We fought two wars with the Brits. We fought two wars with the Germans. We fought one war with the North Vietnamese. We fought one war with Spain. We fought one war with Mexico. We tried to invade Canada. And we even fought each other in a massive bloodletting.
And nowadays we get along famously with all these countries and peoples.
One country we have NEVER fought a war with is France.
Plus …we wouldn’t even be an independent nation if France hadn’t saved our asses during the Revolutionary War.
So why is there such bad feeling by so many Americans towards the French?
The French = surrender monkeys. The French are dirty and smelly. The French are snobbish. And on and on.
I realize the French possibly gave up too soon during WW2. But to disparage the French fighting ability from the nation that almost conquered the world under Napoleon? And fought like tigers during WW1?
Hey …give a nation a break I say.
It seems some of us only like peoples we have fought in wars whether we won or lost.
An always friend like France is something to be disparaged it seems.
I don’t know if there is a factual answer to this, but I think it’s mostly among conservatives. France sort of went it’s won way in NATO, and wasn’t a full ally like they would like. For instance, not allowing US planes to fly over French air space when Reagan bombed Libya.
And although there is the famous meme that French look down on American tourists who don’t speak French, I’ve spent lots of time in France, and never experience that to any significant degree.
n.b.: I’m not endorsing the conservative American view, just reporting about it. And I’m an American who likes France and the French, so I may be biased.
It’s not just Americans. I attended a pub quiz here in Bangkok once in which one of the questions was: “What was last used in France in 1975?” The answer was the guillotine, but one Brit shouted out “Soap!” to raucous applause from the mostly Brit crowd.
Yep. From ~850 on, German armies mostly fought other German armies. From ~1700 on, German armies fought with many allies gainst the French and sometimes kinda won, sometimes lost. In 1864, the two German Great Powers fought small Denmark and won, in 1866 they fought each other (again). Then, in 1870, for the first time, the German side without allies beat the French armies fair and square. WWI and WWII, Germany lost.
So, while France could be said to have had a mixed martial history, the military prowess of Germany certainly is a stupid myth. Or a remainder of nationalistic Wilhelmine legend.
Actually, the French really didn’t give up too early in WWII. When your enemy is marching toward your undefended capital, the war is lost. The government knew it had no choice but surrender and brought in Petain because they didn’t want to be the ones to do it.
I think it boils down to Charles de Gaulle. In the 60s, he stressed the greatness of France, so much so that they became obnoxious about it. It set up the stereotype and that hasn’t gone away (despite the fact that, even if it were true then, it’s not true today).
I actually think that is mostly it. The French are fine (I grew up appreciating French history in Louisiana) but Britain is a much more close ally to the U.S. and they don’t like each other so the prejudice spills over a little. The French have always been a little bit of an outside power. They backed the Americans during the Revolutionary War and the South during the Civil War. Some of the more modern deals made since then with middle eastern powers don’t really fit with our ideals.
I don’t think most Americans hate France judging by the number of Americans on Parisian streets. I think it becomes more an issue with the ‘uncanny valley’ like the problem in video. They are almost like the U.S. but not quite enough and it can be disconcerting to some people. They do like their culture and I can’t fault them for that.
However, I have never had a bad experience in any part of France and I have been there many times. I don’t speak anything but the most basic French and all of the younger people speak English as far as I can tell or at least they can grab someone that can. I have spent days walking around Paris as well as the French countryside without an issue.
One of the things that probably sets obnoxious American tourists off is that their customer service standards are not the same as ours. Some places close during normal American lunch hours and the servers aren’t as peppy as you get as a typical American Applebee’s. There is also special American seating in some restaurants in Paris that give sub-par food for inflated prices but my ex-wife knows all about France and speaks the language fluently so we just told them them that wasn’t accepable and they put us in regular seating. True French food is outstanding but I can imagine enough Americans complain about it that they just don’t want to deal with the issue anymore.
French people aren’t huge on working tough schedules either and some consider that anti-American.They will strike on a whim no matter who it affects. My ex-wife was taking a gourmet cheese tour of buyers on a trip a few years ago when the truckers went on strike and blocked all the roads. They were stuck there for 8 hours until she could negotiate a way through.
I love France but it isn’t the U.S. The have their issues but also some outstanding points. That is one gorgeous country with beautiful and intelligent people in general.
If the French were decent people, they would speak English, and stop pretending that their gibberish holds a candle to English. The Brits at least try to speak our language and make themselves understood.
I don’t even think they gave up too early in WWII; they’d pretty much been conclusively beaten, and continuing to fight would have just got a lot of French troops killed to no good end.
I think the main reasons that current-day American would have an axe to grind with France, is that France has consistently been somewhat of a contrarian nation to the rest of the West since the end of WWII. It’s a legacy of de Gaulle, I think.
Anyway, by this I mean that the French publicly bailed out of NATO, they forbade overflights to US forces on their way to bomb Libya, they didn’t join the coalition in 2003.
Economically, they tend to act as if they consider themselves as part of the EU and Eurozone to be some sort of counterbalance to the US and the US Dollar, which means they do some kind of adversarial stuff in that arena as well.
Personally, I think it’s not so much what they do that pisses people off, it’s how they go about it- there always seems to be a certain snooty attitude about us like we’re half-retarded children.
I’ve been told the French are smelly and rude, that they get mad if you speak English, or if you speak French with the slightest flaw. I get the idea from this board that it isn’t really true and I don’t know how the stereotype got started, but it gets passed around in America a lot so people believe it. My sister says I need to speak French if we ever go there, but I’m not even going to try as I never got to the point where I can really understand spoken French.
My understanding is that in a sit down restaurant you call over the waiter by saying “Garcon” when you want to order, Americans that don’t understand that could perceive the French as lazy and rude".
France (or at least some of their actions) gives the impression that it’s very nationalistic, that it wants to throw off American influence on their culture, and seems to want to try to prevent subcultures in their society from being anything but French. I think that irritates Americans quite a bit. Plus the de Gaull thing and going their own way was pretty annoying. It seems the French manage to annoy a bunch of people because the Brits don’t like them much either.
I’ve been to France many times, and I’ve only encountered one rude French woman. And nobody, including her, smelled bad. I’ve found them to be courteous, helpful and patient. I wish I could say the same for some American tourists. Or worse, Germans.
I think that much of the problem is that the French don’t suck up enough to America to make America happy.
One comment I’ve heard in the past is that many foreign tourists get their ideas of French arrogance & obnoxiousness while visiting Paris, whose inhabitants are supposedly regarded as arrogant & obnoxious by other French as well.
I think it is because American food is famously bland slop out of cans and French food is famously seductively wonderful and refined. The French are svelte chic dressers and Americans wear jackass shorts and are fat. The French look down on American crassness and mediocrity. The crass mediocre bland slop eaters of America feel rightly insulted.
See: East Coast Elitists who think education makes them better than us, and West Coast Hedonists who hate family values.
Also, French is really hard to pronounce, and you can watch a whole French movie in which nothing happens at all. What’s not to hate?
Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if this attitude (coming to us via the British) dates all the way back to the Norman invasion of England. I’ve heard that the Anglo-Saxons considered the French/Norman invaders (who established themselves as the ruling class) to be prissy and dandified. The ongoing issues in Quebec probably play directly into American stereotypes about the French as well.