Post #569162 by Club Nouméa on Fri, Dec 17, 2010 7:13 PM

On 2010-12-17 08:49, bigbrotiki wrote:

I am very fascinated by another country that for all intent and purposes SHOULD have had a thriving Polynesian pop culture: France. Just like America "owned" Hawaii, they always had THE idealized South Seas paradise, TAHITI! They have the distance, and they have an established pre-poly pop history of idealization with Gauguin and Pierre Loti. So WHY do they have no Polynesian pop worth mentioning in France? Clearly a case of the above mentioned "cultural sensitivity", the bane of the century-old keepers of high culture in Europe, the disdain for plebeian popular, i.e. "bad", taste. Americans in turn had a carefree, boyish sense of wonderment for Polynesia and freely lived it.

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2010-12-17 14:54 ]

France is an interesting case, because its Polynesian territories (French Polynesia, Wallis & Futuna) were minor parts of a global empire. From the late 18th century onwards, French philosophes and intellectuals appropriated Tahiti as an idealised concept synonymous with utopia, but this doesn't seem to have had much resonance in the French popular imagination in the 19th and 20th centuries.

If you look at French pulp fiction, comic books, advertising, films and stage and even radio plays, you will find that darkest Africa, the burning sands of North Africa, and even Indochina had far more resonance than Polynesia, and they still do. There was no level of direct contact between the mainland French population and the French Pacific that is comparable to the huge numbers of US servicemen who visited the South Pacific in WWII and returned home full of nostalgia for the South Seas. Yes, French civil servants, soldiers, sailors etc. served there, but they were (and are still) far fewer in number than those who served in Africa, for example.

Even in the age of jet travel, comparatively few French people travel to that part of the world. French Polynesia is an expensive destination for French tourists when compared with "Club Med" style destinations in North Africa, the Caribbean, or even the Indian Ocean. Due to its remoteness and high cost of living, French Polynesia has had trouble fulfilling its ambitious projections regarding tourist arrivals for decades and its tourist trade would have collapsed long ago were it not for US and Asian tourists.

To this day, next to nothing is taught about the South Pacific in French schools, even though New Caledonia, Wallis & Futuna, and French Polynesia now constitute substantial parts of the much-reduced French global empire, or DOM-TOM ("Overseas Departments and Territories") as they prefer to call them in these "post-colonial" days. French Polynesia alone has a maritime zone larger than Continental Europe...

So these are all factors that contribute to explaining why the mainland French do not have tiki bars and restaurants as a substantial part of their popular culture.

CN

Toto, j'ai l'impression que nous ne sommes plus au Kansas !

[ Edited by: Club Nouméa 2010-12-17 19:25 ]

[ Edited by: Club Nouméa 2010-12-17 19:29 ]