The French blues
This winter in Paris has been - at least compared to its rather dreadful predecessors - surprisingly decadent, breezy, sunny and generally uplifting - at least compared to its British cousin. And yet, the French seems to have hardly noticed. While the whole population of Paris appears to plummet into a depressive, semi-suicidal state when rain and the mist envelope its uniform Haussmannian buildings, making the asphalted bricks reflect their distorted contours, this "doux hiver", the soft winter, has not served to lift up the spirits of the French out of the mist, "le brouillard de morosité".
No wonder. A few weeks ago, the Economist wrote of the Bleak Chic being the prevalent French mood in the air, and while many of my fellow compatriots might be tempted to equate the article with the usual spout of French bashing, it was hardly that. The Economist reported some quite factual information on the perception of the French themselves of their life. Notably, the French self report themselves as less happy as Ugandans and have the highest suicide rate in Western Europe, apart from Belgium and Switzerland.
As much as the latter might spell some bad news for the Belgians and the Swiss, one cannot help wonder if the suicide rate has been "helped" by the recent and much denied exodus of upper class French, taking the rest of their hard or less hard earned cash before the government decides to confiscate it. The government of Monsieur Hollande claims, quite laughably, that there is no such exodus as the number of Belgians applying for French citizenship is higher than the opposite. Perhaps Monsieur Hollande has forgotten that escaping France has nothing to do with citizenship, to which hoards of French exilees in Kensington happily residing in London without British citizenship and with a British umbrella are the most obvious testimony.
Indeed, the number of French in London is reported to be the highest of any city other in Paris. The French also hold many executive suit or at worst white collar posts in banking, fashion and many other sectors all over the world. Ironically, those international French, unlike the local French, do not appear either on the brink of depression or suicide. On the contrary, they seem to be living exceedingly well, having discovered the "vrai joie de vivre" outside of their native country, coming back to Paris with the same attitude as the Gulf Arabs visiting Lebanon: a place to spend their money and leave with a tingling recognition that this is a place to spend a week only.
The explanations for the French grumpiness exceptionalism are as plentiful as the grumpy people themselves. When confronted with the Economist article, some simply deny the French "malheur", others come up with the strangest of theories to explain their country. In my favourite coffee shop near Pantheon - the symbol of the might of the old France - a neighbourhood regular blamed it all on the media. The media in France, apparently, does not inspire confidence and does not give the French a feeling of being in charge of their political fate. That might be true, but then what shall be said of those smiley Americans whose TV sets (and Fox News in particular) regularly blast news of local violence, of government which was almost dissolved, and of US foreign policy which is losing its umph?
The fact that the range of political options are unsatisfying to the French is not surprising, given the notoriously low popularity rating of the current government led by the awkward at best, incompetent at worst, Monsieur Hollande, whose government has about committed all the cardinal sins in his short stint in the Elysee. There was the Finance Minister cracking down on the almost non-existent "riches!" with the bank account in Switzerland and the Justice Minister who wants to dismantle the legal profession to do justice herself, mostly against the whites. Finally, there is the President himself who appears to have no courage except, as it turns out, to cheat on the first lady, married to somebody else but living in the Elysee, replacing his previous partner who wanted him to give her the post of his prime minister, refused by Mr. Hollande's new first lady, who later discovered that he has found his entertainment elsewhere, prompting her to try to commit a suicide, causing further grief to the President.
If this long-winded explanation sounds excessively incestuous, it just might be reflecting the over-complicated French reality in this new brave world of ours. Perhaps there is reason for the French to be exasperated but it has little to do with our goofy President or the television. Sure enough, our politicians are incompetent and inbreeding. Sure enough, joining the Euro was a catastrophic mistake and the global financial crisis has not helped. Sure enough, immigration is an issue and inequalities are substantial. Sure enough, the glory of France's past and its role on the foreign policy arena, is not quite as before, save for a few francophone African countries who cannot seem to get their act together.
But is that really the reason for bemoaning life in France as being miserable? I think not. Social security is still one of the most generous in the world. Health care is still high quality and free. Education standards are still high and post secondary studies essentially free. Fashion is still leading globally. Those smiley Americans would do much to access these privileges, all absolutely taken for granted by the French as fundamental human rights, like toilet paper or salade nicoise. I am certain that if the Ugandans had access to the same benefits, they would self report themselves as the happiest human beings on this planet and also on Mars.
Foreigners see little reason to curb their enthusiasm for Paris specifically of France more generally. Tourists of all shapes and colours are still flocking to Paris as if was about to disappear in la Seine as Venise. Even in Venise, where the local inhabits (now numbering less than 50,000) to the great distress of many, a tourist - while a generally despised creature - can still get a warmer welcome than in Paris, where tourists are also plentiful, but hardly to the Venetian proportions. In Venice, a waiter at a local restaurant has offered to take a day off to show me around town and has facebook friended me immediately. A French waiter would have, in the same time proudly refused to modify the meal, forgot to bring the infamous "carafe d'eau" and shrugged his shoulders in exasperation at any other request.
No wonder the Japanese, who allegedly spend their lifetime saving for that coveted Alice in Wonderland style trip to the land of all luxury, have a special hotline at the embassy to enable a speedy evacuation for those traumatised by the miserable, rude French. No wonder a Lebanese friend looked at me with his eyes full of piety when I said I was ending my trip and returning to Paris. "Ah, good luck", he said solemnly, looking at me as if I was a toreador being sent away to tame a particularly feisty bull.
And maybe I was. Maybe that ideal of picture perfect Paris, that revered place that Japanese tourists spend their lifetimes saving to visit, that Moroccans come to test their French in its native environment, and where Americans come to look at the Eiffel Tower, only not to recognise it when standing in front of it, and where everyone is expected to chuckle as that taste that deliciously cruel fois gras, simply does not exist.
Instead, there are different Parises in Paris, just like different New Yorks in New York. Brooklyn has as much in common with Soho as Avenue Montaigne with Gare du Nord. In the urban chic, vegetarian, grassroots boutiques and restaurants of upper Marais, Victor Hugo would be pressed to find the usual Miserable French, complaining and pushing around in the christmas market, the metro and and just about everywhere else. The malaise seems not to have arrived there. The upper Marais, is ironically one of the most international places of the city, not in a sense of being most visited tourist destinations but in a sense of being populated by the most international French, surprisingly similar to their compatriots in New York or London.
It is one of those rare, anti mainstream edges of Paris areas that the shocked Japanese tourists, obsessed with buying as many Louis Vuitton bags as possible, have probably not visited. If they did, they would have traded a few overpriced bags for something that is extremely rare in France and on which the general malaise can be blamed much more than on the President or the television. And that something is called social cohesion, a feeling that we are not all out for ourselves, life wolves stranded in the forest in the middle of Siberia.
This feeling of life being a zero sum game of survival of the fittest, of everything happening to ME, and none of it being MY fault, is something that permeates many corners of Paris. The French individualism - strongly bordering, if not nested in - egoism is much to blame for the French malaise. It can explain the drivers that push ahead as if they were alone in the desert, the waiters that serve as if they hope it would be their last day on the job, and salespeople who are only too eager to announce that of course they don't have YOUR size!
That is perhaps why when the winter sun is strutting its rays on the sidewalks of Paris, the French don't think it is happening to them either and prefer to ignore it, hiding in their "brouillard de morosité", alone and proud of it. And that is also why Paris is a only a hypothetical picture perfect, that place that like that super smart but always distracted pupil in a class, is so close to perfection, but at the same time to failure. Paris is more like a date with a beautiful woman, whose glacial coldness is a turnoff, leaving both the lady and the prospective suitor at once melancholic and nostalgic for better times.
