Francia contra sí misma

Genial Simón Kupper sobre los franceses y su chovinismo:

In France the customer is not king. The producer is. Strikes are only one of the ways in which French producers insist on their dignity. When you step into a taxi or café or shop, you are served at their pleasure, so don’t get uppity. A common belief among French producers (probably correct) is that the system of production is perfect … until customers mess it up. 

• France is a no-fault culture. Most French people will deny any suggestion that they have done something wrong. Like many aspects of the national outlook, this probably derives from schools, the agents of the Republic. Traditionally, teachers punished errors without mercy; if a seven-year-old did bad work, the teacher would wordlessly rip out the offending page (or, in the old days, administer a beating). Sometimes you will be chastised like that child.

• France is what sociologists call a “low-trust society”. The French have the least “trust in others” of any western Europeans, according to surveys by the European Commission. Building trust here can take decades. The result of this is that friendship, business and, indeed, politics is conducted within tight groups, the members of which have known each other since youth. Newcomers will be treated distantly for years while the French try to place them in social, class and geographical terms. 

• Most French people are trained from about the age of three in aesthetic criticism. Beauty is not reserved for special occasions or places (a Saturday night out, an art museum) but is sought in seemingly banal aspects of everyday life: the arrangement of food on a plate, the lighting of a street, a woman’s make-up. French aesthetic appreciation of physical beauty has helped feed the falsehood that they are always committing adultery. As Instructions for British Servicemen in France, a UK government booklet, warned in 1944: “It is as well to drop any ideas about French women based on stories of Montmartre and nude cabaret shows.”

The French aesthetic eye never rests. On the upside, it makes life here beautiful. On the downside, a French person may feel aghast at your outfit. A football fan walking into a bakery in a tracksuit should expect to be shamed.

• It may be useful to learn some conversational devices. To end when you are bored or have run out of French, say, “Voilà” (or more emphatically, “Voilà, voilà, quoi”). To patronise a fellow conversationalist, reply to all pronouncements with “Bien sûr”. The polite way to start an encounter is with, “Bonjour”, so to indicate rudeness, open with “Oui?” And to complain, say, “Mais c’est n’importe quoi!” (roughly, “It’s nonsense”).

• Finally, here is a guide to French politics for the perplexed. France has the world’s best way of life, food and aesthetics. But none of this discernment gets applied to politics where a ruling Socialist party still living out the 19th-century proletarian struggle faces off against union bosses still living out Britain’s 1970s. Both sides treat this as a zero-sum game but in fact the beneficiary is the far-right, which is still living out France’s 1950s’ struggle to keep down Algeria’s Arabs. 

Mention any of this, though, and you will be accused of “French-bashing!” In reality, though, the true masters of French-bashing are the world’s most sophisticated critics: the French.