What Does a Frenchman Watch on TV? (And Does He Find Pépé Le Pew Offensive?)

Actually, now that we’re in Australia, Maxime doesn’t watch anything on TV. I tried to get him to watch Doctor Who once. What was I thinking? I mean, what would a Frenchman think of a hero who doesn’t have a sex life?

I nevertheless did my best to explain: ‘So … there’s this guy who can travel through time. In a phone booth,’ I said.

Maxime blinked.

‘That’s him in the big rainbow scarf,’ I pointed.

‘The gay one?’

‘He’s not gay! Or at least … I don’t think so ...’

It didn’t help that although I’m sure the daleks used to be scary when I was five, now they just looked like excited male compost bins with knobs on. Maxime was in hysterics. But recently, it’s been my turn to have a giggle at the expense of froggy TV: Maxime’s taken to looking up French shows on the internet.

‘Did you watch Wattoo Wattoo the superbird when you were little?’ Maxime asked me the other day as he trawled YouTube for improving French cartoons.

‘Er, no.’ I said.

Maxime had already introduced me to Barbe à Papa, a cartoon about an environmentally conscious, heroic blob of pink fairy floss. Wattoo Wattoo, I discovered, is another hero about as unlikely as spun sugar with superpowers. He/she/it looks like a fat, spherical magpie. He comes from a cube-shaped planet and can breed asexually by splitting in two (or more). (And Maxime thinks Doctor Who has an odd sex life!?)

I think Maxime is looking for French cartoons about fat magpies and magic fairy floss because he wants the kids to watch something in French. He’s afraid of them losing the language. I can sympathise with this at least. I used to worry the kids would never learn English when we lived in France, and was frustrated that even cartoons from England and the US were dubbed into French. Even the ‘words’ in the Teletubbies and In the Night Garden were dubbed into French, which increased their absurdity tenfold. I used to imagine the poor Frenchman doing the dubbing. Jacques sitting hunched over his café in front of a mike, cigarette drooping from his lip, attempting to sound enthusiastic about having to say lines like ‘Ooh, Upsy Daisy, regarde, c’est le Ninky-Nonk.’ The French certainly came up with some strange translations too: 

'Want to watch Wee-Wee,' Chloé said one day.

Interesting choice, I thought. ‘Wee-Wee’ turned out to be poor old Noddy (Wee-Wee is spelled ‘Oui-Oui’ i.e. Yes-Yes, i.e., Noddy). Tweety Bird lucked out in translation too and landed ‘Titi’. Ironically, the French fought shy of Winnie the Pooh and preferred to tactfully call him Winnie the Little Bear. 

I tolerated Chloé watching Oui-Oui because it was one of the French-English bilingual cartoons shown on French kids' TV, although it was actually French speakers who said the English words. They mangled the words so badly I wondered if it wasn’t all counterproductive. ‘Furny’ was how they said funny, which is what it wouldn’t be if the kids learnt to speak like that. And I hoped fervently they didn’t all grow up to sound like Dora.

But now we’re in Australia, we have a new problem. An embarrassing one – you never realise until you’re sitting next to a Frenchman how many cartoons we have that send up the French. In the Mr. Men cartoon, Mr. Uppity has a French accent (actually, I personally find this pretty funny). There are also French salt and pepper shaker characters on Sesame Street who make also sorts of nasal sounding French snorting sounds while they talk about ‘ze num-bear nine’. Luckily, the kids seem oblivious to the fact that Sesame Street is taking the mickey out of their accent. And then there’s Pépé Le Pew. When this is dubbed into French for French TV, the French choose not to embrace the Frenchness of a love-drunk, smelly skunk and pretend he’s Italian instead. Instead of l’amour, just like a big pizza pie, it’s amore.

This morning, I decided to ask Maxime what he made of all this:

‘Do you find it offensive how in our cartoons here, there are all these cartoon characters parodying the French?’ I asked.

‘No,’ said Maxime. ‘Because it doesn’t sound French to me.’

It just sounded like someone talking a bit strangely, apparently.

‘But what about Pépé Le Pew? You know, Pépé le Putois?’ (As he’s called in French.)

I thought he might really be upset by that one, but somewhat disappointingly, Maxime just shrugged and said, ‘I don’t care.' And he added, typically Frenchly and philosophically, 'Only truth hurts.’

He meant that the French aren’t really smelly, so they don’t care. (Because everyone knows that’s the Italians!)