it before learning the Center had to reschedule the meeting for some reason or other. I couldn’t make the new time, so there was no longer any pressure for me to finish the film on time. That was a week ago, not sure if I’ll get back to it. I only understood 2/3 of the dialogue, and I didn’t find it all that engaging.

2020-09-022020-09-03

Ansonia Wines, Zoom Tasting

I have the good fortune of living not far from Ansonia Wines, an excellent importer of small-batch, artisan French wines made by 40 winemakers around France. Although Ansonia has been in business for all 16 years I’ve lived in my current house, I placed my very first order with them (an introductory six-pack) just this summer. The wines were all quite up good, and they delivered to my house during the pandemic, so A+ for convenience. Their prices are generally $16 – $30 a bottle, with a few offerings higher than that. Especially with current tariffs in the US, this is quite reasonable for good French wine.

Last weekend I participated in an Ansonia organized, Zoom-mediated online wine-tasting and really enjoyed it. I’m not much of a wine expert, though I like drinking it and learning how it is made. I can count on the fingers of one hand the total number of wine-tastings I’ve ever attended, and the online Zoom aspect of it was a first for me. Apparently 40 people signed up in advance for the event, which featured five white wines from Bourgogne and the Loire valley.

Just before noon, Ansonia opened eight bottles of each and redistributed them into 40 sets of five five-ounce bottles. Customers (including me) came by the store between noon and 2pm to collect their bottles and put them in the fridge at home. The tasting started at 4pm over Zoom and lasted an hour. I set out my bottles and my laptop on the living-room coffee table and settled in for a pleasant afternoon goûter (my cheese and bread are out of the frame).

Here are the wines we tasted:

Martin-Luneau Muscadet de Sèvre et Maine “Clisson” 2016
Paget Chenin “Mélodie” 2018
Garenne Sancerre “Bouffants” 2019
Maillet Mâcon-Verzé 2017
Collet Chablis 1er cru “Montmains” 2018

The tasting was conducted by Tom Wilcox, the younger member of this father-and-son (or rather Père et Fils) business. He had a prepared slide presentation with maps showing the region of France each wine was from, photographs of each specific vignoble, and often photos of the winemakers themselves talking with Mark Wilcox (père) (Tom is in the small picture-in-picture box at the top right of the laptop screen, while Mark Wilcox appears in the sweater-vest on the left half of the slide). Tom narrated the whole thing while directing viewers when to taste each wine, explaining the micro-climate, the soil, and the winemaking process that went into each wine.

The first three are from the lower-, middle-, and upper-Loire valley. The last two are from Bourgogne (Burgundy). The presentation contained these handy maps to show the sources more clearly:

Tom followed up with a pointer to a series of short YouTube videos by winemakers in Bourgogne talking about their wine, their work, and their history. Many of these videos are available both in French and in English. Here, for example, is Nicolas Maillet talking about his vineyard in Mâcon-Verzé:

En français …

and in English

The whole series of them can be found here: « Rendez-vous avec les vins de Bourgogne »

I’ve never been to Mâcon, but as it happens, I’ve had the pleasure of visiting the other regions represented by the tasting. Here’s a few pictures I took in 2017 in Beaune, a part of Bourgogne just outside Dijon:

Château du Clos de Vougeot, Headquarters of the Climats de Bourgogne

The photo shows an old, no-longer used, massive press used to squeeze the juice out of grapes. An unknown tourist standing next to the press gives a handy reference for scale. The cisterns (cuve) that held the wine during fermentation are in the foreground, massive oak tanks with steel bands.

Of course, the outdoor scenery in Beaune is stunning, especially in the summer. Here’s an example:

A few years earlier (2014), I spent a couple weeks working in Paris and took a one-day weekend tour of the upper Loire which included a visit to a wine cave (Caves Duhard) and a tasting. Caves have very regular humidity and temperature, which makes the great for storing wine over long periods. Apparently, this has been known for centuries, and so when the stones were quarried for the châteaux that line the Loire, they were careful to leave usable caves behind. Really big ones. Here’s a few photos to give you an idea:

The major city at the mouth of the Loire is Nantes, which I visited in 2020. I didn’t travel to wine country, but I did encounter some really cool street art inspired by Jules Vernes, favorite son in those parts:

My other big wine encounter was a 2020 winery tour in St Emilion, but that’s in Bordeaux, so not rightly part of this weekend’s wine tasting. I’ll have to wait until Ansonia features a Bordeaux tasting to share that story…

2020-08-102020-08-12

Marre de la Confine: Sick of Confinement

On March 17, 2020, France issued a general order for residents to stay at home as part of a national effort to combat the Covid-19 epidemic. The order remained in place for 55 days before being lifted on May 11th, and was generally seen as a public health success.

I was recently pointed to a series of short YouTube music videos created during confinement by a small crew of artists looking to distract themselves: «Au 1er jour de la confine». Each one features a song and animated watercolor illustrations. The song is of the form “On the first day of the confinement …. On the second day of confinement …. On the third day of confinement … etc. etc.” There are 11 videos in all, running two to five minutes each, packaged as “Season 1”, “Season 2”, etc. Together they cover all 55 days.

The videos start off fairly routine, with what sounds like a traditional Breton folk song played on accordion, one or two voices singing, a pleasantly repetitive verse / chorus structure, and the camera panning slowly over the illustrations. The authors’ description clarifies that the song is original, but runs the risk of becoming a folk song of the future: «un échantillon de Musique Traditionnelle de Demain.» The musical arrangement becomes more complex throughout the first video with polyphony, syncopation, and rich instrumentation. Really well done musically and visually.

After the first few weeks, though, the videos become progressively post-modern and bizarre, fitting the increasing toll of confinement. By the end there are drug-hazed psychedelic segments, pastiches of Ravel’s Bolero, and – I kid you not – Soviet agitprop. A rather striking departure, but quite impressive.

The creators are:

Music: Marie Mazille
Illustrations: Capucine Mazille
Lyrics: Fabrice Vigne
Video & arrangements: Franck Argentier

I can’t quite figure out how the author’s’ attitude towards the confinement changes over time. The first verse sounds like an explicit indictment of the policy as a trick, but some of the later videos have messaging that makes me think the authors supported the confinement. If any readers can clarify for me if the attitude is clear in the subtext (or the text), please leave a comment.

Here’s a sampling of the lyrics (rough English translations are mine):

Au 1er jour de la confine
On s'est tous enfermé dedans (x2)
Sans médicaments sans aspirine
Ça durera pas 107 ans
On s'est fait rouler dans la farine
Par le ministère et le gouvernement

Refrain:
Y en a bien marre de la confine
Y en a bien marre du confinement

On the first day of confinement
We all holed up inside
Without medicines or aspirin
This won't last 107 years
They've duped us, the government and the ministry

Chorus:
I am so sick of being confined
I've had it up to here with confinement

Au 2ème jour de la confine
On s'est attaqué au grand rangement (x2)
Le salon, le couloir et la cuisine
Ça durera pas 106 ans
Même si tout laver à la térébenthine
Au savon noir c'est émouvant

Refrain

On the second day of confinement
We did a vast spring cleaning
The living-room, the hallway, the kitchen
This won't last 106 years
What if we use turpentine and black soap?
It's bracing!

Chorus

Au 3ème jour de la confine
On met sa masques et ses beaux gants blancs (x2)
On se lave les mains, on se bouche les narines
Ça durera pas 105 ans
Se laver les mains, les papattes et les babines
Au début c'est rigolo à la fin c'est barbarant.

On the third day of confinement
We wear masks and white gloves
We wash our hands and cover our noses
This won't last 105 years.
Washing your hands, paws, and whiskers
At first it's a joke, by the end it's oppressive

Au 4ème jour de la confine
Ma femme est allée chez son amant (x2)
Sans me prévenir en passant par la cuisine
Ça durera pas 104 ans
Elle est partie pour de la farine
Reviendra peut-être à la fin du printemps

On the fourth day of confinement
My wife went to see her lover
She left by the back door without telling me
This won't last 104 years
Said she was going to get some flour
Maybe she'll be back by the time Spring ends

Au 7ème jour de la confine
Plus de vin rouge ni de chocolat blanc (x2)
Je fouille les armoires de la cuisine
Ça durera pas 101 ans
Me restera-t-il assez de bibine
Pour assurer le ravitaillement

On the 7th day of confinement
We ran out of red wine and white chocolate
I rummage through the kitchen cabinets
This won't last 101 years
Will my supply of booze
Hold out until I can restock?

Au 11ème jour de la confine
Je me bourre de médicaments (x2)
Sans prescription de la médecine
Ça durera jamais 97 ans
Et hop! Encore une aspirine
J'alterne avec l'efferalgan

On the 11th day of confinement
I'm popping pills like crazy
Just the over the counter stuff
This will never last 97 years
Pop! There goes another aspirin
I alternate them with Tylenol

Au 15ème jour de la confine
Y avait plein de morts mais plus de sacrements (x2)
On ne pouvait plus tirer sa trombine
Devant le cercueil et ses ornements
Enterrer des vieux, faut dire que ça nous bassine
Et c'est contagieux surtout pour nos enfants

On the 15th day of confinement
There were plenty of dead, but no more funerals
No more showing your ugly mug
In front of an ornate coffin
Burying our old ones makes us tearful, I confess
Our kids catch on and weep as well

25ème jour de confine
Il pleut des divorces. C'est alarmant! (x2)
On quitte son mari, son amant, sa concubine
Du jour au lendemain, c'est vraiment navrant
Les tribunaux sont fermés. On divorce en ligne
On se confine au couvent

25th day of confinement
It's raining divorces. Yikes!
Folks leaving their husbands, their lovers, mistresses
Day after day, it's really upsetting
With the courts closed down you get divorced online
Then go to the nunnery and isolate there

That’s a good sampling for now. I may have more in a later post.

Y en a bien marre de la confine. Y en a bien marre du confinement.
Y en a bien marre de la confine. Y en a bien marre du confinement…

2020-08-032020-08-03

Au Service de la France: Parody and Prejudice

A friend recently introduced me to the TV series “Au Service de la France“, an absurd parody of a French spy agency in the 1960s (“A Very Secret Service” in English). The show debuted in 2015 and has two seasons totalling 26 episodes so far, with a third season in production. It was the first French series picked up by Netflix and marketed as “a Netflix original”, though it was originally developed by Canal (who abandoned it) and then by the network Arte. I’ve watched 3 episodes so far with the original French audio, both with and without French closed captions. It’s available with English subtitles as well.

I’m conflicted about the series. On the one hand, it is hilarious. The writers mock French attitudes at the time about Africa and Africains, Germany, women, bureaucracy, and more. The deadpan humor is well delivered and the skewering of 1960 French Gaullist culture is brutal. By myself I’m not expert enough on French culture to confirm that it lands for a French audience, but the critical reviews in France are positive as well. I am familiar enough with French culture to get the most of the jokes, I think, and they are pretty funny.

On the other hand, in order to mock these bad attitudes, the show puts them on full display. Yes, the characters showing these behaviors are loathsome and stupid. Yes, the show is self-acknowledgedly politically incorrect and generally irreverent. But while the typical French viewer may have seen the thing being mocked enough times that a little more won’t hurt, I’m not in that situation. I feel I am actively picking up 1960s French prejudices (and perhaps modern ones?) from watching the show. I’ve never viewed the American series “Mad Men”, but I gather its treatment of 1960’s American office culture has the same problem of amplifying sexism and misogyny while nominally criticizing it.

The attitudes towards Africa, with the backdrop of empire and decolonization, are really awful. An African delegation that comes to demand independence is first ignored, then laughed at derisively, then handed off to the intern who surprises everyone by producing a full-fledged constitution and administrative transition plan. Can’t have that, it seems, so the higher ups first try to corrupt the delegation with wine and women, then when that doesn’t work arrange for delegation members to be killed one at a time in innocent accidents. They offer heartfelt condolences to the remaining delegates each time, until the final surviving member accepts a much watered down governmental program, grieving and bewildered. The whole thing is horrid, both despite and because of the thick layer of buffoonery that pervades it all.

I had to snapshot these from Netflix. No official promo images for the series bother to include the African characters…

“C’mon, it’s a parody!”, the devil on my left shoulder says. Yes, but I am too suggestible. For example, I have a teenager in the process of learning to drive. For their benefit, I often narrate aloud what I’m thinking while I’m driving. Yesterday at an intersection I said to them: “Even though we have a green light here, pedestrians in the crosswalk always have right of way,” and then stopped myself before I could say “Well, except Algerians”. Yikes! I would never, ever have thought to introduce that topic gratuitously were it not for the constant stream of insulting and dehumanizing mentions of Algeria and Algerians in the show. Now I have to avoid imitating these horrible examples.

Some of the scenes mock safer targets, while making me feel extra good because I know enough to be in on the joke. For example, an interrogation of a captured East German spy includes a beaurocrat reading aloud a multiple choice questionnaire with items like:

Germany's territory is:
  a) big
  b) small
  c) too small

The Third Reich should have lasted:
  a) 1 month
  b) 10 days
  c) 1000 years

I guess this doesn’t strike me as being as hurtful as the insults lobbed at Africa because of my sense that Germany is now prospering, while Africa is still suffering from its experience with France. But what do I know? Maybe raising these tropes of the expansionist and imperialist German serves to fuel ongoing dissension between France and Germany. I’d have to ask French and German viewers.

Unsurprisingly, humor is hard, and rough humor especially so. For now, I’m going to continue watching, as for me the show is a good source of French culture, especially latent attitudes that are no longer allowed to come to the surface much in modern French media. But I’m not so sure I’ll make it to the end of the series before I change my mind on the balance of benefits and harm.

2020-07-142020-07-14

La Fête Nationale, now and then

Joyeux 14 juillet! It’s la fête nationale in France today, what we call Bastille Day in English. Turns out nobody calls it that in France. French Today blog has a great run-down of vocabulary and customs for Le 14 juillet, I recommend it.

(It’s also the 108th anniversary of the birth of American folk-singer Woody Guthrie. Happy birthday, Woody!)

Covid-19 has has disrupted the 2020 celebration of quatorze juillet this year, but not as much as I would have expected. France’s daily Covid-19 totals nationwide are down to 800 new cases / 30 new deaths, and are largely having success at re-opening their society. In Paris, they are going ahead with an all-day concert on Champs-de-Mars, a military ceremony on Place de la Concorde, an ariel parade over Chaps Élysée, and midnight fireworks. There are more restrictions than usual on people gathering to view these events, but the Champs-de-Mars concert is definitely open to the public. Sortir à Paris has a full guide of Fête Nationale 2020 events.

My oldest daughter and I were in Paris on 14 juillet 2013, sampling a lot of venues:

We attended a nearby Bals des Pompiers at midnight 13-14 juillet, viewed the morning military parade on the Champs Élysée, went to a movie near Opéra in the afternoon, then took a boat cruise on the Seine at night, watching the fireworks from near Pont de l’Alma

Here’s some of what we saw seven years ago.

A 14 Juillet midnight tradition: Bals des Pompiers. We watched from the outside, didn’t make it into the dance hall.

We watched the défilé militaire from the sidewalk, near the George V metro stop. First there was an aerial display, a parade in the sky of sorts, complete with un drapeau français.

Next came a mechanized parade. First police and fire vehicles…

… and then military vehicles:

After that, a final return to the air:

We took the afternoon off, then went on a bateau-mouche at night to watch the fireworks from the water.

Feux d’artifice, 14 juillet 2013 à Paris.

At the time, I had mixed feelings about the military parade in Paris. On the one hand, it seemed totally authentic, patriotic, clean, and stereotypically French. On the other hand, I imagined the analogous event in Washington, D. C., on July 4th and didn’t like the image at all. Of course, it didn’t take too many years before imagination became reality. I was right: I was not a fan of the July 4, 2019 military parade in D. C.

Maybe some French traditions are best left to the French…