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Post by Devil Wincarnate on May 9, 2022 18:46:43 GMT
Even reading background material while listening, I *still* don't know why May '68 happened or what they wanted. Its a lot easier to explain the former than the latter. As in Germany around the same time, a big part of it was younger people's frustration that their elders weren't being honest about what really happened in WW2. Which was ironic, as at least two major writers who articulated that position turned out later to be former NSDAP or SS members. The excellent modern history museum in Bonn has video footage taken by the British authorities upon liberation of the camps, to be shown to the locals. Quite stark and even frightening. It is forgotten how much "coming to terms" with the Nazi era was done in the immediate aftermath of the end of the war, before there was even a formal West German state. Of course, the DDR never had such a reckoning. |
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Post by gwynthegriff on May 9, 2022 18:59:19 GMT
Yes, that is today taught in quasi all media&schools - what inevitably means, that the contrary is true: "Vergangenheits-Bewältigung" (~"coping with the past") was indeed the battleCry of the bored bohemiens bourgeoises - but it meant exactly the opPosite of what the present-day antiFa-wokies read into it. Its meaning was "Stop with Your permanent boring chatter about the obsolete war - we want to enjoy the Economical Wonder (WirtschaftsWunder)!" Hey - you didn't have to suffer interminable war films. Every Damn Christmas, Great Escape, Dam Busters, Wooden Horse, get over it, it was 40 years ago, we know, you won it for us, now just shut up and drink your eggnog. You forgot Tora, Tora, Tora, the perfect Boxing Day evening pick me up for the season of peace and goodwill. I once stood behind a couple of young German visitors outside the Ian Allan shop (railway, bus, military and masonic books, models and kits*) in Birmingham. They were fascinated, intrigued and - I think - a little alarmed by the display of German WWII kits on sale. * Well, masonic books - maybe not so much in the way of models and kits. |
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neilm
Non-Aligned
Posts: 25,023
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Post by neilm on May 13, 2022 16:29:49 GMT
Even reading background material while listening, I *still* don't know why May '68 happened or what they wanted. Its a lot easier to explain the former than the latter. As in Germany around the same time, a big part of it was younger people's frustration that their elders weren't being honest about what really happened in WW2. Yet ask the same young people, now in their 70s, and they will tell you that France was full of Resistance heroes and that Vichy was a one-off stain on the national character rather than a sign of an underlying streak of authoritarian nationalism. |
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J.G.Harston
Lib Dem
Leave-voting Brexit-supporting Liberal Democrat
Posts: 14,772 
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Post by J.G.Harston on May 13, 2022 18:36:57 GMT
Its a lot easier to explain the former than the latter. As in Germany around the same time, a big part of it was younger people's frustration that their elders weren't being honest about what really happened in WW2. Yet ask the same young people, now in their 70s, and they will tell you that France was full of Resistance heroes and that Vichy was a one-off stain on the national character rather than a sign of an underlying streak of authoritarian nationalism. That's something I was pondering some time ago. We see plenty of dramas/films/etc set in German-occupied northern France, but I can't think of any set in Vichy France. From that I don't have an cultural knowledge of how everyday life went in Vichy, compared to everyday life in occupied France being so commonplace as to be a trope. |
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on May 14, 2022 16:36:43 GMT
Yet ask the same young people, now in their 70s, and they will tell you that France was full of Resistance heroes and that Vichy was a one-off stain on the national character rather than a sign of an underlying streak of authoritarian nationalism. That's something I was pondering some time ago. We see plenty of dramas/films/etc set in German-occupied northern France, but I can't think of any set in Vichy France. From that I don't have an cultural knowledge of how everyday life went in Vichy, compared to everyday life in occupied France being so commonplace as to be a trope. Louis Malle caused a lot of controversy with his film Lacombe Lucien (a very good film). I'll defer to relique but I believe this was the first major piece to show collaborators as essentially normal French, be they committed "collaborationists" or just opportunists. And in that way, it caused huge uproar, because it confronted France with the idea that the narrative of the war as plucky resistance versus nasty Germans was simplistic and allowed a lot of people to downplay their wartime activities. Edit: I think it's set in what had been the Vichy area before the Germans occupied the rest of it. |
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Post by finsobruce on May 20, 2022 20:16:53 GMT
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Post by Arthur Figgis on May 20, 2022 21:19:25 GMT
I knew a bloke from Norwich who would only ever buy mustard in Gent. |
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Post by finsobruce on May 20, 2022 21:24:36 GMT
I knew a bloke from Norwich who would only ever buy mustard in Gent. presumably this stuff?
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Post by Arthur Figgis on May 20, 2022 22:06:37 GMT
I knew a bloke from Norwich who would only ever buy mustard in Gent. presumably this stuff? That’s the one. We ran into this bloke 3 years out of 4 on our annual long weekend piss-up cultural tour of Flanders. |
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john07
Labour & Co-operative
Posts: 15,786
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Post by john07 on May 20, 2022 23:48:12 GMT
I wouldn’t touch any mustard other than Dijon. Colman’s mustard is foul. |
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Post by mattbewilson on May 21, 2022 0:27:51 GMT
Latest poll looks like macron loses his majority and the popular union are largest party
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Post by finsobruce on May 21, 2022 8:19:37 GMT
I wouldn’t touch any mustard other than Dijon. Colman’s mustard is foul. "Other mustard makers are available". |
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on May 21, 2022 16:51:54 GMT
I wouldn’t touch any mustard other than Dijon. Colman’s mustard is foul. Depeends on the brand surely? Big-standard Dijon isn't great. And of course, Colmans and Maille are the same company. (Carrefour own-brand tarragon mustard is the gold standard) |
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Georg Ebner
Non-Aligned
Roman romantic reactionary Catholic
Posts: 9,815
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Post by Georg Ebner on May 21, 2022 18:56:12 GMT
I am obsessed by Branston's "Sweet Pickles" (and buy it in an EnglishShop here in Salzburg, what is naturally costly).
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