There are many ways a homesick American can find his fellow countrymen in Paris. On one weekend one could, for instance, attend a Sunday mass at the tony American Cathedral, have a restrainedly grand time at the American Contra Dance society monthly social, or attend a Charlie Kirk vigil with the Republicans Overseas club, all the while hearing not a single word of French. For my part and to my detriment, I have mostly steered clear of other Americans while falling flat in my efforts to integrate myself into French society. No matter how far into the country I run or how high I peer up the social ladder, America is somehow still there. Whether suffering through tinny renditions of English-language pop songs I somehow have never heard before (or worse, “Superfreak”) while stuck in the mulled wine line at a village fair, or being ambushed by “Abide with Me” at the knees-on-tile part of the Latin Mass, our country never fails to cast its ebullient shadow over the generally gray Parisian atmosphere.
It was thus to my great surprise that dear Uncle Sam reared his grand old head in one of the places where it should least be found: the utter excess of grand opera. The opulent Théâtre de Champs-Elysées was showing Jacques Offenbach’s Robinson Crusoé in France for the first time since the mid-eighties and, swayed by the incessant advertising on the subway, I shelled out the necessary shekels for a student seat in the highest balcony.
Robinson Crusoé, like all grand opera, is three hours of getting whipped cream sprayed in your face. At first, it is decadent and ridiculous, then confusing and ridiculous, and ultimately just tedious slush. Offenbach, king of the can-can and opéra comique, transports his grand choruses and dance numbers from the foyers of France to the dockyards of Bristol and a forlorn desert island, making for a rather incongruous spectacle. Instead of the admittedly dull original narrative of “M. de Foë,” Crusoé spends the first half having Robinson’s parents sing odes to domesticity before expelling him off to his island, where he lives in a homeless encampment (never explained) with his third-person-using Caliban lackey “Vendredi.” On the same dreadful island wash up Robinson’s childhood servant, best friend, and cousin-girlfriend, who are captured by ¡the savages! and they are informed by their next-door-neighbor-turned-cook for ¡the savages! that they will be promptly turned into stew. The best friend and servant sing a nice romantic duet about how “the same spit will unite us” (they were clearly too busy dancing to get the finer details of the jaunty “I will turn you into stew, ha ha” song) while the cousin manages to become delirious and disappear.
At this moment, who should appear but lo! and behold! my stars! ¡the savages! In a chorus line, all dressed as… Donald Trump? Indeed, in red ties and wigs, the chorus burst out with an inanely graceful French version of the Trump dance, to the howls and teary applause of the entire house. They sang a hymn first to cannibalism, then, more in character, to the beauties of white women. Cue the white woman! The cousin-girlfriend was carted out on a metal gurney, massive red letters spelling “EAT” and a glorious bonfire burning behind her. At what was somehow the emotional climax of the opera, she hobbled up on her heels (as one naturally brings to a desert island) and belted out a stunning aria, while forty-odd Trumps milled around her, pawing at her legs and swaying along. Of course, the “poor white woman” is saved and everyone heads back to “the holy land” (Bristol) in a final grand chorus sing-along. As the opera has not been staged since the mid-eighties, nobody knew the words and when we finally learned them, the conductor shushed us for the orchestra to blast a few bars for the dancing sailors and Trumps to get their final kicks in as the curtain went down.
Surrounded by the upper echelons (in seating and status) of French society, the choice of Trump as ¡the savage! felt natural. Only America, the land of athleisure and affluenza, could produce such a crudely powerful behemoth, and save the middle class from the boredom and stagnation imposed on them by the opera-going class. The French peer down at its human manifestation, the ugly American, enlightening the old world with its simplicity and stupidity. It is all good to keep it at a comical arm’s length, admitting ¡the savage! for polite mirth and frivolity—yet just outside the theatre, with “Chicago” sweatshirts and Gen Z swear words, the silent majority has already taken the red pill and France appears to be in for a shipwreck of its own when the chorus bursts out again, this time at the presidential ballot box.
Savagely,
Brady Santoro
Image: Spencer Frederick Gore, Ballet Scene from “On the Sands,” oil on canvas, 1910 (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven).