Robin Hood Anti-French

1. Maybe this explains Ridley Scott’s anti-French attitudes : Ridley Scott loses French legal battle to stop ‘bad odours’ – Sir Ridley Scott has lost a court battle to stop farmers next to his Provence home rearing poultry which he claims causes pollution including “bad odours”.

   But the idyllic, picture-postcard French way of life offered by the south-eastern region began to go awry five years ago when a couple bought a neighbouring plot in Oppède, near Cavaillon, and set up an organic poultry farm.

2. “Perhaps the only evident political misfire is that it’s aggressively anti-French at a time when the Greeks are the European bugaboo of choice.”  – Ezra Klein

3. Too bad about Ridley Scott, I generally like most of his film, and Blade Runner is one of my all time favorites.  It would seems he allowed himself to be personally offended by chicken farmers, of all people.  Seems a lot of wealthy Anglos believe Provence to be their own personal playground.

   As for “Robin Hood”, it received mediocre reviews at Cannes, no one seemed to have been impressed with it.  It will undoubtedly garner a better audience in the US, where continued French-bashing is norm.  The film will no doubt attract those who will see it mainly to fulfill their anti-French consumption, i.e. – Conservative Republicans.

4. Problem centers on all of the young inocents who will watch this movie and establish misconceptions. As for the main audiance, there is no doubt that, in the US, such films attract the political Right.

5. Certes le film à un relent très net de francophobie… Mais cette francophobie plus ou moins assumée est largement critiquée, voire tournée en ridicule par les critiques ! Et ça c’est quand même un progrès : imaginez la même situation, disons cinq ans plus tôt, je n’ose y penser ! Il ne reste plus qu’à espérer, sans trop d’illusions bien sûr, que ça fasse un bide.

6. J’ai lu une lettre d’un historien dans “le  Monde” qui dénonçait de nombreuses absurdités historiques. Il y est question d’une invasion de l’Angleterre par les Français alors que bien sûr c’était l’inverse pendant la guerre de 100 ans, et Richard Coeur de Lion dont le français était la langue maternelle ne parlait pas anglais et a passé la majeure partie de sa vie en France.

7. The situation will endure as long as French officials remain mute.
   Where is the minister of Culture in all this ?

   Too busy diddling Thai boys ?

8. Wow Barney – that’s cutting close to the bone. It’s not the Ministry of Culture who should be involved but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During the 2003 anti-French psychosis, the official policy was something akin to “faire le dos rond” – hoping all this would blow over. Seven years later, pop culture has absorbed anti-French attitudes and ideas likes never before.

9. Get a grip you whingers! Why get so bothered about a holywood film? There always has to be the vilains in these films. At the moment (and since the second gulf war) it’s the French’s turn to play the  bad guys. Before that it was the British who were always the bad guys (see Braveheart) as an example, and before that the Germans.
   These films should not be taken seriously.
    

10. Barney – Why should the French culture minister or officials comment on  a holywood film? Why give any attention to it? Whether you like it or not there will always be anti-French, American, British, German, etc. attitudes, that’s just part of being from a country with a colonial history. 

11. Robin Hood and colonial history. Right…

    Shouldn’t the villains be Normans instead of French ?
    According to the bigm, a French English history scholar if there ever was one, the French are a cowardly and idiotic bunch incapable of matching wits or swords with the English Supermen so what were all those French people doing in England messing with Robin Hood ?

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