After coming back from a three and a half week study abroad session in Paris, I must admit that there are some interesting ways in which America and Americans have been represented to the French. Despite the long and drawn-out conversations that I had with my professors and family, it’s quite alarming to see the way in which Paris has approached the topic of America. Stacks upon stacks of newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals that have the images of Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton, and Ben Carson plastered all over them. Despite the fact that the United States is currently in the midst of a heated political race, would you ever expect to see François Hollande’s face anywhere near the cover of an American periodical? (Do you even know who François Hollande is?) The answer is, most likely, no.
Yet, I find this all so interesting, and it is slightly frightening to me. How are Americans truly being represented in foreign countries? What is the image that people would associate with me regardless of my family history, political views, or anything else that could separate me from one giant all-consuming identity that, Parisians at least, seemed to link to Americans? Now, to begin with, I have to clarify that I really don’t have many political views and wouldn’t have any authority to make claims about current political figures given my lack of knowledge regarding the current political race. However, I do find it a little concerning when a local population equates my personality and views with those of prominent political figures.
I think the best way to highlight this situation is through an interesting, to say the least, interaction that I had while waiting for food and drinks at a wine bar in the heart of Paris on a Saturday night. Fighting for a place to stand and eat in the crowded yet remarkably intimate L’Avant Comptoir wine bar in the 6e arrondissement, I struck up a conversation with a handful of slightly intoxicated Frenchmen who were more than happy to practice their broken English with a "yank" as they called me. Apart from the language barrier that, for the most part, was not the issue, there was a definite culture barrier that seemed to complicate some things. Constant questions arose about American Football, Justin Bieber, and Donald Trump. It began to dawn on me that this was, actually, all they saw about les Etats-Unis (the United States).
“Is it true that... um… tous les Americans… ahh… like Donald Trump?” These, along with other interesting questions and comments that should not be repeated, are among the tasks we were forced with fielding that night. When I brought up the topic to my Parisian cousins, they too explained that it was part of, more or less, un image générale de les Etats-Unis.
All of this is not to say that we, Americans, do not do the same thing with Parisians or other foreigners. Don't we all expect to see the oh-so-stereotyped “striped-shirt-wearing-cigarette-smoking-bread-and-cheese eating-coffee-sipping” Parisian when we step off at Charles de Gaulle airport? Yet, I feel that the connections that are made with Americans are more than just simple stereotypes; they more or less part of an identity.
All in all, I am pondering this because I believe that it is something truly worth thinking about for my generation and the generations before: How do we want America and Americans to be identified around the world? While this is only the second or third time that I have been in a foreign country, the very fact that all of this was painfully evident from the minute I set foot on French soil is (and should be) alarming. First impressions are everything, right? If we truly want to create a good one, it is going to take some work.
