Meta

When did we all go meta? As a culture, we’re all worrying about the presentation of the thing rather than the thing itself. I don’t know if this is new; I’m too young. But it seems very strange to me.

Maybe I just know of bunch of examples recently, and only the cocktail had me feeling its effects, so maybe I overrate the strength of this phenomenon. But, here are the examples that provoked my interest: Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, some reality TV show, and retail anthropology. Each of these examples is from completely different realms of our culture, so I think they illustrate the ubiquity of this phenomenon.

Take the Bhutto assassination first. Of the newscasts I saw of the event—I saw quite a bit but I’m not some sort of genius about this—the first reaction was, “What does this mean for US policy?”, which is a substantive, understandable question to ask, but then, the second was, “What does this mean for the US presidential race?” with the focus being on who would benefit most. One particular incident within the story shows what I mean best: naturally, each of the candidates had to put out their reactions to the assassination, and media advisor David Axelrod handled Obama’s. Axelrod’s argument was basically that the war on Iraq distracted from Pakistan policy, and so Clinton was in some ways responsible for the failure of Pakistan policy that led to Bhutto’s death (massive paraphrase here). The immediate reaction of the assorted pundits was to proclaim that it hadn’t “resonated” and that Zbigniew Brzezinki should have delivered the argument.

So note what’s happening here. The focus here was not on the argument, but on how the argument played, and moreover, who would’ve best pitched said argument. It was a discussion over the theatrics of the reaction to a very important event. It was not a discussion over the event itself, or even whether Axelrod’s interpretation of the event was a worthy or valid one. Instead, it was what people were likely to think about the event. And there’s no necessary link with how an argument is perceived and how true the argument is (throw in clichéd Galileo example, right here; for a more modern flavor, George W. Bush’s existence as important human being). The two important things, Bhutto’s death and the correct interpretation of its meaning, were lost for where the actor should have stood to deliver his oration.

Again, arguments about an actor’s placement on the stage underlay the second example, which is the reality show advertisement. Don’t rely on me to reproduce the title, but I can reproduce the pitch: help millionaires find love! Which should be a winner of a show, seeing as it combines America’s two favorite themes: money, and fucking (uh, I mean love—the matchmaker says to one of the male millionaires, “You should know that one of my rules is no sex”, which prompts a crushed shock on the part of the millionaires). What the matchmaker appears to do is not only select the woman that’s appropriate for the millionaire—with some criteria as, intelligent, but also, not a gold digger—but also present the millionaires in an attractive package. The most hilarious example was the matchmaker trying to get a pudgy, bearded, stumpy millionaire to dress in one of those leather-jacket and deafeningly loud shirt combinations, but the most revealing moment was when she, the matchmaker, found a stripper pole in her male client’s house, and basically got him to move it because it looked awful. It did, obviously, but there was no point about the type of dude who gets a stripper pole installed in his home is probably facing some real, non-cosmetic issues blocking his way to love (which is the stated aim of the show) other than the mere presence of a stripper pole. Of course, this is merely me surmising on the last point, but since it fit into the broader pattern of the show, I don’t think it’s that unreasonable a leap.

Cosmetics, appearances control retail. Anyone who’s walked by any Abercrombie and Fitch anywhere has immediately suffered ear damage from the pulsating music playing within. Obviously this is part of the image of Abercrombie. But so many more details other than that have been thought about and controlled: the placement of the mannequins, where the jeans are placed (in the back, because people come to buy jeans, so that that way, you walk to the back and are tempted by all the other goods in the store), and so on and so forth. These moves are less about the product itself than how we present the product.

Certainly the presentation of a product, or anything for that matter, is important. I won’t show up to a job interview anytime soon in ripped jeans and a dirty shirt. Or, in the case of, say, stores, the presentation of making your product accessible and good-looking is similarly worthwhile. But it seems that, too often, the energy devoted to the presentation starves the content of the product; certainly, years from now, I won’t care about how effective Axelrod’s presentation was, and will care about what our foreign policy ended up being.

But I think we’re convinced of our self-worth already. There’s a good reason “Be Yourself” is the most common, most clichéd advice people give to guys struggling to land dates. It’s meant to be reassuring, sure, but it’s also meant to indicate that you’re a wonderful human being already! If you just change the packaging a little bit, you too (with your essence unchanged) will enjoy your rewards. What’s so wrong about this idea are the small truths it contains.

We are affected by these tactics subconsciously: going meta, worrying about the presentation, is a clandestine attack. So it can be worthwhile to worry about how we come across and what would be the best way to win friends and influence people. But, as with so many things in life, it’s a question of degree. We plan, we strategize, we live in our conscious. Because of that, the rational forms a big part of our life, and so we must be prepared to make our arguments to the rational, rather than the irrational, parts of our selves. Otherwise we’ll all be rehearsing how to stand on stage, and not what we mean to say.

Saviors

Sports fans, including myself, have a tendency to think of coaches as saviors; so, when I heard that Scott Skiles had been fired on Christmas Eve, I rejoiced to see the removal of a fallen idol, presuming that a new, better one would replace him. One game in—too early to judge, of course—the results won’t necessitate building a new statue near the Jordan one outside the United Center, but I’m still confident that it was the right thing to do.

The Bulls’ slow start is probably mostly attributable to the poor play of nearly everyone on the team, but that includes Skiles himself, who refuses to set either a constant or good rotation, and since it’s a lot easier to replace a coach than a player (or else Ben Wallace would be updating his resume on Monster.com), the move was made.

Skiles isn’t the only coaching savior to find rough roads on the way to canonization: Bobby Petrino left the NFL before his first season even finished (he found it a lot easier when he was coaching Brian Brohm); Billy Gillispie is presiding over a mediocre season in Kentucky (Acie Law IV certainly helped a lot); and so on and so forth. For every great coach, there’s a great player (or several) along with him or her.

But it seems a little too flip to suggest that it’s always the players’ responsibility over the coaches’, as I’m sure we can all think of examples of coaches reviving dormant teams, or coaches providing the extra little spark, or whatever. So they clearly have some effect. But perhaps not a savior-like effect. After all, we can see so many examples of the opposite, so it seems pretty smart to bet against a savior with any given coach.

I was listening to the radio last Sunday, while the Bills were playing the Giants, and the announcer—he was very bad; it took him five minutes to say the score and quarter—bleated out a point about how Dick Jauron was coaching well, seeing as the Bills were ranked 20th in offense and 20th in defense, and that he was “putting his players in a position to make plays.” Now, if we move beyond the simple stupidity of his statement—if he’s putting his players in a position to make plays, why are their statistical rankings, the measurement of whether or not they’re making plays, so bad?—there’s something more interesting here, which is that a team that seems like it should be doing so poorly is in the chase for a playoff spot. It’s a God-in-the-gaps explanation: we have something unexplained, so it must be the coach. Of course, there are a ton of other explanations (luck, special teams, inadequacy of statistics, the league-wide mediocrity in the NFL, and so on), but the first explanation that leapt to the mind of the announcer was to praise the coach.

The reason that the coach is the one who is recognized disproportionately is the same reason CEOs, Presidents and other various moguls are recognized. It’s a question of heuristics. The world is complicated, too complicated to explain. Our methods of describing it will always fall short, whether statistical or literary. There will always be a gap for a God to fill in.

Successful entities are like unsuccessful ones in that our methods for describing them lack completeness. There’s an intangible at work; to invoke a cliché, the sum is more than its parts combined. People always say that as a complement, but in truth, that’s a statement that should be deeply worrying, because it means that our explanatory methods are woefully inadequate. The constant used to balance the equation out is invariably the leader, whose ‘will to win’ or ‘determination’ or what have you is said to pervade the organization and propel it to victory. The most highly public leader, then, is imbued with the qualities we imagine are important to the organization’s success, thus explaining the problem away, for the moment (i.e., as long as the winning/profits/prosperity lasts).

This is not exactly untrue, as I’ve covered above, but it still leaves something to be desired. A leader leads a system of some sort, an institution: whether it’s a team, an army, a corporation, a country, whatever, he is nominally responsible for the daily affairs of a large group of people in theory dedicated to a common purpose.

The leader is merely the most powerful person in the system, but he or she does not have absolute power (even the most totalitarian systems have not figured out omnipotence), but limited power. The network of people is intended to maximize, to project a combined power, which must, to be worthwhile to assemble, be greater in sum than its individual parts. Therefore, the combination of the individual parts must be greater than the worth of the leader. The leader is less important than the people he leads. The leader can only put people “in a position to make plays.” Insofar as he does a good job, the leader’s a good one; insofar as he does a bad one (see: anyone invading Russia), the leader’s a bad leader.

That’s why it’s especially important to realize these days, when we’re seduced by visions of coaches leading players to glory and Presidents restoring prosperity in the United States, that our leaders are only as good as we are.

The End, Or Rather The Beginning Once Again

I’m back home.

It’s strange how much I feel reintegrated into life already. I’ve had a few cultural shock moments of re-assimilation: I forgot how to lock my cell phone’s keypad after turning it on for the first time in months today, and, while on JetBlue’s flight today, I marveled at the size of the cans of soda—they seemed impossibly generous—until I realized that they were standard size and France’s size were the smaller ones. Nevertheless, I’ve reintegrated: one of the first things I did upon coming back was to go to the gym, which I haven’t done for months. But there I was in the regiments of exercisers on my regimen.

Home is instantly familiar, and once I felt the sting of cold on my cheeks, I knew that I was home, if only temporarily, and if only one of them (one of the great things about college is the acquisition of multiple homes, so that you can experience that wonderful feeling of return, the feeling that everything has an order and you’re part of it, several times a year). But being home meant I was gone from Paris, which for me rests as a kind of waystation, a convalescence home or something—it’s tough to think of it either as a home or a vacation spot, what with the time that I’ve spent on it and vice versa.

****

My trip to get here ended up being mercifully easy, but I must say that I was worried about it. I had decided to go to the airport on the 6:00 AM RER train at the latest, but to shoot for the 5:45 AM train as an ambitious goal.

My worries were these: besides the normal anxieties of flight and travel, I also did not have an alarm clock, which, given the fact that I’d missed a finals and had to pull a Blanche du Bois (you know, depending on the kindness of others), haunted me. So when I woke up at 2:33 AM in the morning with pains and chills, I was unable to go back to sleep, with these two conflicts pressuring my mind: how badly am I sick, and will I make my flight? Everything was answered well, and it seems silly now—I certainly feel silly remembering my earnest attempts to self-diagnose—but I was wracking myself with worry; I felt as if I were a desperate searcher pushing through my mind searching for some lost article.

As I left Paris, dark still hanging on, all that turned to melancholy, the full reality which I had been anticipating for a week at least, that I was leaving and that it would be a while before I could come back. I immediately set to plotting my return—how? when? for what ostensible reason (because the real reason would always be to reclaim what I was relinquishing: to have no task but enjoying myself for months on end)?—and rejecting it as a unique moment in my life and in the historical moment.

The fortune that I had, in coming at this moment in the first year of Sarkozy’s term, is immeasurable. The turbulence that jostles France is a change in the winds. People are uncertain about their direction, and some want to orient towards the US—look at the number of students who want to work in the US after all—and all this is at the same moment that I saw myself orienting more towards the French direction, of less work and more enjoyment of life.

Hell, you can even see it in their airports. Charles de Gaulle’s security was laid-back, which after the British and American editions, seems impossibly contradictory. I didn’t take off my shoes for their metal detector. I didn’t see that giant transparent barrel, that trophy, that displays all the confiscated contraband, as if too-large toothpaste containers are going to destroy the West.

In my doldrums in the airports—isn’t it ironic that no matter how much of the circus they bring in for their captive audience, the captives can’t help but be bored?—I ended up reflecting on all the things I had seen and done, and a procession of images marched through my mind: pastries from patisseries, a child begging her mom for candy then eating it before they even leave the store, two children leaning out over the quai watching for the oncoming train goaded on by their dad who leaned with them only to dash back as a joke confusing his children, the saliva that floods the mouth at the mere sight of a dessert crepe, walking through the city late in the night when no one but myself walks with a serene cathedral silence, the vivid orange streaks of clouds as the sun sets, but also the bad things too, the strikes, the homeless reposing in each and every metro station, the disenfranchised youth, the indifferent bureaucracy, and on and on and on until it all blurs together into some impression, part concrete image but mostly a feeling of contentment. And that was when I knew that that was the end of all that, and that another part of my life was set to begin. My first decade ended and my second one has begun, which I guess makes me almost some sort of adult or something like that (not to be wishy-washy about my characterizations).

So thanks everyone for reading during this trip, I hope you’ve enjoyed it.

Lucky and Ebullition

I got lucky today, after getting horrendously unlucky.

My sole final was scheduled for 9:30 AM, which is the same time that the class has been scheduled for the entire quarter. I have rarely been late. So of course, the one time I have to be late—and no mere fifteen minutes, these—has to be today, and I have to wake up at 10:27 AM. As for excuses—they can only be described as such—my alarm clock didn’t function, or I slept through it. I don’t think the latter is true, because this alarm is loud, intense. It’s impossible to do that, I think. So I can’t explain it.

However, I got lucky. I got to take the test after class, after spending only fifteen minutes on it (I arrived at 10:45). It went about as fine as could be expected.

****

After that debacle, our Paris and Politics class went to Ile St. Denis, a banlieue in the north of Paris. We went there to speak to a group called Ebullition, an association whose name means “bubbling forth from beneath,” which connotes the solutions coming up from a bottom-up sprit.

They say necessity is the mother of invention, and it may be true in this case. The bottom-up spirit is lacking in France, and its emergence here may be the consequence of a lack of investment by other French sources, necessitating action from the community.

An example from my boss, Roxanne, for my media internship shows what I mean. The Rue Daguerre in the 14th, where she lives, is a narrow street lined by shops. It is a typical medieval-type street with a lot of foot traffic and outdoor interactions. It is the type of street which makes Paris great. Except for this instance. Typically, many streets of this type get Christmas decorations of some sort—the Rue Mouffetard, which I wrote about a week ago, is a beautiful example—and the Rue Daguerre usually does, except for this particular Christmas. For whatever reason, the president of the business association decided no one wanted the lights and that they were too expensive, so they weren’t put up.

But Roxanne went around to each of the shop owners and asked if they’d each be willing to put up some money, and the mairie of the arrondisement (think alderman) decided he’d be willing to meet them halfway, and so it looked like it might happen (I don’t know whether it did or not), but during the course of this quest, some French woman apparently said, “Why are you wasting your time like this? What do you want it for?” as if she was against individuals actively taking a care in their community.

You see it in the strikes, too. They seem like bottom-up activity, but they aren’t attempts to solve things for themselves, but instead are usually attempts to petition the state to solve their problems for them. Not to say this is necessarily all wrong, but civic life is about more than citizens and the state; it’s about citizens, civic institutions and the state.

Anyway, Ebullition is so bottom-up that they decided to take over the local government. Their former President, whom we met, is now the deputy mayor, and apparently the mayor also has ties with them. Furthermore, in Ile-St. Denis, there’s a citizen’s list, one unaffiliated with any of the major parties.

Their efforts are certainly needed in the community. There are a lot of great examples of modernist architecture—some of the best-looking high-rises I’ve ever seen—in Ile-St. Denis, and also some nice smaller houses, but the atmosphere reminds me of Buffalo or Rochester or another Rust Belt community in the United States, except with some French twists.

For example, in Rochester, we’ve been declaring Rochester Renaissance 2010 (or some variation of those three words) since I’ve been in high school, if not longer. Anytime you have to declare a rebirth is bad, because it means you’ve been dead in between. Similarly, if you have to focus on tomorrow, it’s usually because today isn’t great. There was a huge sign, bigger than most billboards, in a bright baby blue, stretched across a large building, declaring that “Tomorrow, We Will Be Connected” in reference to the new tramway line being built in 2009 (I think).

The lack of tramway lines in the banlieue are a general problem, because there are so few that they are essentially disconnected. Because they are disconnected, residents must first go to center city Paris to get to most other banlieue. The consequence of this is that it is harder to support general stores or other types of businesses.

This was certainly reflected in Ile-St. Denis. I saw four types of businesses: hair care (one store), a discount cell phone store (another one), a tabac, and several restaurants. Of the restaurants, almost all were ethnic—there was one Italian place and one Greek place—and most bore very ethically evocative names, ex. “La Medina.” The restaurants were mostly of the fast-food variety, and they took great care to emphasize their formules.

The people dressed in the hip-hop fashions, and a high proportion of them were young people. They were of many different colors and races, and seemed very multicultural. In fact, one incident demonstrated their multiculturalism best of all: as we were walking back from Ebullition’s building, a group of kids passed by us. We were speaking English, and one of the guys asks one of the girls, “Oh you speak English” while reaching out and grabbing her arm, and, when he was rebuffed, he continued all in the same breath, “Fuck you.” His friends laughed.

As for the meeting itself, we came to appreciate the problems faced by the banlieue: the lack of investment, the difficult relations with the government, the language barriers for immigrants. The women whom we met, who were in high positions in the association, often disagreed with one another in a spirit of friendly debate. One thing, however, was clear: Sarkozy was not a popular figure. Everyone was against his DNA testing provision in the recent immigration bill, and strongly so. One of the most grimly funny moments was when our professor asked about the new Marshall Plan for the banlieue, about what they thought about it. The reply: “Well, we don’t trust it very much, because there have been Marshall Plans for the banlieue for a decade or so.” Which is the same kind of stuff you hear from politicians all the time—oh yeah, we’ll do it, we’ll do it—and it rarely gets done the way it needs to, so sometimes the situation just needs to bubble up.

****

Sarkozy’s position, however, is not one I envy. Not that I necessarily approve of his policies—his immigration policies, in particular, pander relentlessly to the far right—but whomever was placed in his position would have found it difficult. I think the problems that France faces in the year 2007 are similar to the United States’ in 1993 when Bill Clinton took office.

What was the bind Clinton faced? “It’s the economy, stupid” was his rallying cry, and Sarkozy’s appeals have been in large part about remedying the economy. Well, the economy faces (and faced, in the US) this problem: there is a deficit whose size is concerning, yet, at the same time, there is widespread unemployment and underinvestment in poverty-stricken areas. As economics would have it, this is a catch-22, as deficit spending is supposed to be about curing the last two problems, except it’s not and there’s an untenable deficit there. So there’s a problem, a conundrum that must be solved.

What’s interesting is that in both cases, the wishes of the financial elites have been served. I think Sarkozy has largely chosen that direction out of inclination, whereas Clinton needed to do so at least partially politically—after all, the Perot voters worried him. That is, after all, the source of James Carville’s hilarious quotation (you know, back before he was a rampant political hack for CNN): “I used to want to come back as the Pope. Now I want to come back as the bond market, so then I could scare everyone.” (undoubtedly paraphrased).

And think about it, who is going to win? Rationally speaking, a group of rich people who are probably in close constant contact with government elites is going to beat out a disorganized group, of which many can’t speak the language very well. One of the perpetual problems of democracies is how to effectively represent the interests of the de facto disenfranchised, and it’s unfortunate that the poor of the banlieue only seem to attract attention when they riot.

Apocalypse

That’s right, never thought it would happen in my years at Stanford: we beat Cal AND USC. In the same year, no less. Jim Harbaugh is officially amazing; no questions asked or answered.

I may or may not have stayed up ‘till 4:30 in the morning for the final result, and it was all worth it. Good job, team.

****

Outside of my little corner of the college football universe, the Apocalypse has descended on the BCS system. Actually this is a hyperbolic lie. In reality, we’ve seen several such situations in the past few years: dare I enumerate? I do. Ask Auburn, LSU, USC or Michigan (well, back when the system was screwing them) how they feel about the assertion that this year is the final offense against decency and good sense. The BCS is a building built out of shoddy materials: it keeps on rotting further and further, and there are some spectacular cracks and breakages, but the whole structure somehow, improbably endured despite its too-soon dilapidation. It needs a fix-up; that much is for sure.

This is obvious to most who follow the game and even most who don’t really follow the game that much either, so most of the debate now is marked by polemics of the “WHY WON’T THEY CHANGE? ISN’T IT OBVIOUS?” variety. The assumption of the polemics is true, but they assume that change is a much easier thing to achieve than it really is.

Right now, if you surveyed experts on any number of issues, you could find huge numbers of petty stupid inefficiencies and grand blunders whose solutions are relatively obvious: Besides the BCS, you’ve also got the War on Drugs, payroll taxes, the DMV, plastic bags (seriously!), voting, high fructose corn syrup and on and on and on. We’ve got our share of intractable problems in the world—hate, race relations and another infinite list—but sometimes it seems as if we could pull ourselves forward if only we had the will. That is the implication of those polemics at least.

The problem is that in any given system for it to survive long enough to be utterly exposed, must also serve someone’s interests, such that they would actively work against its disappearance or reform. So it is with the BCS: the contracts with the bowls and the university presidents have interests in keeping it around. Sure, it’s easy to say that the general welfare would be improved by casting it aside, but the problem is making the power structure’s grip on the system untenable.

One of the distinctive features of the present is that as the number of institutions multiplies in scope and complexity, so too does the number of people with vested interests, and their positions in society becomes progressively more obscure and hard to reach by ordinary means. Like, I bet you didn’t know that there was a powerful plastic bag lobby, huh? Behind most of these really dumb policies is some obscure retail group. And how are we supposed to redress our wrongs with them? No wonder some people have an obsession with the Trilateral Commission; they’ve got the wrong target but the right idea.

****

I broke down. I went to McDonald’s. I haven’t had really, really good junky fries in a while. I apologize. I wish I could justify it in terms of an anthropological exploration or something—I mean, I can as I’m going to write about it as you can see with a quick glance down the page—but I mean, it’s McDonald’s. I didn’t even go for the free WiFi.

The MacDo’s (as they are referred to by the French) are well-patronized; it isn’t uncommon to see a phalanx of French kids, all toting huge bags traveling down the street. Profit-wise, I bet they’ve got a pretty good thing going.

But their interiors are curiously antiquated. Most of them look like holdouts from the 80’s—some of their menus are hand-lettered without electronic backing lights. Furthermore, the lines are really, really slow, and the tellers really patient—one guy talked on his cell phone for two minutes straight before actually, you know, ordering.

****

It’s started to rain the past few days. The rain falls heavy and seems to dampen your entire body. The wind blew, today, from south to north, so that when I walked back with my dinner, I had to walk against the gusts of wind. It rained so much that my paper bag became sodden and wet, so much so that my drink fell through the bag when it became too weak.

I have this to reassure me: it’s no Rochester, NY winter, and thank god.

The Soccer Match

When I first started traveling to dinner, vaguely in the direction of Parc des Princes, the home field of Paris Saint-Germain, I noticed how packed the metro cars were: I was heading out to dinner and already the cars were moderately full of pimpled, scarved supporters of PSG. When I finished dinner and went towards Parc des Princes in earnest, the cars this time was full of older college-age students. The cars were clown-car level full, and it was too full to be boisterous.

But a curious thing happened when I sat down for the match. I was sitting in the most expensive publicly available seats (the luxury boxes were between levels, unlike the US, where in terms of sightlines, they are usually awful) thanks to the Bings. I was in the second row from the field halfway between the center line and the goal, which was great, but slightly better than it sounds, as the field is separated from the seats by a metal fence topped by spikes, and sections are separated from one another by a glass barrier, which interfered with the view of the field—when I tried to look right towards the goal, I had to look through the glass, which had a strange disorienting reflective aspect. Fortunately my neighbor moved and I took his seat, which had a perfect view. When I got settled though, I looked around and realized this: the stadium was practically empty.

The “Presidential” section—which was where I was sitting—was full of genteel supporters, who, as it turned out, cheered supportively but not enthusiastically but did not seem particularly engaged. One woman directly in front of me did little beyond chain-smoke cigarettes; due to the wind, the smoke curled up her hair, and while it ascended, it clung insistently as it curled, looking as if a fire burned underneath her deeply matted hair. As the Jumbotron flashed through different spectators—all of whom were boring and do not, unlike the US, quickly realize that they are on Jumbotron—I wondered: where are the hooligans?

A first candidate was in the corner of the ground level. It was a jailed section, by walls. Its supporters were chanting a full half-hour before the match and swaying in unison. They were waving flags—but some were of the three lions. So that ruled out Paris Saint-Germain and ruled in Caen, a town in Normandy, which I figure due to its English connections, has adopted the three lions as its own. So they were not the massive contingent of supporters that I was expecting.

Once the match began, the question disappeared from my mind. The match took precedence. At first, PSG looked overmatched as Caen made several forays into PSG territory, with only some fortunate defense stopping an early goal. I had settled down for the match and assumed that the vocal fanbase decided not to come out for a cold, damp night, with the home team generally mediocre, playing against the mediocre. The question where are the fanatics? faded from my mind.

In the fifteenth minute of the match, the question answered itself. They had been confined somehow. A boom sounded, as if from a cannon, and they rushed in. The first ones through ran as if liberated, waving their arms above their hands in celebration. They rest proceeded in more orderly fashion, but were nevertheless quite fast. They quickly set about to unfurling their various banners that signified the various factions amongst them: “Lutece Falco” (Lutece being an ancient name for the city of France); “Gavroche” (the street urchin who revolts in Les Misérables); “Boulogne Boys” (Boulogne being the suburb near which Parc des Princes is located; its banner had a skull with a top hat between Boulogne and Boys); “Paris Puissance”; “Supra Autres” (I think on this last one; mostly what I remember is the middle of the banner referring to the group as “ultras” which is always otherwise a synonym for crazy reactionary radicals); lastly, one with just a bulldog and “Boulogne.” Other banners were more aspirational and directed towards the players: “Bleed for us like we bleed for you; otherwise…” After they hung their banners, they began chanting and cheering in unison but little by little devolved into their own group’s cheers. Their first cheer, though, was something to see: everyone clapped with their hands above their head and they finished each measure of the chant with arms spread wide, in prayerful supplication.

The fan engagement is the chief difference between watching soccer on TV and watching soccer in person. On TV, the fans sound like white noise, a dull murmuring roar. In person, it is thunder reverberating, awesome in import. When each end of the stadium (excepting the genteel middle) did a call-and-response, the sound itself traveled and collided and almost metamorphosed into a tangible thing right there in their air.

This was in direct rebuke to the US theory of fan management, which holds that the more bells-and-whistles that are present in a stadium, the more enjoyment a fan will have. I’ll tell you this: the stadium was a concrete oval, the seats were two plastic circles, one for the ass and one for the back, without armrest or cup holder, and the food was the equivalent of a 7-11 (no one ate there; in POPB, the food was similarly bad but more people ate outside food; I’m not sure the stadium operators realize what an opportunity they’re missing out on—maybe they should take a pilgrimage to AT&T Park and realize the money they’re missing out on). And it didn’t seem to matter—those fanatics kept on chanting for ninety minutes in forty-five minute chunks.

The crowd—here’s sports commentary cliché numero uno!—energized the players and from then on (well…except…you’ll see…), PSG dominated the game. One of the unfortunate things about soccer, and one of the reasons I think Americans probably won’t embrace the game (along with the biggest reason: we not only aren’t the best, but the best don’t play in US) is that the team that dominates the flow of the game won’t necessarily win, to the point of the game ending in a tie. Now remember when baseball’s All-Star Game ended in a tie? Remember how freaked out everyone was, even though it was a meaningless exhibition game? There you have it—there must be a winner in American sports, none of this both teams played hard nonsense (actually there is a place for the noble loser, but only rarely, and even then, only temporarily).

At any rate, PSG settled into that zone, and it was no one’s fault but their own. Often in soccer, I’ve noticed, the most well set-up plays won’t produce results; the slightest thing goes wrong and—slam!—the door is shut. Junk plays, the ones that appear to have no design whatsoever, tend to be the source of many goals. PSG appeared to be trying for “well-set up play” category, but was falling for a particularly American stereotype.

I would argue in every American school—the best example is from high school, but I know this type in college—there is a genre of person whom I call “Guy Who Knows Soccer.” Now, Guy Who Knows Soccer is painfully aware that soccer is a second-tier sport (if that) in the US, and so he must justify it by showing off all the really cool things from soccer: bicycle kicks, juggling, that move where, instead of dribbling, your legs kind of circle around the ball like electrons around a nucleus (and here I’m painfully aware that I’m displaying my ignorance here), you know, those things that look pretty cool to the uninformed yokels. The thing is, many of these moves—not all—are mostly useless in a game (actually juggling and that ball-orbiting move I’ve seen often), and if done too much, they get the ball stolen, just like And 1 moves can’t be played in an actual game of basketball.

That’s basically what happened to Paris Saint-Germain: they would gain possession of the ball, advance it when unopposed, but once opposed, attempt to fancifully dazzle their way out, with only occasional success. And the thing about soccer is, you have to have a series of successful confrontations (or luck) to score, meaning that the dazzling was a temporary palliative. Oh, they came close: there was the ball played behind the streaking striker; there was the offsides that wasn’t (this provoked high-pitched whistling, the signal of derision). But no goal, because of the nature of the game in general and their game specifically.

I just summarized about three-quarters of the game right there in those two paragraphs, which says a lot about soccer (similar to baseball; then again I actually enjoy both sports). It was enjoyable, though, watching from so close a view, because the God’s eye view of television, while it allows you to appreciate the maneuvering of the pieces like a general at war, doesn’t allow you to appreciate the visceral timing of the game. If a pass is but a millisecond off, it is picked off. And free balls provoke much more violence than you’d assume—jostling with elbows and shoulders is normal, as is running people over; it’s also normal to see guys just writhing on the field as the game flows on around them; the most extreme behavior was a blatant shove before the ball descended. With so much physical activity comes many opportunities for fouls, which is probably why there are so many whining appeals to the ref: because the ref has the discretion to let them play on, the whine is the source of appeal. But for all this, the game was a stalemate.

The stalemate ended with the rain. It fell in long pointillist streaks. The players, however, seemed relatively unaffected. Until the Paris Saint-Germain goalie kicked off for a goalie kick towards one of his players. The player received the kick, took a step, slipped and fell, like in cartoons with a banana peel. He was unable to get up as a Caen player streaked forward took the ball and ran towards the goal with two steps on the straining Paris Saint-Germain players who followed. Effectively it was a one-on-one situation with the goalie, therefore, which generally doesn’t end well for the goalie; this trend was confirmed as the Caen player scored. Junk plays, like I said.

The whistles returned, and everyone joined in. It sounded like wind whipping through trees on a winter day. It was an eerie sort of derision. It continued for three straight minutes, then abated with a PSG corner kick—there was a brief possibility for atonement—then resumed for another couple of minutes when that was botched.

The PSG players acquired a desperate edge where before they had been show-offy. A few confrontations developed, with one shaved-head player of Caen serving as a particular target as he, the Caen player, tumbled and was sent tumbling throughout the final fifteen of the match. While on offense, the Paris Saint-Germain tried desperate long-bombs without hope of connecting. It was quite incompetent. The derision continued, with whistles becoming mixed with boos. One African player was addressed as a “maghrébin” (a North African) and told to “hurry up”. It was quite nasty. Finally the game ended, after the official end, shaved-head got in another stand-off.

As I walked out of the stadium, painfully aware of my soaked socks, I looked up to see a line of riot police choking off the road and forcing the pedestrians into two narrow channels on the sidewalks. The police were armed with shields, nightsticks (and one had something that looked like a Nerf toy, but I wasn’t about to find out what it shot) and were dressed in helmets, most with covers down but a few with covers up. They stood in a phalanx formation. Their final accessory was their expression, with the sort of baleful intimidation that you can’t teach. There were perhaps fifty of them on the street.

A huge crowd was leaving the stadium, and an unknown signal, a current, passed through the crowd and twenty or so of the fanatics charged in the direction of the police (although perhaps not at the police; I’m not sure) as almost everyone else turned around to watch, a few scrambling up onto concrete steps to get a better few. I was one of the few not to turn around; I kept my head down and got to the side of the crowd.

The metro was full of RATP police, with similarly intimidating expressions, which ordinarily would have been intimidating, but seeing as I had just seen a riot squad straight out of a history textbook of the ‘60s, wasn’t. I mean, how am I supposed to take unarmed guys in neon vests seriously? Or, for that matter, RATP security who are dressed in a jumpsuit? Riddle me that. Well, someone thought the same as me: I saw some kid in a Yankees cap, with the traditional African red, green, yellow, black, arrested to the side.

Then I went home, and here I am.

*****

Before I finish up this, I’d like to single out the Jumbotron/PA operator for further comic abuse. First of all, besides his emphasis on boring people, he was unable to find: a) cute children (one of whom right in front of me was practically begging for it: on a disco song, he was alternating between a John Travolta imitation and general hyperactive jumping hand-waving) or b) hot women. I mean, that’s your bread-and-butter right there if you’re a Jumbotron operator.

His music choices were similarly awful. All I know was a Village People song other than “YMCA” was played, as was “Born in the USA,” which is not a bad song but is an openly patriotic American song, which makes it a strange choice in a French sporting event. I started giggling when I heard the first chords of the song filter through—really? I thought.

When the players were announced, a short clip of them earnestly waving, thumbs-upping or whatever played. It looked like something straight out of the 70’s.

Basically what this proves is whomever works with that section of the stadium has no irony whatsoever, which is a dangerous quality for a semi-public job.

Also it shows huge room for improvement on the part of the Parc des Princes people, which I guess makes sense, seeing as they manage to pack the stadium anyway—who cares about good service when you’ve got 37,181 (they counted) paying customers?

Fashion and Other Things

In this digital age, physical communication still retains a certain punch. So when I walked into Point du Jour today and saw a sign that declared “THM IS NOT HAPPY!”, I was highly intrigued. When I found out about the actual origins of the sign—and others; it was not the only one—I knew that this was a good story.

Here’s how it went down. The studio is divided between freelancers and contract-workers. They work on different shows; they work on different floors. And they work under different rules: in France, it’s extremely annoying to fire workers, to the point that employers will avoid hiring people, or hiring temps, or using unpaid interns, whatever, to avoid taking on permanent weight that may or may not provide its own propulsion. In real-life terms, this means that the freelancers, in exchange for greater flexibility of choosing projects, are far easier to fire. This part all makes logical sense to me—obviously the system is quite strange, but you can understand the incentives.

Now, at this point in the story, you will see the effect of misaligned incentives. The overarching company did not perform up to expectations—while the freelancers were pulling their own weight, the contract workers (apparently) were not really doing much of anything. But—and this is the hilarious part—someone needed to be fired in order to cut costs, and since the only people who could be fired were the freelancers, they were the ones scheduled to be shipped out and replaced by the contract workers, to the point of the boss approaching the receptionist while she was on break and informing her, after an exchange of “Ca va?”s, that she was fired.

This approach might have worked in the United States—everyone expects lay offs; apparently the boss expected the individual workers to be more worried about their own jobs rather than the collective injustice at hand. This was not the case. Threats of collective resignations were offered, and signs of protest were plastered against the window facing the boss’ office. It was all averted; today, the champagne flowed.

****

Fashion is a strange god. At times, it will make a decision for no reason and with no recognition of reality and expect all its adherents to change without delay. Sometimes this is a curse—I am of course referring to the (hopefully by now passé, the four months’ ex-pat says to himself) leggings fad. At other times, like, oh I don’t know, right now, it is a blessing.

For whatever reason, booty shorts that look like shortened slacks have become not just respectable office and street wear, but also somewhat fashionable, to the point that young women emerging from offices are liable to cause whiplash in all but the gay and blind. For young men—like me—this can only be viewed as a positive development.

On the other hand, it’s not arctic but it’s certainly chilly in Paris, so I can’t see this as a particularly comfortable development. So what else is new, ask females? Nothing, is the answer—it is another in a long line of fashion developments that look good but (I presume) are uncomfortable. And judging from the way they are described, I would think that high heels are the crack cocaine of the female half of the human race: they hurt so much, and yet…!

The attitude that women profess, especially about high heels, some strange alchemy of aesthetic appreciation and awful oppression, is completely alien to most guys, who rarely if ever purposefully wear uncomfortable clothing on a daily or near-daily basis. I guess some people find suits and dress shirts uncomfortable, but that is pretty rare.

So I guess we can probably blame the patriarchy or something like that. I mean, it’s the most logical thing: it’s much more important for women to be pretty than it is for men. And even being pretty is a trap because then lots of dudes will merely think about you in terms of being really hot. So it’s a dilemma.

I won’t pretend to have a solution, because it seems like a pretty useless edict to ask men to not think of women sexually. So maybe the solution is to ask men not to let their sexual thinking to overwhelm their other logical thinking, which is reasonable and all, but we (meaning humans) are not ruled by our reason that too will be incomplete. Meanwhile, I have to nurse my whiplash.

****

I’m going to a European soccer game tomorrow. Meanwhile, Stanford plays Those Other Guys—you know, that school that claims, improbably, to represent all of California—tomorrow. This edition of the Big Game is the 119th, give or take a few rugby games.

Many people like to speak of college football as the ultimate fan experience that American sports has to offer. Certainly the experience of joining the pilgrimage off of Berkeley’s BART stop towards Memorial Stadium—aptly named, since it is as odd and antiquated as whatever it memorializes—and marching with that mass of humanity was one of those moments where you feel profoundly a part of everyone around you (which was weird, seeing as the majority of people were Cal fans and therefore insulted us relentlessly) in contrast to the solitude in crowds that is most people’s quotidian existence.

But, for all the grousing that cultural critics level against American’s sports obsession, Europeans take sports far, far more seriously. For example, in England, the percentage of pages devoted to sports was much greater than the number in the United States. More people wore soccer jerseys and more people sported scarves. Similarly, when France was winning in the Rugby World Cup (a minor star in the European galaxy of sports), each game was like a Big Game (admittedly a minor star in the galaxy of rivalry games).

And yet, Europeans don’t seem to be a continent of slack-jawed yokels; similarly, whatever flaws Americans have in citizenship, I don’t think they stem from outsized devotion to sports. (I could argue about why, but this is another subject altogether, so I will merely say that the critics who complain about sports are more often than not trying to reorient scrutiny from themselves, where, as a group, it belongs).

It’s perfectly natural that people should love sports so much. It showcases beautiful aesthetics and, often shows a morality play on our own frailties and triumphs. With all that, with Michael Jordan battling to hit the perfect last shot, how can you resist? Sports explain itself.

There are those who complain about the relative esteem given to sports in our society relative to books, the arts, and other high-minded endeavors. The answer to that complaint is that those works often do not explain themselves; they are mysterious where sports are direct. Sports deliver emotional punches; too often I read a bad book brimming with turgid banalities and overdone situations and wander where the novelty is. It’s not that I don’t love all these things; I do. It’s just that people are often unfair and I want to make an effort to explain where I can, which is everyone’s duty to one another.

Cocoon

I am a bit sick; I’ve caught a slight bug. It isn’t great enough to stop me from doing anything, but it is just enough to make my life more unpleasant than otherwise. If I were just a bit sicker, I’d be just incapacitated enough to not do anything while still not feeling totally awful, which in my opinion would be great. I’m not so I hope I’ll get over it quickly, especially since the quarter is winding down and there are a legion of assorted small tasks arrayed against me.

****

I tried to go to the Louvre today for another lecture. Given my slight sickness, I was actually slightly dreading it—concentrating while sick is always like walking against the wind—so it was actually slightly pleasing that the lecture ended up canceled. But I needed something to substitute for not going to the lecture; I wasn’t going to schlep up to the Louvre (admittedly not that far) just to turn back and convalesce curled up in bed. I decided to relax in Starbucks, a first for me in France.

If I ignored the tourists and the French chatting up a buzz, I would’ve sworn that I had fallen into some rift of the world and landed back in America. The décor is, like any McDonald’s, exactly the same the world around (although of course Starbuck’s décor is actually pleasant; something you might use for your own home). The music, though, is what did it for me. It’s no secret that the French love American music (or, rather, their own twisted taste in American music; just as Woody Allen and Jerry Lewis are exponentially more popular in France than in America, some weird, weird American music that I can’t identify gets a lot of airplay), but this music was one of the few times that was exactly pitch perfect what would’ve been played in America: they were all Christmas tunes, and the specific selections within that genre, Ella Fitzgerald and that Charlie Brown Christmas song, is exactly what the bourgeois upper-middle-class demographic of Starbucks listens to come Christmastime (my parents always break that out with the eggnog, at least).

I suspect, however, that this isn’t cultural blending as much as cultural dictation. I bet at Starbucks World Headquarters, someone is paid to make the decisions for the playlist for everyone, with one Venti-size fitting all (in France, at least, the sizes are reasonably named: Moyen [Medium], Grande [Large] and something large than Grande [something bigger than big]). Not to say the French on hand really disliked either choice—they love Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone here—but it just felt really American, like I’d slipped into a cocoon, in a location as French as the Louvre.

With the globalization era upon us, these little American cocoons are being shipped everywhere. The Louvre isn’t the only quintessential ancient governmental seat to witness the planting of one; the Forbidden City had a Starbucks for a while too. I’m no cultural purist; if people like Starbucks, they like it, you know? But it feels weird to walk into a store that is in many ways so unbowed to local tradition (actually the menu includes what seem to be bows to French tradition—are there crème brulee lattes in America? And if not, please tell me—I feel I need to sample that exquisiteness). It feels like a cultural conquest.

Certainly the French feel that way often enough. The government hands out cultural subsidies like a college hands out condoms. They limit the amount of American music to a certain percentage. Similarly, French movies are the beneficiary (apparently according to statistics) of plenty of protectionism, although that doesn’t seem to prevent the Hollywood onslaught from continuing. Americans feel similarly—there’s a 1984 painting called “The Triumph of the New York School” which shows a mechanized, modern American army (an allegorical representation of post-war American artists) open and smirking, arrayed against a disorganized, antiquated group of Europeans mounted on horses and suchlike. The clear subtext is: we’ve beaten you, so suck on that!

Which to me is a pretty infantile attitude. Culture is about making life good; that’s not a zero-sum game. It is a plant that benefits from cross-pollination, and it does well to be mixed with other types of crops. Slavish devotion to one type or another weakens the overall evolution. For me, some of the most fascinating cultural products of the past few years have been the result of cosmopolitanism, not cultural protectionism.

****

Speaking of cultural appropriations, yesterday, many of the rioters shouted “Fuck des polices!” (Fuck the police!). What is interesting about this, to me, is that it shows that, the immigrants of the Parisian banlieue feel a kinship not merely with each other but also Americans, probably specifically African-Americans. That they do means that the US is many things to many people; George Bush hasn’t ruined that, thankfully, although if he got a few more years, I’m sure he’d make an honest effort towards that goal.

****

Sarkozy has announced his policy, a major crackdown. Francois Fillon, the relatively less popular prime minister, reaffirmed the plan to create a “Marshall Plan” for the banlieue. This strikes me as a mistake. By relegating the positive side of the plan to the less popular underling, it definitively shows a lesser emphasis.

There are two possible reasons for this. The first is that Sarkozy does not actually think the “Law and Order” portion of his program is more important; he feels he must emphasize that portion to retain the allegiance of the far-right supporters of Le Pen who propelled him to the Presidency. The second is that he really does believe that crushing resistance in the suburbs is the most important priority in the situation.

Far be from me to decide which one is true, but they both suggest bad news for the suburbs. Incidentally, if I had to guess, it’d be the latter—he did promise in the Presidential campaign to clear out the “scum” in the banlieue. Either way, the underlying problem of the banlieue will not be addressed: the economic problems and the problem of inclusion into France’s nation. If the former reason is true, then the majority of Sarkozy’s energy will be devoted to appeasing the far right supporters whose conception of the problems of the banlieue are skewed, meaning that comparatively less will be devoted to actually solving those problems. That Sarkozy feels it necessary to append a “and National Identity” to the “Ministry of Immigration” provides a good example of how Sarkozy’s relative focus can result in marginalization of the immigrants. That’s nothing but an insult towards the banlieue. And if the latter reason is true, it shows that Sarkozy has not learned the lessons of insurrections: military or police success means little; political success means everything. Keeping order with force is necessary but not sufficient; if the political problems are not addressed correctly, then there will forever be a fresh supply of rioters.

****

Incidentally, when I was writing of the sizes in the Starbucks in France, I accidentally and unconsciously inserted an ‘et’ in the middle, which is ‘and’, without realizing it until five minutes later. Now it happens, of course, just when I’m about to leave.

City of Lights

Paris has put its lights up. The Champs-Elysees glows blue and the Arc de Triomphe is brilliant white for Christmas. Other neighborhoods have followed suit. The Rue Mouffetard, a former student’s quarter (but now, like the rest of Paris, is gentrifying), winds up a slight grade with the same light tranquil blue glow as the Champs. It will be Christmas soon.

****

The banlieues, too, are all lit up. Needless to say, it is not a festive spirit that illuminates them. When I last wrote of them, it was a he-said-she-said situation; now it is more clear that the government is lying. According to Le Monde, someone in a neighboring apartment building took a video of the incident after it occurred that completely contradicts the government’s account of the accident. Comparisons to Rodney King appear to be particularly popular in comment threads.

Now, as opposed to the riots in 2005, these riots occur with guns: the rioters have acquired hunting shotguns, one of the few types of guns legally available to Frenchmen. Apparently the police have shown restraint in shooting back; they merely disperse crowds with tear gas and shoot paint balls to mark suspects for later arrest (who knew that paint balls would be used by anyone other than warriors who fight in their mind?). The restraint is admirable and needed—I suspect that fighting fire with fire would unleash an inferno.

What is clear is that at least Villiers-le-Bel (the specific banlieue that the fighting has touched off in) has been organizing somewhat. That people have been taking affirmative steps to acquire weapons where before they did not have any. And now, they are fighting “guerilla warfare” (Le Monde’s take) against the police, with children as young as ten joining in on the rampage: they are burning cars and shooting police.

This represents yet another affront to France’s ideal of France: that it is a country where everyone is French, that there are no subgroups, that everyone is a citoyen first and foremost. Note well how no paper, neither Le Monde, nor Le Figaro, nor L’Humanité, nor Le Liberation mentioned the obvious fact, the obvious cause of all this: that the children who died in the accident were North African. I knew it must be so when I first heard of the story, but I did not know until I read The New York Times. That is the clear cause—they know it. Le Monde quotes a child saying, “Celui-là, il est à la famille.” (Here [speaking of a geographic location in Villiers-le-Bel], it’s to the family.”) They’re a family, and they’re building barricades. And the rest of France’s immigrants feel a kinship with the immigrants of Paris—in 2005, the riot spread to all the banlieue of France; the riot spread to Toulouse last night. How could they have felt like an ‘us’ without a ‘them’? How does the ‘them’ come about? It comes about through mutual self-definition, which means that the ideal of the Republic was compromised at that moment.

To my mind, not acknowledging the problem allows it to fester. The French speak of banlieue and of immigrants and of assimilation (who else could they mean but non-Caucasian faces?) but everyone knows that the problem is that those immigrants have high unemployment and few prospects. We were discussing education in French class today, and our teacher mentioned that there are hardly any non-white people in the grandes écoles, the most prestigious universities in France, the ones that mold the elites for the country. It’s true, looking at ISEP, there are hardly any non-white faces. So there is little to do for these immigrants but roil in the suburbs.

****

My reaction to Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin, with its grid of plus-sign shaped apartment buildings in the center of Paris, and the renovation of Les Halles was largely the same: one of confusion, of “what’s the goal here?” The new ‘skyscrapers’ of Paris provoke a similar reaction for me. A dreary utilitarianism infects all of these concrete slabs, and it’s easy to see why so much anger was directed at these monoliths. They were the harbingers of a gray, standardized system that paid too much attention to the general and not enough to the specific which is part of the French genius and exceptionalism.

Take, for example, the renovation of Les Halles. My family rented in a friend of a friend’s apartment in the second arrondisement this week, so I found myself walking through Les Halles in many different instances and environments. When it is gray, a gloom descends on the exterior of Les Halles; when it is sunny, it is merely acceptable but no one wants to stay. No matter when I saw it, the merry-go-round was empty and stopped. The underground mall is not interesting in its architectural vision (it is the worst of unfilled spaces, a void) and in its specific stores (which are the closest thing to a suburban strip mall, hardly the best exemplar of the United States, that I’ve seen in France). Even on Sunday, its busiest day, it was a mere artery of the circulatory system, not a destination in of itself. The attitude of everyone, unusually so in Paris, is to get to where you’re going and fast. This would not be so bad if Les Halles were not such a historically important district or such a geographically central neighborhood, meaning that there are two highly important reasons why it should be vital rather than the French equivalent of a ghost town, lacking only a tumbleweed bouncing in front of a saloon.

Of all the designs featured in the New York Times website, I find all of them lacking, but Koolhas’ comes the closest to my ideal. The colors are too garish, but the idea is right: the center of the city should have energy bursting forth like geyser, spilling out into the surrounding neighborhoods.

In fact, according to “Assassination of Les Halles,” the city stumbled upon the perfect solution in the process of its renovation. In moving the food market to the suburbs, the void left in Les Halles was one onto which activities could be projected; new businesses moved in, creating a diversity of cultural events and interesting happenings. That, to me, better reflects the spirit of the hurly-burly of Les Halles than the current circulatory model.

But instead they went to the current ugly model, thereby losing the chance of fulfilling multiple ambitious goals. De Gaulle’s ideal inspires the rest of design. He wanted Paris to be the capital of Europe, as it was in Napoleon’s time, for everything from aesthetics to industry. But being the capital in one arena meant sacrificing its comparative advantages in another—for example, building the Tour Montparnasse meant sacrificing part of the aesthetic of Paris. Unless—and this is the potentially brilliant move—the necessary modernizing improvements could be located in the suburbs, where their ugliness could not infect the rest of the city with its contagion. By and large, the project worked well, excepting the Les Halles disaster.

The conviction that all of these goals were in reach, despite the atrophy besetting France in the early post-war period, was a special manifestation of French exception. Yes, we are the best in high culture and low; we have a pure language that is ours; we can manufacture; we know how to live. In Paris at its best, this pride manifests itself as slaving over each and every detail with a conviction that excellence is attainable in all of them. In this, French exceptionalism is the same as the American version, if focused on different goals.

Those concrete slabs thrust into the ground at the outskirts of the city are a betrayal of that; they almost seem a capitulation to France’s conception of the United States as summarized by America the Menace, the 1930’s attack on America: “For this French visitor, the symbols of America’s modernity were its mass-produced, artless, and tasteless food and its endless rows of tacky wooden houses.”

It is almost as if the French operated by the light-switch conception of life: either the light’s on, or it’s off, there is no in between. This is as true in economics as in restaurants (I think the concept of a fusion restaurant would be alien to the French). One can have economic modernity, but at the cost of an aesthetic sense of life. But it’s a continuity, and perhaps the French should look more closely at themselves right now: their productivity is among the highest in the world and yet their aesthetic sense is still, after all these years, strong.

****

We met with Germaine Dagognet yesterday for lunch. It was for an interview; we ended up eating lunch along with it.

One particular comment of his jumped out at me. He said that the “People”-style of journalism was becoming far more prevalent in France. Before, details of politician’s private lives were largely uncovered, like FDR’s polio or JFK’s affairs. But now, with Sarkozy’s divorce and subsequent re-entry into the game (Germaine said that pictures of his “copaine” had surfaced; a host mother apparently believes he and Rashida Dati, his minister of Justice, are an item), the “Peopleization” of politics has apparently hit France in a big way.

It seems, however, that Sarkozy brought it on himself to a certain extent. I’m not referring to his divorce—I don’t know the details, I don’t care to know, and seeing as my knowledge is incomplete, I cannot judge. I mean a famous photo of Sarkozy’s, in which he took a picture of his family and him mimicking the posture of JFK’s family in a typical JFK-puff-piece-photo. Seeing as JFK remains America’s premier celebrity-president (I don’t exactly hear people singing the praises of Cuban Missile Crisis policy over his fucking Marilyn Monroe), that’s a pretty bold statement on Sarkozy’s part.

In a sense, though, the “Peopleization” of politics is inevitable, natural and more complex than its detractors give credit for. I too hate coverage of John Edwards’ haircuts and of Hillary Clinton’s cleavage, have no fear of that. But, upon thinking about it, “Peopleization” is a far more complex phenomenon than is given credit for.

The example that everyone brings up is JFK’s follies and FDR’s infirmities. Journalists did indeed keep that information secret. At the time. We know about it now, and both are seen as interesting, critical parts of the story of the two Presidents. Going back further, we love to talk about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln’s personal qualities. The reason is that the President is and always has been both a national leader and a moral leader. As such his personal life is, well, (how antique this phrase) a role model.

Nor is America alone in the elevation of its chief executive above mere technocrat. In that Vanishing Children of Paris book, the King Louis XV was demonized as a baby-killer, as a kind of vampire. De Gaulle fended off multiple coups largely on his moral prestige. As for Sarkozy, besides his marital business, he has made a point to meet both wounded police and wounded immigrants, as if to project by his mere moral presence the need for unity in France.

No, perceived moral standing in chief executives has always been important. And I think even the most cynical about the “Peopleization” of politics would agree that serious moral turpitude—no, religious conservatives, blowjobs don’t count—should disqualify a chief executive from legitimate office. So perhaps in some senses it is worthwhile to worry about the personal qualities and deeds of the chief executive.

But the problem with “Peopleizaton” is how very overblown it is. I very much doubt cleveage or haircuts reflect serious moral choices, for one. The whole phenomenon requires hordes to be deployed, and once employed, they don’t just go away, they have to justify their own presence. That’s how we get haircut stories.

Furthermore, that hordes hunt every spoor of a candidate’s life means that you, the candidate, either have to be really good at hiding your shit or not doing it in the first place. The first means we have exceptionally good dissemblers as chief executive, surely not the qualities we want to be encouraging in our leaders. The second means bland candidates who take no risks at all personally, and a lack of risks in one’s personal life denies one the chance to grow, meaning we get stunted sheltered bland candidates, again surely not the qualities we want to be encouraging in our leaders. So while we would love to have candidates with the public virtue of a Lincoln or Washington, it is clear that searching too hard for it destroys it.

****
A haze hung in Paris. It surrounded the Tour Montparnasse, lending it a mountainous distant aspect. The light filtered through it, as if we all saw the world through bad glasses. In the 14th where I lived, the haze floated above Parc Montsouris going directly north—as soon as I made the slightest move east, it disappear—and dampened and distanced the lights on top of the buildings making them seem like stars at first sight.

I did not and do not know what the source is; I have never seen it before. My first thought was: the banlieue are burning.

Microcosm

Tonight I saw the show at LCI, like I had meant to last Wednesday, before forces outside my control intervened.

****

The show is housed in Boulogne, the suburb to the west of Paris. Like most of the suburbs of Paris, the buildings are comparatively more modern. Across the Seine from the TF1 building—behind which the LCI (La Chaîne d’Info; translate that to: The News Channel) building stands—a crane ferried trash from construction into a garbage barge. A half-completed glass-covered bridge stretched forlornly over the Seine.

The sidewalks were narrow and the streets deserted, save for the occasional car driving past. The only people out were security guards, bored out of their minds guarding the front of the news networks. Craning the neck upwards, I could see solitary figures pacing and smoking. It seemed an American office park translated to France.

The buildings of TF1 and LCI were all sharp vistas of glass, with a curved tower rising above all the rest; the twilight fell upon it beautifully, reflecting a soft tranquility across the glass, a canvas for nature’s art. These buildings were resolutely modern in comparison to the center city’s insistent classicism. Both work, to be honest, in their ways, but it is difficult to see these new monoliths, however beautiful they are, encouraging street life or mixing outside of them. That isn’t really intended for the office park specifically, I can sense, but at the same time, they dominate over the landscape of the quarter, imposing its vision on the rest of the quarter, the tranquility of its reflected twilight falling on the entire ‘burb.

****

The tranquility reflected did not reflect inwards also. Stepping inside was stepping inside a microcosm, an ecosystem devoted to the production of news. I found myself sitting in the lobby on a blue leather coach, staring at two features that would remain constant: the digital clock, and the bank of televisions.

The clock is indeed everywhere in LCI, understandably so. Besides operating in the journalism business, which is all about scoops and time-sensitivity, the channel operates in the television division of journalism, which pays fealty to the minute, or else advertisers won’t pay. It’s also probably understandable that televisions are present everywhere, almost invariably (with two amusing exceptions, which will be spoken of later) tuned into LCI. It’s addicting to be able to see the products of your own work as they are completed, up to the minute, as well as being practical on some level.

These, however, were only the most obvious manifestations of the particular microcosm. Those brilliant glass facades of the building reflect light but do not provide a great view, enclosing the entire building. The screensavers featured a view of the Seine around Boulogne, with the LCI building magnified.

The organization of the workers creates further environments within the ecosystem. Each group of reporters sits in a pod, sharing space and conversation. As I wandered behind the producer, named Germain Dagnonet, for the Michel Field show Le 18/20, I saw that the organization aided community-building, even outside of one’s own pod. People routinely wandered outside of their pod, like bees carrying out tasks.

****

If there was a queen bee, it was the presenter of the show, Michel Field.

Once you see a person in real life who you’ve seen before on TV, you immediately compare the person’s real-life personality to that person’s TV personality, and it dominates your thinking of that person for a long period of time upon meeting that person. The comparison was neither negative nor positive for Michel Field, but it was still the primary locus of my thoughts.

You see, on TV, M. Field plays the large jolly man (who is smart) role, with a large grin and plenty of jokes, whereas in person, M. Field wore a stoic, detached, almost grumpy expression for the majority of the night. His entrance into my awareness was in the production room, where he said a quiet hello to the room and assumed his seat in the corner of the room at his computer. He reacted to all news and questions with equanimity. Clearly, everyone was eternally aware of his large presence and heavy, plodding walk when in the room even if they did not react.

Seen later, watching LCI in a TV outside the studio, he had mastered the trick of balancing a can of Diet Coke on his knee while performing a kind of introverted meditation while consulting his cell phone and TV simultaneously. It was a kind of game face, I thought at the time, and when the time came to do an interview “Oui/Non” with a French student leader (of which more will be spoken of later), he began to banter with her while standing opposite her on podiums.

Before the interview, I watched from inside the production room, and each started stiff, contained, but each warmed up while joking with each other and moving around. The girl, the French student, alternated between swaying and allowing her hands to fall against her sides after raising them. As M. Fields told his jokes, he paced in a circle without turning his torso. Eventually, as the interview drew closer, they settled into their positions and assumed their TV personalities with bright smiles and animated expressions.

Listen, it’s no secret that TV causes the watched as well as the watcher to behave differently; that personalities are changed under the heat of the lights and cameras (when the girl exited the studio, she wiped her face as if she had just finished a nice sauna session). It’s one thing to note it intellectually, and another to observe it yourself. And, still, further, yet another to wonder (although this too is not a particularly groundbreaking point): we have not made the realization that those who animate television do not animate real life as well; hence we assume that our M. Fields, television personalities, with their effervescence, will illuminate rooms, while M. Fields, otherwise, may not fill the room in quite the same way. The force of this realization has not quite penetrated the subconscious; we see politicians, particularly, but actors and entertainers also, and assume their television skills are just as commanding in other contexts.

****

In the preceding paragraph, I tried to avoid the “real life”/”television” distinction. This is common to many critics of television. This implies that television is fake life. It is not, no more than writing or painting or other representations are fake life. No, it is seeing real life through muddied glass just like those others, only its verisimilitude fools us sometimes that we seeing the real thing, making our disappointment all the more potent when we realize it is not, leading us to toss around calumnies like “fake life.” Which is not true and we should have known it all along.

****

The vending machines, in a rebuke to the rest of France, sell huge, US-movie-theater-sized bags of M&Ms and sandwiches and the rest of the cheap fuel for the demanding lifestyle.

****

Now is as good a time as any to mention the non-LCI shows that were being played. In the production room, which is the Mr. Potato Head of TV (each graphic can be added and subtracted with the flick of a button), two of the guys were watching amusing non-LCI related programming. One was YouTube hijinks. The other was a traffic cop stopping onrushing cars and pedestrians from a variety of angles with music video style moves. They glanced furtively at these things, but they did so. Heck, I can understand—who wants to watch The News Channel all day?

****

The stories that the show covered had a typically American balance of subjects: two deaths, a big business deal, and a ukulele player’s CD.

Is it any wonder that people in the US perceive the media as so negative? The negative, feel-bad stories—a murder in the RER and an fatal motorbike accident leading to riots—were so immediate, so visceral, so real in their consequences that only a dullard could fail to grasp their importance. On the other hand, in what realm other than the abstract can someone rejoice over Airbus’ big deal with China? I’m sure the PDG (CEO), the stockholders and the workers felt a thrill, but other than those people, who else really felt energized by that? I approve in the abstract, I suppose, but it’s hard for me to get my emotions involved. Which is how a lot of media works in the US too. Why is this? Is there merely such a great creative variety of the evils that we can do to each other that the various manifestations will always provoke interest? Are only the grand good deeds mold-breaking enough to be interesting? Is it merely the case that a person’s tranquil happiness is not interesting to us? I don’t know, but I suspect it’s a combination of all of those factors.

Particularly interesting was the motorbike death. The RER murder (on the D; I live on the B—no need to be nervous, I guess) is the typical monstrosity of murder-sexual assault which has become familiar to viewers of CSI and Law & Order: SVU. The motorbike death, however, is one of those stories which reveals something of the society underneath.

What is not in dispute is that two teenage motorcyclists crashed into a French police patrol car. The government claims that the motorcycle (two people were sharing the same one) was going above the speed limit; apparently “witnesses” (the vague term has been used with all reports) back that assertion up. But nevertheless, the community erupted, and a protest was organized, along with Molotov cocktails being thrown at the police station in Sarcelles, a Parisian suburb.

This is what happens when a conflict becomes, in the minds of participants, between one group and another, between ‘the police’ and ‘the immigrants.’ Any incident is liable to escalate. And why not? Once the logic of mutual group antagonism is accepted, it only seems as if each provocation is within that logic, even if it is a mere accident. This is the genius of the republican social contract system: it promises to treat each case as an individual case, not a case of groups warring amongst each other. It requires trust, on both sides: perhaps the immigrants would do well to integrate; the politicians would do better to stop muttering darkly about the immigrant threat. If we want to succeed in defusing the Middle East, we must succeed in convincing Muslims that we bear them no antagonism against them as a group. And we fail just a little bit more every time any Republican (pick ‘em) opens his dumb mouth.

****

I saw a man getting on the metro with a bag from a lingerie store in one hand and a bouquet of roses in the other. He had a rigid set to his jaw, as if he were clamping down on a mouthguard. I thought, good luck but it’s probably not going to work out.

****

Last week I saw a performer on the metro. In between songs he spoke of his politics. He hated Sarkozy; referred to his immigrant policies as racist and fascist. Sometimes it’s tough to disagree, especially when you hear about the camps in the north of France where they send immigrants to be deported.

****

Two guys were in front of me in the ATM line. One was trying to engage his friend on every subject under the sun—Sarkozy, soccer, women, all the rest—and his friend was not effusive, speaking in tones that indicated even “Oui” was an effort for him.

“Hey, did you see my new phone?” The first guy said, as if, I know what will work.

“No, I didn’t.” His friends’ tone was more interested now.

The first guy practically tore off his front jean pocket getting his phone out. It had a huge screen. It was pretty cool, and they chattered about its 3G capabilities throughout the rest of the transaction. It seems like everyone everywhere loves their gadgets.

Catching Up

My right heel hurts. It sends a charge of pain up whenever it’s pressured the wrong way. I blame the strike, which makes that pain in my heel the last remnant of the strike. If you had taken a jaunt outside of Paris for the duration of the strike, and had not known about its existence at all, it would be difficult to know it had ever happened—no one speaks of it, average man or reporter.

The last day, Thursday, Thanksgiving, my patience had been nearly extinguished. I was taking the Four, the reliable Four, when the garbled voice came in through the intercom. It advised us that because of the crowds at Châtelet, the train would need to take longer between stops. This struck me as highly odd logic (the first time, I assumed I misheard it; after three more times, I realized that I understood the literal meaning perfectly) because the only way to alleviate the number of people would be to either: a) bring more trains along or b) frustrate people so much that they try out other options—which I guess was the actual intent of the policy. But if that’s true, I would venture that this is the only time that a business or service has attempted to purposefully piss its customers off (as opposed to merely not caring what they think: see most French businesses and all airlines, regardless of nationality). Anyway, after four or five stops with this process, the voice added, “take some time to breathe,” which provoked a sarcastic unified laugh from my car (the French are really, really good at those sarcastic, disbelieving laughs).

When we finally reached Châtelet, I saw the quai, and it was not a huge crowd (foule) as had been claimed, at all. It was moderately full, but this was average for the strike thus far. The only sign of something untoward were the RATP personnel lingering behind the crowd, leaning uncomfortably against the curvature of the wall. They, however, were not uniformed security but instead bureaucrats, with their matching navy blue-and-turquoise windbreakers and RATP ties. Then I turned the corner towards the exit and another part of the crowd revealed itself: like at a golf tournament, where the spectators are roped off from affecting the action, so too was the crowd sequestered to half of the stairs, not allowed to move until we exited. But, still, this didn’t strike me as crazy, insane or massive, merely the logical extension of their earlier conducting policy.

That was the sole logic in an irrational system where no one knew what was going on, neither web site nor bureaucrat nor taxi driver nor American nor Frenchman. The Metro system, usually reasonably competent and efficient, was crippled not by the lack of service, but the uncertainty with which we dealt with it: I had no idea which information to trust or how to plan for it. The constant comparison I’ve heard, both in French and in English, is that the strikers held the nation hostage. That has some elements of truth, but it does not capture the situation: instead, the strikers were extorting the country. Like some junior Mafioso demanding protection, they asked, “Oh, well you don’t want to pay? You’ll find it real hard to function without me.” So they did, and the uncertainty that reigned was not the enforced containment of being taken hostage but rather the lack of knowledge of what was going to work and wasn’t going to.

But then the strike ended on Friday and everyone returned to their usual placidity, as if nothing had occurred and their were no inconveniences suffered. It seemed as if coverage was banished from the pages and from the lips of Frenchmen and all was right with the world.

****

Some betook to alternate forms of transportation during the strike. Walking through Parc Montsouris, I saw a woman on a scooter, no unusual thing. But she was not traveling under her own power: a pair of terriers pulled her along, and the wind swept back her hair, and she assumed a regal expression surveying her domain, like a female George Washington crossing the Delaware. Everyone double-taked when they saw it, which is pretty impressive for Paris, considering that most barely pay a care to the most flamboyant of odd phenomena.

*****

Thanksgiving was normal: it was with family and friends. Thanksgiving was tremendously different: it was in Paris.

This meant no snow, no football, nobody driving in from vast distances (or you yourself doing it), no lazily sitting around while others busy themselves with making the meal (I am the most useless at Thanksgiving—I eat and talk), none of all that. Not to say my meal or experience was bad in any way—it was great; I could not have wished for more—but it was just strange, especially since Thanksgiving is, like most holidays, dominated by traditions (Dad’s sweet potatoes, Grandma’s biscuits, Lions and Cowboys).

This has been only my third major holiday away from home (in a row, now that I think about it)—last Christmas, last Fourth of July, and this one—and that each represents a break with tradition is directly related to the march of time. I’ve just turned twenty, and, being a nice round number (although not the big one next year), it’s got me thinking: I’m kind of old. Or something like that. I felt uncomfortable writing that, being old, which is probably the first time I’ve felt that, which is in itself a milestone. Jesus, I’m making it seem like I’m senile and seventy-seven. Let’s move on.

****

I got free champagne for my birthday, from the bar I went to. I note that not just because it was some really cool event or something—it is, because I’m really freaking cheap—but because the business aspect is pretty strange at first thought. As I cradled the thin glass and walked back, I asked myself, well how does this make sense? What if I just lied about it? Is it mere generosity that propels the deed?

No, to the last question—no other business offers free goods (except occasionally restaurants)—so either bars have an excess of altruism or there’s smart business here. I doubt altruism as an explanation in the general populace—it’s a rare thing and I know it when I see it, so that leaves sound business practice.

I discovered the reason when I sat down with my friends: unless you’re the sort of person who [insert tired metaphor for friendless schlub in mother’s basement, with D&D, with computer, etc.], you’re going to bring friends who will buy drinks for themselves, etc., etc. So there’s your reason, and I’m sorry that I am so slow on the uptake.

****

Place de la Bastille is one of those places that American tourists assume is more historical, more antiquated than it actually is. I remember the first time I visited Paris I wanted to go, to see the old prison, only to be informed by my high school French teacher that it is a mere roundabout centering on a monument.

Once you actually reach Place de la Bastille, you realize that not only is it a roundabout, but the central monument, a spire crowned by a golden angel, is dedicated not to the storming of the Bastille of 1789, an epoch-making event, but the creation of the July Monarchy in the Revolution of 1830, a merely important event.

The roundabout is quite large, stretching across several blocks. You get the immediate sense of an artery and not a meeting place. To the eastern part of the place, the Opera Bastille and the quarter itself squat.

The Opera Bastille is all clean antiseptic lines and clear glass. Mitterand intended it to be democratic, egalitarian, for the grand public. I can’t judge whether the interior meets its aim—another casualty of a strike—but the bank of steps certainly does, providing a perfect place to loiter, whether you’re waiting for friends or waiting for eternity, as it appears several beggars do.

A quarter grows out of one of the offshoots of the Place, filled to the brim with bars and restaurants, harkening back to the days when the eastern part of town was the working-class section (well, in terms of the establishments—the prices, however, are distinctly not working-class). Bouncers, invariably dressed in black-on-black-on-black (there appears to be a strict no-color policy, punishable by death—I actually saw a bouncer exchange his lovely scarlet tie for a “abstractly conceptual” black tie at the behest of a boss-figure), lurk in every bar. The restaurants are good and packed. Packs of people drift together, propelled by chemicals and cold. This is the party in Paris.

This is no prison.

****

There was even, incredibly, a bouncer in a fast-food establishment. He filled the door with a indifferently angry expression (plus), but wore actual colors (minus). We tried to avoid him and slip through the space between him and the door frame, but he interposed between us. We wanted crepes and told him so; he told us that we could only eat in the narrow hole-in-the-wall without seats. This was obviously bizarre so we wandered up the street until the girls in our group caught up; we explained what happened; they offered to get the crepes for us. It seemed like a win-win-win(!)—it was definitely one of those rules that are made to be broken.

So after getting the first crepe, the man became very agitated, speaking wildly and gesturing wildly. He yelled about how “the police will find us” then slapped the crepe out of Kelly’s hands, staining the front of Brian’s pants, then went back inside and threw the payment on the ground to join its ill-gotten-gains.

This was a bizarre episode—after all, sure, we were breaking his rules and, yeah, I guess if they weren’t licensed to serve takeout food they could get in trouble (although this seems highly unlikely), but how would the police know that this particular crepe came from this particular anonymous hole in the wall selling kebabs and crepes? I can’t come up with a plausible scenario (unless there were police informants right around the corner or something), but it was strange, suggesting either a serious personal imbalance on the part of the bouncer (I mean, doesn’t he understand that the bouncer’s role is one of those roles where people constantly try to undermine you, like the DMV teller?), or something unexplained and mysterious.

****

Restaurants in Paris are all, upon reflection, very similar.

This seems a strange thing to write as an American because there are so many different American types. I know, the proliferation of the suburban chain like an algal bloom is no thing to celebrate, but nevertheless, that proliferation does not appear to be threatening the diversity of the American restaurant. Of course, there are all the various ethnic permutations in America, which is usually treated with respect—the food can stand on its own—to go along with the various clienteles served and styles cooked. The best American restaurants are cosmopolitan: they mix and match and synthesize different approaches and foods with occasional electric success.

French restaurants, on the other hand, are very similar in a way that represents France in a microcosm. All non-Western European food is basically ‘ethnic’ food, and as such, is kitsched-up to an exponential degree. Think your neighborhood Chinese Restaurant, and multiply it: every aspect of décor is suffused with the influence of the native land to an oppressive extent. There are probably two causes for that. Either, a contempt for non-French foods and styles; or, a sort of hyperearnest striving, where slavishly imitating each individual detail masks the lack of understanding of the whole, like a strong deodorant masks an ugly smell.

If non-ethnic, then a fealty to the old ways reigns. Restaurants have the same styles of cuisine the same way all the housing in Paris has the same styles even though they’re constructed in completely different eras. The effect of this city-wide style is a great compression: I’ve never been to a disastrous French restaurant, but only comparatively rarely to a spectacular French restaurant.

The situation is reversed in the United States. There, awful food infests every corner. It so infects our culture that, heck, I kind of enjoy that greasy stuff (oh who am I kidding? I’d gorge on an In-N’-Out Double-Double right now—although that’s the upper class of the American fast food restaurant). On the other hand, I know of a good number of really good restaurants (and, of course, the Emperor of All Supermarkets, Wegmans’) in Rochester, NY, hardly a famed food mecca like Paris.

*****

In the Centre Pompidou, there is a sign suggesting that “Pictures may offend your sensibility.” This, of course, suggests that the pictures have an emotional effect, an immediacy, a presence that the best art has, the kind of art you’d expect a famous museum in Paris to have. Few of the pictures affected me in that way.

For that matter, few of the pieces of modern art did either. There is a lot of bad modern art, and it comes in two varieties: first, art that says nothing; second, art that says something extremely facile. The first requires no elaboration. As for the second, we’ve all seen modern art that comments on, say, the duplicity of politicians or our media-saturated culture. These points have been made to saturation in an already saturated culture, and I don’t really need another easy collage of various pop art sources to prove it to me, either.

Both types unfortunately suffer from the need to be explained. The reason is incredulity: really? Is that all that’s going on here? I found myself referencing the cards constantly, like a traveler in a foreign land with his phrase book. But the phrase book was useless—“paradoxical dualities” “archetypes of womanhood in Germany”—and other easily-satired language, so the art too was useless. Visual art does not need to be explained; its power explains itself. Words are mere supplements.

Whenever I think of modern art, I think of that MIT joke. The engineers took a tray from the lunchroom, took off the fork, and put it in the gallery, titled, “No Fork.” No one noticed. It goes without saying that if someone tried to sneak in a painting done in the 17th century style into the Louvre, someone would notice. That tells us that the mere difference between much of the modern art we see in the museum and the rest of the found objects is mere confidence, a mere confidence game. “This is Art,” you have to say, and I suppose easily cowed critics and curators take you at your word.

The attack on the bad of modern art is motivated by love of the good. The Centre Pompidou has much that. One of my favorites was a facsimile airplane, a passenger jet, made out of bent wood with fans serving as propellers with sheets billowing out from them. Scissors and metal objects, those confiscated things, stuck out of the airplane as if from a stabbing. To see it was to know the point that the airplane is an immensely fragile thing, beset by a thousand tiny threats, despite its incredible technological grandeur. The best modern art in commenting in our times combines the different media in a genuinely innovative way (because it is necessary to express a point, because it could be done in no other way), rather than a mere display of virtuosity.

****

A related point: when I talk to people who aren’t art connoisseurs (I would count myself among them) about why really modern art leaves them cold, they always say, “What is it about?” Invariably something like pristine all-white canvasses are brought up (which the Centre Pompidou actually had, something I had always assumed was a joke). They like art that’s about something, is always the conclusion.

Why is it always the conclusion?

At this time, fine art has noticed the extreme increasing abstraction of our society. It notices the metaification of politics (note, for example, that the strike was not a mano-a-mano negotiating tactic but rather an appeal to the people, in France, and basically all of US political media) and the just strange weirdness of math and high-level physics and the entire premise of the field of statistics (that essential aspects of groups can be generalized by recourse to numbers rather than some reference to their souls).

Much of this is well and good. You can’t have science without abstract: the whole idea of a general principle is in itself abstract. Nor can economic business management or governmental management take place without abstraction; indeed, it is probably preferable that the bureaucrat Joe Schmo doesn’t care about my specific interests (assuming that he cares about everyone’s, which is a doubtful proposition). In other words, we rule and are ruled by abstraction.

So art has noticed this increasing trend and has responded with those random slashes across canvasses or funny-shaped metal bents and has declared that it is in tune with the zeitgeist. It comments on abstraction with further abstraction, in other words.

But people are tired with abstraction—they get their fill every day, thank you very much, they read their euphemisms in their memos and their papers—and the role of arts and humanities is not the general but the specific. Speaking for myself (and I think this is a general proposition), I have often felt that, throughout high school and college, I have been hustling towards some dimly imagined future with those adult things (the familiar trinity of job-house-marriage), without a sufficient pause to consider what, exactly, would be a good example of a good job, house or marriage.

A part of that burden is on the various arts, whether fine art, novels, movies or TV shows or whatever. Why do you think there are so many devoted Sex and the City fans after all these years? It unabashedly spoke to people’s hopes and aspirations. It did so in a simple, materialistic way, but it made a try of it, which is better than I can say for the random multicolored splotches on a red canvass.