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FROM LONDON |
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Learning to live abroad
starts with some 'unlearning'
of TheColumnists.com
There is no better way to study another culture than to marry into it, move there and make a living on the local economy. Sometimes I think the advocates of globalization should try living for a while outside their home country. It might dampen their hubris. Long before al-Qaeda blew the whistle on Americanization I saw the futility of any effort to make us think we are all the same. We are most definitely not.
My 30 years of marriage to a Frenchwoman won’t be of much interest to anyone, but the lessons I learned from my career in the French business world may be instructive regarding our differences. And now in London, where we have lived for 18 of the past 20 years, I have worked inside the British magazine publishing industry, I have seen all the British quirks, including undreamt-of ways to pinch pennies.
Call me a naive Indiana farm boy but the realities of life on the ground here in Europe took me by surprise.
In France, one tends to go in prepared for style, grandeur and high-minded discourse. Once there, however, I saw that mean and conflicting forces made up the national neurosis. Most difficult for an American to accept is the fact that France is no haven for Cartesian logic. It is a mystical, spiritual place where intelligent people have a lot of time for graphology, the alignment of the planets, and an attitude that they cheerfully support, called “the irrational”. They will drive you nuts.
In
Britain, I had expected openness, gratitude for decades of American
largesse, and an endearing Monty Python zaniness. In fact, grim
reserve and conservatism reign, and comfort in the cocoon of
class remains firmly in place. Foreigners are viewed with suspicion--at
least until they buy property. We all speak English so we think
we are the same, but even this linguistic closeness fails to
make us function as one.
No American general would ever say this about his wounded troops
during the fight for Kunduz: “Oh, there have been a couple
of chaps with holes in them but nothing life-threatening.”
It was a debonair British major speaking through his mustache
last week.
Being happy in either country is all about unlearning--casting
off old habits and old thinking. The foreigner must learn to
enter the new world with mind and eyes open. It is not as easy
or as amusing as it sounds.
We all tend to look at others through our own distorting prism. We Americans, like most foreigners, are brought up to believe our home culture is the ultimate. We actually mean it when we say the United States is the greatest country on earth. So naturally I was struck by an equally inflated slogan in France: "Impossible n'est pas français." And even as a foreigner it is hard to resist the thrill of a rousing “Rule, Brittania!” on the last night of the Proms concerts every year. We all fall for our national myths.
In France this kind of pride runs deeper. It has given the French self-assurance in their style of life, and they are not inclined to take lessons today from the Anglo-Saxon world, as they call the British-American relationship. They have long since made up their minds that being French is quite a reasonable state of mind, undoubtedly the world's best. But to outsiders, it seems that two, maybe three, personalities are living happily within the body of a single Frenchman. For example:
The French are trained to think within the hard confines of logic but they revel in their Latin emotions. Try listening to their sentimental popular music.
They have a sense of grandeur that puts the rest of Europe to shame, but small-mindedness is pervasive in everyday life. Try arguing with a shopkeeper.
They are modern, high-tech and forward-looking, yet their manners and morals are très dix-neuvième, as they call their many vestiges of the 19th century. Watch them at dinner parties.
They have lost their place in the world of global politics, but they are able to dwell blissfully on their past. Chauvin, for whom the ism was named, was of course a Frenchman.
Nor do the British have any desire to be treated as the 51st state. They save some of their most withering barbs for American ways, focusing on our lack of education and culture, and more recently on the tendency of the entire country to get fat.
The British are no easy study.
They are proud of their stiff upper lip, but they seem unable to pull together unless there is a war on. Petty squabbling in high places sets the tone.
They supposedly suppress their passions, yet the sexual indiscretions in the ruling classes would make your hair curl.
They launched the industrial revolution, creating a great pool of engineering talent, but today are proud to have sold off their manufacturing base to the Germans and the Japanese.
They think of Continental Europe as an amoral place they would like to keep at bay, but they are headed into the federation of European nations like all the others.
Working abroad as a manager of people, I gradually realized it would be presumptuous to try to turn them into us. The visitor as outsider will inevitably be forced to adapt more than the host.
Paradoxes, contradictions and unknowables abound. Are the French naturally counter-suggestible, or is that just our mindless reaction to their different point of view? Do the British want to be more like Americans, or do they want us to go away? At what point does a generalization about an entire culture become unfair, unkind or even untrue?
When faced with these questions, it is worth finding something better than a reflex answer. Indeed, without a superhuman effort to relearn, we are all doomed to endless bouts of cross-cultural head-butting.
National traits can be defined, and they show no sign of diminishing. Americans are recognized on the streets of London by their tendency to shout across open spaces, their dweeby clothes and their free-wheeling body language. The French--men and women--have perfected a down-the-nose look even when they stand five-foot-four beside a big Brit or Yank. The Brits are simply indifferent to all around them.
One study focuses on ways of walking: “The American male tends to swing his shoulders and hips while churning his arms. The Frenchman tries to take up less space: no sideways swinging; the leg is stretched far out in front, the foot hits heel-first, torso rigid, while the forearms and the head keep the forward movement going.” A typical London banker wears tailored pin-stripes and scoots along the sidewalk ramrod straight. At the opposite end of the spectrum, unemployed young Brits spend a fortune on hair dye and gel, and prance about on the King’s Road, charging tourists five pounds to photograph them.
When I arrived in Europe, I was in awe of the “mother country” that Shakespearean England represented for me, and was tingling with excitement generated by my many years of study of France and the French language.
My
conclusion today is that Britain is and always will be fundamentally
different from the United States but France is far more alien
because of its Catholic and Latin roots.
By now, my immersion in both cultures has washed away most of
my more naive notions--no doubt a healthy process.
Today I am less infatuated, but more relaxed when inexplicable things happen. Even as I see the flaws of the people and their ways up close, I am always grateful for the opportunity to study them at first hand.
© 2001 by Michael Johnson. The logo illustrations are from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. East, San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.
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