Vous aiment les Français ?

May 2, 2007 8:12 AM

Looking for views of French and the French in North Africa.

I'm studying French at the moment, and am becoming increasingly fascinated by the history and culture.
A question that I'm completely unable to find any information on though is what contemporary Algerians, Moroccans and Tunisians make of their former colonial masters/oppressors. I'm guessing they weren't big fans of the 130 years of colonisation, but what do they make of French culture and language nowadays? Are French films popular? Is it cool to speak French?
Any views from natives of or travellers to the region would be great.

posted by greytape to society & culture (10 comments total)

Most moroccans I know speak excellent French and know quite a bit about French culture, but I have never been to Morocco and all my Moroccan friends are from the Moroccan upper class. According to wikipedia though, French, which remains Morocco's unofficial second language, is taught universally...

According to the CIA world factbook, French [is] often the language of business, government, and diplomacy.

I wouldn't know about the attitudes of the ordinary "man on the street" to French culture.
posted by atrazine at 8:32 AM on May 2, 2007

I'm interested in the topic as well. I can't say much in the way of facts, but I know that some of the governments still use French to an official degree. Checks paid to my employer from the Tunisian gov't were labeled in French and Arabic (a guess).
posted by cowbellemoo at 8:32 AM on May 2, 2007

Check out Days of Glory (Indigènes), a recent French film about the North Africans fighting for France in WWII. It's well done.

We are told at the film’s conclusion that, in 1952, France voted to cease pension payments to soldiers from countries no longer under French rule. In 2006, following a screening of this film, Jacques Chirac reinstituted their pensions.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 9:11 AM on May 2, 2007

Well, as opposed to Morocco where Jews still reside, once Algeria recieved independence and all the Jews left in the 50's (my father was among them), no Jews can really visit any longer out of fear for their lives. This might be partially due to residual anger toward the upper class/French citizens back when Algeria was just a colony.
posted by milestogo at 9:15 AM on May 2, 2007

FYI- "aiment" is the 3rd-person plural conjugation. You're looking for "vous aimez", or more properly, "aimez-vous", which is the common construction for a question.

/stickler
posted by mkultra at 9:51 AM on May 2, 2007

You may want to check out Global Voices Online They report regularly on examples of blogs from French speaking former colonies.

For example, here is a post on the recent presidential election from the viewpoint of both former French colonies, and French of foreign descent.
posted by zabuni at 10:20 AM on May 2, 2007

It may be a bit, ahem, 'one sided', (depending on which version you see) but The Battle of Algiers >http://imdb.com/title/tt0058946/< is an excellent film.
posted by Gungho at 10:38 AM on May 2, 2007

I took a class with Sheila Crane at UC Santa Cruz about the architectural heritage of French colonial North Africa and post-Algerian War France, and we explored all sorts of ways that the very design of French parts of North African towns and cities like Algiers and Casablanca reflected their orientalist views, served the political needs of the colonial powers, and directly influenced their attitude toward ruling the locals - and how French architects, designing public housing for mostly North African immigrants in France through the post-war period, seemed to ignore the styles and cultures of the building's inhabitants in favor of a centralized, brutalist approach that reinforced state power - look at these maps of Marrakesh to get an idea of what the two styles looked like on a macro, city-wide scale, and check out the Cite radieuse for an idea of just how different things were in French-designed spaces back in France at the end of the colonial period.

Sheila's listed fifth from the bottom on this page - I can't dig out my four-year-old booklist right now, though I'm sure she'd be happy to send it your way. We also read a bunch of journal articles, so if you want to explore this part of the French colonial experience further, see if you can get to a library that has access to these resources.
posted by mdonley at 12:20 PM on May 2, 2007 [1 favorite]

The French slang for a person of North African descent is beur, in case that helps your search. See Les Beurs en France [in English].
posted by desjardins at 12:34 PM on May 2, 2007

apparently the Algerians are still quite bitter.

Also, I found this: The News & Views of the Maghreb [link is in English, also avail in French & Arabic]. (Maghreb is an Arabic word referring to the North African region.)
posted by desjardins at 12:41 PM on May 2, 2007