Recently it was brought to our attention that the French government was in need of the kind of help that only Allie can offer. Namely, in a rather desperate attempt to tackle the ‘migration issue’, the government – or some of its representatives – voiced the need to establish new criteria that could be relied on when people applied for citizenship.
Admittedly, creating such criteria can be challenging, and thus we want to be very permissive of such efforts even when they fall, well, a bit flat.
Here we refer to the recently forwarded proposal by Geoffroy Didier – a man who we in our appreciation toward his initiative want to call ‘Didix’, in the noble tradition of Asterix and his other valiant Gaulois friends. Didix is the co-creator of La Droite Forte, the Strong Right, and also the regional councillor for the right wing party UMP, the party of Nicolas Sarkozy. We quote:
Je demande à ceux qui veulent devenir Français, quelle que soit leur confession, quelles que soient leurs origines sociales, quelle que soit leur classe sociale, je leur demande de se sentir Gaulois!
Or in English:
I ask of those who want to become French – no matter what their beliefs, social origin or class – I ask them to feel Gaulois!
Why this test of unity? Didix connects it to his attempt to understand and explain the recent violent acts by the Kouachi brothers, who were responsible for the assassinations of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists.
According to Didix such acts are caused by a break-down of values by newcomers into the country. Admittedly, this is again where things got somewhat confusing for us, as the Kouachi brothers were both born and raised in France, but we let this minor detail slip by.
Allegra sympathizes with Didix’s concerns – however, there is another slight problem that desperately begs for addressing. How does one define ‘a Gaulois’, and what does feeling like one exactly entail?
We see the prospective hassles involved in bureaucratic attemps to verify this objectively. Evidently a form, a questionnaire of some sort will be needed. But just what should it read?
We did some research on ‘Gaulois lifestyle’ and ‘Gaulois Recipes’, and on that basis came up with the following questions – all of which can be answered via A, B, or C. Each response offers then an objective measurement for the degree of Gauloisness that the respondent has. By adding the results together, one is thus able to assess just how Gaulois one really feels.
LET’S GET STARTED!
1. When you go to a restaurant, do you order:
A – Salad
B – Curry
C – Sanglier (Wild boar)
2. When you go to a bar, do you order:
2. When you go to a bar, do you order:A – Lemonade
B – Dry Chardonnay
C – Cervoise (une bière faite avec de l’orge ou d’autres céréales comme le méteil et qui peut-être parfumée avec des herbes aromatiques comme la menthe)
3. When you go shopping, do you buy
:
A – Blue Jeans
B – LBD (Little Black Dress)
C – Braies (However, here we are troubled: French wikipedia informs us that the the Braies were ‘une forme de pantalon qui était porté par plusieurs peuples de l’Antiquité, en particulier les Gaulois’. However, the English version speaks only of the Celtic and Germanic tribes. Thus we cannot verify accurately the degree of Gaulloisness that the desire of wearing Braies embodies)
4. When you encounter troubles of metaphysical or psychological nature, do you consult:
A – Psychologist
B – Astrologist
C – Druid
5. When you go to the barber, do you say:
A – “Shave it all off!”
B – “Gimme one of them full Lumbesexual beards!”
C – “All I really want is a moustache!”
6. When you go to get a pack of cigarettes, do you:
6. When you go to get a pack of cigarettes, do you:A – Ask for the low-nicotine kind
B – Remember that you are a non-smoker
C – Go for the Gauloises
7. When you interact with your neighbours, do you:
A – Greet them courteously
B – Ignore them entirely
C – Engage in a fierce fist-fight – usually by using big fishes.
So time for the results. A cleaver reader may have discovered that there is some logic to this test – yes, alternative C is the one that stands for true sentiments of Gauloisness.
Regrettably, this test continually has one cardinal flaw for even the most Gaulois-feeling of folks: namely that it is somewhat tricky to determine what these feelings might have to do with being French, given that the Gaulois people at the hight of their reign, in fact, occupied in addition to the area today known as France also areas of what is today Switzerland, Germany, Spain and Belgium. Yet this is certainly a minor detail, and we are sure that given the opportunity to reconnect with their REAL sentiments, the residents of these areas too would be feeling Gaulois – aka French!
We hope that this task will prove helpful for Didix and all of his colleagues as they attempt to maneuver this tricky terrain, and congratulate Didix once again for this bold vision.
When in doubt, always remember: the answer lies in ‘essence’ – also the imagined kind.
The Gaulois sentiments described in this article are based on a Google search with the phrase ‘Gaulois sentiments’ and Gaulois recipes. In addition we have consulted Wikipedia map of Gaule, and of course in our youth read ample Asterix cartoons. We expect this research to have provided us with at minimum equal knowledge of Gauloisness to that held by Didix and his comrades.
