How American Series (sometimes) Reinforce Negative Clichés about the World.

Even though the number of U.S. passports issued is on the rise, a majority of Americans do not travel and view the world only through what they hear and see in the media. This lack of exposure makes them an easy prey to clichés and nothing is better than fiction to reinforce or change clichés.
So this recent episode of "The Good Wife" called "Je Ne Sais What?" got my attention as the trailer promised that  "cultures will clash" and clearly seemed to deal with French characters :



For those who don't know, The Good Wife is a legal drama centered around the wife of a former state attorney who was jailed after a humiliating sex and corruption scandal. In order to provide for her family,  she returns to work as a litigator in a law firm. As always with American series, each episode deals with several characters and narratives.
The 'cultural clash' plot is about one of the main characters, Will Gardner, one the senior lawyers in the firm who has to replace another lawyer at the last minute to defend Anna, an athlete accused of doping before  the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS), which operates under rules set by Swiss law.

Of course, you can already assume that since Will is defending Ana, she must be certainly innocent, and that it's got to be somewhat not so simple, or else there would be no plot.

RUDE, ARROGANT AND...... FRENCH.
The court hearing looks to be on the cheap - it is set at a sport training facility with just a few tables and chairs.
The judges in panel are all European - one Italian, one German, and the presiding judge, a Frenchman, called Villapique, a character seemingly based on former French Foreign minister Villepin (who gained fame by opposing the U.S. at the United Nations in the debated leading up to the War in Iraq).
In the first scene Villapique starts right away in French, even though he's on US soil. This of course is meant to show that the judge assumes that everyone else speaks French,  a sign of the cultural arrogance of the entire court.
"What the hell?? It's in French?" wonders Will Gardner who tells the judge he doesn't speak French. Villapique tells him (in perfect English - hardly credible when you know most French people!) that the court agrees to continue in English "for your benefit", he adds, with a smirk, after the opposing lawyer, an American presenting the case against Ana, says in perfect French (Not the slightest accent - not very credible either) that Will is "yet another victim of our American educational system."
This first scene ends with Will Gardner introducing himself as "Will Gardner, from good old US of A"
Obviously, everything is set for a great clash of cultural misunderstanding indeed: the good all-American lawyer Vs. the European arrogant panel led by a snotty French.

Baffled by what he initially thought would be an easy wrap, Will Gardner asks for the help of a senior partner of the firm, Diane Lockhart,  a character well versed in art (she can spend huge amounts on paintings for the office) and all forms of high culture, who of course speaks French.
This comes in handy when the panel starts grumbling in French.  Diane is able to show them not only that she understands them but also to admonish them in both English and (terrible) French,  concluding “Prejudices have no place here.” Judge Villapique looks mesmerized, as if charmed by Diane's strong character.

UNFAIR AND CORRUPT
Will also discovers that he has to  present a defense without hearing the charges, and when he later objects, he is told that "There is no objecting. This is not ‘Law & Order.’ (Great mise en abyme of a fiction referring to another fiction!)
Even worse, when our all-American lawyer tries to cross examine the analyst who tested Anna’s sample, Judge Villapique objects by saying “This is not an American court, Mr Gardner, we don't need to be at each other's throat. This is not Rambo.”
“What is it with him and Rambo?” Will  later wonders, “Does anybody even watch ‘Rambo’ anymore?” According to the judge, the rules do not require actual proof. In other words, it is up to the accused to prove she is not guilty.
Our good American lawyers decides to flip the German Judge by showing that the French judge was biased against a German cyclist in another ruling. Then they also get the Italian judge on board by getting Kalinda (a cute investigator in the firm) to flounce over her in her miniskirt to present papers, and of course, what is assumed works.

In the end, it turns out that the French judge used his influence to get rid of the German cyclist to favor a French one, and so the three judges get at each other's throats. This could actually be a great metaphor for a meeting of European leaders at E.U. Commission!

As you can see in the video below, the scene ends with Villapique telling the German Judge (in French) "At least my athletes are not nazis!"

GOOD ALL AMERICAN:
On the face of it, it seems rather funny, and to a certain extent, it is. It plays on clichés which are, after all, often the stuff of comedy.
There is however, a more serious side to it: it reinforces a number of negative clichés, not just about the French or just the Europeans but anything not American, and in the end it amounts to adding fuel to the the belief in American Exceptionalism.
Clearly, the Europeans in this scene are shown as rude and arrogant, and with no respect for the country they're in. It is exactly the negative clichés that many Americans have had about the French, ever since De Gaulle at least, and to be honest, the French have often met their expectations - unfortunately.
Those scenes though are not about cultural misunderstanding but rather about a moral dichotomy between what is American (and what is "right", fair and innocent) and what is foreign (or unruly, and corrupt). There is no attempt by any of the characters to understand where the others are coming from, as they use more clichés (like Rambo) to qualify what the others do.
The implication is also that the law outside the U.S. is not just different but deeply unfair, biased and even corrupt, as the last scene shows.
This also says plenty about why so many Americans were in denial regarding Lance Armstrong and believed him innocent even though tests in France had shown he was doped. The results had to be a French anti-American conspiracy (See my articles here and here). What else?

MOCKING INTERNATIONAL BODIES
The Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) exists in real life, and even though I am not familiar with how they work and proceed, from what I have gathered online, most studies point to a court with plenty of credibility:  "Since its creation as an arm of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1984, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has grown to the stature of a respected independent authority in the resolution of sports-related disputes of every kind" (Source here)

Here's the conclusion of an academic study:

The foregoing study has shown that the CAS forms an integral part of the world-wide fight against doping. It can provide effective protection for the rights of the accused athlete and is able to ensure that the fight against doping will be upheld unremittingly.

And another:

To conclude, CAS is likely the most appropriate internal regulator of the internationalsport system. It is an independent body that exercises a supervisory jurisdiction over international sport bodies, operating both within and outside the Olympic Movement, includingWADA. Indeed, the responsibility of CAS to exercise this role is essential to its legitimacy as anautonomous regulator of the international sport system.

Here's a legal comment found on the Website of The Pepperdine School of Law:

When reviewing CAS awards, the SFT and U.S. courts recognize there  is no place for nationalism and ethnocentrism in the legal regulation of  Olympic and international sport, a judicial view consistent with the  approach the CAS generally takes when applying national law in appeals  arbitration and ad hoc Division proceedings. (Source here)

More here.

Clearly, this episode of The Good Wife not only departs from reality - which is, after all, the very nature of a fiction - but it actually mocks it. The implications are political in nature by giving a bad image of an international institution that is unfair and corrupt and whose very system is prejudicial, and fails to give the basic rights to the accused. This of course is in line with the belief of many conservative Americans who don't think the U.S. should be accountable to the U.N. or the International Criminal Court. This was well illustrated by the Bush Administration's policy of hostility towards the court and dismiss of the United Nations in his war in Iraq.


One could wish that a legal drama actually spent more time on explaining the differences between the adversarial system (or adversary system), as in the United States, where two advocates represent their parties' positions before an impartial person or group of people to determine the truth of the case, and  the inquisitorial system, as in France,  in which a judge (or a group of judges who work together) investigate the case. (Wikipedia). Personally, I prefer the adversarial system, which, for one think makes better dramas, but a case can be made in favor of the inquisitorial system, which does not trump on basic fundamental rights either.

But there was probably nothing dramatic enough in being pedagogical for the writers of The Good Wife, which is one of reasons why this show is clearly not as good and interesting as Law & Order as far as legal dramas are concerned.

Tire-d of Clichés? A French-American Spat that Will not Be.

Franco-American relationships took a blow this week, thanks to American CEO of tire maker Maurice Taylor. Mr Taylor did not only dismiss the French government invitation to invest in a struggling tire factory in northern France, he did so by writing a letter that has shocked la France entière, in which he claimed that the country's “so-called” workers put in “three hours a day” with the rest spent eating and talking. (see NYTimes article for details)

The French government, naturally upset, responded by saying that the letter was "extremist and insulting" and displayed "a perfect ignorance of what our country is about", ending with a warning note of potential retaliation "Be assured that you can count on me to inspect your tire imports with a redoubled zeal"

Mr Taylor is also a right-wing Republican who made a try in the presidential primaries in 1996, à la Ross-Perot, who "promised to balance the federal budget in 18 months, mainly by cutting about one-third of all the bureaucrats." and co-authored a book called " Kill All the Lawyers and Other Ways to Fix the Government." Now of course, one can only imagine that his visit to a French factory and talks to French unions must have been like two worlds colliding.

Mr Taylor also added what looks more like old clichés than anything else:

"France does have beautiful women and great wine. PS: My grandmother named my father after French entertainer Maurice Chevalier, and I inherited the name."
In a final flourish, he said: “I have visited Normandy with my wife. I know what we did for France.” (Telegraph)

This comes in a context when the French are indeed rather sensitive to "le French bashing", as the Telegraph rightfully observed:

They think nobody loves them. They are inclined to see signs of an Anglo-Saxon conspiracy involving credit rating agencies (why did they downgrade France but not, until Friday night, the UK?), the British press (led by The Economist), prime minister David Cameron with his proffered red carpet for exiled entrepreneurs, and now multinationals such as Titan and ArcelorMittal.

Clearly, this is clearly noticeable in the way the media reacted to the story:

The French daily le Parisien actually sounded hurt Feb. 21 when it ran a front-page headline declaring, “No, the French Aren’t Lazy!” Reports elsewhere revealed that Goodyear employees working reduced hours in Amiens do so at management’s requests in response to slumping activity. Harder-hitting French commentators took aim at the avowedly right-wing Taylor, and poking fun at his ferocity-inspired nickname, “the Grizz”—a bearish association he shares with Sarah Palin. True to that company, left-leaning daily Libération described Taylor as “an extremist used to provocations.” In other words, exactly the kind of American businessperson France and most Europe wants nothing to do with. (Time)

Granted there may be some need for self-criticism on the part of the French, especially regarding the communist-backed CGT union who is radical and uncompromising. Besides, the It remains that the charges that the French workers are lazy do not stand when faced with statistics. Even the Financial Times agrees.
Here's what Time Magazine concludes:

Statistics compiled by international organizations routinely find French workers among the most productive in the world in terms of GDP per hours worked. Numbers from 2011 rank, French employees seventh globally in per hour productivity—three places (but less than 3% behind) the U.S. workforce. French labor productivity per hour actually exceeds that of Germany, the U.K., and the U.S. when calculated in adjusted euro figures. That reputation-defying efficiency has also helped make France the ninth-largest recipient of foreign direct investment in 2011 with $40.9 billion—third among European Union members. Not bad for a place where everybody supposedly takes lunch breaks and talks all day.

So could this French bashing lead to American bashing in return? I doubt it. This is most likely of little consequence in the long term as Mr Taylor has been seen as a nutjob rather than a representative of anything more than himself.
This little incident got the U.S. State Department's attention though:

Earlier, US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland played down the cross-Atlantic spat as a "private matter" and not a concern between the United States and its "oldest ally" France.
"We have deep and broad relations, including many successful American businesses operating in France, many successful French businesses operating in the United States," she added. (Telegraph)

One of the most damaging consequences is probably that this diverts the attention from some of the true problems France faces, by victimizing a whole nation. Making outrageous statements does not help, especially when you point out the wrong problems.
As much as I disagree with the solutions The Economist usually offers, I agree with their conclusion on this matter:

At a time when the country has lost competitiveness to Germany, the economy is sliding into recession, taxes are at a record high, and the government has conceded that it will miss its deficit-reduction target for 2013, genuine concerns about the prospects of turning things around are wide-spread. Clara Gaymard, the French head of GE, an American conglomerate which successfully manufactures high-tech industrial stuff in France, put it well in her response to Mr Taylor’s letter. Yes, she said, “France’s image abroad is poor”. But “we are both a wonderful country and a very irritating one. (The Economist)

In the end, this spat between an American Republican businessman and the French government may not even be worth the time I spent writing this post.

UPDATE: The latest "twist" to this ridiculous story is a letter sent by Coca Cola to the French government in which the soft drink company says it “was happy to invest in France, for over 90 years" (....) and "hopes to more actively promote the attractiveness of the French territory to foreign companies,”.
(Source: Le Monde)