French Letters

by Jonathan Miller

  At club level, French football was deeply compromised by a torrid affaire involving Marseille football club, which continues to resonate today. In 1993 Marseille owner Bernard Tapie was accused of match fixing. In 1995 he was sentenced to two years in prison. He was subsequently prosecuted for tax fraud. Tapie later supported Sarkozy’s bid for the presidency (although Tapie was ostensibly a socialist at the time), allegedly because Sarkozy had promised to help him with his legal difficulties. The French state paid Tapie 400 million euros in an affaire that implicated Christine Lagarde when she was finance minister and which continues to rumble on. The state is now asking for it to be repaid. Fat chance. Further accusations of match-fixing were made in 2014 when police arrested the presidents of Stade Malherbe Caen and Nîmes Olympique while in the same year three directors of Olympique Marseille were accused of misusing club finds.

  The most outlandish accusation against French football relates to the nation’s World Cup victory in 1998 against a lacklustre Brazilian squad stricken with food poisoning. While food poisoning is not unheard of in France, conspiracy theorists in Brazil wondered whether this was merely unfortunate, or something more sinister. From a nation with a secret service capable of bombing a Greenpeace vessel moored in a harbour in New Zealand, an ostensible ally, it is not inconceivable that the French were leaving nothing to chance, although it will forever be impossible to prove.

  Racism is a constant feature in French football despite many of their best players being black, including Thierry Henry and Patrick Viera. Willy Sagnol, the Bordeaux coach, was quoted accusing African players of lacking intelligence. The French world cup team in South Africa essentially went on strike over the expulsion of Nicolas Anelka after a row with white coach Raymond Domenech, who had then to physically separate the player Patrice Evra, who is black, and fitness coach Robert Duverne, who is white. The managing director of the French football federation quit in disgust. See Zidane.

  FORCE DE FRAPPE

  The French nuclear deterrent

  The French first tested nuclear weapons in the Algerian desert in 1960. France today has an estimated 300 nuclear warheads including ballistic missiles launched from submarines and guided bombs launched from Mirage and Rafale fighter jets. It’s evident that there are no immediate scenarios in which the French would nuke anybody, nor that this would even be a practical response to any conceivable security threat. Nevertheless, the bomb lets France keep its seat at the top table as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.

  FOX NEWS

  Hated American TV network

  After the Charlie Hebdo shootings, Fox News, the punchy, conservative, American TV network, reported that there were ‘no-go’ zones in French cities. This provoked a storm of protest from Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris, and Le Petit Journal, the closest thing in France to The Daily Show (formerly presented by Jon Stewart). Fox was made to look foolish but it is still a mystery why they ever apologised since there are definitely neighbourhoods in many French cities where it would be most unwise for outsiders to venture unaccompanied. Hidalgo absurdly threatened to sue Fox News (she never did) but since the prime minister Manuel Valls has himself subsequently described the grim French suburbs as ‘ghettos’ and more honesty would go a long way. Whether you call them no-go zones or something more tasteful, the biggest victims are those condemned to live in these places.

  FRANCE, LA

  The ‘indivisible’ nation

  What does France mean, what does it mean to be French? Republican certainty on this question (to be French is to be a Republican) is hardly supported by the historical background. The Republic says that everyone is equal and the nation is indivisible, but an ideology cannot make everyone the same. Graham Robb, an English writer and historian, cycled through France to produce a masterful biography of the French people, The Discovery of France (2007). It shreds the French mythology comprehensively, demonstrating that Frenchness is a recently invented construct. Needless to say, Robb’s excellent book was ill-received in its French translation.

  More or less everything about France’s modern identity has been created in the service of Republican ideology and much of it rather recently. France has been going through an identity crisis that began even before the turn of the century, and has since been exacerbated by the ugly mood in the ghettos of major French cities. The French believed that their Republican model would integrate everyone and sneered at the multiculturalism practised in Britain. But it has turned out that neither appeals to laïcité (secularism) in France nor celebrations of difference in Britain have turned out to be fit for purpose. One reason is that in neither Britain nor France is it entirely clear what it means to be British, or French. Or English, or Catalan. Or Scottish or Alsatian.

  Robb reminds us that identity has local origins - certainly in France. French conscripts during the Great War, the poilus, were not even able to communicate with each other, since their dialects were so strikingly different. As Robert Louis Stevenson observed in Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879), French people living on opposite sides of the same valley were often literally at war with one another.

  The French agrarian tradition celebrated today is as mythical as the rest. Agronomists, dispatched from Paris, of course, in the 19th century despaired at the peasantry’s refusal to cultivate the land, holding to their pastures and the animals who kept them warm. Only the invention of the internal combustion engine and the tractor persuaded French men to till the land – when they had machines to drive around in. Modern France is therefore largely invented, a construct of Republicanism and the ideologically-driven imposition of national education.

  Today, France is a nation united, perhaps, only by its hatred of tax collectors and officials. But it is still not one nation but several, cohabiting often uneasily. An intensely local identity, bound up in town or village life, concerns itself with buying only organic chèvre cheese from the local goat farmer, and playing football with the village squad. Yet this exists in contradiction with a new social media identity which crashes through localism and has created entirely new horizontal communities, sometimes more interested in their Facebook friends than their regional roots, and often reaching far beyond France itself.

  FRANÇAIS, LE

  The French language

  Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, supposedly spoke French to his wife, Italian to his mistress and German to his horse. So, it has long been true that you can only get so far speaking just French. ‘Why would you want to learn French?’ an expatriate Frenchman once asked me at a Sciences Po alumni club meeting to which I had been invited in London. ‘Just so you can talk to French people?’ Well yes, actually. While true that French ranks well down the list of global languages, the language of Molière still offers what a cultivated anglophone would recognise as a certain refinement as well as access to some of the world’s greatest literature. Miss Piggy was a francophone (Pretentious? Moi?) All kinds of interesting people speak French including The Queen, Mick Jagger and the actress Julia Robert-Dreyfus (distantly related to Alfred Dreyfus), as well as 275 million Francophones on five continents. People who are not French seem to enjoy learning French for the pure pleasure of it. French is an accessible language for native English speakers because it shares so many words with English (and a few faux amis, or misleading cognates). Culturally, French is a fabulous brand, carrying with it the suggestion of earnest conversations in Parisian cafés, fresh baguettes, runny cheese and a delicious glass of something with or without bubbles.

  Yet despite all that it has going for it, the French themselves have taken a highly defensive posture. Even if Fleur Pellerin, the culture minister, said in 2015 she is relaxed about English, the government continues to lavish money on francophonie and there are still laws on the books (la loi Toubon) regulating the use of English in legal documents and advertising. (Although an exception has been made so British motorists caught speeding in France can receive their procès-verbal (summons) in English.) Ther
e is no evidence that this regulation is inhibiting the use of English in its entirety and in parts, nor that French itself is in anything other than rude good health, with an important foothold in Africa, and a continuing cohort of support from the same people who read the New York or London Reviews of Books. French today is more dynamic than ever, careless of the rules made by the old men at the Académie Française in Paris.

  FRANÇAISE, ACADÉMIE

  Malevolent guards of the French language

  ‘Mock it, but try to become a member if you can,’ was Gustave Flaubert’s advice. He was never a member. The 40 members of the Academy, known as Immortals, wear the habit vert, a long black coat and black-feathered 18th century bicorne (two-cornered) hat, the robe and hat both richly embroidered with green leafy motifs. They are also issued a sword, presumably to enforce their decrees on the correct use of the French language. Spends its days debating such vital questions as whether it is correct to address a female government minister as madame la ministre or madame le ministre. A ministre (government minister) is a masculine noun; feminists object. The French language is evolving at break-neck speed in spite of all the efforts of the Academy to control it, and has been thoroughly contaminated by anglicisms (e.g. the selfie). Other than running through transgressors with their swords, les académiciens might be seen as powerless to do much about this. It is unkind but not entirely untrue to say that the Académie has become gloriously irrelevant, even ludicrous.

  Of 726 Immortals, eight have been women. Members have included various rogues, politicians and Nazi collaborators (including Marshal Pétain). Excluded have been such greats as Marcel Proust, Honoré de Balzac, Jules Verne and Émile Zola. The Academy has taken a reactionary stand against official recognition of regional languages (Alsatian, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Occitan and Provençal). Its official dictionary of the French language can be defined with exactitude by reference to the inspiring American journalist Ambrose Bierce, who defined a dictionary as ‘a malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic,’ although he wrote one of his own. Sir Michael Edwards OBE, a literary scholar and poet, became the first British member of the Académie in 2014, confessing that he was ‘worse than a foreigner - an Englishman.’ Sir Michael believes that English should have a similar institution to defend itself against Americanisms, proving that for other-worldliness, he lacks nothing in comparison with his native colleagues. Sir Michael’s views are contestable in any case, as he has applied for and been granted naturalisation as a French citizen, although holding onto his British passport and his royal gongs. I suppose one must admire someone who is capable of carrying royal honours and being a republican at the same time.

  FRANÇAIS DE SOUCHE

  Born in France of French heritage

  Literally, French by roots. Controversial expression with racist and anti-Republican subtext used to distinguish ‘real’ French people from immigrants and their families. In my village, where half the population has Spanish surnames (Lopez, Sanchez, Martinez, etc.) and there are also plenty of English, Germans, Swedes and even a Brazilian, the Français de souche are probably in a minority.

  FRANCE INTER

  Organ of the left

  Like BBC Radio Four, with added Marxism. Programmes are often beautifully produced and presented. Listening to France Inter is a very good way of learning French. The announcers pronounce the language with exceptional clarity and elegance. But as is often the case in media content analysis, you miss the point if you analyse only the content. It’s what’s missing that matters. And in the case of France Inter, it is any kind of critique of what is really going on in France. That’s not surprising because France Inter is itself part of the state, as embedded within the establishment as it is possible to be, dependent on the state for its budget, its frequencies and its licences. France Inter is not interested in the economic functionality of France. It broadcasts many beautiful programmes about the arts, and natural science, some highly amusing talk shows featuring many of the most brilliant Parisian talkers, as well as a lesser diet of quiz shows and call-ins. These are interspersed with anodyne news bulletins, in which government spokesmen are rarely challenged. France Inter announces repeatedly that it is a ‘public service,’ but in its failure to challenge state power, it is really a public disservice. France Inter is at its best when the journalists are on strike, which is frequent, sparing listeners the dull repetition of its narrow-minded view of the world. France Inter does play a varied and engaging range of music, which it stitches between its talkier segments.

  Like public broadcasters everywhere, its primary goal is self-preservation. Spokespersons for the right-wing parties are allowed perfunctory participation, though the centre-point of debate is always gauchiste. But it is not so much the ideology paraded by France Inter that makes it pretty unreliable, it is the radio station’s seeming absolute indifference to questions that challenge the elite French consensus. France Inter is not remotely interested in business, capitalism, jobs, innovation, wealth creation, or really anything outside its tight circle of arts and letters. A lens to an ordered France of ministerial announcements, it is a plush platform for a commentariat of la gauche caviar (caviar-eating leftists) who circulate between Inter and the editorial rooms of Le Monde.

  FRANCOPHONIE

  The commonwealth of French speakers

  In terms of absolute number of speakers, measured globally, French is the 18th most important global language after Basa Jawa, Wu and Telugu, among others. The Organisation internationale de la francophonie,financed largely by France, is supposed to act as a fulcrum of solidarity among Francophone countries. Naturally, this is a considerable operation with much opportunity for high-flying jollies and many lavishly-compensated make-work jobs, including an executive secretariat in Paris, summits and ministerial conferences, all sustained by a parliamentary council and, as if this was not enough, a parliamentary assembly.

  ‘FRENCH-BASHING’

  Anglo-American passtime

  Term used by the French to describe any foreign criticism, especially that emanating from Britain. It is true that French-bashing is fun and also easy, since there is plenty to bash. Nothing lights up the countenance of a grumpy English newspaper editor like a slashing story ridiculing the French. It is also true, firstly, that there are plenty of stories in British newspapers that admire the French (e.g., ‘Thank goodness I gave birth in France,’ Gillian Harvey, Daily Telegraph, June 2015) and second, that many of the most celebrated examples of French-bashing are pretty historic and much of what is condemned here as French-bashing might otherwise simply be considered journalism that dares to note that France is not exactly without problems. French-bashing has indeed lately been pretty tame, in comparison with its antecedents. C. S. Forester wrote a classic novel of the Peninsular War which he titled, simply, Death to the French (1932).

  The most notorious practitioner of French-bashing was the former editor of The Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie. ‘Hop off you frogs’ was his classic headline in 1984, during the so-called lamb war with France, when French farmers hijacked British sheep exports to France. In response, MacKenzie sent a detachment of Page 3 girls to France to plant a union flag on the Place d’Angleterre in Calais. ‘Up yours Delors,’ was his headline on 1 November 1990, urging the paper’s ‘patriotic family of readers’ to tell ‘the French fool’ Jacques Delors, president of the European Commission, ‘where to stuff his ECU’ (predecessor to the Euro). MacKenzie again mobilised Page 3 girls, this time to the French embassy in London, after declaring the French to be the filthiest people in Europe. (He had read somewhere they didn’t buy much soap, which may be true, but they do use a lot of shampoo.) MacKenzie, it might be noted, bought a holiday home in France in 2004. He insisted, ‘Look, I don’t mind the French, but when I’m there I don’t spend any time talking to them.’ French newspapers are rarely as creatively offensive in writing rosbif-bashing stories, tending instead to embittered diatribes condem
ning Anglo-Saxon ultra-libéralisme. But Le Monde did well in June 2015 with an article, in English, warning that ‘Britain beware, Brexit [UK withdrawal from the EU] could be your Waterloo.’ It was published on the 200th anniversary of the famous battle.

  FROMAGE

  Glory of France

  ‘Fetch hither le fromage de la belle France,’ demanded Mousebender (John Cleese), vainly trying to order Camembert in the cheese-shop sketch in Monty Python’s Flying Circus. ‘I don’t care how fucking runny it is. Hand it over with all speed.’ Replies Wensleydale, the shop assistant: ‘The cat’s eaten it.’

  When I visited England with a French winemaking friend (his first visit), he was astonished to visit the Neal’s Yard cheese shop in London’s Borough Market, specialising in British and Irish cheese, which must be one of the finest in the world. Astonished because he had no idea that this food of the gods could possibly exist outside France. But if cheese in Britain is just food, it is a French national sacrament and must be treated with reverence. At a French dinner party I reached for the brie and witlessly, instead of cutting a radius, crudely lopped off a piece from its apex. A deadly silence fell around the table. A greater faux pas could hardly be imagined. Had there ever been need of further proof of the crassness of the British, this had just been supplied, declared one of the guests, sparing me the hint of a wink. It is a lesson I will never forget.