Not really. The Marseillaise is too rousing and formal to use as a casual introduction, particularly it’s opening notes. For the stereotypical scene you describe- a guy with a thin mustache wearing a ‘mime’ shirt and a beret sipping wine in front of a cafe, just some generic French-sounding ‘squeezebox’ music will do.
The opening scene from *Team America *is a good example. Just the very first few seconds, then it turns into generic, dreamy, Hollywood music.
And some of us are a bit isolated from other Americans.
My mental image of the French is different, but other than that what he said. The tricolor (yes, there are tons of other tricolored flags, but that’s the one we call the tricolor unless we’re talking Spanish revolutions), preferably borne by La Révolution en demi-topless leading the masses, the Eiffel tower, the Arc de Triomphe (he lost in Bailén*, guys :p), cathedrals, foie-gras…
Perhaps* a propos *(ha) of nothing: note that the Beatles’ version is altered from the original – the original’s first three notes are changed to just two, with a different rhythm and (for one of the notes) a different pitch.
Just to be clear, when mentioning the French mime meme and the rest, that was tongue in cheek ;). I’ve been to France and have a more balanced view of the country and people.
Seriously, I challenge any of you to watch a few episodes of Impractical Jokers, then tell me this is the kind of joke they’d do. At the very least if they did play the wrong music on purpose, they would have crowed about it 3 seconds later.
See, that’s another perfect example of how almost all us Americans think of ‘History’ as meaning American History, not World History. If you showed a tricolor to American grade school kids (and, sadly, older ones) few if any would recognize it as the flag of France. They would think it was some kind of Fourth of July decoration, with the colors backwards for some reason (i.e. blue, white & red).