What "France" represents/means to you? "La France" c'est quoi pour vous?

[Rochambeau]

I'm sure, because I read barely as much freeper prose (FR and others) than I read liberal prose, that the freepers and french bashers in general are wrong on absolutely EVERY points concerning their image of what France is today, and also on what she represents and stand for globally.

But i'm not very sure on the other hand that the american francophiles and those who don't bash France nowadays in general have a very accurate picture either.

This question includes the present image and also what "France" means in a very global aspect (culture, habits etc...) to you.

Write as it comes, please do not fear writing some prejudices or "clichés", positive or not, I don't mind, I don't intend to judge you but I want to know and understand. You can speak not only for yourself also if you think you have an accurate general perception of what the "non-francophobes" americans generally think.

En Français:
J'ai la certitude que les "freepers" et autres "french bashers" ont absolument TOUT faux concernant l'image qu'ils se font de qu'est véritablement la France aujourd'hui et de ce qu'elle représente en général.

Mais je ne suis pas absolument sûr d'un autre coté que les francophiles et les gens qui se moquent de toutes ces histoires ont une image beaucoup plus fidèle.

Cette question concerne à la fois l'image que vous vous faites de la France d'aujourd'hui et ce que représente la France en général pour vous.

Ecrivez ce qui vous vient immédiatement en tête, n'ayez pas peur surtout de sortir quelques bon vieux clichés et idées toutes faites, en bien ou en mal, je ne cherche pas à vous juger ici mais je veux savoir, comprendre. Vous pouvez parler et pas seulement pour vous-même si vous pensez pouvoir exposer ce que les non-fracophobes americains en général pensent.

[da_chimperor]

1. Food. Escargot, cheese, frogs legs (haven't tried them ... yet)

steak tartare, etc. I adore French food, both the end result and the technique that goes into the making of it. I cook quite a bit, so I can appreciate that. I know that France is so much more than food, but going out to eat has always been my favorite part of visiting France. I'd be more than happy just traveling around and sampling all the local cuisine.

[Dr Ron]

2. France means a lot of things

The first three things which immediately came to my mind are:

1) an early allie dating back to revolutionary times

2) Monet

3) Bistro de Paris and Boulangerie Paitasserie at Epcot
(If I ever make it to France, which I'm sure I'lll do someday, I'm sure that memories of real French restaurants will replace these Disney immitations.)

[McKenzie]

3. good wine, excellent dress sense, Paris, Brittany

Brie, Gerard Diepardieu, Francois Truffaut, Isabelle Huppert, St Tropez, Jean Luc Godard (spelling?), left intellectualism, Claude Monet, Edith Piaf, Alan Prost, Peugot diesel engines...French women who wear stockings...and the Auld Alliance.

A wonderfully cultured country whose language is the basis for English.

[Nevernose]

4. Free association list:

1. Dien Bien Phu
2. Red uniforms in WWI, chosen against all rationality becuase of esprit d' corps
3. Esprit d' corps (or however you spell it)
4. Cajuns/Arcadians/Canadians/Lousiana
5. Anti-semitism
6. Good food
7. Better wine
8. Best cheese
9. WWI mutiny
10. French resistance
11. French Foreign Legion
12. Algeria
13. Colonialism
14. Rowan Atkinson

[Starlight]

5. Le Creuset

I love my Le Creuset. :loveya:

http://www.lecreuset.com/usa/products/new.php

[EricL]

40. Most unexpected answer

Excellent.

I love it !

Vive la fonte émaillée :)

[BonjourUSA]

41. Le CreuzOt

:)

[Rochambeau]

42. Le CreuzEt c'est une marque considérée comme "leader" dans les

ustensiles de cuisine de qualité aux USA.

Mais c'est bien au Creusot, par exemple, que furent fabriqués les tourelles d'armement des navires de guerre de classe Pennsylvania (USS Pennsylvania et USS Arizona, l'un endommagé et l'autre coulé à Pearl Harbour). Ne cherchez pas ce fait chez des sources américaines, il n'est, bien étrangement, jamais rapporté, comme très souvent tout ce qui concerne l'équipement quasi total de l'armée américaine de la Grande Guerre en matériel et entrainement français... Mémoire séléctive en français ? ;)

[BonjourUSA]

43. Le système radio "Rita" de l'US Army n'est-il pas français ?

[Kali]

6. wonderful food, wine, cheese, sausage, markets

beautiful farms, cool medieval villages, storks roosting on the roofs, spindly chairs, stereotypical waiter (only once), and the most wonderful Madam _______ our hostess in Turkhiem, and the cool labor protest in Colmer, when we went to the bank to change 15 yearold francs for Euros, and the funny lady who sold me the soccer umbrella with the Rooster and said in English with wonderful accent "Just like Chirac on a pile of shit crowing how wonderful everything is"...

It was in Alsace and only for a week, but I enjoyed every bit except the chairs. (I am more of German phenotype and they seem to use much more practical BENCHES!)

In general I found it to be like anywhere - a bit friendlier in the rural areas, but even in the city a moment of effort and a smile or joke generally gets good results.

[Chicago Democrat]

7. I LOVE FRANCE

I buy French

[Chicago Democrat]

8. Liberte, Equalite et Fraternite

Let's chop off Louis Xvi head! And then kill all of the aristocracy!? wow... that's harsh....

[Chicago Democrat]

9. Froi gras...

Yum

Froi gras

[Kathy in Cambridge]

10. Good-looking, well-dressed men.

Wine. Cheese.

Shopping for beauty products (they're the best!)

Provence, the Languedoc, Paris.

Architecture. Cathedrals.

Rolling hills and vineyards.

Paris: Cold, damp, cloudy.

[Javaman]

11. They saved our ass in the Revolutionary war.

I always get so ticked off when people say, "those French are such ingrates, we save there asses twice and they don't thank us".
Well frankly, they saved our ass in the Revolutionary War and we will be forever grateful for that. And yes we did liberate them in WWI and WWII but to me that is a small price to pay to France. If it wasn't for them in the first place, we wouldn't have existed to save them in those two wars.

[Forkboy]

12. Well,they piss off freepers and people down in the I/P Forum....

(but wait,I repeat myself!)

...so they can't be all bad :)

Actually,I see them as just another country full of people like any other.Some good,some bad.I dont judge people by country :shrug:

When I think of France though I instantly think of movies...that I really dont like ;-)

[Spider Jerusalem]

13. A lot of things...

most of them positive.

The French intellectual tradition that goes through Rousseau and Voltaire and Montesquieu to Sartre, Simone de Bauvoir, and Jacques Derrida, for instance. I regard France culturally and historically as being one of the most significant centres of political and philosophical thought in the past two centuries.

Then, there's France's contribution to the arts, both literary and visual (I include dramatists and filmmakers here)...Moliere, Hugo, Zola, Genet, Auguste Renoir, Jean Renoir, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Dumas pere et fils, Jean-Luc Godard, Monet, Manet, Degas...(just scratching the surface here, but you get the idea).

French cigarettes, however, are some of the foulest and most disgusting I've ever smoked (Gauloises Brunes, sans filtre...ugh).

[Gemini Cat]

14. I love your country.

France is freedom to me.

I will return as always.

[Piperay]

15. Being independent

and not afraid to speak the truth, that is what France means to me. :thumbsup:

[REP]

16. America's First Friend, Great National Motto, Excellent Wine and Perfume

It seems to me, speaking in sweeping generalities, that France and America like to poke fun at eachother (at France for being 'snobbish;' at the US for being 'prudish and vulgar') but when push comes to shove, the 200+ year friendship triumphs, and I hope it survives.

Even if I were ignorant about France's role in American history, I would have vague kind feelings for it any way just because Joan d'Arc was born there.

[DemExpat]

17. My associations with France (and things I love)

1) lovely summer weather and natural beauty
2) PARIS
3) Cheese, wine and French bread
4) Independent thinking sometimes bordering on arrogance
5) Lovely style in practical applications - as in French cars (my favorite car of all times was a Peugeot), how they put beauty into things like road circle rotundas, sound screens along highways, etc.... this has always impressed me.
6) Their lack of a trait found in the Dutch, German, British, and Americans - loud-mouthedness :D
8) Admire their secularism
7) Negatives are colonialism tendencies and sometimes excessive patriotism/nationalism.
8) Have noticed a marked lack of obesity in the south of France, which is nice to see...
9) I am glad to have them as a force within the EU

These are just a few of my impressions.

DemEx

[phylny]

18. When I think of France, I think of

great food, wonderful wine, cultured people, normalcy.

[BonjourUSA]

19. La question que tu poses est intéressante

Et les réponses le sont aussi. Elles montrent bien que l'image que nous avons est plutôt fixée dans le passé.

[Ellen Forradalom]

20. C'est le pays.....

Le pays où mon père a passé quelques années de son enfance.
Le pays qui nous a donné une grande litterature.
Le pays qui a éprouvé des extremes politiques et les a vaincus.
Le pays du Tour de France.
Le pays d'Asterix.
Le pays où faire la grève est le passe-temps national.
Le pays qui apprecie les arts et l'architecture.
Le pays qui valorise son patrimoine culturel et essaie de le maintient.
Le pays qui regarde le monde anglo-saxon de manière repulsé et fasciné.
Le pays où tant des gens ont l'affection grosse pour l'Amérique, même s'ils ne comprennent pas au juste pourquoi.

[Rochambeau]

21. Thank you all for your answers

You can find other comments in General Discussions forum where non-donors had the possibility to answer too : http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2784962


This is very interesting, thanx again. As BonjourUSA said, the image of France you have is, globaly, mostly based on old subjects, some are really true some are not really accurate but all of them are old and a bit out dated.
For exemple, none of you who answered really mentionned up to date images about what TODAY France can represent too like Concorde, Airbus, Ariane space launcher and Guyana launch base, High tech industries, ultra fast trains(TGV), advance medical researches, high tech weapons industry, industrial capacity in general (energy, dams, nuclear, tires, trains, car industry (not in the US but everywhere else in the world), television tech (more than one half of the CRT tv screens sold in the US has a french Thomson cathodic tube in it) etc...etc...etc...

It's weird in a sense because if you ask the French the same question they will certainly more answer with the arguments I wrote above then with the arguments you americans mentioned.

How many French did ever eat frog legs? Maybe less then 1%. Jean-Luc Godard is not French but Swiss and very proud of it. The French are not striking more then the other europeans and some study even say that we don't even go on strike more then the US workers globally. Intellectual, literary, philosophical and artistic ideas appears to us as very natural and we can hardly figure out that it's not everywhere the same and that it can be a source of specific national pride since we are at least as much interested in other cultures then we are in our own. It's the same about the way of life, it's not an argument a French would mention because it is natural to us etc...etc....etc....
About the so-called french anti-semitism it's a vast subject that would require a specific post to deal with but it is globally a lie.

On the other hand many arguments you mentionned are also a source of pride to us. Our landscapes, our language, our history and military history, our historical and architectural heritage, and most of all maybe our visceral independence vis à vis dominating models (Imperial Roman Catholic before, today the anglo-saxon one, it's a kind of "Asterix syndrome").

So, we can say France has really a big deficit of communication in the US. We do have to kill old clichés and explain you what makes US proud of our country.

Thank you again for your answers.

PS: Sorry I'm too lazy to translate all this in french.

[Ellen Forradalom]

33. France a une industrie touristique très developpée

La France s'est bien promouvue dans le marché mondiale touristique tant que chaque année, des millions se rendent à vôtre beau pays passer leurs vacances. Or, quand on pense à vacances, on pense à Relais et Châteaux plutôt qu'aux Usines et Bureaux. C'est ainsi que ces images bien usés saute à l'esprit. De plus ce sont des beaux images n'est-ce pas?

[BonjourUSA]

34. La France est la première destination touristique mondiale

Elle a reçu 72 millions de touristes en 2003.

Peut-être moins en 2004, parce que les américains sont venus en moins grand nombre. Sans doute plus pour des raisons financières que politiques... ? L'euro augmente beaucoup le prix du séjour !

[Ellen Forradalom]

35. 72 millions?

C'est ahurissant. Où est-ce qu'on bourre tous ces gens-là?

[Rochambeau]

36. Comme ils ne viennent pas tous en même temps, ça va. ;)) n/t

[EricL]

37. We're the most visited country in the world

and we receive more tourists every year than our actual population (about 60 millions)

1 France.....75.0 millons tourists arrivals
2 Spain......42.5             "
3 U.S.A......40.4             "

But, but, but... the U.S. makes more money out of tourism :

1 U.S.A......65.1 billion USD
2 Spain......41.7      "
3 France.....36.6      " 

Nous sommes le pays le plus visité au monde et recevons plus de touristes chaque année que notre population totale (environ 60 millions) mais les Etats-Unis gagnent plus d'argent grâce au tourisme.

Source WTO

http://www.world-tourism.org/facts/barometer/june04/WTOBarom04_2_en.pdf

[JNelson6563]

22. France fan here!

Ever since France gave Jr the finger over the Iraq war I buy some French wine every time I go grocery shopping. It's a little thing but it's my way of saying "thanks".

I've always admired the French for their great spirit. I can't wait to go and see France for myself someday.

Cheers-
Julie

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

23. Enlighenment. Form of government known as Republic. Metric system.

Diplomacy. Wine. Portions WAY too small at restaurants. But maybe I'm being unfair on this one.

[area51]

24. Quality of life.

I hear people in France enjoy a better quality of life than we do in the states. They don't believe in letting people die or be bankrupted because they need medical care. I'll bet they aren't busy offshoring every job that isn't nailed down (as the U.S. is) either -- TPTB in France probably know that if you continue impoverishing your population, there won't be enough people to buy your products or pay for wars. People in France probably think of things in the long-term, instead of short-term as in the U.S.

[Octafish]

25. Voltaire. Democracy. Freedom.

And a lot more of what makes up civilization. Ideas like...

Liberté. Egalité. Fraternité.

[Swede]

26. The French Foreign Legion,the eiffel tower. Food.

de Gaulle, the Citreon, Dien Bien Phu,the war in Algeria. Democracy.Paris. The left bank.

[SnohoDem]

27. Some of the best times of my life

It was 1980, I was traveling in Europe, and my girlfriend and I were stuck in Bordeaux with about thirty bucks. I got on the phone and started calling the various wineries, asking in my very, very rusty high-school French if they needed help.

We got work at a small winery in Pauillac, Chateau Gaudin. Most of the people there for the vendange were family, who came in from Paris or other big cities. The only outside workers were myself, my girlfriend, and two French Canadian girls. We spent ten days there and ate the best food EVER! When we left in the morning to go pick, M. Gaudin's wife, mother, and friends would start cooking lunch. Lunch lasted from about 11:30 to 14:00. We would go back to the fields and work until about 17:30 or 18:00, then come back, shower, and eat until 21:30 or so. Fabulous, real French country cooking, and we were treated like family.

Just a wonderful time.

Another time I spent a week working on a bateau-mouche(?) the little tour boats that go along the canals. I spent time in Paris, and a little bit in Lyons and Bordeaux.

No one in France was ever rude to me. I was twenty three, a long haired kid, and my French was lousy, but people were universally polite and often went out of their way to help.

Since the absurdity of "Freedom Fries" and the like, I have made a point of drinking more French wine, and will be serving a couple of bottles of inexpensive Cotes du Rhone tonight with a braised lamb dish.

I haven't been back to France since 1981. I see the disagreements between France and the US as France going her own way. France may owe the US something for the lives that were lost there in WWI ad WWII (my own father was badly wounded there) but I don't think the way to repay that debt is to help the US do the wrong things, such as invade Iraq.

[BonjourUSA]

29. To spend two hours at the table in bordelais should be a great moment!

I wish you'll be able to come back soon in France and spend again other great moments at other tables in other regions. :9

[Rochambeau]

30. Yes bateau-mouche it's absolutely correct.

Thank you for reporting your own experiences in France. About your last sentence "I don't think the way to repay that debt is to help the US do the wrong things, such as invade Iraq." this is exactly the way we think. Believe it or not but our opposition was first a friendly attitude, a friendly warning (and we warned you and we were right on everything!). When you see a good friend driving way too fast what is the best thing to do? Even if you should take the keys from him very unpleasantly.

Even the abominable H.Kissinger said it (I know the statement in french and I'll try to re-translate it but it will not be the true original sentence sorry) "Au fond, les Français ne nous ont jamais voulu que du bien." (in the end the French always wanted only good for us)

[hel]

28. Terrible, terrible movies.

Sorry! :)

[Rochambeau]

31. Hehe no problem :) n/t

[bobbieinok]

32. spent ca 1 week in Paris in 73

I studied French 2 years in high school and 3 in college (then majored in German and got advanced degrees in German).

When I was in Paris, every time I tried to speak French I could only think German.

What I remember/what impressed me

--incredible speed of traffic

--Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe (sp??)

--Napoleon's tomb and museum

--Louvre

--very modernistic subway

--department store Printemps

--Cluny tapestries

--Notre Dame

--Seine boat trip

--sidewalk shops along the Seine

A thought I had after going to Denmark later: great looking young men in France and great looking young women in Denmark.

[GreenPartyVoter]

38. France means special memories of my trip around that

beautiful country when I was 16. If I had the money to go again I would do it in a heartbeat!!

-------------------------------------
Would Jesus love a liberal? You bet!
http://timeforachange.bluelemur.com/

[Lydia Leftcoast]

39. Quand je me souviens de la France

ou j'ai passé une semaine il ya beaucoup des ans, je pense au plaisir de promener les rues de Paris, regardant les vitrines et les gens. J'aime bien les filmes français, les romans de Georges Simenon, le vin, et la musique classique française. Les français sont bien instruits et n'ignorent pas leur histoire et culture.