franco-anglo-mascots

One of my tasks at work this week was to make signs to post up around the center that will encourage students to speak French (because in theory, we're an immersion program, although the kids seem to stick to French for about a week before relapsing back in English). I was bored and took this as an opportunity to get creative with Photoshop, creating a few mascots of francophone/anglophone fusion to decorate my posters.

I called this one the Statue of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. She is armed with a (not-so-)Petit Robert, the classic French dictionary, and a baguette.


Next up, Oncle Sam wants YOU to speak French!
My last experiment in graphic design was a parody easily understood by Parisians, of the ubiquitous "Wall Street English" métro posters. The company has long been the most well known (and most obnoxious) business English program in the city, and the current campaign features, as Tom describes it, "terrible stock photos and slightly-too-old young people" with either American or British flags imprinted on their tongues:
For my version, I altered an iconic image of a more heroic smarty pants. I call him Freinstein:

(This is not a cry for help)

I learned today of a fascinating (at least to my morbid tastes) Parisian phenomenon that existed up until the early 1800s called the "filets de Saint-Cloud", a set of nets on the downstream end of the Seine used to recover the cadavers of suicide victims. Apparently jumping into the Seine was the #1 way to off one's self back then--between the lack of swimming skills and the high walls that made it difficult to climb back out, it was more or less surefire.

The reason I found out about this is that the Balzac book we read for yesterday, "La Peau de Chagrin," begins with its protagonist contemplating suicide-by-drowning. This got me thinking about how trends in suicide can reflect on a society. In the book, the protagonist's suicidal tendencies are indicative of both Parisian geography/culture and the bleak 19th century "mal du siècle" ennui. The same could be said of a lot of other literary suicides I've read through so far this year--sacrificial lovers' suicides at the tip of an épée in the medieval ages, which attest to a different perspective of honor, chivalry and passion; Madame Bovary's graphic death by pharmacist's arsenic, which could be seen as the product of strict 19th century marriages and oppressive gender roles and social codes and indicative of a new interest in/fear of science and medicine.

Yes! I thought to myself. Here's a gem to store away in that little jar labeled "potential thesis topics" in the corner of my brain. Unfortunately, a quick Google search proved that I'm far from the first person to have had this stroke of genius. *siiigh* However, my brief researching also turned up a few interesting statistics about French suicide--the non-literary kind, that is--that shed a little light on changes in French culture and differences between France and the U.S. and really got me thinking. It seems that as Seine suicides (more than 300 between 1795 and 1800!) became less frequent due to better swimming abilities and the improved precautionary measures of throwable emergency life rings, ladders, and regular police patrol of the water, Parisian suicides matched trends in Parisian life, switching to jumping from increasingly high buildings or under metro cars.

France's most (in?)famous tall building, the Eiffel tower, has had more than 350 successful jumpers since its construction in 1889, with the annual rate down to about 4 or so in recent years due to new precautionary measures. (Most Parisians still remember a high-profile incident last year, in which tourist plunged to her death on the glass ceiling of the same Eiffel Tower restaurant where I spent Thanksgiving...eesh). The most recent statistic I could find for the Parisian metro was from 2006, and it puts annual metro suicides at either 70 or 150, depending on who you ask, with definite spikes after holidays and vacations. (In comparison, the D.C. Metro got flak from the media for having a record-high 9 suicides last year. Granted that's comparing D.C.'s 5 lines and 2 million riders to Paris' 19 lines and 3 million, but still.) In fact, Parisian suicides outnumber Washingtonian suicides in general. The rate of suicides in Paris is 23 per 100,000 residents, higher than the national rate of 17, but MUCH higher than Washington D.C.'s 6 per 100,000 and the U.S. national rate of 11. (The method is also different; while firearms don't even figure in the statistics here, they are overwhelmingly the most-employed method in the U.S., which only proves that we REALLY need to get our gun regulations under control.)

So why are so many more frogs croaking ? Theories out there include a lower rate of religious fervor (which would account for less of a spiritual support network as well as less moral interdiction), racial/economic tensions in the urban suburbs of Paris, and, most recently, an increasingly oppressive workplace environment. What I didn't discuss in my previous post on the workplace in France is that finding a job in France is much more difficult than it is in the US. The economic crisis has pushed America's unemployment rate to where France's has been for a while--around 10%, and unlike America, France isn't expecting it to go back down. With many service positions filled as careers, part time/temporary jobs are much harder to find here, and with an education system that pushes you to make a vocational choice early in life and a regimented system of competencies/requirements that makes it difficult to switch careers, it's easier to feel "trapped" in a job you don't like (which you then don't want to surrender to unemployment).

Or maybe it's something different entirely. To come full circle with this post, modern French literature is marked by a series of rather depressing philosophical/literary movements that reveal a bleak worldview. Is the outlook of this literature descriptive? Or just intellectual? Making ties between real life and fuzzy fictional universes always gets tricky. In any case, this research was enough to sober me and turn me away from such a depressing thesis topic. I'll stick to women's rights and courtly love from now on.

Working out the world of work

Relative to the U.S., French business hours and practices are extremely inconvenient and, from an American perspective, downright rude. To start off it can often be difficult to even make it to a business while they're open. France works a 35-hour week. Shops and services open late, then close again shortly thereafter for a two hour lunch break. (Fortunately, some of them stay open later than they would in the U.S.--for example, the Cité Universitaire Post Office is open from 2pm-8pm, which makes a lot of sense when you realize that the French start their days later and don't usually eat dinner until 9pm or so). By law, most of France shuts down on a Sunday, and many stores opt to take a Monday or Tuesday off as well.

There is also little to no concept of "customer service". As I discovered through my Hertz battles a few weeks ago, the customer is NOT always right in France, nor even valued. Part of this is due to the fact that many of the retail and food service jobs that are snubbed as low-class and low-paying in the US are salaried careers in France (with the notable exceptions of the "Arabe" 7-11esque stores, kebab vendors, Asian traiteurs--basically anything minority-run), meaning that hostesses and waiters don't feel compelled to debase themselves for tips, and to the contrary are often very proactive in maintaining a mutual power/respect balance. The benefit is that people take a lot of pride in their work, are good at what they do and are generally recognized as such. The bad news is, well, let's take the example of my friend Barclay. When we went out to get a post-class pint, we opted to sit at one of the outdoor, street-side tables underneath a heater. As the waiter was placing our pints on the table he got bumped from behind by a pedestrian, spilling most of Barclay's beer onto her lap. Although he apologized and immediately ran in to grab a towel, he left most of the clean-up to us and didn't offer anything in the way of compensation (a pint on the house, or a discount, for example). This would have been totally unacceptable in the US, but in France no one near us even batted an eye.

And yet, most of the people I interact with on a daily basis are, if not more polite, at least a lot more competent and knowledgeable than their American equivalents. After an episode of intestinal angst this past weekend I found myself visiting a string of pharmacies. Never did I wait longer than three minutes in line, and I was extremely appreciative of the medical expertise expected of pharmacists here, who are able to evaluate symptoms and distribute mild prescription drugs without the hassle of doctor involvement (or inflated US prices). I also love bakery or open air market staff, who exude quality, from their food, to their promptness, to the care they put into the wrapping of their products. Apparently I'm not the only one--here's a BBC piece about Parisians that seems to agree (and reads like what my blog aspires to be).

I've been spending a lot of time lately considering this system, browsing job listings and trying to imagine myself as an employed woman in Paris next year. As an employee, the late starts, long lunches, frequent vacations and short work weeks would seem luxurious rather than irritating. Until my own country sorts things out, the health care would be lovely. And another year here, this time as a "real" adult with an apartment in a cosmopolitan city wouldn't be too shabby. First task: tackle the French formatted CV, which is surprisingly different...you're expected to list hobbies and "competencies" and to attach a photograph, which surely invites racism/other appearance-based prejudice, but hey, it's France. If customer service is in its infancy here, the idea of political correctness has yet to be born.

Art Insomia

Saturday night was an annual event in Paris called “Nuit Blanche.” In French, to have this “white night” is to pull an all-nighter, and the idea of the event is to utilize public space to celebrate modern art (read: film and light installations) from 9pm until 7am the next morning. Across the city, parks, universities, religious buildings and even pools opened their doors to a crazy band of glowstick-adorned art-lovers, insomniacs, street musicians and more.

I met up with Pascal and Thibaut (the French guys from the bar last week) and a few other random friends (Antoine, from Toulouse, Daniel, and American film student, and a girl from Greece) at Luxembourg. The streets were packed with a cheerful, chattering young crowd and dotted with equally jovial policemen who had pretty much given up on trying to clear a path for cars. It was really surreal to have so many people out and about at midnight, and there was a real sense of life and electricity in the air. The line to actually enter the Luxembourg gardens wrapped all the way around the block, although you didn’t have to be inside it to see the main attraction: a huge disco ball, suspended from a crane. Strategically placed searchlights refracted off of the ball’s many faces onto the eerie purple clouds and full moon, giving the impression that tonight, Paris itself was our nightclub.

With Pascal as our guide, we trekked around Paris to see what we could see, speaking French all the while. My favorite destination was the Grande Mosquée, whose central garden hosted an x-ray video installation (one of the only ones I enjoyed…I really need someone with some film background to teach me how to appreciate those because right now I just think most of them are stupid) and a laser installation piece that combined the visuals of the moving lasers with audio voiceovers of the history of the earth and a strong scent of roses. (More art should be scented. It’s like that adult version of those scented markers that were really cool in the early 90s…fun!). The exhibits were cool, the locale was beautiful, and the calm reverence of the crowd in response to our surroundings presented a strange contrast to the delightful chaos around Luxembourg.

Around 4am, my blisters from the previous night’s boat adventures were starting to hurt and my fatigue was beginning to interfere with my French. The boys and I walked up to Chatelet to catch the night buses home…only to find that French bureaucracy, in its infinite wisdom, had decided to suspend almost all of the night bus lines on the one night that they were really needed, opting instead to keep the 11 and 14 lines running (which both lead away from where I live). The result was that I took the metro and then a bus to Pascal’s apartment in Levallois (a cute, upscale Parisian suburb), where we stayed up for another hour or so discussing Sarah Palin (did anyone else know she got punk'd by a a couple of Quebecois radio DJs?), Ségolène Royale and South Park before I gratefully crashed on an air mattress.