Today’s Earworm
By Mitch Berg
Yeah, I know. It’s French. Although since Sarkozy took office, that’s not been anywhere nearly as derogatory as it was for much of our adult lives.
And not only is it among the most aggressively bloodthirsty national anthems in the world (the choruses end “To arms, citizens! Form your battalions! We’ll march! We’ll march, and water our fields with the blood of the impure!”), but it is a living artifact the French Revolution, a time when “liberal” populism was co-opted by “A Better France” into an epic horror, of show trials and pseudo-judicial mass-murder in the name of rule by men, not laws, of a type that served as a model for every blood-sucking tyrant, singular or group, that ever followed.
Still, this version of France’s national hymn, “La Marseillaise” (which is apparently French for “Yes, We Can!”) by Mireille Mathieu – “the Sparrow of Avignon” – has been my non-stop earworm for the past week.
And it’s a wonderful version of that vainglorious, blood-soaked tune for so many reasons.
Golly: It was recorded at the height of Charles DeGaulle’s Gallocentric era, when France may have marched to the beat of its own percussionniste, but in marched with a purpose. It was a time when the French – including pop-culteur icons like Mathieu – could sing unabashedly patriotic music without slathering it with post-modern irony.
Rdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrd – I never took French. Oh, I hitchiked around France, getting by on my year each of high-school Latin and Spanish, my German accent, and my lack of fear of looking like an idiot in a foreign language. I could read things pretty well, and when I tried to speak, people at best figured out what I was saying, and at worst heard my fluent German accent and at least figured I wasn’t a Yanque, so they cut me a break. But real speakers of French have always tittered at my accent, especially since I roll my “r”s in a way that people who learn Parisian French – which is most of vous – do not.
So listen to Matheiu wrap that Avignon accent ardrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdround the song, and rdrdrdrdrdrdroll those Rs. “Mardrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdchons! Mardrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdchons! She sounds like a six-barreled minigun! Glordrdrdrdrdrdrdrieuse!
Frappe-O-Licious!: The more world politics I see, the more I realize the sheer worth of enlightened self-interest, both for individuals and nations. And yeah, I know – “enlightened” and “French” aren’t usually in the same Zip code. But bonne golly, this is a version that’d make a gallic Chuck Norris or Jack Bauer or Audie Murphy sit up at attention, and jump-start the cold, post-ironic heart of the most cynical Sorbonne academic trash. It makes me marginally less ashamed of my family’s own partly Quebecois roots.
It was the first time I’d seen this song delivered outside of a fundamentally American context – which I can also not stop humming, by the way, although I guess that’s fairly obvious, since it’s the same song…
Anyway – Vive le cul-coups de pied!
November 29th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
I’ve worked with several Frenchmen. “Francois” was a socialist. The only time we ever came close to talking politics was in the aftermath of the 2000 election. We had to share a car to visit a remote site, and so we were stuck together for an hour or two. Francois said that the French election system was superior to the American system, and that the tie between Gore and Bush could never happen in France!
I asked him if it was true that the French were on their 5th Republic. He vigorously affirmed this, and we changed the topic.
He did not seem to sense any irony at all in my question.
November 29th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
I remember learning this song in French class eons ago and wondering at just how bloody it really was. But then again, few people here know much less sing the third verse of our anthem anymore. Still, by any measure La Marseillaise makes the Star Spangled Banner look bloodless.
And if there’s anything to teach you the wisdom and exceptionalism of our Founders, consider the difference between how the American Revolution went and the French Revolution (which started only 6 years after the American Revolution ended).
November 30th, 2010 at 6:45 am
That’s a song that puts shivers up my spine, and I’m not even French. I like the version in “Casablanca” when resistance champion Victor Lazlo leads the patrons of Rick’s cafe as they morph a German drinking song into the Marseillaise. Pretty cool stuff, patriotism. Would that our lefty friends could experience it.