France et l'anti-américanisme

The Joker and Thief recently attended a one day colloque in Paris at the Cité Universitaire on the topic "Du modèle US à la superpuissance?" It was intended for history teachers in the French schools, to give them an opportunity to discuss America as a topic for their classes. Already the US occupies much of the curriculum since it dominates current events. But talking about the US in a balanced way can be a bit tricky in France right now with students more than willing to reduce American culture to McDonalds and Michael Jackson (et alors?...) than to discuss any upside of American society.

The first speaker was the reason for our presence, Andre Kaspi, professor of American history at Paris IV - la Sorbonne, who gave a talk on the reasons for the anti-américanisme in France today. His points are worth outlining here.

First of all, there are three types of people that express opinions on the US in France:
- those who know it well
- those who don't know it but are curious
- those who don't know it but think they do

The last one is obviously the most vocal and the most annoying since they generally take their limited experience with the US as representative of the whole. Bush for them becomes the typical American. While we can agree that he's almost a caraciture of the ugly American abroad, he's hardly representative of the "typical American." - if such a thing exists. For a country of nearly 300 million, it's difficult to find general principles that apply everywhere at all times.

Of this anti-américanisme, Kaspi describes three types:

Political - the idea that the American society is characterized by rampant consumerism (i.e. How Much?). There is, as he describes it, a paradoxical set of views which most French hold as well, that the US is extremely materialistic yet profoundly religious.

Economic - the rich get richer and the poor poorer, business is king ("business interests prevented them from signing Kyoto")

Social - the words typically associated with any criticism of American society are racism, genocide (of the indigenous populations), poverty, drugs, apartheid, etc.

While these firt two topics are interesting, it was the third that provided the most fruitful discussion, "How to explain the French/American relationship."

Most explanations today offer one of two explanations, either A) that the US and France share a common interest in human rights and personal freedom (the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of Human Rights were both inspired by the Englightenment ideas circulating in the French salons of the 18th century), or that B) France was at one time in the position that the US now occupies, having once offered the French universal model and had its own civilizing mission. Kaspi find these two theories unsatisfactory alone and offers a third, C) that France has become one of the most Americanized countries in the world. It's cultural reference points are becoming American - cinema, food, politics, fashion, music, language, etc. - and the only ones they can identify as truly French are those reference points of contention or hostility. It's an interesting point, one that can certainly be used to expand our understanding of le sentiment anti-américanain which exists in France. This American influence has certainly not slipped in under the radar. What Americans call globlization, the French refer to as américanisation.

Unfortunately for the French, the term anti-américanisme is a rather recent term (1968) and takes its inspiration from the left-wing protests on the American university campuses of that era. In other words, in this country that goes to great lengths to impose its own linguistic standards, the word used to reject America is itself an American import! Somehow, that just seems right.