And there is a lot to love. I’ve lived here most of my adult life and I’m still discovering seductive new eccentricities and eye-opening facts.
Make no mistake—Paris has got where she is today because she has genuine star quality. And, unlike most movie stars, this becomes more obvious when you see her close up. She even looks great first thing in the morning with no make-up and the sleep still in her eyes. Which is not bad for a 2,000-year-old.
Stephen Clarke, Paris, January 2011
‘Welcome to Paris, you annoying tourist.’ In fact, most Parisian waiters are very polite, much to the annoyance of visitors hoping to go home with anecdotes about grumpy service.
1
PARISIANS
Dieu a inventé le Parisien pour que les étrangers ne puissent rien comprendre aux Français.
(God invented Parisians so that foreigners wouldn’t understand the French.)
ALEXANDRE DUMAS THE YOUNGER,
NINETEENTH-CENTURY WRITER
Paris is full of Parisians
PARISIANS HAVE a terrible reputation for being self-centred, rude and aggressive, and the worst thing is that they’re actually proud of it. A few years ago, the daily newspaper Le Parisien made a series of commercials that were shown in cinemas. As the paper is the local version of the national Aujourd’hui, the ads were obviously aimed at Parisians themselves.
One of the films shows a pair of lost Japanese tourists begging for help from a middle-aged Parisian man. He stares blankly at them as they point at their map and valiantly try to pronounce ‘Eiffel’. Then, when the penny drops, he points them back along the way they came, and they thank him as if he’d just saved their lives. He goes off in the other direction, turns the street corner, and there, looming large, is the tower. The Parisian deliberately sent the tourists the wrong way. Cue the punchline, Le Parisien, il vaut mieux l’avoir en journal—The Parisian, it’s better to have it as a newspaper.
Another ad shows a respectable-looking man peeing against the outside of a public toilet. He zips up, walks away and smiles innocently at a woman whose shopping bag is standing in the rivulet of urine he’s just created.
Then there’s the one in which a guy strides quickly to a supermarket checkout, cutting in front of the little old lady with her meagre supply of groceries. He has been waiting in line for a few seconds when his wife turns up pushing a huge, overloaded trolley. The Parisian shrugs to the horrified old lady as if to say, well I did get here first. Cue the punchline.
And the funniest thing was that every time I saw one of these ads in a Parisian cinema, it got a huge laugh. I was astonished - it was as though the New York Times had put together a campaign saying that the paper was like its readers—thick and opinionated.
But Parisians don’t mind the insult at all. On the contrary, they love to think of themselves as anti-social pushers-in, always trying to get one over on anyone gullible enough to fall for their tricks.
They even enjoyed the ad that went too far. In this one, a tall, chic Parisian businessman is seen leaving a café. He grudgingly accepts a business card from a small, subservient type who is leaving with him (from his grovelling demeanour, the little guy has to be a provincial). The Parisian goes to his flashy 4WD, reverses and hits a parked car. He’s been seen by everyone sitting at the café terrace. He gets out to inspect the damage—his car is fine but he has dented the other car—and has a brainwave. He takes the little guy’s business card out of his breast pocket, holds it up to show everyone what an honest fellow he is, and slips it under the windscreen wipers. The little loser is going to take the blame. One up for the totally amoral, treacherous Parisian, and the city’s movie-goers cheered.
Who actually likes the Parisiens?
A survey in early 2010 by Marianne, a national news magazine, asked its readers what they thought of Parisians, and the answer was a typically French contradiction.
Overall, provincials had a bonne opinion of the capital-dwellers, recognizing that they were sophisticated, well-educated and trendy—while also showering them with insults.
The survey found that Parisians were seen as arrogant, aggressive, stressed, snobbish and self-obsessed, as well as being much less generous, tolerant, light-hearted and welcoming than people from the provinces.
But was the Marianne survey accurate, or just a reflection of the clichés bandied about in the media (including those Le Parisien newspaper ads)?
Parisians certainly think of themselves as a race apart, probably because the city is separated from its suburbs not only by its postcodes, which all start with ‘75’, but also by physical barriers. The boulevard périphérique, the ring road that encircles Paris, is lined for much of its length with high-rise HLMs—habitations à loyer modéré (low-cost housing) —the modern version of the old city ramparts. And even though the walls have long disappeared, the twenty arrondissements comprising Paris itself are still referred to as intra muros—inside the walls. No wonder Parisians are considered snobbish—they’re using a medieval term to distinguish themselves from anyone unfortunate enough to live outside the périph’ (the abbreviation commonly used by the locals).
This sense of geographical uniqueness does seem a bit exaggerated, though. After all, a commuter who lives, say, 10 kilometres from Notre-Dame is still going to be pretty Parisian, even if he or she does live on the ‘wrong’ side of the périph’.
And commuting and working are at the root of the Parisians’ famous aggression. That man pushing past you on the métro, or snarling at you when you ask directions in the street, probably got up at six that morning, wedged himself into a suburban train and/or a métro carriage, stood for forty minutes with his nose in someone else’s armpit while the carriage jerked his spine out of shape, and then
