Guillaume Rey said his dismissal represented a case of ‘discrimination against my culture’, which he said tended to be ‘more direct and expressive’. So, was he rude or just a bit too Gallic? What can we count as characteristic and what is offensive stereotype? What little I know about Vancouver stems from Helen in these comment pages; I imagine they’re very nice and sensitive to Euro-rudeness. As someone who used to live in France I cannot begin to explain the jaw-dropping conversations I’ve had with the French about sex and race.
I’ve heard it suggested that John Cleese’s German scene in ‘Fawlty Towers’ is racist. To reach this viewpoint you have to remove the scene from context, which is a fatally flawed approach. The show was made within living memory of the war, the provinces had had little experience of the Germans since then, and Cleese was ridiculing his main character, who considers himself sophisticated but is of course ludicrously provincial.
Countries do have clear cultural differences. I’ve always found Germans shockingly direct and have put this down to the way imperatives are used grammatically. The French have a much more limited vocabulary, which makes multiple meanings from simple sentences and soften language. The British have an astonishing command of conditionals, resulting in complex coding that often baffles Chinese business people.
Just as some of the novels featured in my ‘Book of Forgotten Authors’ are racially insensitive and actually racist it’s hard to separate time, location and social milieu which can help us understand
So, these hyper sensitised times how can we represent different cultures today? Perhaps by doing the most shocking thing; reversing stereotypes. Here’s my favourite reverse-stereotype joke;
A newly-arrived Irishman goes for a job on a building site. The foreman says he can have the job if he answers one question.
‘Do you know the difference between a joist and a girder.’
The Irishman says of course. ‘Joyce wrote Ulysses and Goethe wrote Faust.’