I don't mean to always be slightly critical of France. Really, I'm in love with France, but I guess the eye-rolling, "oh, the french" moments are easiest to point out since all of the lovely things that I love about being here are more general: everyday attitudes and pretty places.
With that disclaimer, I had another funny little encounter with a French family.
This time it was a hot, fancy French mom with two trendy little girls in the H&M underwear section. The littlest girl was sort of shifting back and forth to the music in a kind of heavy, more like imitating a monkey than dancing way. At first her mom just asked sort of flatly "what are you doing, are you dancing?" The girl didn't answer, just kept going with her caveman moves. The mother looked at her again and said "c'est atroce" (that's atrocious.")
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Fête de l'humanité
(1) This year was the 80th fête de l'humanité, a giant communist festival outside of Paris where each region's communist party sets up a booth with petitions, speeches, pamphlets and cute communist puns. But it's also just a big music festival with a lefty spirit, basically more disgustingly innovative dreadlocks, Palestinian flags and nice people than the Euro-bro summer music festival I went to last month.
(2) So, in this setting, this makes perfect sense: an old French rock star, Jacques Dutronc, starts singing one of his classic songs called "J'aime les filles" or "I love girls." From the extreme distance of where I am sitting from the stage I can't see much, but suddenly notice a small red blob on the stage that is not in any of the shots projected onto the giant screen. It kind of looks like a midget? Well, yes it is. Finally, Jacques introduces this tiny woman in a ridiculous red dress as Stéphanie, his "porte-bonheur" and "mascotte" (good-luck charm and mascot). Then she tells some jokes.
The only clip I could find is the end of the song, where, gotta show love for the Corsicans by holding up that Corsican flag your midget keeps in her pocket?
So I guess its just cultural differences, but even the crunchiest of the Frenchies didn't seem to find this a little fucked up. I guess France is a little behind the US, what with all our more enlightened little people entertainment. Or keeping midgets as mascots has always been more of a European thing.
(2) So, in this setting, this makes perfect sense: an old French rock star, Jacques Dutronc, starts singing one of his classic songs called "J'aime les filles" or "I love girls." From the extreme distance of where I am sitting from the stage I can't see much, but suddenly notice a small red blob on the stage that is not in any of the shots projected onto the giant screen. It kind of looks like a midget? Well, yes it is. Finally, Jacques introduces this tiny woman in a ridiculous red dress as Stéphanie, his "porte-bonheur" and "mascotte" (good-luck charm and mascot). Then she tells some jokes.
The only clip I could find is the end of the song, where, gotta show love for the Corsicans by holding up that Corsican flag your midget keeps in her pocket?
So I guess its just cultural differences, but even the crunchiest of the Frenchies didn't seem to find this a little fucked up. I guess France is a little behind the US, what with all our more enlightened little people entertainment. Or keeping midgets as mascots has always been more of a European thing.
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