France 2.0 is “tres Americaine”

PARIS — A recent headline in Figaro proclaimed: World Ends; No Survivors. Actually, it said stores could now open on Sunday. But, for many, both amount to the same thing.

The French are not generally wild about being told what to do — or not do. Yet every week, it seems, the Juggernaut of global change mows down something sacred.

And now even Sunday lunch, where families bond and pass along tradition, is falling victim to people who see “24/7” as a universal measure of progress.

Take Gustave, the unhappy headhunter I met at a beachside cafe near St.-Tropez. Gentle and wry, he is old enough to recall his joy when Allies stormed Normandy.

He admires America but not its profit-obsessed model. As he sees it, an imported scourge of heartless executives, soulless technology and moralizing nanny-state authorities is ruining the nation that civilized the rest of us.

Because France apes the United States, he said, mass mediocrity blunts a quest for individual excellence. That old joie de vivre is waning fast. “France is now a police state, thanks to you Americans," he said. Gustave glanced around for cops before lighting his pipe and then grimaced at the big black words – Fumer Tue (Smoking Kills) – stuck onto the tobacco package.

“Everything is forbidden,” he said. “Liberte is over. Egalite? Hah. That’s for the rich. Big business and government run France. As for fraternite, forget it.”

Such grumbling at outside influence has made France French since Asterix directed rude gestures at the Romans. Yet there is some substance to the complaint.

France 2.0 still provides free healthcare and higher education for all. But, more and more, workers are seen as components of production rather than humans with families.

Global hard times are part of it. Gustave, for instance, finds plenty of talented heads but few corporate bodies on which to stick them.

In Paris and workaday cities from Lille to Marseille, visceral reaction to a meaner, leaner France has led to scattered violent protest.

Beyond the economy, people are seeing cultural underpinnings come loose. Surface signs suggest a tectonic shift deep down in the heart and belly of France.

When Domino’s first opened in Paris, its slogan seemed to be: “If your pizza is not there in 30 minutes, go (expletive) yourself.” Now there seems to be a celebration of fast food and there are Subways by the metro.

“Bree Van de Kamp” might earlier have evoked thoughts of misspelled cheese and Flemish masters. One channel just ran a 20-hour Desperate Housewives marathon — in English.

The venerable Academie Francaise tries lamely to turn hotdogs into sauci-pain or cornflakes into ble souffe. Yet this is not about language but rather the society itself.

Before computers, restaurant checks had no date, and phone bills listed partial numbers. If spouses cheated, neither the state nor private business ratted on them.

Such amusing sidelights are part of a larger picture in which the old French concept of “laissez-faire” — back off — fades into the background.

This unsettles even those of a fresh generation happy to relate to a wider world.

“Every day we lose more freedom, more respect for the individual, more of what made us different,” a young friend told me in the Provencal city of Draguignan.

He had restored my treasured Peugeot convertible, and I remarked that countless radar traps and patrols killed the Michelin-in-hand fun of driving in France.

I added that the unarmed gendarme who had just stopped me had none of that Robocop attitude so pervasive in America. But my friend had had a different encounter.

He was driving late at night — neither fast nor erratically, he said — and three gendarmes threw him to the ground and shoved a Taser in his ear. When he said, “We’re not in America,” one hit him so hard he had a bruise for weeks.

“Little by little, we are becoming what we see on TV,” he concluded. Sociologists argue to no general agreement. But outsiders who have watched France over the decades see clear trends.

As in America, 9/11 was a turning point. Beyond genuine fear of terrorists, authorities had a solid excuse to wield more power and remake French society.

Jacques Chirac, like all presidents since de Gaulle, ran France as an elected monarch. He imposed more state control but kept an eye on popular sensibilities.

Nicolas Sarkozy, of Napoleonic mien but with a technocrat’s soul, now steers a trickier course as French grandeur fades into a European Union and a global economy.

Much remains of the former. On Bastille Day, hearts pumped fast as jets streaked blue, red and white low over the little emperor’s Arc de Triomphe.

While a superpower flaunts high-tech weaponry, France cheers bearded men parading with axes and leather aprons, Foreign Legion sappers who fight their battles in person.

Fireworks blazed over the Eiffel Tower. As always, neighborhood dances jammed Paris firehouses.

At the center of things, however, liberte, egalite and fraternite were in short supply.

A chosen few got through fortress checkpoints to the reviewing stand. Along the route, hearty parents lifted kids on their shoulders behind layered barricades.

But many who once relished sights and sounds of their old glory stayed home by the TV. Like pipe tobacco, crowd-control cops in France 2.0 can be hazardous to your health.