So on a friend's recommendation, and because it'll be funny and naff to discuss and because I'm curious if the advice in it will seem very culturally specific (i.e., American) or not, I picked up Mars and Venus On a Date. Yes, Venus and Mars of the the inter-planetary relationship counselling franchise. I counted no less than 8 Venus and Mars books on the shelves, some with vomit-inducing titles like, Venus and Mars in Harmony Forever, and Venus and Mars in Love 365 Days of the Year.
I clearly plan to read this book ironically. Ahem, obviously. Not that the state of my love life is such that advice wouldn't perhaps be useful... And to minimise the trash factor, I got it in French so I can try to convince myself that it's somewhat of an intellectual exercise during my non-French speaking vacation and not just the gender stereotyping fluff that it clearly would be in my native language (and the original language it was written in).
I might be the only person who enjoys reading anglophone books in translation because I think it's so interesting what translators decide they have to explain to a foreign audience. And do they keep to the original and explain it, or use a cultural equivalent? Like in the French version of the American TV show Veronica Mars set in Southern California, they made the poor kids from the Valley from St. Denis (a Paris suburb with a bad reputation). I love cultural footnotes in books, like in Bridget Jones' Diary, they footnoted Pride and Prejudice and explained that it was a famous Anglophone literary classic, that Jane Austin was a writer known for her social commentary, especially about the role of women in society and gave a brief plot summary. Isn't it intersting to imagine people reading that book who have NO idea who Mr. Darcy is? I mean, not that it's super deep or anything, but knowing who Mr. Darcy is does add a little layer to our girlfriend Bridget, don't you think?
I also figure if I ever apply any of the advice in the book, I'll probably do it in French, so might as well start with the French version, non? And when I handed in my attendance sheets for the last time ever at work, returned my key to the school and filed away all my course programmes and class notes, I happened to be near a bookstore.
A friend of mine swore by Men Are From Mars and I read bits of it, but as I'm not married, I didn't really relate. I think those kinds of books can be helpful because at best, they make you think about communication in a relationship and that different people have different ways of expressing what's important to them. At their worst, of course, those kinds of books become reductive gender stereotyping. So we'll see how Venus and Mars do on the Parisian dating scene.
When I went to pay for my relationship self-help book, I noticed that the guy in front of me was buying, of all things, Relationships For Dummies (Relations Amoureuses Pour Les Nuls). Seeing that this was clearly fate, or at least a pick up line made in heaven (and as a foreigner I have the priviliged positionof being able to start conversations with strangers and it's charming, rather than slutty or weird, as it probably would be for a French woman here), I hesitated and carefully evaluated how attractive this man was and if I wanted to use this golden opportunity or not.
I ultimately decided not to pursue this one, (would that seem really lonely and desperate? Just how good a pick up line is it really? "I see we're both single and looking for a relationship" is not exactly a huge thing to have in common, is it? Or is it? And what if he were in fact happily married and just buying the book as a present for someone else? That would be really embarassing...) and save my ace for a different card game. Although I'm waiting to see what Venus and Mars would have done...
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Life, Love and Video Games
So I never play video games but I often think of them as metaphors. How pretentious, right?
Living abroad is like a video game (ok, I think of them as similes not metaphors, excuse me), an elegant intellectual one with good high-res graphics and many nuanced shades of grey (Paris is a very grey city) in that through trial and error you have to learn the right thing to do in different situations, the right words to use in a particular context or the right reaction to have and then this enables you to advance to the next level.
I have no idea how many levels there are total. Or what my all-time score is so far.
Welcome to the next level. Bienvenu au niveau suivant!
Self-Help Starts With... AAA? Or: Why Support Groups Are Inherently American
Student: "In America, you have AAA (pronouncing each A individually)?"
Me, fairly surprised: "Um, we call it triple A and it's a type of car insurance. Why?"
Student: "No, you know that group to help alcoholics. You always see it on TV. My name is... I lost my job and my house, ha ha ha!" (This was real laughter and mockery).
Me: It's called AA, it stands for Alcoholics Anonymous. You have it in France, too. There isn't a similar French group?"
Apparently, support groups are for whiny little girls. Or Americans, in the French mind.
Maybe I'm over-reacting to an arrogant corporate student, one who works in a oncology pharmaceutical, no less, but it made me think a little about national attitudes towards support (financial and emotional) and self-improvement, in general.
While the average French citizen/resident can count on government support financially through social programs like national healthcare (which I love) or unemployment (which I guess is generous but everyone I know who ever needed it had too many bureaucratic problems to get any actual money from the government ever), I don't think there's much public support for the old morale, no smiley "will that be all, is there anything else I can help you with today?" efficient bureaucracy or customer service. The French bureaucracy is generally acknowledged by the French and foreigners alike as heartless and as inconvenient as humanly possible. Prefecture officers are reguarly indifferent when they reduce my American friends to tears and no one I know has ever succeeded in talking their way out of a metro fine if caught without a ticket.
Systems aren't helpful, let alone user-friendly. The French fonctionnaire mentality, endorsed by civil servants everywhere, can often seem like "go sort it out yourself and stop bothering me." Outside of the realm of civil servants, it's still not always that easy to negotiate. Customer service, or what anglophones consider customer service, anyway, is non-existant here, unless you're a millionaire who shops at Prada. And you'd probably have to be a regular there to get good service. Anyway, these are some of the stereotypical run of the mill anglophone complaints about the hexagon and I must confess that even after living here 5 years, these particular issues do still get my goat, or chevre. But it's part of life as we know it and well, chevre is pretty good cheese, so that takes the edge off a little.
In terms of personal/emotional support, I recently noticed that in general people tend to pair off very early in France, like in their early 20s, which is a lot earlier than in the US or the UK. (The result this has on the 30-year old French man when, surprise, this relationship doesn't work out and the ensuing dating frustrations that this causes for women in their 30s is a blog post for another day). I'm convinced that this early coupledom has to do with how difficult the administration is, the 'sort it out yourself' attitude and how much you have to fight to get people to do things they should do anyway. Like what, you might be wondering? Recent struggles of mine include making my company pay my salary on time (yes, late pay checks are a regular occurance) and one still in progress: making my landlord fix the collapsed floor board in my apartment. This will easily take at least 4 months.
Other support that you can count on here besides your 21-year old husband, is the rest of your family. As a foreigner whose family is far far away, it seems like the French are highly family-oriented, or in other words, obsessed with their families and physically cannot go more than like 2 weeks without seeing the clan gaulois. A regular French reaction I get when I say I'm an only child is, "how can you break your parents' hearts like this and live so far away from them?"
So even if the administration is a cauchemar and a half, the family and your underage partner can help you in times of crisis. Just about everyone I know in Paris has moments of severe depression. France has the highest rate of anti-depressant consumption in Europe, which doesn't necessarily mean that they're the most depressed, just that they like taking meds the most. Honestly, I had a cold once and my doctor wrote me like 5 prescriptions for it. But medication aside, the French mistrust happiness, I think, and complaining and being digusted and existentially miserable show you're a sensitive intellectual soul. Blame Sartre for that one. The weather in Paris in the summer and the winter is also terrible with constant cloud cover which doesn't help. I almost took a job in Norway awhile ago and I honestly thought that the arctic winter probably wouldn't be that different from the sun-less French winter. But I think if depression really becomes a problem, most people here just take pills or call their aunts (I probably would as well, to be honest), rather than join a support group. The only support groups I've ever seen advertised here were in the English language paper.
The main reason support groups would NEVER catch on here is that the French don't often publically admit that they have problems or don't know things or need self-improvement in any way. Lest you think I'm being too harsh, consider this: self-deprecating humor, typical of the US and the UK, doesn't exist in France. The French would NEVER poke fun at themselves and they find it highly weird that we do. They often take it quite seriously and don't realise that it's a joke. Honestly, some French person I once met told me that he was shocked when he went to the US because Americans didn't know basic geography. He said when he told someone he met there that he was from France they answered, "I couldn't even locate France on a map, ha ha!" I had to explain that this was called self-deprecating humor and that is really means "I don't think I'm very worldly and am exaggerating and making a joke about it" and not "I have no idea if France is really in Western Europe."
There are, of course, exceptions, I have a couple French friends who DO make fun of themselves, but they admit that it's not typical French humor at all. French humor usually mocks OTHER people and I find it quite cutting sometimes. And it's not just me. The number one word that my friends used to characterise French humor when I first moved here and asked them questions like that was absoutely cassant or cutting.
So, this really is not a country where the national mindset seems that conducive to support groups, or admitting in public that you have a problem that you can't solve and need help with. Americans (maybe I just speak for myself here...) are all about trying to improve themselves, I mean this is the land where self-help is an industry, and a lucrative one, at that. I too consider all the self-help rhetoric in the US a little too Oprah for my taste, but at the same time, while I wouldn't hire a life coach or buy self-help tapes, I do set personal goals for myself, like running the Paris half-marathon, doing 15 minutes of Spanish a day, etc. becuase I feel like these will ultimately make me better in some way, like more fit and proficient in the most useful foreign language in the US and I find this motivating.
Strangely enough, the one time that I ever got a French recommendation for a support group, or a phone support hotline, at least, was an extremely strange (and, I thought, very funny) situation. Before I started my second year of university teaching, a colleague sent out an email directed to new foreign staff. He told us that he realised that being far from home could be stressful and lead to disappointment, frustration and anxiety. And he wanted to remind us that we weren't alone. How did this caring man show his humanity? Did he mean that he would be there to help us delicate fragile etrangers? No, of course not. He showed he cared by passing on the number of an English language suicide hotline. Ok, maybe it wasn't technically a suicide hotline, but it was called SOS Depression or SOS Loneliness or something. (If I were a real blogger, I would link to a previous post from a few years ago that reproduced the text of this famous email). At the time, I thought it was pretty funny and that the university was more or less outsourcing support and compassion. I mean, this guy or the uni could have implemented a buddy system/systeme de parrainage or organised an event for the foreign staff to help us integrate better or a number of other things. Now I think it really was meant to be thoughtful and it was actually quite considerate to acknolwedge a problem that had occured in the past, that the university can be a tough place to work when you're starting out in a new land and provide a resource to help. Especially in the world of "demerde-toi" (kind of a crass way to say, sort it out yourself).
Interestingly, I've long been frustrated that there isn't a direct translation of the adjective supportive in French. You litterally can't describe someone this way in this language. (You have to use the verb 'instead, i.e, you can say, he supported me during a tough time', or the noun, 'he gave me a lot of support', but you can't say he was supportive). I guess philisophically, in French, support can't a personality attribute like it is in English. Not that this proves that the French or the English are any more or less supportive, but can probably make a case that different cultures probably envision help and support somewhat differently and public group support, for example, seems typically American. An example of a different kind of helpful: something that has happened to me a few times is that if I go to the grocery store when it's raining and put my umbrella down on the floor while I bag, pay, generally have my hands full of stuff, someone will often tell me that my umbrella's on the ground. This really irked me this first time it happened, I know where it is, I put it there, I only have 2 hands and it sounds a little like a criticism. But I think it's honestly meant to be helpful and to mean, don't forget your brolly, which is how an Anglophone would say it.
So all that to say demerdez-vous, French alcoholics. But you probably don't really have a problem. Unless you're a foreigner.
Me, fairly surprised: "Um, we call it triple A and it's a type of car insurance. Why?"
Student: "No, you know that group to help alcoholics. You always see it on TV. My name is... I lost my job and my house, ha ha ha!" (This was real laughter and mockery).
Me: It's called AA, it stands for Alcoholics Anonymous. You have it in France, too. There isn't a similar French group?"
Apparently, support groups are for whiny little girls. Or Americans, in the French mind.
Maybe I'm over-reacting to an arrogant corporate student, one who works in a oncology pharmaceutical, no less, but it made me think a little about national attitudes towards support (financial and emotional) and self-improvement, in general.
While the average French citizen/resident can count on government support financially through social programs like national healthcare (which I love) or unemployment (which I guess is generous but everyone I know who ever needed it had too many bureaucratic problems to get any actual money from the government ever), I don't think there's much public support for the old morale, no smiley "will that be all, is there anything else I can help you with today?" efficient bureaucracy or customer service. The French bureaucracy is generally acknowledged by the French and foreigners alike as heartless and as inconvenient as humanly possible. Prefecture officers are reguarly indifferent when they reduce my American friends to tears and no one I know has ever succeeded in talking their way out of a metro fine if caught without a ticket.
Systems aren't helpful, let alone user-friendly. The French fonctionnaire mentality, endorsed by civil servants everywhere, can often seem like "go sort it out yourself and stop bothering me." Outside of the realm of civil servants, it's still not always that easy to negotiate. Customer service, or what anglophones consider customer service, anyway, is non-existant here, unless you're a millionaire who shops at Prada. And you'd probably have to be a regular there to get good service. Anyway, these are some of the stereotypical run of the mill anglophone complaints about the hexagon and I must confess that even after living here 5 years, these particular issues do still get my goat, or chevre. But it's part of life as we know it and well, chevre is pretty good cheese, so that takes the edge off a little.
In terms of personal/emotional support, I recently noticed that in general people tend to pair off very early in France, like in their early 20s, which is a lot earlier than in the US or the UK. (The result this has on the 30-year old French man when, surprise, this relationship doesn't work out and the ensuing dating frustrations that this causes for women in their 30s is a blog post for another day). I'm convinced that this early coupledom has to do with how difficult the administration is, the 'sort it out yourself' attitude and how much you have to fight to get people to do things they should do anyway. Like what, you might be wondering? Recent struggles of mine include making my company pay my salary on time (yes, late pay checks are a regular occurance) and one still in progress: making my landlord fix the collapsed floor board in my apartment. This will easily take at least 4 months.
Other support that you can count on here besides your 21-year old husband, is the rest of your family. As a foreigner whose family is far far away, it seems like the French are highly family-oriented, or in other words, obsessed with their families and physically cannot go more than like 2 weeks without seeing the clan gaulois. A regular French reaction I get when I say I'm an only child is, "how can you break your parents' hearts like this and live so far away from them?"
So even if the administration is a cauchemar and a half, the family and your underage partner can help you in times of crisis. Just about everyone I know in Paris has moments of severe depression. France has the highest rate of anti-depressant consumption in Europe, which doesn't necessarily mean that they're the most depressed, just that they like taking meds the most. Honestly, I had a cold once and my doctor wrote me like 5 prescriptions for it. But medication aside, the French mistrust happiness, I think, and complaining and being digusted and existentially miserable show you're a sensitive intellectual soul. Blame Sartre for that one. The weather in Paris in the summer and the winter is also terrible with constant cloud cover which doesn't help. I almost took a job in Norway awhile ago and I honestly thought that the arctic winter probably wouldn't be that different from the sun-less French winter. But I think if depression really becomes a problem, most people here just take pills or call their aunts (I probably would as well, to be honest), rather than join a support group. The only support groups I've ever seen advertised here were in the English language paper.
The main reason support groups would NEVER catch on here is that the French don't often publically admit that they have problems or don't know things or need self-improvement in any way. Lest you think I'm being too harsh, consider this: self-deprecating humor, typical of the US and the UK, doesn't exist in France. The French would NEVER poke fun at themselves and they find it highly weird that we do. They often take it quite seriously and don't realise that it's a joke. Honestly, some French person I once met told me that he was shocked when he went to the US because Americans didn't know basic geography. He said when he told someone he met there that he was from France they answered, "I couldn't even locate France on a map, ha ha!" I had to explain that this was called self-deprecating humor and that is really means "I don't think I'm very worldly and am exaggerating and making a joke about it" and not "I have no idea if France is really in Western Europe."
There are, of course, exceptions, I have a couple French friends who DO make fun of themselves, but they admit that it's not typical French humor at all. French humor usually mocks OTHER people and I find it quite cutting sometimes. And it's not just me. The number one word that my friends used to characterise French humor when I first moved here and asked them questions like that was absoutely cassant or cutting.
So, this really is not a country where the national mindset seems that conducive to support groups, or admitting in public that you have a problem that you can't solve and need help with. Americans (maybe I just speak for myself here...) are all about trying to improve themselves, I mean this is the land where self-help is an industry, and a lucrative one, at that. I too consider all the self-help rhetoric in the US a little too Oprah for my taste, but at the same time, while I wouldn't hire a life coach or buy self-help tapes, I do set personal goals for myself, like running the Paris half-marathon, doing 15 minutes of Spanish a day, etc. becuase I feel like these will ultimately make me better in some way, like more fit and proficient in the most useful foreign language in the US and I find this motivating.
Strangely enough, the one time that I ever got a French recommendation for a support group, or a phone support hotline, at least, was an extremely strange (and, I thought, very funny) situation. Before I started my second year of university teaching, a colleague sent out an email directed to new foreign staff. He told us that he realised that being far from home could be stressful and lead to disappointment, frustration and anxiety. And he wanted to remind us that we weren't alone. How did this caring man show his humanity? Did he mean that he would be there to help us delicate fragile etrangers? No, of course not. He showed he cared by passing on the number of an English language suicide hotline. Ok, maybe it wasn't technically a suicide hotline, but it was called SOS Depression or SOS Loneliness or something. (If I were a real blogger, I would link to a previous post from a few years ago that reproduced the text of this famous email). At the time, I thought it was pretty funny and that the university was more or less outsourcing support and compassion. I mean, this guy or the uni could have implemented a buddy system/systeme de parrainage or organised an event for the foreign staff to help us integrate better or a number of other things. Now I think it really was meant to be thoughtful and it was actually quite considerate to acknolwedge a problem that had occured in the past, that the university can be a tough place to work when you're starting out in a new land and provide a resource to help. Especially in the world of "demerde-toi" (kind of a crass way to say, sort it out yourself).
Interestingly, I've long been frustrated that there isn't a direct translation of the adjective supportive in French. You litterally can't describe someone this way in this language. (You have to use the verb 'instead, i.e, you can say, he supported me during a tough time', or the noun, 'he gave me a lot of support', but you can't say he was supportive). I guess philisophically, in French, support can't a personality attribute like it is in English. Not that this proves that the French or the English are any more or less supportive, but can probably make a case that different cultures probably envision help and support somewhat differently and public group support, for example, seems typically American. An example of a different kind of helpful: something that has happened to me a few times is that if I go to the grocery store when it's raining and put my umbrella down on the floor while I bag, pay, generally have my hands full of stuff, someone will often tell me that my umbrella's on the ground. This really irked me this first time it happened, I know where it is, I put it there, I only have 2 hands and it sounds a little like a criticism. But I think it's honestly meant to be helpful and to mean, don't forget your brolly, which is how an Anglophone would say it.
So all that to say demerdez-vous, French alcoholics. But you probably don't really have a problem. Unless you're a foreigner.
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