[lit-ideas] French Superbowl
- From: "Andreas Ramos" <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Lit-Ideas" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 08:29:46 -0800
A bunch of friends get together every year to watch the Superbowl. It's pretty funny; many
are foreigners and know nothing about Am football. But a few are American, and they know
very little about football either. The kids don't play it much anymore.
Anyway, the Superbowl was diff this year; no shots of cheerleaders grinding their hips, very
few shots of drunken fans. For the halftime show, a quartet played classical music.
Another friend watched it on a French satellite feed (she lives in France most of the year).
They saw a rather different Superbowl. Below is her report.
yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com
You guys were obviously not watching French TV. They were all over the cheerleaders, not
during the game, for which they used the standard US feed, but before the game and during
halftime. They were bug-eyed, like teenagers. If you were diligently reading my blog, you
would know that before the game they had the women doing a routine to a Stones tune, all
shot at bared-midriff height, of course, with a few cleavage shots for contrast. Then,
during halftime, and this is the not-blogged, just for you scoop, they interviewed a
cheerleader. The only time they cut from her tits was when the French went too long without
translation, when they would zoom to her blank, confused face. Oh, and there were some
under-the-table shots of her perfect butt and very long bare legs (she was wearing her
uniform). They wrapped it up with some incredibly dismissive, patronizing remarks, that
would likely have hurt her feelings if she had understood them, about how pretty she was, in
a very American way.
I spend way too much time watching smooth French reporters do interviews. It was interesting
to see the difference in how they covered the Super Bowl. I never see French people on an
adrenaline rush, so to see them so blatantly excited was surprising. It was most apparent
when they were talking about Michael Jackson's sister's wardrobe malfunction. To hear the
football player, supposedly the dumb guy, let the snub go for some minutes and finally say
"Janet, elle s'appelle Janet," in this "let's calm it down boys," tone of voice, was
revealing about much more mature we are about sex in the States. I wouldn't have thought
that before I came over here. I thought of the US as prudish and France as disinterested.
That's over. When the French get away from their home turf, they can be kind of infantile; I
wonder if that is true of people of other nationalities.
There is a show here for the pre-teen crowd, "C'est pas Sorcier." They take a topic, like
the renovation of the Grand Palais, and explore the nuts, bolts and how-to of it for half an
hour. These guys gave the Super Bowl the complete "C'est pas Sorcier" treatment, with a
review of the equipment, detailed explanations of the rules, interviews with rugby players,
everything it might take to explain the game to the French and to make them feel comfortable
about watching it.
If you are used to rugby, the big differences would be the line of scrimmage, the snap and
the forward pass. When those things happened during the game, the announcers were all over
it. Since we have the rugby finals going on now, this was a timely comparison, as well as an
apt one.
I'm going to run out and buy a copy of L'Equipe, and see if this made much of a dent in the
ordinary French sports nut's consciousness. Given the time of the broadcast, midnight, I bet
it didn't.
It's not often that watching the Super Bowl can truly be described as a cult
ritual.
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