An online boycott campaign is currently raging in China against a French supermarket chain. I am so reminded here of the famous “freedom fries” debate in the US during Iraq War where patriotic Americans poured French wine on the streets to oppose their anti-war position. The same happened also earlier in the late 1980s when France conducted nuclear tests despite international pressure. Again: the key focus of the boycott was French wine and food. Now, comments such as this have been circulating online (See Global Voices Online for full coverage)
We hope you are able to boycott Carrefour at least on 1 May, to deliver, by the empty Carrefour that day, one message to the western world: Chinese shouldn’t be humiliated! Chinese people shouldn’t be insulted!
The boycott against Carrefour is going to spreading all over the country, and we anticipate your presence! Thank you.
OR:
Support Olympic, oppose Tibet-independence; boycott French products and Carrefour!
7. The major media in France reviewed the torch relay with such headlines— Fiasco in Paris(Figaro) and A Slap on China
While I am not sure whether Red Wine is the culprit again this time, I am still curious why French food and products gets singled out as the object to be boycotted. I could thing of many other things recent events would allow us to boycott. London. San Francisco. Why can’t we boycott whiskey, hamburgers, Hollywood films? Or wait a minute … Google is based almost in San Franscisco? Why not boycott Google as a sign of American disrespect and arrogance. Boycott Intel chips. Same locations. Computers with American chips and software in them? The list could go on…
So my question is: what then the symbolic value of French food and wine? Why does it become so easily charged with political significance over an infinity of other things that could serve the same purpose. I suppose there might be some kind of an anti-hedonistic symbolic violence that you commit on yourself as a sign of political purity and abstinence when you boycott something that is considered a sign of luxury and a pleasurable such as French wine. Can’t see any other reason why Frech wine could be considered so politically charged as opposed to other things? Wonder what Zizek would say about this? Any ideas?
You don’t need to go to Zizek for ideas. Roland Barthes wrote about french wine, cheese and steak in mythologies. I don’t remember the reference but it answers most of your questions. Unless they were rhetorical.
I would not actually be so sure if Barthes would answers to all the questions of why an American wine-seller would use French wine as a political statement or Chinese would boycott a supermarket but will check it up.
All questions are rhetorical: 1+1=2. Wine+Barthes=answer. Right!?
Matti, French wine and luxurious? You have a glass, or two every night, you poor man.
But, but … somebody has to support the European economy in these uncertain times!
there you go, doing good and being of service. Perhaps Angad was right after all. Nothing is fun, even drinking.
How that meaning would have changed if you said: “Nothing is even fun, drinking.”
So been reading “The Thought Gang” by Tibor Fischer. Quite entertaining: a self-hating alcoholic Cambridge philosopher robs banks while snouting random Greek philosophy. And drinks lots of expensive French wine as a getaway plan…
Recommend it, if you get some time off.
no actually i think barthes would be useful. and do not confuse my use of ‘rhetorical question’, which is a standard figure of speech in english, and rhetorical question, in the theoretical way.
The moment language stops being confusing, it stops being fun. Or we stop speaking. But do get your point - and the confusion was partially on purpose. The point I perhaps maybe meant was that the only answer we receives from questions are better questions. So will surely see if Barthes will give me more questions, better questions …
So a couple from Barthes on this (found online so I could cut-and-paste). A bit off topic but nonetheless interesting:
…but what is characteristic of France is that the converting power of wine is never openly presented as an end. Other countries drink to get drunk, and this is accepted by everyone; in France, drunkenness is a consequence, never an intention. A drink is felt as the spinning out of a pleasure, not as the necessary cause of an effect which is sought: wine is not only a philtre, it is also the leisurely act of drinking. The gesture has here a decorative value, and the power of wine is never separated from its modes of existenceâ€.
… an award of good integration is given to whoever is a practicing wine-drinker: knowing how to drink is a national technique which serves to qualify the Frenchman, to demonstrate at once his performance, his control and his sociability. Wine thus gives a foundation for a collective morality, within which everything is redeemed: true, excesses, misfortunes and crimes are possible with wine, but never viciousness, treachery or baseness; the evil it can generate is in the nature of fate and therefore escapes penalization, it evokes the theatre rather than a basic temperament. Wine is a part of society because it provides a basis not only for a morality but also for an environment; it is an ornament in the slightest ceremonials of French daily life, from the snack (plonk and camembert) to the feast, from the conversation at the local café to the speech at a formal dinner. It exalts all climates, of whatever kind: in cold weather, it is associated with all the images of shade, with all things cool and sparkling. There is no situation involving some physical constraint (temperature, hunger, boredom, compulsion, disorientation) which does not give rise to dreams of wine.
HEY! I found something coool!!!
“rhetorical” (flip/flip/jumble/stare/deal) => “theo-oh-shiiiit…. doesn’t quite work.