French Culture vs. Spanish Culture: You Be the Judge

In My Humble Opinion
1

Alright, so. I’m sitting around the house. Surfing the SDMB. Wearing my Paris shirt. With my copies of Les Miserables and Stories by Maupassant beside me. Having seen a medley of French movies (albeit, in French class.) This very pro-French viewpoint was bound to get me into trouble.

Enter: Jester. When his pro-Spanish viewpoint came into contact with me…well, it isn’t pretty.

So let’s debate French and Spanish culture.

We both make good points in this conversation below. (I make more, but hey, who’s counting?) Oh yeah, conversation edited severely because otherwise you’d get mad and stop reading because it was too long.
FenchurchIV: Did i tell you about that other French movie I saw?
FenchurchIV: 'twas good.
Mojo530: No, you didn’t.
Mojo530: What was it.
FenchurchIV: Tous Les Matins Du Monde
FenchurchIV: you’ve never heard of it. but thats okay
Mojo530: Fun.
Mojo530: True, true.
FenchurchIV: It was about music and passion.
Next we’re going to watch a film, French Postcards, and another, La Femme Nikita
Mojo530: Hey! I know that last one.
FenchurchIV: :slight_smile: Ya DO?! Ah. finally.
Mojo530: And yes, the movie, not the series. I got it for Deiket for her birthday.
FenchurchIV: Ohh cool. So you have heard of some French movies.
Mojo530: Some.
Mojo530: Meaning one.
FenchurchIV: :slight_smile:
FenchurchIV: i’m guessing you take…Spanish, am i correct?
Mojo530: Bingo.
FenchurchIV: i don’t think they have quite the culture as the French…
Mojo530: What are you talking about?!
Mojo530: Spaniards have culture out the wazoo.
FenchurchIV: Come on, name me Spanish movies, authors, paintings, artists…
Mojo530: Salvador Dali.
FenchurchIV: Well, okay. But can Dali rival the impressionists? ::the dead ghosts of Monet, Degas, and Renoir appear behind Zoggie::
Mojo530: Gregorio Lopez.
Mojo530: (Writer)
FenchurchIV: (I know. Well okay i didn’t.)
FenchurchIV: Keep going.
FenchurchIV: Can your writers rival: Antoine de St. Exupery? Guy de Maupassant? Balzac? Moliere?
Mojo530: Eva Perron. Not really artist, but a damn good leader.
Mojo530: Gloria Estefan.
FenchurchIV: Colette? Emile Zola?
Mojo530: Well, maybe not her.
FenchurchIV: GLORIA ESTEFAN?!
FenchurchIV: Are you kidding me? This just proves it.
Mojo530: Alright, then, tell me this?
FenchurchIV: Yes, what?
Mojo530: Why has France kept its influence in Europe, while Spain’s “nonexistant” culture has influenced almost all of South America, Mexico, an uncountable number of Islands, and America?
FenchurchIV: Ah, well. The French are wise.
FenchurchIV: They are sagcious. They are aware that Americans will not be able to fully embody and appreciate their culture.
Mojo530: Or be able to keep out of wars when they can’t fight for more than five minutes without surrendering?
FenchurchIV: For example. Yourself. You said with your own words, that Indochine was a “chick flick.” It’s American attitudes like this that prevent the French culture from oozin in.
Mojo530: No, it’s French arrogance that keeps French culture from oozing in.
FenchurchIV: But ill tell you what. I’ll post this conversation to a SD thread. Lets let the Dopers decide, shall we?
Mojo530: Go for it.

2

Well, the Spanish had Cervantes.

3

And what about Velasquez, Goya, Picasso, Miro, Gaudi, Garcia Lorca, Lope de Vega, Perez Galdos, Bunuel, Almodovar …? And those are just the Spaniards. If you’re willing to let him count Latin America as well (and it certainly sounds like he’s trying), I think he wins.

4
      • Well here’s my take on it all:
  1. Spanish chicks have moustaches and act like they don’t, French chicks wax theirs off and then pretend that it was never there.
    2.Spanish chicks tend to be better-looking but Catholic and are rarely easy; French chicks are a bit easier but more mangy-looking, and they bathe less.
    3.The Spanish are to blame (in a roundabout sort-of-way) for Menudo and consequently Ricky Martin; the French foisted that Gerard big-nose guy actor over here (we retaliated with Mickey Mouse, but that still leaves Spain up one: BarneyWorld? TeletubbyWorld? Hmmm…)
    4.The French are always running around African sheetholes trying to keep the peace where peace hasn’t been seen in centuries; I have no idea what the Spanish military does for a living -I think they hide, or they’re all just cardboard cutouts.
  2. France: McDonalds!!! Ha ha ha! Suck it up, monseur! Spain: Get really drunk and sleep, the bulldozers are just over the horizon. Someday we’ll run your country, too.
    -I think that about covers it. - MC
5

I am personally a fan of French culture. La Femme Nikita happens to be one of my favorite flicks (Thus Jester buying it for my b-day)
Also, French food is the best. I’m not a fan of Spanish cuisine…

All in all, though, Spanish beats French in language. The French language, though pretty, can’t hold a candle to Spanish.

6

Yes, I think that Latin America is legal, since hey, it’s a culture thing, not a location issue.

Oh, and I thought of another example. As far as going out in style is concerned, nobody could do it better than Lupe Velez! :smiley: (Man, **Eve’s gonna kill me for that).

7

Oh come on. Latin America? That’s a bit of a stretch. Are you really so desperate for culture that you have to go to South America? Yeesh.

8

Ahem…I think Latin America is a different culture from Spanish culture(just like the US have a different culture form the UK, and they share the same language). In fact, each country has their own culture, at least those that speak Spanish. They do share somethings (Spanish language, they were conquered by the Spain, they were a colony of Spain). If you’re reffering to Spain, dude it’s not that one culture is better than other, but they do have a culture(something every nation has, wether u like it or not) and great artists and painters. I’m currently taking a Spain Literature course, and they have some good works, like El Cid, La Celestina(Fernando de Rojas, a Jew that converted to Catholicism), Lazarillo de Tormes, Don Quixote(Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra), El Burlador de Sevilla(the original work from which the mithology of Don Juan comes, by Tirso de Molina), several works from Lope de Vega, La vida es un sueño(Pedro Calderón de la Barca, a drama of fate vs. freedom of choice). It also has poets like Antonio Machado, Miguel Hernández, Gustavo Adolfo Béquer, and others. About the paint…Goya, Picasso, Velázques, El Greco. Music: Joan Manuel Serrat (technically, he and Picasso arent real Spaniards, they are from Cataluña, an autonomous region of Spain) Movies: La buena vida, Carne trémula, La celestina, movies by Pedro Almodóvar. Many others, just the first that come to my mind.

About Latin America literature in general, since I also took a course about it: The contemporary works of Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, Isabel Allende, the poems of Octavio Paz, Sor Juana Inés, Alfonsina Storni, the essays of José Martí, Eugenio María de Hostos, other writers like Horacio Quiroga, Simón Bolívar(yes, the liberator also wrote essays). From my own culture, the poems of Luis Lloréns Torres, Julia de Burgos, the works of Luis Rafael Sánchez and much more. Music: Silvio Rodríguez, Mercedes Sosa, Pablo Milanés and others(not your usual pop act, serious music with a message)Paintings:I’ll say the both I know from my culture: Francisco Oller(who studied from the French painters of the era) and José Campeche.

For the end… Spanish language IMHO, is the most beautiful language that exists(i love all languages, btw)so rich in forms, so expressive, so musical…

9

Awwwwwwwwwww…man, put to shame by a…by a…dare I say it…a NEWBIE?!

Hell, couldn’t have been done any better. Welcome, KarlGrenze. I Hope you stick around, cause it seems that ignorance has a new enemy.

10

Oui.

I guess I kind of think that Spanish culture is existant, though no other culture (be it British, Italian, Russian, or…well, that will suffice) will make my love for France abate. Though I am partial to American movies (I mean, without America, we’d have no Pulp Fiction, no Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, no PSYCHO, no Exorcist). And without America, we’d have no Powerpuffs, and no Stephen King.

I suppose nearly all cultures are worth learning about.

Je t’aime, Jester. :slight_smile:

11

KarlGrenze, you write of Latin American literature and omit Jorge Luis Borges???

Neither France, nor any other country has ever seen a writer like him. One of a kind. The finest.

12

True, I did not include Jorge Luis Borges, but I wrote only those that first came into my mind, i.e. those authors whose works I have read or artists whose paintings I’ve seen. There are other good writers, artists, musicians that I did not mention. That was just a small example.

13

I’ll say this for Argentina: any country that can produce Borges in literature, and Alberto Ginastera and Gato Barbieri* in music, has earned its place in world civilization.

[sub]I’m thinking of Barbieri’s brilliant, mindblowing recordings on the Impulse! label in the early 1970s, like Chapter One: Latino America — not the schlock he’s been doing in recent years.*