I guess the way things look and what they mean really depends upon your viewpoint. From an American viewpoint, the conquest of the French fast-food market by McDonald’s could be a source of pride. It’s normal to think that one’s frame of reference is the right one or the best one. We even tend to confuse it with our idea of self. “Ethnocentric” as anthropologists would say. As an American immigrant living in France, transcending in some ways cultural references and their political usefulness, I find it kind of sad to see not the best, and perhaps the worst, of American culture, conquer France.
When I arrived in France in the mid seventies, one of the things I found charming was that a meal here was a valued moment of communion with family and friends. Even the food preparation was a collective ritual that enhanced the shared pleasure of the event.
The table was the center of a lifestyle based on quality ingredients, the skills and know-how of farmers, winemakers, and all sorts of local craftsmen, all of whom were celebrated in a daily way. The lunch break lasted between 2 to 3 hours, and a Sunday family meal could last nearly all afternoon.
Even before the socialist government, with a 40-hour workweek, the restaurants were open from 12 to 3pm and from 7 to 11pm and most stores open on Saturday were closed on Monday. It was a question of cultural rhythm in which family life was still a priority.
French eating habits were well structured, and the between meal snack just wasn’t a problem, as it is in the US. The number of obese persons and heart disease was dramatically fewer in France, in spite of the importance of the dinner table.
McDonald’s had already successfully invaded and conquered the fast-food market in numerous European countries, but was relatively absent in France. At the time, the principal advantage of fast-food restaurants, the rapidity of service, was not pertinent to the French way of life.
What’s rarely mentioned is the years of effort begun in the early eighties by McDonald’s to win the French child clientele, by offering quality toys with a Happy meal (that the kids never ate, yuk) and an enormous ad campaign. Years later those same kids are teenagers and young adults, still going to McDonald’s, even though they don’t get toys anymore, I guess by habit?
Today, in spite of the 35-hour workweek, the pace of urban living in France has accelerated to a point where eating has become, as in America, more of a disturbing obligation, distracting the population from it’s economic activity, rather than a time for exchange. In more and more couples, both members work in order to maintain social and economic standing, spending less and less time raising their children or even talking to each other.
In this context, taking the children to McDonald’s for a Happy meal and a “free” toy has perhaps become a guilty substitute for meaningful family relations.
For many Frenchmen, José Bové represents a needed effort to defend their cultural identity and the historic quality of a lifestyle that’s being relentlessly eroded as a simple obstacle in the marketing strategy of a junk food merchant.
When I see the American way of life advance in France, I sometimes wonder, who decides what is good enough in America to export? I fear the only ones who think about it are those whose business interests are concerned.
When I think about how the average American city is structured, with it’s “heart” left to rot in poverty and crime, where children have to join a gang and own a gun in order to protect themselves and survive, and where quality health care is a merchandise only the rich can afford, I have a hard time rejoicing over McDonald’s success, and the perspective of those values prevailing elsewhere in the world.
Désolé j'ai la flème à traduire un truc aussi longue. A l'origine c'était ma réponse à un membre de ma famille aux USA qui gloussé en m'envoyant un article de la presse américaine sur le succès de McDo en France.
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