Ma Vie in France

A few weeks ago as I was flipping through the channels of French TV, I came across a documentary called ‘La maladie du pouvoir’ (literally, ‘The power illness’). I figured this would be another French political documentary and wasn’t extremely interested, but I kept it on anyway. The first hour of the documentary got me hooked: starting with Georges Pompidou (president from 1969-1974), the film basically recounted how several French presidents had been severely ill, terminally ill in some cases, and yet their illnesses were kept a secret from the public, and even the president’s families. For Pompidou, the documentary showed how his failing health (due to blood cancer) was becoming more and more obvious in the fourth year of his presidency, but the Elysée (the French equivalent to the White House) continued to deny any rumors of illness. The last images showed Pompidou isolated, exhausted and very ill. His death was announced to a very surprised public, who thought he was ill...

As I found when I first moved to France, you don’t have to look far for ‘cultural’ or artistic events and activities. One great example is a parade I attended this past weekend which was the opening ceremony for a Biannual Dance festival. I went to the parade knowing that it mostly highlighted performances from local dance studios. I don’t know much about dance, but the performances were really surprising to me. Obviously hours had been poured into the choreography of the different groups, the costumes, the timing, the music, and I thought on the whole it was really well done. What surprised me, though, was that for a very big, well advertised parade the choice of dance was contemporary, and at times, just plain weird. In my mind, contemporary art in any form remains fairly inaccessible to the general public. This kind of thing doesn’t shock people here, but I have a feeling it would be less well received in the US. The question is, why? Not so much why wouldn’t a French person f...