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What do you mean essentially the same? Obviously we learn that 2+2=4, do you think it means that it is the same as american culture? I doubt Americans spend as much time on grammar (and especially on french grammar) in the US. The language is not the same. It's not a detail: the book we read in class are not the same, they are from french literature. Do Americans ever read l'Avare, from Molière? Almost every french person has read it. Do most Americans ever hear about Racine and Corneille, about Flaubert and his master work, Madame Bovary? We learn at least two foreign languages, so that I can understand something like 50% of an article written in german, and like 95% of anything written in english (yet foreign language learning is not that good in France when compared to other european countries). Do Americans learn foreign languages? In history lessons, there is much emphasis on the french Revolution, but we almost never speak about the American revolution. Most french people do not even know there was an American revolution. Have Americans ever heard about Danton and Robespierre? About the differences between Jacobins and Girondins? There are also lessons on Napoleon, with much emphasis on his politics. Do Americans learn Napoleon's politics? So please tell me what is "essentially the same".
I've skimmed it in first grade. Soviets, like the pre-revolutionary elite, were fans of posh European literature and my house had a decent stack of that stuff. We could find other parallels, like the appreciation for High Modernism (some of Moscow architecture is in that style) or whatever.
Do you think that the Soviet Union was essentially similar to France on this account, if not others? I believe it was pretty much an alien civilization.
But there's a similarity, of course. It's the obsession with literature and formal school education as the fundamental frame of reference. Probably there are CCP stans too, who believe that learning Confucius is what makes Xi's PRC the heir to the ancient empire.
Not much to say here.
I still dont get to know what is important or not. I'm not sure anyway that the difference between XXth century France and Russia are were bigger than between XVIIIth century and XXIst century USA...
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I think you've kind of missed his point entirely; globalization occurs on distinctly American terms, and while France gets to have its own particulars as to certain things, there are matters of politics that exist within a particularly American frame. Now, since you are presumably French, you might contend this, but I think his point is that US cultural hegemony (propagated through US-based international business power and cultural power centers like Hollywood, Wall Street, etc.) will transform places like France and the UK to resemble America in everything but surface-level appearance (you might be familiar with this concept from a certain Rammstein song that someone linked somewhere in this mega-thread). A point that some posters here might make is that EU countries have thrown away traditional elements of their cultures in order to plug themselves into the international capitalism machine, a system that has strong roots in the US, thus giving power-brokers from within the private and public parts of the US incredible leverage over the internal workings of EU nations.
As a side note, I suspect you didn't learn about the American Revolution because it would have probably made your own revolution look like an absolute clusterfuck, but that is my own American cultural hegemony talking, so.
The problem with those claims is that they are non falsifiable. "Surface level" does not mean anything. I can prove that there is a huge difference and you can still claim it to be on surface level only. Actually your theory is really like marxism "anything non surface level can be explained by the class strugle". I am quite sure Marx would have loved your theory.
France, and a lot of other european countries, resist the american version of capitalism in some ways, and imitate it in other ways. If I say that all modern science is french because it uses the metric system excepted on a surface level, it is a ridiculous claim yet you can hardly disprove it as I did never explain what a surface level is. The french unions, the number of companies where the gouvernement has stocks (eg car companies, the train transportation company SNCF 100% state owned...), and the relationship of the people with the government are examples of things that are very different between french capitalism and american capitalism.
And hiding insults behind loosely related theories won't prove your point.
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