Friday, July 07, 2006

French or Italian?


Alright, one last World Cup post before the weekend--from Zachary Roth on The New Republic's excellent WC blog, Goal Post. I suspect Raphael won't react too well to this, but I thought it was well done. It nicely captures the virtues of good blogging--short, pithy, moderately well-informed, and kind of funny (if not in a laugh-out-loud kind of way). However, I hope he's wrong about the game. I think the Space Cowboys are going to bring it:

I WILL NOW IGNORANTLY REDUCE TWO RICH CULTURES TO A THREE PARAGRAPH-LONG BLOG POST:
When my family gets together we sometimes play a game called Beach or Mountains, which involves naming two things that are pretty much comparable and then saying which is better. So like Beatles or Stones. Or vodka or gin. Or buttocks or armpits. The skill of the game--and what a skill it is--lies mostly in coming up with the pairings.

One pairing that came up last time we played was France or Italy. I think we all agreed France was better. History-wise, the French Revolution was at least a good idea in theory. Neither of them came out of the war with much glory, but at least the French pretended to be on the right side for a bit. And they were good in the first one, while the Italians were characteristically playing the field. Plus, no one enjoys a good spaghetti carbonara more than I do, but French cuisine is clearly more varied and sophisticated than Italian. In fact, don't people say that French and Chinese cuisine form the basis of pretty much all modern cooking? I think they do. In the visual arts, it seems like French painting surpassed Italian somewhere around the late 18th century with David et al. (how's this for complete awesomeness, painting-wise?) and never looked back. Matisse vs. those Mussolini-worshipping Futurists isn't even a fair fight. In terms of movies, La Dolce Vita is pretty cool, if sort of pointless, but as for more recent fare, La Haine kicks Roberto Benigni's narcissistic arse. Also, people: One of my best friends is French, and he's great, and plus I have these French cousins who are very nice too. And I had an Italian girlfriend once when I was in school but she turned out to be kind of unstable and ended up getting drunk and breaking her nose by walking into a glass door the last time I saw her. So.


But football's a different story. I don't think Italy has ever produced players as good as Platini or Zidane, but its historical record of success is obviously far better than France's. And this year, there's no denying that, on balance, they've looked the better team so far, mainly thanks to Cannavaro and Buffon. So I expect they'll win, but I hope the French do, because of what Frank calls "the whole space cowboy trope," for which I too am a sucker.

Posted by jwb at 12:27 PM   

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said:

The origins of French cuisine can be traced to the cooks that Catherine De Medici brought with her from Italy when she married King Henri II. To say that French cuisine is more varied then Italian is a stretch. Every region in Italy has its own unique dishes based around local products. The problem with the USA is that most people associate Italian cuisine with Neopolitan cuisine and even that is somewhat cliched (pasta and red sauce).
at 10:30 AM     

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