Capitol ideas/Burgers on the Left Bank
Bethell, Tom
C A P I T 0 L I D E A S ~ r 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 ~2e e - . e e 6 e . * e e o e e c e . . e o e e o . c e e e e o...
...Bourgeois Shock had been registered[ Mission accomplished...
...He kept us in the dark fight to the end...
...As a part of its thirty years of experimental film, the Cine'matheque fran~aise was showing on Wednesday 6 THE AMERICAN SPEcTATOR JANUARY 1983 Pursuit to Algiers by R.W...
...Here was French culture, still alive and well...
...I suppose they were emulating Marcel Marceau, the greatest gesticulator (and bore) of them all...
...For years he had been in failing Adapted from RET's weekly Washin g to n Po s t c olu m n sy n dic a t e d by King Features...
...It costs billions of rubles to hold off the invading armies menacing Soviet borders...
...I le~ Manhattan Burger and made my way to the Ile de la Cit~, the island on the Seine which contains some very famous old buildings...
...Friends, you have to pay good " money to get into this Mus~e--18 francs for a full-day pass--but if, for example, you have a keen interest in le film AmJricain, it's a bargain...
...Neill (USA, 1945), and Our Da@ Bread by King Vidor (USA, 1934...
...There is a display denouncing La Dictature Uruguayenne, complete with pictures of nine "otages"---Tupamaros nasties someone seems" to have put behind bars, no doubt thereby displaying sound common sense...
...It is just that since the doctors' hours before they could be sure...
...I'm afraid it's true that they have been culturally colonized to some extent, but really, if Lang can't keep American influence out of his own Centre National d'Art et de Culture, birds, objects trouves in latrines, cannon balls, canned b a l l s . . . Freudian surrealism, roric smudges and Rorschach blots--all of it as corny in its own right as the academic 'September Morns' and 'Florentine Flowergirls' of half a century ago...
...Yes, folding, exposed innards, stacks, and but we all knew that that business d chutes, with the Parisian addition of about the " p r o l e t a r i a t " was not big 1930s-style transatlantic liner meantto be taken too seriously...
...For those who like to play cultural parlor games, they even have "The Westerners: A Picture Quiz Book," with 238 stills...
...Do you ever get that feeling when you enter an art museum that you have invisible 100pound weights attached to both legs...
...He thought that this empire was trying to impose "a uniform way of life on the whole planet," in the process constituting a grave threat to such nations as Cuba, "a valuable country that is building a new society...
...Orson Welles looks portentously out at you from a dust jacket as you browse through "Le Correspondance de Groucho Marx," Gable and Grable galore, "Les Films de James Cagney," and "Telly Savalas," a book beginning with the sentence- "Porquoi Kojak...
...Again, it was only a short walk...
...My judgment is based solely o n t h e man's own published statements...
...Two or three of them, perhaps, were not wearing blue jeans by Levi or Jordache...
...Martin (4th arrondisement...
...Back, then, to the Ministry of Culture to help Third World build new society...
...Vespers as though Vatican II hadn't happened...
...You9c an imagine Crofter Jack air-intake funnels, giant foghorns, and his trbs" dating designer friends external tubular escalators...
...The congregation sang the Magnificat ~ in Latin--Gregorian chant (ton royal...
...Jack Lang...
...Consequently the level of Soviet medical technology remains comparatively primitive...
...There...
...All in all, if you' re feeling homesick, it's a nice little home away from home that the lads from the Minist~ re Culturel have inadvertently set up...
...6 11 Leonid Brezhnev resign from his many leadership posts in December...
...Thus begins an imm e n s e I y i n for m a t i v e d is c u s s ion of p~sible successors in the October 27 number of Soviet Ana~st, one of the West's most authoritative p~~icals an Kremlin happenings...
...D I T 0 R I A L PAPA B HNEV (i906-i982) by R. Emme~ Ty~eli, Jr...
...Jack Lang asked UNESCO delegates in Mexico City...
...Naturally, then, I made straight for the Centred'Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, the Parisian palace of culture...
...Well, now we know...
...May I recommend, You can go on upstairs to the main then, Manhattan Burger, only a museum floors, but I don't recommend it highly...
...They failed...
...Inside, by the door, was a The price was right, too---less than throng of tourists, but beyond them a a dollar for a cheeseburger and about congregation filled the nave and at 50 cents for les f r i t e s . Thanks to ~ the altar priests were celebrating Monsieur Mitterrand's Unwise socialist experiment, which makes all sensible investors nervous, a lot of Frenchmen have been trying to get rid of their francs, which means the money-changers do give you a decent number of them for a dollar these days...
...And what a glowing tribute to American culture this The only problem was that in order to achieve this Comic effect the bourgeoisie-bai~ers had erected a distinctly American-looking structure...
...They were mostly formed into rings of spectators, in the midst of which chalk-faced mimers were grimacing and gesticulating--so very Gallic, hiding behind a nearby pillar the day after the building was finished---the better to watch the country ~ folk slip up on the banana skin of their conventional expectations...
...you would swear you had seen its strange building turned out to be...
...As l went in, a loudspeaker was playing a Ray Charles record (good Ray Charles, too---the French know their Ray Charles...
...Make your way to the cm" e"a ste section, and there you will find more books on the subject than you knew existed...
...The hamburger on sesame-seed bun was easily up to the American standard, the French frites every bit as good as our French fries, the milk shake not bad, and the service excellent- no rude garfons here, thank God, but the familiar, cheery gals who seem to your Madras blazers, bring along a couple of cameras to take snaps of the quaint artists in Montmartre, hop on the plane, and enjoy life for a few days in colonial Paris...
...horror...
...Recall if you will his admonition to President Jimmy Carter at the Vienna summit u165h at manner of man was hey Fortunately I have at hand Leonid B re z h n e v: Pa g e s Fro m His L ife, a charming biography prepared by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and advertised in the New York Times Book Review as the Soviet leader's " f i r s t fully-rounded port r a i t . . a work of extraordinary THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR ~ JANUARY 1983 7...
...9 twin in the shape of an oil refinery Obviously the first thing about it is that it is meant to shock...
...So frail was he in the end that aging bodies of CapitOl Hill gentleit took his physicians 26-and-a-half men...
...Poor old Jack, I think he must be descended from Scottish crofters or something, so no wonder he's a little uncertain about the Gallic contribution to twentiethcentury culture...
...Our political systems are bureaucracy, but one must not rule different...
...Be prepared for 200,pound weights here, amidst the prissy Kandinskys and the Giacometti wire, the Calder bores and the lightweight L~gers...
...C A P I T 0 L I D E A S ~ r 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 2 1 6 ~2e e - . e e 6 e . * e e o e e c e . . e o e e o . c e e e e o r . . : 2 ~ 2 =?:V . : ::7.==2{~2, ==..,- . . . . I URGERS ON THE LEFT BANK by Tom Bethell It was at one of those dotty UNESCO conferences they keep holding in various parts of the globe that the French minister of culture Jack (not Jacques) Lang launched into his diatribe against "American cultural imperialism...
...eager to sign the death ce~ificate of a member of the Politburo, Not that the Soviet pol is as insanely sensitive ~out aging ~ as his American counterpart, in Moscow you will see none of those pinched baby-faces and fluffy hairdos that incongruously protrude from the floats were amazing imitations of military weapons, but he had seen it all before . . . . Many Americans are now asking, "Is Brezhnev in heavenT" I believe that he is not,~ though I do not mean toxile our liberal clergy...
...plotof Stalin's time physicians on the Maybe it takes this long to get a deathwatch bear a heavy responsideath certificate through the Soviet bility...
...including of course Notre Dame de Paris...
...Lang had arranged for the latter to perform for the benefit of Parisians on Le l~letro...
...The ~-year-old building and the at-least-as-ancient music showed little signs of having been he's probably fighting a hopeless battle, bifteck, and so on...
...But here we finally do find French c u l t u r e - - a t Notre Dame...
...r hini Plaries, it can be difficult to find a place to eat where you don't have to worry about mysterious additions to l'addition, three difwork behind the counter wherever look like dry old bones, but living such eateries are to be found, still...
...A year earlier he had even tried to restrict the distribution of American films in France, no doubt much to the dismay of all those Left Bank cm" e"a stes who for the last quarter century have been displaying their discernment by analyzing Howard Hawks and early Hitchcock...
...Notre Dame's old white stones affected by the passage of so much time: the Battles of Crecy and Agincourt, the Renaissance and the Reformation, Louis XIV, the Enlightenment, Rousseau, Voltaire, Robespierre and the French Revolution, Napoleon and the Revolution of 1848, all had come and gone and left little impression on these architectural and musical expressions of the permanent...
...The man has no shame, apparently...
...i ent Brezhnev Holds Fast to Power" read the front-page headiine in the November 8 Washington Post...
...Brezhnev failed at out the peculiarities of Soviet medicine...
...So now's the time to visit, folks...
...Actually, aside from keeping Russia as peaceful as a morgue, Mr...
...I mean, you went around the corner, and there, set down amidst the good old slate-grey hoity toits of Victor Hugoland was this weird...
...later General Se~eta~ of the C...
...Brezhnev will not resign in December...
...Eight hundred years...
...Is it our fate to be the vassals of the huge empire of profit...
...In front of the building was a large cobbled square, crowded with people, mostly young...
...R esU...
...Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...Let's see now, Poi Pot attended the Sorbonne...
...I was reminded that Jack Lang~ retorted at one point that indeed he did like American culture, some of it at least--citing John Cage, Merce Cunningham, and a troupe called "Bread and Puppet...
...Anyway, a few weeks ago I had the good fortune to spend a few days in Paris, and while I was there I managed to tear myself away from the M'Bow Show (also known as the UNESCO Follies, open 9-5, Place F0nten0y, 7th arrondisement), in order to take in aiittle indigenous French culture...
...At the entrance to the Centre you are first invited to experience, by way of cultural hors d'oeuvre, a little bit of spicy political indignation...
...One hazards a guess, so remarkable is this building and so enduring its appeal, that it must have been constructed when French culture was at its peak...
...There's no doubt about it, the French have a winner here...
...then there was Jean Paul Sartre, Ho Chi Minh...
...Two days health...
...What Vladimir Nabokov so well described fifteen years ago has been religiously preserved in Paris" "Crankshaft cretins of stainless steel, zen stereos, polystyrene stinkferent sauces covering up your gristly Pack your primary-color pants and couple of blocks from the art center, at the corner of Rue des Lombards and Rue St...
...where, placing his hand on our President's shoulder, he said, "If we do not succeed, God will not forgive us...
...Crofter Jack went on to call for "real cultural resistance, a real crusade against--let's call things by their name--this financial and intellectual imperialism that no longer grabs territory, or rarely, but grabs consciousness, ways of thinking, ways of living . . . . We must act if tomorrow we don't want to be nothing but the sandwich board of the multinationals...
...Hero of the Soviet Union, causes, though it is curious that three days before his sudden expiry someone persuaded the old boy to stand for two hours during the ~ traditional Red Square parade ~ celebrating the Bolshevik Revolution.: Many of the Hero of Soviet Labor, Lenin Peace ~ze Laureate, Lenin Literary ~ze Laureate--he had won it all, missing only a medal at the Moscow Olympics Yet the USSR is in dreadful condition...
...What a building...
...For some reason, in this part of the museum, there could be heard a bagpipe recording of some well-known Scottish jig (one of Crofter Jack's little jokes...
...Possibly the quacks could not lay hands on a stethoscope, and no i believe that it is safe to say that everything, though personally he President Brezhnev died of natural ~ prospered...
...9 is as though its architects had first envisioned some immensely middleclass, easily shocked French family in town from the provinces, and then laid their plans insuch a wayas to make these poor rural folk recoil in perched on the eastern outskirts of Galveston, Texas, or set down inthe bayous and sugar-cane fields of Southern Louisiana: a Baytown industrial complex of pipes, scafdon't you think...
...Dare One point-out that socialist Jack Lang has cultural taste so elitist that it could not survive without taxpayers' subsidies...
...Soviet physician wants to appear too munist Party of the Soviet Union, President of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Marshal of the Soviet Union, Leonid I. Brezhnev had assumed ~m temperature...
...It has been downhill ever since, n "est-ce pas...
Vol. 16 • January 1983 • No. 1
