The French Gendarme is a boot wearing villain
It is most certainly one of the most common preconceptions that we have of foreign countries. Foreign police are always more severe more villainous and undeniably more sadist in their methods of punishment. At least in Britain, where the reputation of the kind hearted ‘bobby’ is still maintained, embellished viewpoints of ferocious foreign police forces generate huge amounts of fear in many travelling tourists. The prospect of being stopped on the motorway by a foreign policeman, or woman for that matter, has become a terrifying prospect.
While these preconceived ideas of foreign policemen are naturally born out of deep anguishes related to minimal knowledge in foreign languages and hidden desires of being tied up by a man in tight leggings, it is a noticeable trait that French gendarmes are kitted out to mean business.
Furthermore, living in Paris for my second year has opened my eyes to the general perception the French have towards their own police force, or rather police forces. The French forces d’ordre are made up from La Police Nationale, a generalised police force; La Police Municipale, a police unit which surveys local communities; La Gendarmerie , best described as law enforcing traffic police with a bad temper; and Le CRS, or riot police. None of these sections, except perhaps for the Police Nationale have earned the reputation of the British Bobby – a funny hat-wearing gentleman who only too happily gives directions and poses for photos with summer tourists.
A history of ideological battles between le peuple[/I ]and [I]l’etat has produced a nation of French citizens who see the police as sole representatives of the state’s evil ways. Revolutionary die-hards in both student and working class circles are defiantly anti law and order. Not in an anarchic, up with the barricades sort of a way, but in a vocally demonstrative one. This I feel is the product of a nation who has always tried to realise an end goal of total social harmony by means of an ideological doctrine. In which case, any state which proves incapable of recognizing these goals is announced guilty of high treason according to its subjects.
Thus, Police in France are nick-named Les Flics or Les Keufs - two words which are phonetically harsh and semantically controversial. In Britain, the police are called ‘the pigs’ in the worst case scenario.
Opposite Notre Dame Cathedral is a huge central police headquarters for central Paris. The policemen or gendarmes who scatter themselves sporadically across the pavement are wearing high leather boots, tight dark blue breeches, an officially embroidered blue shirt and all seem to be carrying a machine gun.
Perhaps this is why we are all so scared of foreign policemen. They don’t wear funny hats or carry wooden batons the length of a cucumber.
