Welcome friends!
Did you read about that big rally against gay marriage and adoption rights that took place in Paris a couple of weeks ago? Paris, Texas? No, I don’t think so, but let me just check to make sure. No, not Texas. France. You know, The City of Light, The City of Love, capital of France, etc. Yeah, that Paris. Well, anyway, it got me thinking about how Americans (and especially liberal Americans) tend to view France and how we really ought to view France if we knew what the heck we were talking about and actually cared about such things. And believe me that thought doesn’t cross my mind every day, so I suppose I might as well say a few words about it.
First a quick recap of the story. In case you don’t know, France’s current Socialist government is planning to change the law to allow gay marriage and adoption, so good for them, but ... wait for it ... (I know, what could it be? Oh, the suspense!) ... the Catholic Church and the right wing opposition including the Le Pen family’s infamous National Front are up in arms over the whole affair and held a big old protest march in Paris. I’m not talking about a handful of wackos here. French police put attendance at around 340,000. Hardly a drop in the bucket. And I’m not even talking about the other similar demonstrations in Lyon, Toulouse, and Marseille. So what was the thinking behind all this rallying and marching, you ask? Well, according to French conservatives gay marriage would “undermine an essential building block of society.” Whoa, I haven’t heard that one before! Just kidding. American conservatives have been making that argument for years, unsuccessfully in the eyes of most people. The theory is that if we allow gay marriage then straight marriages will be undermined because of ... something something ... and society will inevitably crumble to pieces because of ... something something. OK, I’ve never really understood how it all hangs together but anyway that’s the argument. Nothing new there. I’ve already written about it a couple of times (May 27, 2011 and June 24, 2011).
Fittingly enough the Paris demonstrations were apparently led by some sort of comedian named Frigide Barjot (yes, very funny; but not as funny as the fact one can never find a good Freudian psychoanalyst when one needs one) who told French TV gay marriage “didn’t make sense” because “a child should be born to a man and a woman.” I’m not entirely sure if she was being serious or doing a bit but it seems popular opinion has tended toward the former interpretation so let’s go with that. (By the way, I think the pronoun she is correct, although the pictures I saw of the person in question were somewhat ambiguous, so please excuse me if I’ve gotten it wrong. Yes, I admit it. I don’t really keep up with French popular culture.) I sure hope she wasn’t doing a bit; it’s so difficult to delve into foreign humor. Reminds me of the time I tried to watch a Japanese comedy movie on TV one day. There did seem to be an awful lot of hilarity onscreen, but why, oh why?
Anyway, if Ms. Barjot was indeed being serious then I think she may need a few remedial logic lessons. Descartes must be turning over in his grave. First of all, gay marriage is not some sort of logic problem, so I don’t think it’s literally a matter of whether it makes sense or not. Assuming she meant to say that she feels gay marriage is inappropriate I’d just like to say I think a fairly common feeling nowadays is that allowing gay marriage is appropriate if one considers that some people are indeed gay (and not just straight people acting out to annoy other people) and one is interested in being fair to those people. And, of course, allowing gay adoption is clearly a different issue from whether a child should be born to a man and a woman. (On the latter issue: I know we’ve made a lot of scientific advances and so on but as far as I know a child cannot currently be born to two women or two men; I’m quite sure you still need an egg and a sperm from somewhere. But whenever we overcome that little issue we can talk about whether kids should be born to a man and a woman as opposed to some other configuration of people and genders, although it’s not immediately clear to me why we would consider it a significant issue under those conditions. In the meantime I think we’re essentially talking about adoption of one type or another, even if we’re talking about adopting a fetus in a womb.) Setting aside the birth issue and as far as the real moral issues involved with gay adoption, I think they’ve found that kids raised by gay parents do just as well as other kids, but please do let me know if you find out otherwise because then we might actually have something to talk about. But never mind. I don’t intend to go back over issues I’ve already discussed just because some Gallic nitwits have started banging the drum. Right now I’m just talking about the fact of this rally having taken place in Paris, France. Well, and I guess it never hurts to talk about the funny bits. Speaking of which, the funniest bit for me by far was the organizers’ contention that their movement was non-political, non-religious, and in no way directed against homosexuals. If they were playing American baseball they would have struck out on consecutive pitches because their movement seems rather obviously political, religious, and directed against homosexuals. (You’re telling me the National Front isn’t political? The Catholic Church isn’t religious? Trying to prevent someone from obtaining equal rights isn’t acting against them? Oh get real.) Which all sounds eerily familiar to American ears. I wonder if they called some American conservatives for advice. French conservatives: The Catholic Church wants to hook up with some right wing political parties, again, and this time make a big show of opposing equal rights for gay people, do you have any advice? American conservatives: Have you tried lying and fear mongering? French conservatives: C’est magnifique!
Well that’s the story from the papers, so I guess I can finally get to the actual point of this post, which is that reading about this whole affair made me think about how American liberals tend to have an unrealistically positive image of France. I know that many people imagine if Americans are predisposed toward any European country at all then it would have to be the UK or Britain or Great Britain or the British Isles or England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, or whatever constellation of the preceding one may care to discuss. (Let’s just go with the UK for now.) And I suppose there’s probably something to that because of the obvious ties of language, culture, and to a lesser extent, history. But I think one can easily overstate the case for a special relationship between the UK and the imagination of your average American. Well, I suppose some Americans do indeed have a soft spot for a certain image of the UK one finds in old BBC programs: mature, polite people sitting about stately homes sipping tea from fine china and making gently witty conversation. But these days that image is balanced out by another more modern and unfortunately probably much more accurate image of the UK that one can find in BBC programs of more recent vintage: that would be the UK of mean, snarky people; social classes; posh twits; binge drinking lager louts; hooligans; street punks; poverty; violent crime; one-eyed Muslim street preachers; and so on. So I think it’s a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to how Americans think about the UK these days.
Now France, on the other hand, I think must be in a whole other league when it comes to your average American. For most Americans, and of course especially for most liberal Americans, France is first and foremost the birthplace of the Enlightenment and hence of the better part of our own philosophical and cultural heritage. And I suppose it doesn’t hurt that back when we were battling Great Britain for our independence France managed to throw in its two cents worth at a rather convenient moment and has remained an ally of one sort or another ever since. Of course, I realize French involvement in the American Revolution had more to do with Louis XVI wanting to poke George III in the eye than with any prescient appreciation of the American experiment on the part of the French ruling class, but nonetheless, there we were, side by side. We also have a long tradition in American film and literature of portraying France as a center for most of what one might find beautiful and enjoyable in life: art, music, fashion, food, wine, cinema, literature, philosophy, and let’s not forget about love. And I don’t just mean in serious works but also in all those popular entertainments of the type in which one moves to Provence or wherever, starts up a garlic farm, renovates an old farm house, falls in love with a down to earth local, is rejuvenated, and just in general has a heck of a lot better time than one had dodging bullets and freezing one’s backside off in Detroit. Wait, am I talking about Italy? Well, Italy, France, whatever. I guess we have that same trope with other countries but certainly France must be one of the main ones. And above the image of France in general is the image of the city of Paris, surely the European city most Americans would still most like to visit if ever they got around to going to Europe at all, which is a pretty big if. And the ultimate expression of all this generalized Francophilia for American liberals? That would be the presumption that France will naturally take the lead on any liberal social issues flowing from our shared Enlightenment values, which we assume will emanate from the City of Light like so many rays of sunshine to penetrate all the backward villages, rustic provinces, and rough and tumble ports of the land.
Of course, there are a few smudges on this otherwise glowing mental picture to be sure. I think most Americans are vaguely aware that the French went a little crazy with the head chopping during their own revolution and then eventually settled on Napoleon Bonaparte, who I suppose wan’t all bad but certainly generated some issues of his own, and then waffled big time and brought back the nobility for another go, and then went this way and that for much of the nineteenth century. Hardly a straight shot in terms of a commitment to democracy. And later they got up to their share of colonial shenanigans in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East and had a great deal of trouble giving up power in Vietnam as well as in Algeria and other random bits of Africa. (I guess from recent news reports La Francafrique lives on, which I suppose isn’t necessarily a bad thing given the alternatives, but I think they gave up some bits anyway.) And they clearly weren’t what anyone would call diplomatic geniuses when it came to winding down WWI on a satisfactory basis and instead probably helped set the stage for round two, a political failing compounded by the fact that either by design or just plain old incompetence their military contributions to round two weren’t exactly what one might term outstanding. And of course it later became rather obvious quite a few French were actually pretty soft on fascism themselves or at least couldn’t wait to jump into bed with the fascists both figuratively and literally, even to the extent of helping the Nazis round up little French kids to ship off to their murder factories. Then more recently they seem to have developed some rather severe social and economic problems of the sort that have led to rioting in the streets and of course the reactionary call to get some pressure hoses in there to clean out all those damned slums. (Sarko l’Americain? Yeah, sure buddy, whatever. But the guy was President of France, not President of America. I’m just saying.) And of course they’ve had a number of notably corrupt political administrations over the years. And I suppose they haven’t been entirely helpful in any number of contemporary political and military situations where we really could have used a little help. But I’m just rambling now. You know, Americans understand these things happen. We’re not all that ourselves sometimes, so no hard feelings. No, I think for most Americans these sorts of issues just don’t have the psychic force to overcome the generally positive image of France we’ve always had in this country and that one can find in such delightful popular entertainments as Ratatouille or The Devil Wears Prada.
But you know what might really finally put a damper on American enthusiasm for all things French? A few more stories about mobs of French yahoos parading around the streets of Paris in support of conservative causes, that’s what. I mean, holy cow, what a colossal let down. What sort of world would be living in if the US with its entrenched and powerful conservative elite had to take the lead on social issues like equality for gay people? Of course, I understand there’s no fundamental reason things should be any different abroad. International conservatism is just as alive and well in Europe as it is in the US, maybe more so in certain respects. But what a cold blast of harsh reality on such a beautiful dream. It almost brings tears to my eyes. Vive La France! (Of our collective imagination, that is!)
References
Mass Paris rally against gay marriage in France. January 13, 2012. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21004322.
French protests against gay marriage bill. November 12, 2012. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20382699.
