Française en Colère

If you have ever lived in France for any length of time, or even visited the country, you have probably heard the phrase, or read the headline, or saw the picket sign that said, "(Filll in the blank) en Colère", which loosely translated means "Angry (fill in the blank)".

Teachers, railroad workers, bureaucrats, dog owners, visitors to Disneyland, or citizens with nothing better to do, will rise up in anger at most anything, will then bus up to Paris, grab a sign (usually provided as a courtesy by the CGT, the all powerful confederation of unions that just loves to fill Parisian streets with protesters) and hit the streets.

The script usually goes like this: the government will announce a (change in the amount of hours worked, new taxes, a law banning X, Y, or Z, cuts in the amount of bureaucrats at the A, B, or C level, ordinances regarding fines for dog owners who leave their dog's poop on the street...whatever) and the buses start heading for Paris. People will march, threaten strikes, public monuments will be draped in mantels with slogans, traffic will be snarled for hours, and two days later the government will back down and not follow through on their proposal.

When I applied for my residency in France, I was obliged to go to Pau, the site of the regional Prefecture, and attend a "Civic Day" (a day in which I was to be instructed on how to be a correct resident of France). As I waited for the instructor, who was fashionably late as most bureaucrats are, I happened to look out the window and into the floor-to-ceiling window of the office next to our classroom. There were hundreds of CGT flags and posters stored there and more being made by half a dozen busy, little workers. The flags, and posters, and placards, and mantels did not carry a message. They were just being readied for the next protest and for someone to "fill in the blanks", as it were. Protest in anger is not only a right in this country, it is a national sport and a source of infinite pride. People will tell you, with eyes misting with emotion, of the day they protested, angrily of course, against (you name it).

French anger--many times disguised as indignation, righteousness, national unity, love of animals, fresh produce, or stinky cheese, or defense of culture, customs, or traditions--is really anchored and truly the product of French Pride. This has been the boon and the bane of this country for centuries. It has led it on the path of glory and down the blind alleys of disaster.

The story of supersonic transport is a great example of how this combustible mixture of anger and pride can lead to economic disaster and personal tragedy. When the race to produce an SST, supersonic transport, began in the 1950s, the Americans, the French,the British, and even the Russians (with their" Concordski" copy) set off on a race to capture the transatlantic shuttle business. By the 70s, the Americans had figured out that transporting 100 people at supersonic speeds was not as profitable as transporting 500 at subsonic lethargy. Environmental as well as economic concerns doomed all of the SST projects but not the French one. For France, the project had nothing to do with making a feasible business out of the Concorde. It was all about French pride: The French wanted to prove they were technologically superior to those hamburger-eating Americans.

The Concorde was a technological triumph but an economic disaster. The dream of technological superiority came to an end on the 25th of July, 2000, when a Concorde carrying 113 passengers crashed in Gonesse, France. All one hundred and thirteen passengers and nine crew members on board the flight died. On the ground, four people were killed with one left injured. For years aviation specialist had been pointing out that the huge amount of resources that were needed to keep the Concorde flying were a waste, and that age and the intrinsic complexity of supersonic flight made it very dangerous. But, pride kept that bird in the air until it finally flopped to the ground.

But, this combination of pride and anger (sounds almost like the title for a novel) not only shows up in important, obvious ways, such as the crash of the Concorde or a protest by thousands of people, it permeates everyday life as well. Last night I was watching a classic French film of 1943, "Le Corbeau" (The Raven) directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. It depicts how a series of poisoned pen letters sent by an anonymous citizen of a small town in rural France, create a lynch-mob atmosphere fueled by pride and anger disguised as righteous indignation and moral outrage.

Pride and anger again reared their head after WW II when the film was banned because it was said to misrepresent the French character and life in small French towns; it was also accused of having been German propaganda.

But French Pride and Anger are not always that tragic. Sometime they can combine to produce hilarious consequences. A few years ago, we were in Paris and went to see the marvelous exhibition "Picasso and the Great Masters". It was so popular people (us among them) waited for hours in freezing temperatures to go into the Grand Palais where the exhibition was held. My wife was busy during the day and we decided to go the the "nocturne" time slot, the last during the day, at 8:30 PM. The show was so crowded that we were not allowed into the building until 9:15 PM. Nevertheless, the museum staff "respected" the closing time of 10:00 PM, hardly time to see an exhibition that one would need at least two hours to see, and even in that amount of time, it would have been a bit rushed.

We were half way through the show when the museum staff started urging us to head for the exit because they were going to close up shop. Claudette, the spunky French citizen that she is, started to protest and when the head museum guard was rude to her, I started to protest in English. Well, that set off the crowd, which was composed mostly of French people, this being a winter show when few tourist were around. Among the angry French persons who defended us was a tall man, about as tall and as prideful as General Charles de Gaulle. "Il est honteux!," (It is shameful) he yelled. "Une honte!" (A shame!) he screamed at the guards. He went on to say that we (the poor beleaguered tourist) would take with us a "disgraceful impression of La France!" This was, in his view, a stain on the national honor.

It was a scene straight out of that wonderful book by Pierre Daninos, "Les Carnets du Major W. Marmaduke Thompson", which pretends to be a diary kept by an Englishman who comes to live in France. That book is not only very funny it is dead-on in depicting the French character, especially the "pride and anger" combination to which I am referring.

I thought it especially funny confirmation of my hypothesis that in the last World Track and Field Championships, while world records were being set by athletes from other countries, all the French television channels could talk about were there second and third place finishes by French men and women. I found it hilarious that in one instance, while the entire stadium was celebrating a new world record set by a Jamaican relay team, the French commentators and interview guy were overjoyed that the French team, which included one white, blue-eyed sprinter who is the current darling of the photo press, had come in an "honorable" third place. Not a word was said of the new, and amazing, world record set by Usain Bolt and company.

But to me, the most interesting show of "pride and anger" is the beloved parade of the 14th of July, Bastille Day. The country comes to a standstill and people remain transfixed by the televised transmission of hundreds of soldiers, police officers, firemen, and sundry uniformed folk marching down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées while French Air Force jets fly overhead streaming the red, white, and blue. That is the "Pride" part of the day. The "Anger" is displayed by a group of people, kept far away from the proceedings by the police so they don't mar the beauty of the parade, who protest the unnecessary waste of money and time that the parade entails.

I sympathize with those folks because I really don't see what, for example, armed men, dressed in yellow leather aprons and carrying hatchets (that make them look like butchers on the way to work or spiffy woodsmen), and who represent the worst of French history because they are members of the Foreign Legion, the armed force entrusted with enforcing French colonialism in Africa and other places, have to do with a nation's sense of being. The laundry bill alone of all those hundreds of men in starched, well pressed uniforms, could finance a school building or the salary of a couple of teachers in grade school (now that a lot of them are being fired in cost-savings measures). But then, I might not see the logic in it because, I am not prideful, rarely angry, and certainly not French.