Category — media

As my friend Marc Cogan commented in the previous post, the recent general strike had as its unofficial slogan Sarkozy’s comment, although this time directed back at him, “Casse-toi, pauv’ con” - “Bugger off, you sorry asshole.” Around two-thirds of the marchers were wearing this slogan in some form, and Marc managed to get a photo of one of them, wearing it stuck to her hair.

Statistics I heard on Radio France this week may help to put this in some context: over two million (7.8% of the population) are now unemployed in France, with youth being the hardest-hit demographic. This is much higher than in Australia, where we have over half a million, or 4.8%, unemployed.

Australian musicians Tristan Lee and Douglas Rutherford at the Musee de la Vie Romantique, Paris, January 27 2009.

I’ve never been a big fan of Australia Day. It’s supposed to mark the day in 1788 when Captain Arthur Phillip, who was the commander of the first fleet of British convict ships, arrived in Sydney. This was the start of the British invasion and occupation of what later came to be known as Australia.

Here in Paris, the Chamber Strings of Melbourne are in town to perform Australia Day concerts, one of which is being hosted by Université Paris Diderot, where I spent my sabbatical semester in 2007 teaching and researching in the department of Etudes Interculturelles et Langues Appliques.

It was a colleague from there who alerted me to the Melbourne group’s performance. By happy coincidence, my son—also a musician, studying in England—is staying with me for a few days, and has a very good friend among the visiting orchestra. The performance was in the elegant College Franco-Brittanique at the Cité Universitaire.

And where does one take two young musicians on the day after Australia Day ? To the Musée de la Vie Romantique of course, where they can imagine themselves as Liszt and Chopin, together with George Sand, visiting the Romantic artist Ary Scheffer who owned the house at the time and for thirty years ran his studio there, as well as his salon to which he welcomed artists and intellectuals.

I’m not in favour of beauty contests, but since no one seems to have managed to stop them, I will say that I think the new Miss France, Chloe Mortaud, is beautiful (am I the only one who thinks it ridiculous that it’s not Mademoiselle France?). There has been, however, a certain amount of ‘backbiting’ that would seem to be an inevitable part of such competitions (I do hope Aussie slang is understandable to my non-Aussie readers! If it’s not, please leave comments below).

To counter the gossip, Le Poste has interviewed Mademoiselle Mortaud, to give her the right to respond to the nastiness. Certainly not the most in-depth article of the week in the French media, I know, but one which gave me the opportunity to learn a few new phrases. At least I hope I have learned them correctly. Idiomatic expressions in a foreign language can be very difficult to get right. Please do correct me if I am wrong, using the comments section below.

First, there is the title of the article:

Miss France: “Je n’ai été méchante avec personne” = I’m not nasty to anyone.

Méchant/e = nasty, mean, bad, spiteful

Huer = to boo or jeer

Mettre en avant = to advance something, e.g. an argument

le côté = direction, way

metisse = mixed race

ringard = literally ‘fire iron’, so this sentence — ‘Certains attribuent un petit côté ringard à Miss France…‘ quite likely means : Certain people assign/impute a troubling side to Miss France [the contest]…