The most surreal exam period of my life

No one—not even the professor—knew if there was a final for my class at Univ. of Paris III. He told us that all he knew was that the Comp. Lit. department had asked him for a question and he’d given them one and if any student needed another grade (2 were required), we should ask the Comp. Lit. office when and where we could take the final. Because heaven forfend the professor should be familiar with requirements for his own class or even arrive to teach it every week. I mean, what do we want from him? Blood?

As far as I can tell, the Comp. Lit. office is one evil troll woman who spends all her time smoking and insulting American students, making her a rather typical Parisian and someone whom I try to avoid.

One of our readings for my French society class posed the question, is the French University system in crisis? I would have to reply yes. My prof. at Paris III cancelled our class 6 times during the semester and 3 of those times he just didn’t show up—no announcement in advance, no message left with Evil Troll so that she could put a note on the classroom door. And the times he showed up, we never, not once, actually discussed the books on the syllabus for the semester. Tales of Paris III: a friend of mine had a Prof. who showed up an hour late for their final. Another friend of mine has a class at Paris III that had to move to another room for the 2nd half of the class each day they met because there weren’t enough available classrooms or chairs for all the students and classes offered on Wednesdays. The professors all also have to bring their own erasers for the black board and apparently, their presence, like the elusive final exam schedule, is optional.

Other finals absurdities: the question for my French society class was: is France capable of reform? (Can we just reply, “no” and leave, someone asked?)

The question for my grammar class was: is the massive use of cell phones due to the fear of loneliness? During the exam, a bunch of people got calls on their cells, no doubt from the fearful and lonely ready to provide the three required examples for the first part of the essay.

I swear, I will become a philosopher simply by taking exams in France.

And how does one answer questions like these? Not like a normal human being.

Below is an example of a good thesis-antithesis-synthesis essay. You start with a general phrase, form a “problematique,” then announce the organization of the essay (which should be always 2 or 3 parts each with 3 sub parts) and then conclude. I swear, this is really the norm for an argumentative essay in which you are asked to give your opinion. It's a form of writing that is still strange to me, but I'm getting used to it-- now it's kind of fun (instead of horrifying) to force the 2-part essay vision on every single question on earth.

Example:

The sky has fascinated man for ages and has formed both our concept of the divine (the heavens) and our vision of reality (the science of astronomy). Many claim that it is blue in color, but how do human beings interpret color and are we capable of understanding the natural world? Can one really say that the sky, as we know it, is blue? In a formulaic 2-part essay, each with 3 sub parts, we will first consider evidence supporting this claim, then we will look at evidence to the contrary.

Yes, the sky is blue (3 specific examples).

We may think that they sky is blue, but we are wrong (3 specific examples).

In conclusion, the sky is and is not blue. And rather than ending on a conclusive note, we will now broaden our question to invite the reader to think about something else similar yet also completely different, for example, is the grass really green?

Libraries and Algeria: 2 weeks of finals

If you’re wondering how I’ve been spending my time in the city of light, the answer is in the dark-- or at least dimly lit libraries or in front of my computer, or both at the same time when my laptop accompanies me to my beloved BNF. This is a shame, because I’ve heard from people not enslaved to academia that Paris, where I live, is a fun city... In an internet version of the Bryn Mawr College “done is good” credo, something that hasn’t crossed my mind in the past 6 years since I graduated, as of today, I’ve taken 2 exams and handed in 3 papers (2 of which were French paper records for me at 13 pages). I have yet to finish another 12-pager and take 3 exams, the last of which is the slightly terrifying subject of 19th century French History from the revolution to the resistance.

The 19th of December (the day of my last final) will indeed be a happy day, which I am starting to imagine as a date nearly as monumental and liberating for me as the day France recognized Algerian independence (one of my essays was on the conquest of Algeria).

Charmed Life

The show Charmed is always on French TV. You know, an Aaron Spelling creation that used to star Shannon Dogherty before she was too bitchy to work with. Skinny chicks fighting evil in halter tops. In English, they use “vanquish” as a noun to refer to saving innocent people, or killing bad guys with a ball of fire thing that is way less cool than Buffy vampires that disintegrate instantaneously. Frankly, I don’t really know what they say in French for “a vanquish,” because most of the time they just pout and plot against an evil wizard or something named Cole who is in love with Phoebe.

General rule: shows about witches are lame. Sabrina couldn’t even make a talking cat interesting.

Whenever I get home and turn on the TV, there they are, the annoying glamour witches who run a nightclub in San Francisco in their spare time, drive a BMW SUV and own (yes, own) a Victorian in SF, obtained no doubt by magic. But every show includes a shot of the Golden Gate Bridge and sometimes the skyline (which should have the Christmas lights up now) to imply a realism that obviously is not present in all areas of the show, like the witchcraft part. Every once in a while I’ll actually watch these silly night club witches just to see the Transamerica pyramid.

The Hit Film Poltergay

You can’t be cultural and sophisticated all the time…

The other night, friends of mine went to the opera to see Cosi Fan Tutte. I also headed towards the opera, but to the cinema near the opera house to see a French film that just came out. If you, like most Americans, think that “foreign film” equals “art house, intellectual and thought-provoking,” then I am very sorry to shatter that illusion.

I saw a film called “Poltergay.”

It is the story of five ghosts who haunt a house built on the hallowed ground of a gay disco that tragically burned down in the 70s. They are now trapped there for eternity as poltergeists due to some magic stones with a vaguely defined electromagnetic force that keep them there. You may be shocked to learn that no one actually recommended this film to me, but I saw it based on the strength alone of the movie posters with a tagline that roughly translates into “phantoms or fantabulous?” Yes, for a girl from San Francisco who, on occasion, spent Halloween in the Castro, it was irresistible.

Spoiler alert. Stop reading if you don’t want a plot synopsis of this important cinematic achievement. (Or: I am not kidding that this is a real movie in theaters everywhere in France).

The short version:
It’s your basic boy sees ghosts, boy loses girl, boy wins her back and opens a nightclub.

The long version:
A straight couple moves into a gay haunted house. Rainbow colored fog foreshadows ensuing creepiness. The cat senses the otherworldly presence—perhaps she sees the fog— and spends the entire film caterwauling. The ghosts do silly things like play disco music, photograph the male lead’s naked ass, paint winged penis insignias on everything, arrange his closet and iron his pants, even his jeans. There’s some psychological drama wherein the male lead thinks he’s losing his mind, since only he can see gay disco ghosts. This prompts his archeologist girlfriend to leave him and he then seeks professional help. The professional help tells him he’s a repressed homosexual, so he trolls a gay club but doesn’t go though with a hook up. He loses his job, too and the antagonistic ghosts start to feel sorry for him.

He decides it is time to Take Action. So he does a google search and discovers that his house was once a disco that burned down. He then calls a German parapsychologist who appears on his doorstep 2 seconds later and is always eating McDonalds. He also discovers that his ability to see the gay ghosts actually reaffirms his heterosexuality since only virgins, who are, according to the film, men who haven’t ever been with another man, can see them. His best friend can’t see them even though he’s straight, but the film explains this inconsistency in that he is not pure because he is a fireman, which is (I discovered later) a Bawdy Pun, since the word for fireman in French is also slang for blow job.

And you thought the film had nothing to teach us.

The male lead and the ghosts then drive into Paris with the magic stones that are the source of their poltergeist power and seem portable enough, and take a tour of Paris gay clubs. But, oh, no, the ghosts become weak and hover near whatever ontological state describes the demise of a ghost. The German parapsychologist explains, in an emergency cell phone conference while he waits in line at a drive-thru, that the ghosts will disappear forever if they and their magic stones are not returned to the house by 5 am, since that was the time of the Tragic Disco Fire. It wasn’t clear if he just forgot to mention that earlier, or if he were deliberately plotting against them and then had a royale with cheese-induced change of heart. (Yes, Pulp Fiction will get a mention in every single blog).

The male lead piles the ghosts into a wheelbarrow and into his car and speeds back to home sweet haunted home, but he gets stopped by the police, one of whom is evidently not a fireman and sees the ghosts, and they let him go. But after this delay, edge of your seat suspense— will they make it back in time?

Yes, don’t worry, the ghosts are fine. Quel relief.

After the Drama That Solidifies Friendship, next along in the plot line is the Effort To Win The Girlfriend Back. The ghosts help and it becomes a French version of Queer Eye for the Straight and Not Dead Guy. They write a love letter to his lady and quote Cocteau. They sew him a shirt out of a floral curtain, cook a great dinner and prompt him with conversation topics since he can hear and see them and his girlfriend can’t. They show him how to dance the salsa with his lady, tell him when to try to kiss her and cheer him on when he hooks up with her later that night. Seriously, all men should be so lucky to have gay French ghosts to give them dating tips.

But, plot twist, one of the ghosts records himself on the girlfriend’s digital camcorder and she can see the ghost when she replays the segment! They’re not vampires after all, so why not show up on digital film? After this discovery, the happy couple, now united in their perception of disco ghosts, open a gay paranormal nightclub in their basement where all the ghosts are visible on TV screens and can communicate and make out with the living, even the firemen.

Gardens, Airport Security and Beer: the BNF (National Library of France)

The library, you’re thinking, not an exciting topic for a blog. You were maybe hoping for the sex museum or just lots of photos of the Eiffel Tower.

But don't discount the BNF. It’s a wonder of the world, according to François Mitterand, who it is conveniently named after. With its extensive archives, and majestic halls, this cultural treasure could be the subject of a documentary film.

The library is recognizable as such in that it's a building that houses books all with Dewey decimal call numbers and a computerized catalogue. The part that becomes a little Waiting for Godot is that the library is organized not by floor number (e.g., first, second), but by proximity to a garden. The top floor is above- the-garden, the lower floor is garden-level, etc.

The garden-centric system of organization seems about as logical as arranging flavors of coffee by their relation to toothpaste, or, I don’t know, spider webs.

You might wonder why there is a garden at the library. The library is constructed as a large rectangle with an arboretum in the middle with actual trees imported from the countryside so that you can look out the window and admire them while you walk along the red-carpeted corridor to get from one reading room to another. You can’t actually see the garden from any of the hunting lodge-like luxury dens that are the reading rooms. These are dark and gloomy spaces with no natural lighting and plush carpeting that are slightly reminiscent of fading grandeur and drawing rooms of the aristocracy, had they ever entertained 221 readers at once. To enter each reading room, you have to insert your library card into a metro station-like turnstile because, why not apply the innovations of the public transit system to the library? Since there's already a garden there. I will say that the reading rooms are at least in alphabetical order instead of organized around a random natural phenomenon to keep with the garden theme like, say, types of birds, except that salle D is inexplicably before salle A.

To obtain a library card, you're lucky if the books you need are above the garden. This is the part of the library that is accessible to the public. For a fee, of course. The library is not free, perhaps because they have to pay the gardeners, and it was, after all, a 2 billion Euro construction project. Also, like all libraries in France, you cannot borrow books, but just read them there. All books in French libraries are reference books and the libraries function more like archives. At the BNF, there are also specific rules about how many pages of a 100-page book you are allowed to photocopy (at your expense, of course), assuming that the condition of the book is such that it will not disintegrate on the spot if you try to copy it. Thankfully, as a literature student, I only need above-the-garden access, but we are not all so lucky.

My friend Corrine needed garden-level access, so we went to the library, first to the main desk, then to the desk where they directed us. There, we took a number and were to wait until a library teller in a row of bank window-like cubicles was available. Our teller was super nice—most of the staff at the BNF is. They realize that their library was designed by aliens and makes no sense to anyone else and are very helpful and patient. Corinne showed her the printouts from the catalogue proving that the books she needed were on garden level, her student ID and a photocopy of her passport and the teller explained to us that:

1. If the book you need exists in any other library in Paris, you have to go there because the BNF is a library of last resort. She cross checked Corry’s records and found some other libraries with the same books. Other libraries are way more normal than the BNF, so it is not a problem to go elsewhere, to libraries without gardens.

2. You need a letter from your research director as proof that you are a real student writing a real dissertation who has a real need for these books.

3. You need a valid ID, which in France means your passport. And a photocopy is not acceptable.
4. You are not allowed to photograph books with a digital camera, place a water bottle on the desk at the library, only on the ground, or smoke in the library. This last warning was unnecessary for us. As Americans, we are habituated to not smoking in the public places where the French smoke, like restaurants and the metro station.

Despite the fact that Corry didn’t have her attestation from her research director or her actual passport, our friendly librarian took pity on us and gave her 2 cards, one for above-the-garden where some of her books were and one for the elusive garden level. Each card was good for 15 visits, so Corry will have to keep count of them. The library teller also explained the rules of the garden-level. There are many of them and it’s very complex, especially in a foreign language.

1. You have to check your bag, coat and personal affairs above the garden. In an airport security-like measure, you can only take what you need in a clear plastic bag. I didn’t ask about liquids.

2. You have to order your books and they bring them to you. No browsing in the stacks for ordinary people on the garden-level. You can expect to wait up to 45 minutes for your books.

3. Or you can plan ahead and reserve a computer and order your book in advance, especially if it exists in digital form and then it will absolutely be there for you. Unless the library goes on strike or something, which happens with alarming frequency.

4. If you leave the garden-level temporarily, you have to tell a warden/guard/footman. Otherwise you will Lose Your Place There.

She took Corry’s info for her 2 library cards and gave her probably about 100 brochures explaining the BNF and the quirks of each garden level. Then we had to go back to another desk to take another number and wait to be called back to the same row of tellers so that Corry could have her picture taken for the card. In typical 2nd language confusion that arrives daily, we had only a vague understanding of this repeat number-taking and I ended up asking the new desk person what the number she’d just given us was for, again. After about a 4-second wait, they called the number and Corry is now the proud owner of the blurriest BNF photo ever which the photographer assured her was supermodel quality. While they issued her the library card at this desk, we had to go to another desk, the original desk where we’d started, for the second card and to pay for it. Perhaps it was the influence of the garden, but I felt like we were a pair of ducks waddling to and fro, searching for bread crumbs or library cards.

At the other desk, there was a problem with the computer system, “merde, merde, merde”, exclaimed our librarian and then she excused herself. French cursing really doesn’t bother me; it’s just like any other word, like paint or trousers. I didn’t grow up with French curse words as taboo; no kids on the playground during my childhood ever said, "ooh, I’m telling, you said ‘paint.’ " Or , "merde." Finally, we realized the computer error was because Corry had yet to pay for her blurry photo card and of course, this had to be done at another desk. So we went and did that and then returned to the original desk and they finally issued her the second card.

To celebrate the card victory, we had a coffee at the café in the library where, surrounded by the pile of her 100 BNF brochures, Corry remarked that you could buy a beer at the library. At the risk of sounding like a Pulp Fiction discussion of subtle cultural differences by way of fast food, drugs and alcohol, they only have Heineken and 1664.