1000 Years of Annoying the French

by Stephen Clarke

  For others, though, it opened the way to making some serious money. With radio stations obliged to programme prime-time French music, producers were able to create a whole new generation of French-language imitators of Anglo-American styles. These days, some of them even go so far as recording most of the song in cod English, to make it sound authentic, and then adding a few words in French so that it fits the quota.

  Some compliance seems to be purely symbolic. Advertising slogans have to be translated into French even when it is totally unnecessary. If, for example, a French food company wants to advertise a new American-style cookie and comes up with the slogan ‘It’s all good’, every single French person who sees the advertising billboard will understand what they are reading, but there will always be an asterisk after the slogan and a tiny translation at the foot of the poster – ‘C’est tout bon’. Coincidentally (or not), on posters for the Paris Métro, the translation will often be blocked out by the seats in front of the billboards.

  It can get even more absurd. Because French is a less graphic language than English, and decency laws apply only to French words, if a French rapper brings out an album entitled Fuck You, Motherfuckers! (which is a real possibility), the advertising posters will almost certainly feature a line explaining rather confusingly that this means ‘I have sex with you, all you people who have sex with your mothers!’

  The law is being ignored more and more, especially as more and more international chains of shops arrive in France. No one, for example, has forced Gap to provide a translation of its brand and add the (slightly obscene) word trou on their shopfronts.

  Occasionally, however, French-language campaigners call everyone to order.

  As recently as 2006, an American-owned company called GE Healthcare was taken to court for not translating certain in-house documents into French, and thereby discriminating against non-English-speaking workers. The company insisted that the documents were generally intended for its Anglophone employees, but a group of unions and other workers’ organizations sued GE Healthcare, and the court subsequently ordered the firm to translate its in-house software, training manuals and all health and safety instructions into French, and pay the plaintiffs 580,000 euros, plus 20,000 euros per day for non-compliance.

  The moral is obvious. If you want to make some easy euros, simply go to France and complain to a lawyer that you are suffering from panic attacks because you don’t understand the name of any international high-street brand. Qu’est-ce que c’est, un Starbuck?

  You can freedom kiss my ass

  The exception française – France’s right to see the world differently – is mainly applied to culture and language at home, and rarely troubles the English-speaking world. But when it was applied to Iraq in 2003, it caused a veritable lava flow of Francophobia.

  By refusing to send troops to knock out Saddam Hussein’s fabled weapons of mass destruction, France opened itself up to attacks worse than anything The Sun had managed in the 1980s and 1990s. This time, American conservatives were the biggest culprits, and turned the patriotism that the Bush administration had successfully whipped up to support its invasion into a loathing so strong that France was actually seen as an enemy as fiendish as Saddam. There were even bumper stickers saying, ‘Iraq First, France Next!’

  Telling anti-French jokes became a favourite American pastime – ‘Raise your right hand if you like the French … Raise both hands if you are French’ – and the level of ill feeling in some sections of the media was truly visceral. I went to the States to promote my novel A Year in the Merde in 2005, and even as late as that, a radio presenter told me that my book wasn’t anti-French enough* and that ‘those uncivilized Froggies are just like stone-age men, aren’t they?’ When I didn’t agree, the interview was ended.

  And it wasn’t only the loony fringe of the media that indulged in the language of hatred. Farcical Francophobia was bubbling away just below the surface in serious American political circles, just as it had been in Britain during The Sun’s campaigns. General Norman Schwartzkopf, hero of the first Gulf War, said that ‘going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion’. And the cafeterias in three office buildings used by the House of Representatives famously changed the ‘French fries’ on their menus to ‘Freedom fries’, prompting a rash of copycat name-changes like Freedom toast, Freedom pancakes and even Freedom kissing.

  Whatever France’s reasons for staying out of Iraq – oil contracts with Saddam that they didn’t want to lose, or a fear that the invasion would turn Arab countries against the West – they seem to have been proved wise in the long run. And France also won a couple of key victories.

  When the French Embassy in Washington was informed of the ‘Freedom fries’ menu change, a spokeswoman called Nathalie Loisau replied, ‘We are at a very serious moment, dealing with very serious issues and we are not focusing on the name you give to potatoes.’ A putdown worthy of Larry David.

  And American servicemen may not have known it, but many of them were eating real French French fries. The catering company Sodexo, which has been faithfully serving meals to the US Navy for years, is French-owned.

  French industry rules the world

  The Sodexo canteens are typical of the discreet way in which France, despite its claims that the Anglo-Saxons are taking over the world, is, well, taking over the world. Wherever you live, there is a high likelihood that the nearest oil refinery, nuclear power station, bus stop, advertising billboard and high-speed train will be French, whereas we usually assume that it is only the hypermarket – and most of the mineral water and cheese inside it – that came from France.

  French-owned companies run bus and regional train services in many of America’s biggest cities, and supply water, electricity and gas to huge swathes of Britain. To give just two examples: France’s EDF entered the UK energy market in only 2002 and is already the country’s biggest electricity generator and distributor. Its full name is, of course, Electricité de France, but see how many clicks it takes you on the company’s British website, www.edfenergy.com, to find that out. And Veolia, which used to have the rather less discreet name of la Compagnie générale des eaux, has diversified from water supply and, after entering the US transport market in 2001, now controls transport networks in Atlanta, Las Vegas, LA, Miami, New Orleans and San Diego, amongst others.

  In fact, the French are the best globalizers in the world, even if they refuse to say so because they think the word is too English. They call globalization mondialisation, and if you ask the average French person what this means, he or she will cite McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Gap and Starbucks, and accuse the Anglo-Saxons of trying to control the world economy. They will be surprised when you begin matching them name for name, with Carrefour, Perrier, Chanel, Danone, l’Oréal, Louis Vuitton, Occitane and Renault, for example, as well as all their big Champagne, fashion and perfume brands. Many French people just don’t realize how spectacularly successful their country is.

  And this mondialisation is important for more than just global economic reasons – it is also vital for the French business community’s psyche.

  Without naming any names, for obvious legal reasons, what a French company can do when it buys its way into a non-French market is go as wild as a salesman on a conference in Las Vegas. It can cheerfully get up to all the mischief that a liberalized country will permit but France forbids – it can, for example, impose price increases that would be illegal in France’s protected economy and working practices that would cause a national strike.

  And this globalization à la française has benefits on a more personal level, too. French managers are usually trained in very academic business schools and then sent to work in companies where any creativity is stifled by a rigid hierarchy and the need to respect workers’ rights. To avoid staleness, the ideal solution is for a French company to send its execs to an overseas subsidiary. There, they can get all the pent-up frustration out of their system by firing inefficient wo
rkers and closing down unprofitable factories (both of which are as good as impossible in France), and then return home like crusaders after a rampage amongst the heathens. They will have sated their bloodlust and can now settle down to the more restrained style of management imposed on them by the French unions. In short, foreign workers take the punishment that French managers would dearly love to dish out to their compatriots. Vive la mondialisation.

  How do you say faux pas in English?

  In 2004, France and Britain continued their eternal tap dance through the minefield of history when they celebrated the centenary of the Entente Cordiale.

  In March, the Queen went over to Paris, where President Jacques Chirac provoked a scandal by putting his arm around the royal waist. This perfectly anodyne French gesture was of course interpreted in the British press as a huge Gallic gaffe – the Latin lover trying it on with the monarch – and there was general outrage that France didn’t understand the untouchability of royalty. It wasn’t 1904 that was being remembered, it was 1789.

  In June 2004, it was the sixtieth anniversary of D-Day. The Queen was invited to Normandy, along with George W. Bush, who made a speech saying that France was America’s ‘eternal ally’, this just a year after his administration had stood by while the US media called the French every name under the sun.

  In July, the British were given a great honour when their soldiers were invited to lead off the Bastille Day military parade. Amongst the regiments that were sent to march through Paris were the Grenadier Guards, who have been wearing bearskin hats ever since they nabbed them from the defeated Gardes impériales at Waterloo. (But then finding an old regiment that had never been in battle against the French would have been nearly impossible.)

  And in August, Paris celebrated its liberation with a series of festivities under the banner ‘Paris se libère’ – Paris liberates itself, a line from Charles de Gaulle’s famous ‘Paris libéré’ speech. France’s most serious newspaper, Le Monde, published a forty-eight-page sixtieth-anniversary supplement, which didn’t mention that non-French troops might have taken part in liberating the city until page eighteen. Merci, les amis.

  In short, the year 2004 was meant to be special but in fact it was same old, same old.

  In July 2005 there was another head-to-head, when Paris and London competed to host the 2012 Olympics. (As we now know, London won and is bracing itself for the financial consequences.)

  The two cities’ campaigns symbolized the deep differences between Britain and France. Paris’s 2012 Committee was chaired by the city’s mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, seconded by the then Minister of Sport, Jean-François Lamour, both of whom looked about as athletic as a crème brûlée. Meanwhile, London’s bid was headed by an Olympic Champion, Sebastian Coe.

  The Brits made a film that showed youngsters being inspired by the Games to become athletes themselves – a truly Olympic dream. The French, on the other hand, commissioned an arty video that was basically an advert for Paris’s tourist attractions, as if the Eiffel Tower would be competing in the high jump.

  On the night before the committee’s vote, Tony and Cherie Blair stayed up schmoozing with delegates in their hotel in Singapore. Jacques Chirac put in an appearance and then went to bed, declining to demean himself by begging committee members for their votes. He also (it is said) cost France the vital support of two Finnish delegates when he was quoted in the press criticizing the Brits by saying, ‘You cannot trust people who have such bad cuisine. It is the country with the worst food after Finland.’

  In essence, Paris was so sure of itself that it threw away the bid. Instead of playing the Anglo-Saxon game of really showing how much you want something and going all out for it, the French played hard to get. Even so, they were incensed when they lost. I was invited on to French TV news to watch the announcement live, and sat between a former Ministre du Sport and a newspaper journalist, both of whom exploded with righteous anger when the ‘wrong’ city was chosen. They were such bad losers that I said they were forgetting the Olympic spirit – ‘Paris didn’t lose,’ I suggested, ‘it just got the silver medal.’ The politician turned to me and, live on air, replied, ‘You Anglais think you’re funny, but you’re not.’ Not a very sporting minister.

  The Brits show Sarko their London derrière

  France and Britain’s non-stop snubbing carried on during the visit to London in March 2008 by President Nicolas Sarkozy and his glamorous wife, the model and chanteuse Carla Bruni. The speech-writers hit exactly the right note, with both Monsieur Sarkozy and Gordon Brown calling for an upgrade of the Entente Cordiale – Sarko suggested an ‘Entente Amicale’, while Brown went one further and proposed an ‘Entente Formidable’.

  It was only almost every other detail of the trip that turned into a diplomatic faux pas.

  When Sarko gave his speech at the Houses of Parliament, he was taken to the Royal Gallery and shown two of its prize exhibits – immense paintings depicting the French defeats at Trafalgar and Waterloo.

  Similarly, when the French first couple arrived in Windsor to visit the Queen, they were greeted by a pair of royal carriages – the Queen and Monsieur Sarkozy were to travel in the first, Prince Philip and Carla in the second. Along the way, the procession was escorted by the Household Cavalry, whose breastplates are copies of those taken from dead French cavalrymen at Waterloo. Also present were men from the Blues and Royals, whose uniform features a golden eagle, in celebration of the capture of French colours at the same battle. And to cap it all, the first horse in the parade was called Agincourt. The French visit to Windsor Castle was being met with a bombardment of historical cannonballs.

  The royal banquet at the castle was just as gaffe-strewn. To reach the banqueting hall, the guests had to pass through an antechamber called (what else?) the Waterloo Room, on the walls of which hung two magnificent portraits of (naturellement) the battle’s two victors, Wellington and Blücher. By this time, Sarko must have been relieved that they weren’t going to watch a video about tourism on St Helena.

  He was smiling politely as he walked to the great table in St George’s Hall, laid for 160 guests. On the table sat a Sèvres porcelain dinner service that, according to a French protocol expert with whom I did a TV talk show on the day after the banquet, was acquired by the British royal family during the French Revolution, when the contents of the Château de Versailles were plundered and sold off on the cheap. The implication was that, in French eyes, the President had been invited to Windsor to eat off his own plates.

  Sarko came up with a snub of his own, though. Despite saying in his speech at the banquet that ‘it’s like a dream to stay at Windsor Castle’, he apparently declined the offer of a second night’s B&B and headed back home. One day of historical humiliation was apparently enough.

  And is it too far-fetched to speculate that the failure to invite the Queen to the sixty-fifth anniversary of D-Day in June 2009 was France’s reaction to the historical put-downs during the previous year’s state visit? Fair enough, the French were focusing all their attention on Barack Obama, the new political superstar, but how could they have forgotten the daughter of the king who allowed Charles de Gaulle to base his Free French regime in London for four years? The faux pas was explained away afterwards – France had expected the Brits themselves to decide who was on their guest list – but the excuse was about as convincing as one of de Gaulle’s wartime declarations of friendship.

  In fact, Obama could probably consider himself lucky to be flavour of the month, because in June 2009 France was still smarting from two American low punches. First, as a parting shot when George W. Bush left office, his administration seems to have taken revenge for the French stand on Iraq by singling out Roquefort cheese for an inexplicable 300 per cent import duty, effectively pricing it out of the American market. As this was almost literally the last trade measure implemented by the administration, it surely can’t have been a random move.

  Another American gaffe came from the newly elected Obama hi
mself when he sent a letter to former President Chirac saying, ‘I am certain that we will be able to work together in the coming four years, in a spirit of peace and friendship to build a safer world.’ Hadn’t Obama’s advisers noticed the régime change in France back in May 2007? Shocking, perhaps, but it was almost certainly not meant as a personal insult. One could even say that the Sarkozy –Chirac confusion was a symptom of the way America sees the world – one, maybe two, superpowers on top, with Britain at America’s feet, a few key enemies leaping up to attract attention to themselves, and an anonymous gaggle of less important countries bustling about below. Like it or not, to at least one adviser in the new American president’s team, France was on the same level of importance as Taiwan, Mozambique and Lithuania, and who knows the names of their leaders?

  Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

  There are some who say that we should bury the hatchet and simply forget all our supposed differences. We are all grown-ups now and should get along as partners in the modern world. History, these people seem to be saying, is in the past. But, as William Faulkner once said: ‘The past is never dead. In fact, it’s not even past.’

  In other words, history is in the making every day, and to ignore the past would be to deny the theory of evolution. Britain and France, and more recently North America, are the way they are today because of our constant fighting over the centuries. Our spheres of influence in the political world date back centuries. As we have seen in earlier chapters, many of Britain and France’s political institutions grew up in direct opposition to what l’ennemi was doing. France’s modern-day politicians, soldiers and administrators almost all come out of schools set up by Napoleon, and have Bonaparte’s inherent mistrust, mingled with envy, of l’Anglo-Saxon.