The French are Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys
Comedians, Pop Culture - Tweet this! February 8th, 2010The 5 Most Statistically Full of Shit National Stereotypes by Cezary Jan Strusiewicz.
Read the rest of the entry at Cracked.com!
Comments on this website are the responsibility of their authors and are subject to the Blog Comment Rules.
May 31st, 2010 at 2:20 pm
Quite funny. A bit factually incorrect though. Is it right to talk about ‘France’ as far back as 387bc?!
As a student of French I regularly TRADE banter with my French counterparts. We Brits are perfectly happy to be called reserved, unexciting and a nation of alcoholics. We smile as our French friends pass jocular judgement on the lunacy and obsolescence of wall-to-wall carpets in every room. Our food is mercilessly derided. We dish out the standard ‘frog’ and ‘cheese eating surrender monkey’ jibes, and invoke the arrogant, work shy garlic-perfumed stereotype that all parties know full well to be ill-informed, and then we all laugh.
None of my french friends really belive that our food is inedible, or that we are emotional retards, any more than we believe that there is any substance in our jokes about them. Sensitivity to cultural stereotypes is no better than whatever backward, xenophobic sentiment that may or may not lie behind them, especially when you are talking about a phrase (cheese eating etc) that is rarely used without irony. Laugh it off and carry on, or risk becoming dangerously disconnected from reality. Whatever happened to france being a mouse with the skin of an elephant?
May 31st, 2010 at 5:28 pm
“Quite funny. A bit factually incorrect though. Is it right to talk about ‘France’ as far back as 387bc?! ”
Well, some americans obviously think so. RRemember that “complete military history of France” (very incomplete) list that was circulating on the net in 2003? It also included things dating from before the term France even existed (I’m pretty sure that France didn’t exist in the times of Julius Caesar).
As for “laugh it off and carry on”, that was also the tactics my parents told me to use against bullies. It never worked. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: it gives you a reputation for being an easy target.
And let’s face it, most people posting the “Cheese-eating surrender monkey” on the net really believe that it’s true.
BTW, the italian americans faced a similar problem way back in the seventies, with all the Mafia references. They didn’t take it lying low. They organized and got results. Now, no comedian would dare do a joke linking an italian american with the mob. Maybe we should do the same.
June 28th, 2010 at 5:57 pm
“”We Brits are perfectly happy to be called reserved, unexciting and a nation of alcoholics. We smile as our French friends pass jocular judgement on the lunacy and obsolescence of wall-to-wall carpets in every room. Our food is mercilessly derided.”"
Oh my God, wall to wall carpet. Yeah that’s super offensive
As equally offensive as calling people cowards and smelly among other things.