Friday, 23 October 2009
Those Crazy French
Ah the glorious (root: gloire) absurdity of the French never ceases to amuse. Now they're celebrating the 50th anniversary of a clapped-out cartoon character with a costumed pageant, a seminar at the Sorbonne, a musical, a flypast, que sais-j'encore - oh and, for good measure, a bitter squabble among several villages over which of them inspired Asterix's home. Only in France would the anniversary of a cartoon character who, even in the fans' estimate, long ago ceased to be any good, and was never funny (except perhaps to the French, whose sense of humour is no laughing matter), spark such a frenzy of self-congratulatory brouhaha. He may be rubbish, is the French line, but he's our rubbish. Asterix is held to stand for the plucky, wily, sturdily independent French nation, holding out against the forces of US cultural imperialism, or whatever is the latest threat to precious French identity (not much holding out in the Last Spot of Bother, if memory serves)... Not that I'm knocking it - the reason France is still France is precisely this inflated sense of her own importance. It's just that I can't see any other nation on earth celebrating 50 years of an unfunny cartoon character on quite such an absurdly grandiose scale. Vive la France!
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"Our ancestors the Gauls...": isn't that how French history lessons were said to begin?
ReplyDeleteAs a kid I loved Asterix but even then I could tell he massively jumped the shark after in Belgium.
ReplyDeletelove a bit of asterix, especially the latin jokes - although I haven't read any in years, and I had heard that they are still making them, with diminishing returns.
ReplyDeleteTalking of Franco-American war by cartoon, Mrs B was playing a Simpsons computer game a little while back. In one sequence the small fat German kid throws a pebble at a French village, and instantly hundreds of white flags pop up along with cries of "we surrender!"
ReplyDeleteThat's how you do it, no mincing about with metaphors involving the Roman Empire...
I too enjoyed Asterix, particularly Asterix in Britain. I still love his entirely understandable reaction to the notion of vinegary mint sauce with lamb, "pauvres betes".
ReplyDeleteI think it's even more absurd when you consider the most direct descendants of the Gauls are to be found in Brittany. So it's a bit like the English celebrating their roots via a cartoon about the Welsh.
ReplyDeleteI once went to the 'bandes dessine' museum in Angouleme (I think). God, it was dull and totally unfunny.
It's just that I can't see any other nation on earth celebrating 50 years of an unfunny cartoon character on quite such an absurdly grandiose scale.
ReplyDeleteYou can't?
Vive la France indeed Nige, tunnel vision extraordinaire, engaged in a conversation once, in midwinter in an Alpine refuge, with a group of elite French soldaten being taught how to fall off an Alp without complaining. The talk got around to Napoleon, whom they were insisting was their most victorious commander, trying to point out that he may well have lost the odd one was met with deafening silence.
ReplyDeletePeter - of course! The pernicious Disney - and Mickey's a mouse too, so it's even weirder. What the hey does Mickey M stand for, I wonder, apart from cloying whimsy?
ReplyDeleteIsn't mickey mouse the God of shopping?
ReplyDeleteMickey - according to an impeccable source he's never been the same since they removed his teeth and stopped him beating Minnie
ReplyDeleteNige:
ReplyDeleteThey may feign incomprehension and fight about lots of things, but the Americans and French are a lot more similar that either likes to admit. They seem to have a kind of dysfunctional co-dependancy relationship. After all, we are talking about people who consider boycotting cheese and Coca-Cola as either affirmations of patriotism or hostile acts.
My theory is that it all comes down to too much classical architecture.
I put it down to Rousseau on the one hand and the holiness of the Constitution on the other.
ReplyDeleteIt's like the old joke about the Frenchman that Gaw referenced the other day: "It's ok in practice but does it work in theory?"
That gag applies to plenty of Americans too.
"the most direct descendants of the Gauls are to be found in Brittany": could be. But the name "Brittany" gives a clue to the origin of part of the population.
ReplyDelete