FEATURE WINNER: France’s Cultural Exceptions

BY EMMY SCHWARTZ
A commercial for stylish eyewear blares with an updated, disco version of Little Willie John’s “(You Give Me) Fever” playing in the background. An advertisement for NBC’s Bones is next, with intense characters attempt to melodramatically resurrect old skeletons. These are immediately followed by a news program on President Sarkozy’s initiative to raise the retirement age and the French national soccer team’s World Cup loss. Although not immediately apparent, this is not an American television, but a French one--the glasses commercial is for Tchin-Tchin, a French eyewear company named after the popular French toast (the toasting of drinks, not the breakfast food), and Bones has been dubbed by French actors who give Dr. Brennan a high-pitched, snooty tone and Agent Booth one that is much more appropriately macho.
Although there are regulations in France to protect French television shows and movies, there is still a struggle for dominance between globalized, primarily American media and French-made programs. “Television in France has been around for over fifty years, and ever since it was introduced, we have watched American and British shows,” says Beatrice Thomas, a 61-year-old resident of Hyères, France. “Now, it is mostly American, but there are some French shows.”
American television shows in France are doublé (dubbed) in French, something that can be irritating for American visitors used to actors speaking their own language. However, the French do not find it out of the ordinary. “I don’t notice it,” says Thomas. “It has always been this way--I listen to the words, I do not watch their mouths.”
France is a country devoted to preserving its culture and its language, and the most striking evidence of this fact is the existence of l’exceptionne culturel (the cultural exception), a concept France introduced in 1993 during international trade negotiations for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or GATT. Currently cemented into law, the idea behind the cultural exception is that France’s culture should be protected from too much influence from foreign countries. This is accomplished through tariffs on foreign products, subsidies for French moviemakers and other artists, and quotas various industries are required to fulfill. For instance, 40% of music played on French radio and 40% of shows on French television are required to be French, with a mandatory portion played during primetime.
This doesn’t stop American films, television shows, and music from becoming a large portion of the media in France, however. And it’s not because everyone in France can speak English, either; according to a 2006 survey by the European Commission, only 36% of French people claimed that they spoke English well enough to carry on a conversation. At some French movie theaters, American films can be seen one of two ways: dubbed in French, or in the original English with French subtitles. “It is only a small percent of people who watch movies in the original [American] version,” says Coralie, a young French teacher at l’Institut d'Enseignement de la Langue Française sur la Côte d'Azur, or ELFCA, an international French language school. “A few people watch them in English with French subtitles, but if there was a movie theater that only showed movies in English with English subtitles, it would have to close!”
When the French discuss their favorite films, however, the responses are overwhelmingly American. Cecile Briolle and Jacques Repiquet, two French- English-speaking married freelance architects living in Hyères, are wary of the Americanization of France in ways such as the presence of McDonald’s, but still enjoy American movies. Among their favorite Americans in film are Anthony Hopkins and the Coppolas, and they own American films such as “Mission Impossible” and “The Virgin Suicides.” Seeing a student in one of her classes wearing a T-shirt with a quotation from the American movie ‘The Ugly Truth,’ Coralie laughs and asks her students about their favorite films. “Have you seen Sex and the City?” she asks in French. “I love ‘Sex and the City!’ It is so funny, so American.”
Surprisingly, the French, famous for their cuisine, are even starting to accept American food into their culture. The city of Hyères, also known as les Palmiers for its profusion of native palm trees, has a town center that dates back to medieval times, and even castle ruins that date back to the 12th century. But the newer portion of the city is arranged around a triangle of reasonably priced restaurants that its residents frequent at night. Two of the less bustling cafés are French, but the one that is constantly surrounded by circles of young French girls and boys who zoom up on mopeds and leave just as quickly is what the French call a McDo: McDonald’s.
Thomas, a secretary at a day care in the small city of Hyères, sits down nightly to traditional French dinner courses: salad, a selection of cheeses, bread, and a single glass of red wine, “for my health,” she says. Normally politely talkative, at the mention of an unsavory topic she starts to pound the table and stab vegetables with her utensils, her creamy white skin turning as crimson as her hair. One such inflammatory topic is President Sarkozy’s recent proposal to ban the veil in France. To Thomas, who also believes strongly that visitors to Hyères should make learning French a priority to the point of refusing to speak English even with other Americans, the idea of immigrants from Muslim Africa and the Middle East who refuse to fully assimilate into French society is insulting. “In France, we have a certain culture, a way we dress and act,” says Thomas in French, slicing angrily at her salad. “And when you come to France, you should respect that, especially since we would be expected to dress and act in a specific manner if we were to visit the countries in the Middle East.” Although she is speaking specifically about France’s Muslim population and the recent debate surrounding French President Sarkozy’s initiative to ban the veil, her words are evocative of a deeper perspective in France, one that is becoming threatened by rapid globalization: the devotion to being French. Once she finishes her heated monologue about the importance of respecting French culture, however, Thomas smiles and turns to the television. “Docteur House is on,” she says. “Do you know Docteur House?”