Professional Smiles

David Foster Wallace only gave a name to something we all experience: the Professional Smile. The Professional Smile occurs when someone smiles at you in a professional circumstance when they otherwise wouldn’t. Wallace has some great comments on the Professional Smile amongst other things in his essay on his cruise boat trip, “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.”

For that reason, I won’t attempt to reprise his comments, but expand on them. There are no Professional Smiles in France. The waiters and cashiers simply serve you without pretense: to be honest, no one cares about you that much, and that’s not a problem at all. Why should they? But, for me thus far, it’s one of those things that makes intellectual sense but hasn’t seeped down to the emotional level. So I find myself smiling out of instinct after transactions, then hitting myself in the head mentally. Try not to be so obvious, I think. Just blend in. You even think it’s a good idea, so why can’t you go along with it? The culture, it is too strong.

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Vacation ended officially today. Our first class, bright and early, 9:30. I could’ve avoided it, but I decided to shop it. Who can’t get up out of bed for Cathedrals, I ask you? Well, I can.

After an invigorating beignet (non-shocking fact: New Orleans’ are better. Still, not bad at all.), I found myself in the class. It’s taught by an older French woman. She started by taking roll, and trying to match up people to the faces.

There was some confusion at that point. Not so much because of language issues, but more because of cultural issues. Every American identified him- or herself by first name. This confused the teacher somewhat; she seemed to be expecting our last names. It didn’t help that three Sarahs were all sitting in a row. The French place more importance on last names, I’ve noticed. This is how my name is written on an official document in the US: Darius Tahir. By comparison, in France: Darius TAHIR. The very words for one’s name confirm the relative importance of last name over first. The word for last name in French is nom; for first name is prenom. In other words, your given name is “before” your last name, your proper name. I don’t have a compelling theory as to why this would be case, but perhaps the relative importance of the last name emphasizes community and heritage versus the individuality of a first name? I don’t know, but that’s a stab at the question.


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French advertisements represent different products. For one, theater advertisements are everywhere. I would guess that plays are the majority of advertisements in the Metro. And, unlike the advertisements for plays in New York and London, there seem to be an unusual number of new plays being advertised.

Switching gears, one commonality in movie advertising in London and Paris is the promotion of screenwriters. I’ve never seen a movie trailer in America mention the screenwriter, and the only screenwriters I can identify are the ones who’ve also written books. Screenwriter is, as a profession, largely collaborative and low-profile. At least in America. But in the movie theater in France, amongst the movie trailers shown, a number mentioned the screenwriter. A few mentioned the screenwriter in conjunction with another film he/she wrote, (“i.e. From _____, the writer of _____.”) but just as many simply mentioned the same on its own. The latter is important; it means we’re expected to simply know who the screenwriter is. Which would mean that screenwriter receives much more credit in France. Meaning that the Nouvelle Vauge ain’t so Nouvelle any more. Whatever you think about the issue of whether the director is the most important person in the film (well, almost everyone seems to think he/she is), I enjoy the mention of the screenwriters. It takes away from the producers, whom I truly don’t care about. For me, only one producer matters: Jerry Bruckheimer, and that’s because I know exactly what kind of film I’ll be getting when I hear, “A Jerry Bruckheimer Production.” The rest? I’m sure they exercise great influence over the film, but I don’t see it.

Moving even more generally, French advertisements are quite different than in the United States. England, on the other hand, has very similar advertisements, to the extent that many of them are exactly the same except with British voice-overs. With France, though, it’s not a matter of the content being literally different but thematically similar, as it is with England (when they aren’t taking advertisements whole cloth). The style somehow seems older, more primitive. And what does look modern looks very peppy and enthusiastic. At least three company’s logos are nearly indistinguishable due to the similarity of their subjects: a jumping happy androgynous human being drawn from circles and imbued with color. France just isn’t as advertising-saturated as the US or England, which is a good thing.

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The beggars and the homeless of Paris are never long out of sight. But they are rarely heard. A few ask explicitly, but this is rare in my experience. The model appears to be a woman I saw in the subway: she had a penitent posture, almost as if in prayer, with a white cup placed in front of her. The beggars and the homeless have a nearly even gender balance, unlike the US, where the vast majority are men, in my experience. However, the men generally have a more raggedy, unkempt appearance, which earns them more centimes. The women, nearly all Muslim, dress to well to be condescended to and hence get no money.

Despite their numbers, the indigent are not nearly as much a problem in Paris as elsewhere. The beggars of New York are frequently mentally unbalanced and unstable. Neither appear to be the case in Paris. On the other hand, New York beggars are noticed; in Paris, beggars are part of the landscape. Just tonight, as I was coming home rather late, I saw a number of homeless people sleeping. One slept in the car; many others slept on the benches in the station. No one seemed to find this unusual except me.

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It’s been raining the past few days in Paris. If it were Rochester or Stanford, this would be a problem. Whether showering or merely drizzling, the rain is unpleasant and soaks your bones over there. Here in Paris, the rain seems as if it were created for a movie set: it evokes the feeling of rain at night but none of the uncomfortable side effects. You feel like Humphrey Bogart tramping about in his slicker or something.

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France hosts the Rugby World Cup this year. People are excited about it. Actually the second most common advertisement is for the event. Interesting, this, because one generally thinks of soccer dominating all other sports in Europe, but I see a number of people wearing rugby jerseys, so it’s not just a media creation. I haven’t watched a ton of rugby, but it seems less interesting to watch than football. Watching football is like watching a formalized baroque battle—you can almost see generals pushing about their troops on some map in the situation room. That’s why fans obsess over football strategy in a way that they don’t about basketball or baseball strategy. Rugby, though a close relative, doesn’t seem to have the same grand strategy to it.