Drownout France

Franco-anglophonic Television

Franco-anglophonic Television

Paul Auster, speaking in Brooklyn to "Double Je". 10 Juin.

The French relationship with English ain't simple. On the one hand you have this man, Paul Auster, and others like him: the francophones of New York. The Swiss-French program "Double Je" spent two hours taxicabbing around New York City to interview these people: Annette Insdorf of Columbia's film department, Gary Tinterow of the Met's painting department, and so on. "What do you love about New York? What do you miss about living in France?"

As amply demonstrated by things like "le weekend" and the street-level excitement about Spider-man, it would be foolish to imagine the French as rejecting American/"anglophone" culture wholesale.

Love-hate isn't quite the right way to think of it either. The attitude doesn't oscillate between appreciating then suddenly disliking precisely certain features of the confrontation with America. Rather, if the snobbish and hurried New Yorker reminds the French of Parisiennes, it is the utter corporate and commercial domination of all New York's great streets that is loathsome. So it's complex. Puritanical, oversimplifying (Bush's "cowboys and indians"), arrogant, gluttonous, and so on are the bad things.

And all the cultural oppression happens in English.

Literally half the movies on the movie channels at a given moment are Hollywood dubs. There aren't quite as many primetime TV shows, but during the day they run a number of US programs (they seem to like Pacific Blue). The cultural products consumed are to a great extent American and British.

Expat HQ. 10 Juin.

But that's really not true of the telephone company, or the food in the grocery, or cars. Or books. It's isn't merely the overpowering American economy that shoves US-exports down French throats. Something else explains the excess of American TV shows.

It must be that they like the stuff.

Posted by amol at June 12, 2002 07:09 PM