American Relativism, French Formalism

A recent book by a French sociologist begins with contrasting anecdotes. The first is a report by a Frenchman visiting the U.S. “Those people eat like animals” is his judgment. Why? Just look at them lined up at the cafeteria counters like pigs at the trough. Some of them are even wearing hats. They eat what they want, down it quickly, then leave. Others, horror of horrors, eat while sitting at their desks.

The second anecdote involves an American visiting France. “Those people eat like animals” is his judgment. Why? They have fixed feeding hours. It’s like they have to wait for their keepers to bring out the food. Everything is highly regimented, not only when to eat, but the order of courses, the limited options, even what wine goes with what food.

Two visitors, two anecdotes, two stereotypes? Well, stereotypes exist and the two anecdotes do touch on different dominating patterns in each country. Americans lean heavily in the direction of relativism. There are no general rules to be followed. “It’s up to the individual” along with “the customer is always right” are widespread slogans. For the French, formalism is more dominant. Certain forms of behavior just are better than others. Good and bad are decidedly not “up to the individual.” These depend on certain patterns rooted in nature and approved by tradition.

Over the years we have faced situations in which we, the customers, were definitely not always right. One involved a Parisian restaurant specializing in the north African specialty couscous. The waiter took our order, couscous with chicken. For beverage, it being a hot summer day, I asked him for beer. Well, I might as well have insulted his mother. He immediately went into a harangue about how the beer/couscous combination was unthinkable. O.k., having once heard about the white-wine-with-chicken rule, I changed my order. Once again an unbelieving, appalled waiter. Non, non, non, pas de vin blanc avec le couscous! Fortunately for me, regrouping was simplified by the situation being a sort of multiple choice exercise. I settled on the only remaining option: red wine. Ah, good selection, said the waiter.

About a decade later, we were living in Lyon and friends came to see us. They had a taste for Italian food. We ordered, and, as is our American habit, asked for some parmesan cheese. Pause. Steely look in the eyes. Unlike the Parisian waiter, this one was evidently having an internal struggle about whether to let loose or not. Finally, he could not help himself. Did we not know how much effort the chef put into getting just the right blend of flavors? Were we so insensitive as to insult the chef by smothering the tastes he had worked so hard to prepare?

Another occasion occurred in a wine store. This was not a fancy place. It was, in fact, a chain. The location was Strasbourg. The season was Christmas. Strasbourg has a lovely and famous Christmas market set up all around the Cathedral. Many stalls sell mulled wine. Since our hotel was equipped with a kitchenette, we decided to make some vin chaud ourselves. To the store clerk’s question about how he could help, I said we were looking for a bottle that would serve as the base for mulled wine. The result was almost another “you have just insulted my mother” moment. “Monsieur, we do not sell such a product here.” Every bottle in his store was meant to be savored for itself. Wine to be adulterated with sugar and spices had no place in an enterprise like his. He could have thought to himself “these are some dumb customers, but, what the heck, they want to spend some money so I will gladly take it.” Instead, formalism ruled. Pride in produce easily outweighed his desire to make another sale.

The most recent of these anecdotes is almost a decade old. Things are changing. Old-style formalism is more and more rare. One sign: ketchup is now widely available as a condiment to be slathered over food. Another sign: at a restaurant several months ago we were seated next to someone who runs a school preparing individuals for work in the hotel and restaurant trade. He told us that his students are imbued with the slogan Le client est roi, “the customer is king,” or, as American relativism would have it, “the customer is always right.”

Chewing, Obesity, Time at Table

Minutes Daily Spent at Table Horace Fletcher was once a household name. After all, he championed scientific eating and drew a large following. A new century, the twentieth, had just dawned. One key to proper eating was simple chewing. But the chewing fostered by Fletcher was not simple. Right eating demanded that food be liquefied. This could mean hundreds of chews for one mouthful. Not surprisingly he was called the “great masticator.” “Fletcherizing” became all the rage. The novelist Henry James and the industrialist John D. Rockefeller were adepts. Like most food fads, especially ones pushed to a silly extreme (or ones that require special exertion), Fletcherizing eventually faded.

A recent book here in France has, however, re-emphasized Fletcher’s central theme. It’s actually the second book in five years to do so. An earlier, briefer one, Mastiquer C’est la Santé (Masticating is Health), appeared in 2004. The latest book, published on May 7, is called Le Régime mastication (The Mastication Diet). It doesn’t have the fervor of Fletcher’s proselytizing, nor does it insist on chewing until all intake has turned to liquid. It simply emphasizes, based on studies, how careful chewing of food is natural, necessary, and beneficial. Three benefits are highlighted. (1) Quick eating means overeating, a combination avoided by ample mastication. (2) Stomach upsets and bloating are minimized. (3) The digestive tract works more optimally with well-chewed food. All this seems evident enough. What concers the author is the way a lazy chewing fashion has led to the predominance of “soft” food. Certainly at the college where I teach, some students can eat cereal for every meal of the day. Since “soft” is a vague term, there is room for discussion about what counts. The author, for example, classes hamburgers as belonging to the soft food category.

For those who eat quickly without much chewing, another recent food story offered help. One day before Le Régime mastication’s release, a new dietary aid arrived on the French market. The product, called “Alli,” is an anti-obesity pill. Its uniqueness is availability without prescription. The French love medications of all sorts, but it remains to be seen whether this one will be a hit. First of all, the target audience is genuinely obese individuals (body mass index of 28 or higher). Second, it is no magic bullet. For weight loss success, pill intake has to be accompanied by a low-calorie, low-fat diet. Third, the pill works by limiting the absorption of fat, which, being rid by natural means, may necessitate an increased frequency of visits to the restroom. Finally, although available without prescription, the pill will not simply be displayed in a pharmacy showroom. In order to ensure that proper advice is dispensed along with the pill, customers will have to ask the pharmacist for their supply.

“Alli” has been available in the U.S. for several years and has achieved success there. One reason for its popularity may be the level of obesity. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, about one third of the American population has a body mass index of 30 or more. France’s rate is about 1/3 lower. This is so, even though, according to another recent food story, the French spend more time at table than do people in other countries. Anchoring the other extreme, spending the least time at table, is North America’s triad of nations. Citizens in those countries dedicate only about one hour a day to meals. Americans, it turns out, actually spend the most time of this group. Mexicans and Canadians hurry through their eating episodes more quickly. The French take about twice that amount of time to get in their three squares.

Some newspaper headlines misleadingly claimed that what the survey revealed was that the French ate more than people in other countries. But time at table and intake of food are not necessarily proportional. Sociable, leisurely, relaxed eating creates wide expanses of time. Wide expanses of time, in turn, encourage plenty of conversation, pauses between courses, and, almost as an unconscious by-product, ample chewing. There is no need to make a fetish of Fletcherizing. One important result, indicated by comparative levels of obesity: the quantity of food ingested is probably lower than in those countries whose citizens gulp down their softer edibles.

Italian France

Countries often like to tell their history as if it involves a pure line of descendance from some prized ancestral group. Nos ancêtres les Gaulois (our ancestors the Gauls) is how French history books used to begin, even the history books used in African colonies. Such a story of pure origins typically covers over the more mottled, mixed and blended conjuntion of peoples and events that really shaped a country.
Lately, we have come to realize that much of what France prizes as part of its heritage has Italian roots. Take perfume. The city of Grasse, not far from Nice, was once the perfume capital of the world. On a visit there we learned that the town was originally a center for tanning, where hides were transformed into leather. One problem: the leather, given its source, was often accompanied by an unpleasant odor. Then came the Italian connection. Caterina Maria Romula di Lorenzo de’ Medici was her name. She is better known as Catherine de Medici, wife of French king Henry II. She may have brought the practice of scenting leather with oils distilled from flowers. At least that is how one version tells it. The other version has someone in Grasse come up with the idea of perfuming gloves and then presenting a pair to Caterina/Catherine. Once she adopted the practice, it became all the rage, and the French perfume industry took off. Caterina also played a key role in another area in which the French take pride, gastronomy. Leaving cultured Florence for Paris was kind of a bummer for a good looking, wealthy, well-connected young woman. Not wanting to suffer too much in her exile, she brought chefs with her to Paris. The Italian Renaissance, in one of its dimensions, had transformed cooking to new levels of refinement.

It will come as no surprise that Avignon, the nearest big city to our village, owes much of its historical success and architecture to Italians. Exactly 700 years ago the first pope arrived to set down new roots. Having a pope around meant that rich and powerful (Italian) cardinals would soon be arriving, injecting wealth, economic prosperity and architectural novelties into the area. More surprising was what we learned on a visit to Lyon last week. 16th century Lyon was a thriving place. Why? Italians of course. Italian merchants and traders made of it an international business center famous for its commercial fairs.

A lesser known city that is a favorite of ours is the Mediterranean port of Sète. The city is dominated by a mountain in the center, criss-crossed with canals, and bordered by a lovely beach. As a working port it has not yet been transformed totally into a tourist enclave. Its earlier name Cetia indicates the area’s Italian heritage. The city’s local gustatory specialty is called a tielle. Typically when we hear “local specialty” we run the other way. Local specialities stay local because their tastes do not travel well. The tielle is an exception. It’s kind of a pot pie, made with octopus. A key ingredient, here comes the Italian influence, is tomato sauce. Really, it is good, a lot better than I am making it sound.

Several key personalities in France also were initially Italian. In the late 60s a singer and movie actor sort symbolized French artists who combined their talents with political activism. His name was Ivo Livi. He gained fame as Yves Montand. Today, the French first lady is Italian-born Carla Bruni. Most prominent of all is an individual known everywhere. He came to life as the child of parents named Carlo and Letizia. He had an older brother named Giuseppe. His birth name: Napoleone di Buonaparte.

May Day mayday

“May Day” and “mayday” are spelled alike and sound alike. Their meanings are not at all alike. The former indicates a day set aside to celebrate working men and women. It is typically marked by large demonstrations organized by labor unions. The second is a phonetic spelling of the French m’aider, (short for venez m’aider) “help me.” It has become an internationally recognized distress signal. This year, with the economic crisis affecting laborers, traditional May Day demonstrations were also a mayday call.

Since the beginning of the year the French have taken to the streets three times in mass demonstrations. Organizers hoped that May Day would bring out the largest crowds. Unfortunately May 1 fell on a Friday, which meant a long holiday weekend. Since the weather throughout the country was pleasant, many would-be demonstrators seem to have been relaxing with their families in the countryside.

Still, the numbers were impressive, and, sign of how difficult times bring even antagonists together, all the major unions formed a united front in the marches. The May Day “mayday” complaints were common ones.

• Workers had nothing to do with causing the economic crisis, but they are bearing the brunt of it. Not only are they being fired but, adding insult to injury, their taxes are being used to subsidize banks who did cause the crisis.
  
• Workers help bring prosperity to companies which enrichens managers and shareholders. When things go bad, though, it is the workers who are dismissed as if their contributions meant nothing.
  
• It is a mistake to think that nothing can be done and laborers should just resign themselves into the role of passive pawns in the process.
  
• Political leaders who should represent their electorate have become, in effect, an extension of the industrialist class.

Although the demonstrations were peaceful, labor activism in France this year has been marked by a heightening of tensions. A government office was ransacked as workers heard the news that negotiatons had not resulted in jobs being saved; fires have been set outside a tire fabrication plant about to be closed; and sequestration des cadres or “bossnapping” has been a favorite strategy to up the ante in negotiations.

All this might lead people to think that France is a country with widespread unionization. This would be a mistake. According to 2004 figures from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, France is among the least unionized of the major industrial countries. A little over half the workers in Belgium and Norway are unionized. In France the rate is 9.7 percent. Even the U.S. has a higher level of unionization at 12.8 %.

What France does have is unionization in key sectors and general popular support for workers. When the railroad workers or the subway workers go on strike, the effect is immediately noticeable. Workers at the national electric company have recently resorted to the strategy of cutting off service. When that proved unpopular, they switched to manipulating meter reading so individual bills would be lower. The latter move was inspired by the desire to preserve public support. Even when it comes to “bossnapping” some 64% of those surveyed did not think the workers should be prosecuted.

It is not yet clear whether the economic crisis, its attendant job losses, and worker unrest will make a major difference in the country’s political situation. Most French people surveyed may express sympathy with the May Day demonstrators, but in the last three presidential elections they have voted for the center right party, one friendlier to market liberalization, U.S. style. The current president, Nicholas Sarkozy, elected while promising market liberalizing reforms is not finding popularity surveys to be especially favorable. This should be a good sign for the opposition, but, this being France, there are lots of opposition parties, and, given their ideological differences, getting united behind a single presidential candidate, and getting a majority in the national assembly, may represent overwhelming hurdles.

Until then, the next presidential election is not until 2012, the major question will continue to be whether job losses can be slowed down and reversed. Meanwhile French workers will continue to ask themselves why, in neighboring countries, protests are so passive.

Time for Dinner

“The lady is a tramp...She gets too hungry for dinner at eight.” So sang Sinatra. If the lady in question were a tourist in France, her “tramp” status would be hard to maintain. She would have to wait for dinner at eight. Most restaurants don’t even open their doors until 7:30. Even that time is approximate. On a recent visit to Marseille we showed up punctually. Initial signs looked promising. Other diners were already seated. Closer inspection revealed that this was the staff. They were enjoying their own dinner, in no hurry for customers to come through the door. Faced with two different signals, a written one which said that the restaurant opened at 7:30, and a live tableau which said, “7:30 really means closer to 8:00” we opted to follow the latter. Returning, after a leisurely 20 minute walk around the port we were the first arrivals.

Even if the doors really opened at 7:30, being “too hungry for dinner at eight” would remain a problem. Service is relaxed and cooking takes time. This is disconcerting for Americans who always hear the clock ticking. Such habits can only lead to frustration for visitors to France. A good meal involves waiting. Waiting, first for the server, often there is only one, to approach and take orders. Then, waiting for the appetizer to be prepared. Then, well the pattern is pretty obvious. In an unexpected twist, the server does not even hurry along the check. This would be rude to guests. Often, it is the clients who have to ask for the bill. There is certainly no question of someone swooping down and taking away the plate of one diner while the others are still eating. This abusive custom, signalling “we just want to maximize lucrative efficiency by moving people in and out as quickly as possible” is so prominent in the U.S. that its impoliteness often goes unnoticed. Dining in France definitely does not represent what Americans would call an efficient maximizing of time. Heaven forbid restauranteurs should be seen as trying to move as many people as possible through the dining area to maximize profits. We have even been refused entry into what was an empty restaurant. Very sorry, says the maitre d’, but all our tables are reserved. What he means is that, although it is 7:30 now, at 9:00 the tables will be all taken. Letting us in might mean that a table would still be occupied at 9:00. There is no question of letting that happen.

The whole intersection of time and food famously marks a significant difference between the U.S. and France. There are cultural markers for the differences. One was the 1950s game show “Beat the Clock.” Contestants had to perform challenging tasks as a large clock ticked off the seconds. Time, it symbolically said, was something to be occupied by frenetic activity. A city favored by Sinatra, Las Vegas offers another important symbol. There, the natural cycles that were the original markers of time have mostly been obliterated. 24/7 is the rule 365 days a year. Day and night do not matter. Nor do the seasons. The notion of limits, patterns or cycles that depend on the natural order of things has been overridden. Not surprisingly, the city is renowned for its “all you can eat” buffets.

In such a setting, agricultural practices that serve as the base of any culture (itself an agricultural word) are ignored. The farmer must pay attention to nature’s own measures of time. Day and night, along with the seasons, do matter. Life must adjust to a chronology dictated by something other than human will. When cultivation and growth of foodstuffs can be ignored, when money is earned simply by exchanging money, then thinking solely in terms of clock time rather than nature’s time becomes possible.

Most of us have not gone so far as Las Vegas in forgetting our natural setting. We still retain some sense of the agricultural cycles. We can imagine a world which at least has pockets when “beat the clock” is not a preoccupation. The leisurely pace of evening then becomes something to be welcomed. An an oncoming temporal expanse, it can be viewed as a gift. As a gift, it is meant to be savored, not seen as a constraint within which as many tasks as possible have to be accomplished.

Disappearing Smokes

Tobacco and thought go together. At least, they once did. Solving a crime, without his pensive pipe, would have been impossible for Sherlock Holmes. How many French philosophy books would have remained unwritten without smoke-filled cafés ? Still, times change. Now it is sickess and smoking that go together. Gone are the role models with pipes in their mouths or nicotine stained fingers. Gone also, even here in France, are the smoke-filled cafés. Outlawed also are advertisements for tobacco products.

Sometimes, though, good intentions have unintended consequences. In their zeal to uphold the advertising law, or, more likely, in their fear of lawsuits, some individuals have pictorially altered history. In 1996, 20 years after his death, a stamp was issued to honor André Malraux, the author and former minister of culture. A famous photo was used. Those familiar with it noticed a particularity. Something was missing. When the photo was taken, Malraux had just about finished a cigarette. Its remaining centimetres, in the original, were still obviously clamped between his lips. Through the magic of photo alteration, the postage stamp Malraux morphed into a model tobacco-free individual.

Malraux’s contemporary, the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, consumed avidly things that were not great for his health : barbituates, pipe tobacco, alcohol of all sorts and, of course, cigarettes. Rarely were mouth or hand free of some instrument for smoking tobacco. Yet, in publicity photos for an exhibition devoted to him by the French National Library, a new Sartre appears, one whose lips and hands are tobacco-free. The malign product, à la the Malraux stamp, had been photoshopped out of existence. This time the result was somewhat clumsy. The erasure is glaring. Sartre’s right hand, positioned around a cigarette, now seems strangely contorted.

One way to avoid publicizing tobacco without deletions is simply to ban tobacco-including photos altogether. That is what happened to a publicity poster for a movie released last Wednesday, a biography of Coco Chanel. The film’s publicists released a picture of Audrey Tautou playing Chanel. She is luxuriating in bed, cigarette in a carefully posed hand. This was too much for the Paris subway authorities. The photo was simply banned. Others posters, tobacco-free to be sure, reluctantly supplied by the film’s promoters, now adorn the corridors of Paris’s public transportation system.
Of the various ways to alter visual history, perhaps the clumsiest involved the alteration of photos for a retrospective celebrating the films of Jacques Tati. Tati was a sort of 1950s Mr. Bean. He played an unflappable sort, someone whose customs and habits belonged to an earlier era. Sweet, innocent comedy resulted from this befuddlement at the new world. His most famous creation was a character named Mr. Hulot. Hulot is immediately recognizable because of his trademarks : trench coat, umbrella and pipe. Yes, horror of horrors, in 1958 Mr. Hulot smoked a pipe. Indeed, Mr. Hulot would just not be himself without the pipe.
What to do with the publicity photos for the 2009 retrospective? Go the Malraux and Sartre route and photoshop the pipe out of existence ? Find a photo of Mr. Hulot without a pipe, Audrey Tautou style ? Neither, it turns out. In what has to be the worst of all choices, the picture has been altered by adding something. The pipe’s stem remains what it alway was. In place of the bowl at the stem’s end there now stands a colorful pinwheel. Yes, a pinwheel. One has to wonder whether the designers of the revised image meant to make a mockery of the whole photo-alteration enterprise. Whether they did or not, that is the result.

The most famous "pipe that's not really a pipe" came from the paintbrushes of René Magritte. In the late 1920s he exhibited a canvas depicting a smoker’s pipe. Underneath are the words, “this is not a pipe.” Magritte wanted to prod reflection on the relation between art and reality. The recent “pinwheel-means-this-is-not-a-pipe” alteration could serve to prod a similar reflection, this time about tensions between public health and historical reality.

Roman Remains

“There is as much history underground as there is above ground.” So, our Avignon tourist office guide informed us. This year Avignon commemorates the event that has marked its history more than anything, the arrival, in March 1309, of the first pope. Six more were to follow. The move of the pope from Italy was not the move of a single individual. A retinue of cardinals followed. Being in proximity to the pope meant being in proximity to power, after all. For Avignon, the result was a 14th century urban renewal of sorts. The existing structures, many wooden and typical of the earlier centuries, were razed. Room had to be made for the new sumptuous homes of the new elite. Whatever vestiges of the Roman city that had thrived on the banks of the Rhone were now put to a new use: they became quarries as the stones that once marked Roman greatness became building materials for the city’s new rich and powerful.

Unlike Nimes with its intact Roman arena or cities like Orange and Lyon in which there are still recognizaable Roman legacies, Avignon is left with about a dozen random pieces gathered together on a street corner near the opera house (see picture above). Developing its power as a new (papal) Rome, Avignon lost its heritage as descendant of (imperial) Rome.

That’s too bad because one treat of visits to France is the ability to touch the Roman inheritance. A memorable moment for me involves what is essentially a trench. It is found near the Cathedral in Narbonne. Within the trench: an uncovered section of the Via Domitia, Rome’s first road in France. It stretched from Spain to Italy. Parts of today’s French highway system retraces sections of the Via Domitia. The movement of information has always been important, and, well before our wireless networks moving through the air, there was something more tangible: a system of roads.

The engineering prowess of the Romans is not just well-known. It is still widely feted. One of the towns near our village has “Roman” in its name, Vaison la Romaine. It is also home to a bridge built in the first century. Wherever one goes in this area one hears the story of the 1992 flood, a devastating one that killed over 30 people. The swollen river, loaded with mud and debris tended to take down everything in its path. Not the Roman bridge, however. Even 2 millenia after its construction, it held fast against the ravages of the flood.
When we visited the nearby Abbaye of Senanque, our guide insisted on its Roman roots. She pointed overhead to some stones in the vault that had shifted during an earthquake. The Abbey, founded in 1148, survived the earthquake with no major damage. Why? The guide explained that the people who designed it had studied, and copied, Roman building techniques. Not surprisingly, the lovely, graceful and peaceful architecture of the 11th and 12th centuries is known as “Romanesque.”
The most important Roman legacy is Europe itself, at least as a necessary, though not a sufficient condition. From England to Romania the contours of Western Europe are those of Rome. Intellectually, Europe is also the descendant of Rome, but with important intervening steps. The part of the Roman Empire that is the Europe we know was first touched by medieval Scholasticism and its emphasis on reason as correlative to religion. This opening fostered universities and eventually, two more defining moments for shaping European identity, the Reformation and the Enlightenment. Some of the better distinguishing marks of European identity are the result: liberal ideals, republican governments, tolerance, economic prosperity. In those parts of the old Roman empire where the subsequent movements were lacking, counter-reformation Spain for example, or north Africa, the cultural benefits were either delayed or are only tangentially present. Ultimately, the communication network made up of roads led to the communication networks made up of books , scientific inventiveness and reforming ideas. This legacy makes the trench uncovering the Via Domitia a site worth preserving.