When Ronald Meets Mona
“Rendez-vous in December for a Maxi Best of Mona Lisa menu,” announces Louvre pour Tous, an Internet journal aimed at museum visitors. They qualify the plan by McDonald’s to open its newest French outlet (number 1,135) in the Musée du Louvre as a “lack of taste,” citing the “tsunami” of global media reaction.
The most indignant criticism comes from the foreign press, and it is the anglophone press whose knickers are in a collective twist. The New York Daily News calls it “a move guaranteed to wipe the famous smile off Mona Lisa’s mug.”
Across the Channel, the British press sees the move as a defeat in the battle between high gastronomy and standardized (to be polite) food. Not that they don’t appreciate the irony of the fast-food giant doing so well in the country where cuisine has attained art form status. London’s Telegraph calls it “a move which has managed to get both France’s art lovers and gastronomes choking on their Gitanes.”
For those who cringe at the specter of super-sized tourists munching Big Macs before the Venus de Milo, relax. McDo, as it is known here, will be joining similar restaurants in the food court of the Carrousel du Louvre, the commercial space beneath the Pyramide. Described in its publicity as “a successful meeting between culture, tourism, history and shopping,” the plan was to have stores that sold high-ticket items or, at least, those related to culture, and many remain. However, McDonald’s might be seen as a logical addition to Virgin Megastore, Tie Rack and Hertz. Can Jenny Craig be far behind?
The chain is seen in France and around the world as a symbol of American globalization. French deputy José Bové gained prominence in 1999 when he and a band of militants bulldozed a McDonald’s construction site in a two-pronged protest against American sanctions on certain European products and against malbouffe or junk food.
Yet France is the chain’s largest market outside the U.S., and the outlet on avenue des Champs-Elysées is the most profitable in the world. McDonald’s chief executive Jim Skinner attributes that success to the fact that “we are perceived as a French enterprise.” One has to wonder where he gets his information.
I’d love to have your thoughts on this.
(Photo Credit: La Tribune)
Jan del Monte,’ blogging from the rue du Cherche-Midi, Paris, France
© 2009 Jan del Monte
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All day yesterday, every U.S.local and national news broadcast’s lead story was not about Afghanistan, health care or unemployment but the fact that McDonald’s is joining the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, and that France has the dubious distinction of having more McDonald’s than anyone outside the U.S.To me this means obese and monolingual American tourists prefer the “familiar” and not being faced with anything “foreign,” yet want to tell their neighbors at home that “We saw the Mona Lisa,” even if they saw no other art on their “cultural” tour of Paris — oh, yes, they can eat the same American McDonald’s “cuisine” by that other icon, the Eiffel Tower.
This is what the New York Times said today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/world/europe/26mcdonalds.html?_r=1&ref=europe