The country that gave the world eclairs and croissants just welcomed Krispy Kreme Doughnuts with open arms.
PARIS – It isn’t new to lament the Americanization of France. While it may not be as old as the republic itself – however tidy that would sound – it is true to say that the French have worried forever about threats to their identity, more imagined than real.
That may be the reason France has harboured a healthy anti-Americanism, which flared, as it did everywhere, during the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. Mostly, though, it has been ambivalent, heartily denouncing things American while happily adopting them.
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It is a contradiction I first saw coming here as a backpacker 50 years ago. The distaste for the United States, largely from the left, thrived on the campuses. This was a fact.
But sitting at a café on Boulevard St-Germain, what was most striking? All those students from the Sorbonne wearing multi-coloured sweatshirts emblazoned with the names of those French seats of higher learning, such as the University of Virginia, Colby College and Penn State. Or posters in bus shelters announcing The Exorcist, the horror film, or later, Twin Peaks.
To these emblems of America, the cultural gendarmerie would shudder and shout: Quelle horreur!
It is safe to say that as long as the United States remains the world’s great cultural machine – purveyor of music, film, fashion and other instruments of influence – it will remain a threat to a certain constituency in France. Many worried about the arrival of chewing gum, Coca-Cola and blue jeans in the 1950s, and Euro Disney in 1990s, but none of those unravelled la République française.
In recent years, the worry among French intellectuals is importing American divisions over race, gender, ethnicity and history. They see this as a threat to the unity of the French state. In their aversion to this corrosive conversation, they have a point. Does France really want the American melodrama?
But leave that hifalutin debate for a moment, if you will, and consider the more insidious threat from the U.S. It is food – or more precisely, fast food – and it is everywhere in France.
Krispy Kreme Doughnuts opened in Paris last month to great applause. Hundreds lined up outside, some overnight, to be there when the first shop opened. Happy patrons emerged with boxes of the glazed confections, triumphant, officers of the new avant-garde cuisine.
In a country of croissants and pains au chocolat, the French love doughnuts. They could have éclairs or mille-feuilles, or any of a number of other delectables that come from the hand of artisans.
The éclair, you might even say, is why some come to France. Of this I have some knowledge. At its best, it is as stately as tasty. In the storied Maison Béchard in Aix-en-Provence, each is placed in a box with distinctive red paper and ribbon. It exudes a sense of ceremony.
No ribbon or wrapping paper with Krispy Kreme, which follows Popeyes, Burger King, Five Guys, Chipotle, Domino’s, KFC, Starbucks and others to open here. McDonald’s has 1,500 restaurants in France, its biggest market after the United States.
This in the land of the leisurely lunch, where food is to be savoured more than swallowed, wine sipped rather than gulped. France gave us the genius of Paul Bocuse, the innovative chef, and inspired Julia Child to write Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It is a country for which food is everything and everywhere, from the vendors of vegetables, cheese and tapenade in the daily open-air markets of Provence to the bouchons of Lyon.
“You can’t get a bad meal in France,” people used to say. You can and people do, but it’s rare.
So why the popularity of American fast food? Probably, say followers of trends, it is about pop culture celebrated in social media. A younger generation watching Netflix wants what they’re eating, and on The Simpsons, it’s doughnuts.
France won’t fall apart, and every day more of the French will opt for fromage and jambon on a baguette than a Big Mac for lunch. For all the handwringing here over arguing like Americans, the clear and present danger to the French is eating like them.
Andrew Cohen is a journalist and author of Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours That Made History.
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