The French Way (52 page)

These surveys permit some interrogation of the various elite subcategories, when given the choice between the extremes of “very positive” and “very negative” opinion of the United States.
⁷⁹
It mattered rather little what kind of an elite you were with respect to the “very positive” attitude. Such enthusiasm was rare. Affirmative attitudes clustered at the bottom of the scale and ranged from 4 to 16 percent, but the variations in the sample seem too small to reach any conclusion about preference among these elite subgroups. In contrast there was a large range among those asserting “very negative” views. Virtually no businesspeople, public sector managers, or second-level political leaders expressed such hostility. But there was a rising chorus of shrill voices beginning with educators and increasing with media elites, and cultural and religious leaders, and peaking with elite politicians.
⁸⁰
What is clear is that the top strata of the political class spoke most harshly of the United States; they were among those least willing to admit to any positive attitudes and they were the most vehement in expressing very negative attitudes. It should be no surprise that the loudest critiques of the United States often came from the most prominent national political figures in these years.

Data for disaggregating the general population according to other variables are scarce. But what exist give some tantalizing numbers. In general, age and gender made some difference, but political affiliation counted most in determining attitudes. Evidence for occupation, religion, and region is too rare to reach any conclusions.

On the question of whether the respondent had more sympathy or antipathy for the United States (from a poll taken in 2000), women
were less likely than men (34 percent to 49 percent) to opt for sympathy.
⁸¹
Another poll taken in the same year showed that women were slightly more likely than men to associate negative terms like
violence, racism
, or
the death penalty
with the United States.
⁸²
But women were no different from men in voicing anxiety about the status of the United States as the sole superpower.
⁸³
In general, evidence for gender is too thin to generalize about its role as a variable.

Data were somewhat more plentiful for age, but they were, at best, suggestive for two cohorts, the oldest and the youngest. The U.S. State Department categorically concluded that, when compared to Britain and Italy, “in France age has no effect.”
⁸⁴
A private survey agreed, at least in one respect, finding almost no generational difference among the French as regarding approval of American cultural imports.
⁸⁵
But these assessments overlooked the data that indicated there were some subtle distinctions for those over sixty-five and for those in their late teens or twenties. Two surveys found that those sixty-five and older were the most sympathetic audience for the United States, though the margins were small.
⁸⁶
The most senior generation, another poll found, less often than others employed uncomplimentary terms like
social inequality
or
racism
to describe the United States.
⁸⁷
And another poll demonstrated that far more of those over sixty-five than those under that age said they felt close to the American people.
⁸⁸
The common notion that the generation who experienced the Second World War harbored kind feelings toward the United States seems to have some validity. At the opposite extreme of age, evidence for the young was not what one might have expected. Some surveys reported that French youth were more disillusioned with their American cousins than other age groups.
⁸⁹
Almost three-fourths of those between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four said in 1999 that they did not feel close to the American people.
⁹⁰
Three years later, compared to the national average, more young people expressed unfavorable impressions of the American people.
⁹¹
Other polls found nothing unusual for those eighteen to twenty-four.
⁹²
But it is somewhat disconcerting that the fascination
among the young with American music, fashion, and film did not translate into enthusiasm for Americans. Neither gender nor age seems to have determined much about attitudes toward the United States.

The only variable that clearly differentiated among the general public was political affiliation.
⁹³
Without exception surveys all reported that there was more sympathy for the United States on the right than on the left. Choosing between sympathy and antipathy in 2000, far more respondents who identified as leaning to the right (51 percent) expressed sympathy than those leaning to the left (34 percent).
⁹⁴
Judgments of Americans as people were also much more favorable among those who declared themselves as supporting the right rather than the left.
⁹⁵
In the same year when selecting from a menu of words describing feelings toward the United States, respondents from the right selected
admiring
or
kindly
much more often than those on the left.
⁹⁶
One reason for the Right's relative warmth stems from its respect for the American economy. There was a marked right/left split among those who found merit in the American economic model.
⁹⁷
From a menu of terms that supposedly described the United States, those on the right selected complimentary categories associated with economic prowess like
innovation
or
everyone can make his or her fortune.
Those on the left were less attracted to these attributes.
⁹⁸

The right/left polarity is rather crude and can be subjected to further analysis according to party loyalty. Respondents aligned with the Socialist Party and the Greens (i.e., supporters but not necessarily party members) followed closely the norms for those affiliated with the Left.
⁹⁹
To describe the United States, approximately half of those on the left chose
violence, the death penalty
, and
strong social inequality;
over a third picked
innovation
and
racism;
and a quarter selected
permissiveness (tout est permis)
and
everyone can make his or her fortune.
Those who identified with the communists made similar choices, except that they ranked
violence
even higher and
innovation
very low.

The only right-wing parties for which sufficient data permit generalization are the RPR/UMP, whose adherents closely followed the
norms of the Right, and the extremist Front National, whose adherents did not. Backers of the Front National were both attracted and repelled by America—even though the party itself in the late 1990s became passionately anti-American, attacking the United States as the enemy of national identity and the stalking horse for globalization.
¹⁰⁰
Compared to others who identified with the Right, Front National supporters were less willing to criticize American society for violence; they were more forgiving of the death penalty; and they were more inclined to approve of what they perceived was America's priority of jobs over social promotion. But they also were harsher in their condemnation of American moral permissiveness and they believed that France and the United States increasingly disagreed on “the world's important political, economic, and cultural debates.”
¹⁰¹

If partisans on the right expressed relatively more sympathetic opinions, they could not be dubbed enthusiasts or “pro-American.” Among backers of the RPR/UDF, near majorities scored the United States poorly on social conditions and practices like the death penalty. Criticism of the United States may have been heavier from partisans on the left, but the separation between left and right was not great. When the issue was U.S. hegemony in particular, they were not far apart.
¹⁰²
Nevertheless, political affiliation was a potent determinant of attitudes.

The United States in the recent past, according to this survey data, functioned more as a source of consensus than it did as a basis for division within French society. The shades of difference among partisans on the left or the right, as well as among age cohorts, or between men and women, were insufficient for America to be a cause of controversy—although intellectuals sparred over it. The unflattering image of the United States was so widely shared among the French that it tended to bring them together. Thus, opposing the United States served as a way for politicians to rally support for their own agenda.

At the end of the 1990s the French were, according to the polls, more worried and more suspicious of the United States than at any time since the tense days of the early Cold War. The warmth of the
mid-1980s had cooled markedly. These trends raise questions of historical causation: Why were the French so pessimistic, so concerned, about the American threat? Why, more than for other Europeans, was America such a problem for the French? These questions require some close analysis.

Analysis

Any global explanation of such a complex phenomenon as fin-de-siecle anti-Americanism would be unsatisfactory. Pundits asserted that the French were simply jealous of their transatlantic cousins and displayed their envy by belittling Americans and their achievements. Such a simplistic and condescending answer fails to take into account the distinctions among those who disapproved, the spectrum of motives, or the array of opinions that were voiced about America. Some objected to American mass culture, others to the U.S. government's international practices, and a few said they were unimpressed with Americans as a people. Variables like political affiliation or elite status distinguished how one disapproved. And individuals often harbored complicated, even contradictory, views. One might, for example, have praised the United States for law and order yet scorned Americans for capital punishment. Moreover, attitudes in general evolved over time: they darkened—a shift that any static analysis misses.

The paradox that pairs the simultaneous rise of anti-Americanism with the immersion of France in Americanization can be partly resolved with the application of common sense. We should expect neither consistency nor logic from human beings. People compartmentalize attitudes and behavior; someone might approve of one form of American culture, like popular music, but criticize Hollywood movies; another might admire American business yet deplore materialism. Take the example of the young woman who joined the rally at the trial of Jose Bove. She told a reporter that she had nothing against Americans, but
she disliked “the American system”—“all the bad food makes for bad thinking.” But when asked if she ever ate at McDonald's, she said, “Well, sometimes. I have no choice. And I get a stomach-ache every time.”
¹⁰³
Or, maybe the explanation is not one of human inconsistency, but a reasonable reaction to an overdose of America. Some of the French seem to have had enough of America, and they were reacting to the very scope and intensity of Americanization. It was not hypocrisy; it was drawing a line and trying to limit the intrusion of American products like television programs. Or maybe it was guilt. Having overindulged in American mass culture, the French felt embarrassed and condemned it.

None of these reasons fully resolve the paradox. There is more to the story than human foibles. Explaining the resurgence of anti-Americanism in the last decade of the twentieth century requires a different approach.

Answering why there was growing resentment toward America in the 1990s depends on making some distinctions, the first of which is the difference between constants and contingencies, between historical givens and historical circumstances. There was a latent Gallic apprehension about America and there were events, leaders, and policies that aroused this anxiety. Analytically one must distinguish between the two. A second distinction should be made among the different issues—economic, political, social, and cultural—that excited distrust and dismay. Each contributed in different ways and intensities to the sour mix of resentments. And allowance must be made for human ambivalence—most French people harbored ambiguous and even contradictory feelings toward America. Mindful of these distinctions, I shall argue, nevertheless, that there was a paramount reason for anti-Americanism. Mounting American assertiveness in international affairs along with the accompanying celebration of the American way encountered French insecurity and defensiveness. The Gallic reaction was to chide and belittle the Americans as well as defend indigenous French traditions.

The French image of America in the 1990s had many parents and a long pedigree. Among its ancestors were those of a perennial nature—
the constants. First, there was the composite stereotype of Americans marked by multiple binaries, such as religious versus materialist, whose origin can be found in the eighteenth century; this was well honed by 1900 and seemingly impervious to any contrary experience or information that might modify it.
¹⁰⁴
As far as the public was concerned, it was sure it knew what Americans were like. In the early 1950s polls showed the French believed Americans were youthful, optimistic, wealthy, and dynamic. But they were also less favorably stereotyped as materialistic, vulgar, violent, racist, and puritanical. By the century's end little changed except that Americans no longer appeared youthful and seemed arrogant and given to excesses of all sorts. This latter characteristic supposedly informed Americans' opulent lifestyle, exuberant religiosity, and zealousness in pursuit of evil in international affairs. A second constant was Gallic pride and the refusal to act as subordinates in the transatlantic alliance. French prickliness about being treated as a lesser ally disturbed every occupant of the White House from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Bill Clinton. The French were determined that the United States should treat them as equal partners, and they could be manipulative and obstreperous if they were slighted or relegated to the status of passive followers. A third constant was twin universalism or narcissism. Rooted in history and lodged in the people's collective psychology was the conviction that the French, like the Americans, had a special global mission. For Americans it was the spread of democracy and free enterprise; for the French it was the
mission civilisatrice.
Such presuppositions were bound to clash. Or, put in another way, the Americans and the French are the only two people who believe everyone else in the world would like to be them. Such a coupling was bound to cause the two to see each other as rivals. What intensified this rivalry was yet another constant, that of a French sense of cultural superiority. In the late 1770s and ‘80s the French nobility combined admiration with condescension in their behavior toward Benjamin Franklin when he resided in Paris; 150 years later came the writer Georges Duhamel, who, after touring the country in 1929 claimed he could associate no
cultural achievements with the New World (e.g., no great artists or composers). Americans, he wrote, preferred movies, sports, and cars. By the interwar period intellectuals sounded an early alert about the American menace.
¹⁰⁵
During the early years of the Cold War when Louis Aragon, Emmanuel Mounier, and Jean-Paul Sartre ruled St. Germain des Pres, the same haughty posture toward their rude American cousins characterized Parisian mandarins. And the sentiment persisted in some quarters to the end of the century.
¹⁰⁶
The conviction that France was the guardian of high culture and America the peddler of mass culture was stoutly defended by intellectual gatekeepers. A final constant was the way traditional culture configured the sense of national identity. French identity, for hundreds of years, has been defined by literature, the arts, humanism, food,
bon gout
, and the French language itself. As the twentieth century developed, Americanization seemed to mount a direct threat to this conception of identity.