Vol. 20 No. 22 · 12 November 1998
pages 24-26 | 3270 words
Blanc-Black-Beur
Anand Menon
- On the Brink: The Trouble with France by Jonathan Fenby
Little, Brown, 464 pp, £18.99, August 1998, ISBN 0 316 64665 2
There is a general impression, both inside the country and abroad, that France is floundering in the face of its many political, social and economic problems – which is why winning the World Cup was held to be so important. Jonathan Fenby’s fine book, On the Brink: The Trouble with France, explores the multi-faceted nature of this crisis, from the decline of the baguette to widespread political corruption.
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Letters
Vol. 20 No. 23 · 26 November 1998
From William Millinship
Anand Menon tells us a lot about France today (LRB, 12 November). But his view of de Gaulle is a bit askew. He suggests that le Général used foreign policy to ‘rally political opponents to his new Republic’. After watching de Gaulle in action for some years, I concluded that his opposition to the United States and ‘Anglo-Saxon hegemony’ was at the heart of what he called ‘une certaine idée de la France’ and not simply a tool for managing domestic politics. I also assumed that he negotiated a settlement in Algeria – and antagonised the French Army in the process – because he wanted a free hand to conduct the foreign policy he had always dreamed of: against America and in favour of ‘l’Europe des Patries’.
William Millinship
London SE21
Vol. 20 No. 24 · 10 December 1998
From Mat Pires
The slogan chanted by French football supporters after their World Cup victory should be in the order ‘black-blanc-beur’, not ‘blanc-black-beur’ as Anand Menon had it (LRB, 12 November). It is a militant response to the Front National’s co-option of the tricolour for their annual Fête du bleu-blanc-rouge. In any case, the jubilant fans didn’t chant that, they chant ed ‘Zidane for President’. Paris’s former mayor Jacques Chirac would doubtless have been alarmed if, as Menon asserts, this call for his replacement had been projected onto the Arc de Triomphe, since the lightshow in question was organised by his Gaullist successors at the City Council. In fact, the monument acted as a backdrop to a simple succession of players’ names and photos.
Mat Pires
Paris 18
Vol. 21 No. 1 · 7 January 1999
From Duncan Bush
Anand Menon (LRB, 12 November 1998) thinks that the victorious French football supporters' chant was 'blanc-black-beur', while Mat Pires (Letters, 10 December 1998) argues for 'black-blanc-beur'. I think they are both wrong. The original pun celebrating a successful, multiracial team, 'les bleus', was 'bleu-blanc-noir', quickly refined to 'beur-blanc-noir' – which I think deserves to be definitive. Whether as a chant for streets and stadiums or a slogan for multi-ethnic national unity, this has at least two advantages over Menon's and Pires's versions. First, auditory: as a closer variant on the actual sequence of 'bleu-blanc-rouge' of the Tricolour, it's a more logical, and wittier, play on words. Second, lingual: it's a lot easier to pronounce (even for the French).
Duncan Bush
Luxembourg
