American Culture’s Impact on Postwar France: A Positive Report

Abstract

This essay reads Jean Echenoz’s Cherokee as a novel that challenges the commonly held French belief during the Cold War that the American cultural invasion (food, movies, household appliances, clothing) along with the rampant consumerism these products encouraged, were a major threat to traditional French values. By turning his novel into a parodic form of a ciné-roman, Echenoz shows how the American Way of Life can relatively easily be absorbed into the French equivalent without doing serious harm to the latter.

Keywords:

• Ciné-roman
• Hollywood
• comic books
• consumerism
• post-World War II literature
• movie icons

Notes

1 De Beauvoir, Simone. Les Mandarins. Paris, Gallimard, 1954.

2 Vian, Boris. J’irai cracher sur vos tombes. Paris, Scorpion, 1947.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

William Cloonan

William Cloonan is the Richard Chapple Professor of Modern Languages (Emeritus) at Florida State University. His most recent book is Frères Ennemis: The French in American Literature, Americans in French Literature (Liverpool UP, 2018).