France Arts And Culture
Are French people as uptight and snooty as they are depicted to be?
When I think of France and French culture, the obvious things come to mind: art, fantastic architecture, the most beautiful language in the world, fashion and class. But, along with those, I see French people as rather snooty and stiff. Is this way off the mark? Are they actually laid back and humourous?
Probably not laid back, no. We are still very old fashion and follow strict politeness rules that can be cause for misunderstanding and the most laid back French will still stick to those rules. Here are a few of them: We don't grin to strangers, it's not polite. We always say bonjour to someone we meet or want to ask a question to, not doing it is rude, we don't grab people in the street, say 'hey you', and don't appreciate people who very rudely holler in everyone's ear instead of talking quietly. The answer to all those things it to be stiff and cold and unhelpful. Which means that when a foreign tourist arrives hollering 'hey', with a huge toothy grin, sometimes grabbing you by the arm, and babbles immediately a question in his language... we lash back. And then we are called rude.
Passed that sligthly exxagerated example, our habit to never smile to people we don't know can be badly taken by people whose culture make them smile to everybody. Even if the French person is very polite it is perceived as being rude.
As well, many tourists don't go further than Paris and consider it a good representation of France. Parisians are as smiling and helpful as New Yorkers. The city itself has only 2 millions inhabitants, the parisian metropolitan area has 12 million inhabitants. Lots of people, lots of running, not much time to stop and be nice to the tourists when you're running to your daily job. As there's 60 other millions French people you can see that using Parisians as a exemple for all France is not a good idea but that's what people do.
Once passed the 'stranger' square, you'll see a totally different person hidden behind the public face. Among friends we laugh, we grin, we joke, we have fun, we grab each other, we can even be loud.
As for humour, the French sense of humour is different from yours. We do appreciate comedy and such, but we absolutely love plays on words (nearly but not quite puns) that are untranslatable and we have a more acidic sense of humour. Here is a good article on how to try to explain French humour to non French.
http://www.economist.com/node/2281647
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