Texas, Paris
The capital of chic feels une grande passion for la Texanité—from fajitas and pickups to country couture, a Texan in Paris reports on France’s Lone Star love affair.
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Texas Dancing
Among a handful of Paris social clubs dedicated to la texanité is Les Amis du Far West, a group of a hundred or so members who don the requisite jeans, hats, and square-dance flounces to pursue country and western dancing. A regular course in “le danse country western” covers dances “en couple et en ligne,” such as the Texas two-step, “cowboy cha-cha,” “tush push,” and cotton-eyed Joe. One teacher, Nathalie Menu, is a former ballerina whose professional repertoire includes a cabaret act of lasso tricks. The dancing class is clearly vigorous: Students must bring a note from a doctor attesting to their health.
Texas and Aristocrats
France’s titled elite boast their own phone book, the Bottin Mondain. Several Texans have appeared in its listings, but the best thing about the Bottin Mondain is calling up the company that compiles the directory, being put (inevitably) on hold, and listening to the recording offered during the wait—an interminable rendition of “Home on the Range.”
Texas Music
Parisians love Texas music—honky-tonk, bluegrass, Western swing. Texophile musician-actor Jean Sarrus hosts Country Box, a weekly country music show. Sarrus, whose daily attire includes boots and a cowboy hat or gimme cap, filmed last year’s Halloween show at Texas’ legendary rug-cuttin’ venue Gruene Hall. He notes that “people here still think of Texas as oil fields and J.R., but increasingly they’re beginning to know Texas for its many styles of music.” Last year Sarrus’ annual country music festival in Marmende featured Texas musicians Junior Brown, Monte Warden, Rosie Flores, Kimmie Rhodes, and High Noon; 80,000 fans showed up. Another Western extravaganza is scheduled for summer in, of all places, the elegant Riviera resort city of St. Tropez.
A prominent Parisian country and western band is the Bunch, whose eleven members wear genuine Stetsons and chemises fancy and essay Bob Wills tunes and other Texas classics. “Since the Western style is very fashionable right now in France,” says band member Patrick Vrolant, “our record company wants us to write words about fashion models, to cash in on la mode western while it lasts.” Here’s a couplet they should try: “She makes more in a day than I make in a year / She’s taller’n me, but then I’ve got a rear.”
Even tejano music is creeping into Paris cabarets. Oswaldo, a single-moniker singer-accordionist, is currently recording an album of tejano tunes, including Flaco Jiménez covers.
The nation’s most aggressive promoter of Texas music, however, is country singer Dick Rivers (born Hervé Forneri in Nice), who raises Appaloosas on his French ranch, sports boots tooled with the Texas flag, and installed a satellite dish so he could tune in to Country Music Television. Rivers adores Texas and Austin in particular: One of his videos was shot in Austin at the Travis County jail and the now-defunct Black Cat club, and his 1991 CD, emblazoned with the shape of Texas, is titled Holly Days in Austin. The twenty songs are all covers of Buddy Holly tunes with new words; a sample lyric, sung to the tune of “Oh Boy!,” is “Met tes bottes, sautes dans tes jeans / Cette nuit on dé-barque à Austin / Oh boy!” (“Put on your boots, jump into your jeans / Tonight we’re going to Austin, Oh boy!”)
Dallas, Paris
Right up there with France’s beloved Jerry Lewis is the country’s favorite television drama—Dallas. Since the prime-time sudser debuted in 1978, the French have adored the show, especially les texanes—the Ewing family women. The scheming Sue Ellen and Lucy in particular provoked beaucoup d’ooh-la-las. Dallas has been off the air since 1991, but it was such a hit here that French television still airs reruns, and one French scholar wrote an essay titled “Homère et Dallas,” in which she likened the soap opera to Homer’s Iliad. Dallas also gave rise to two French expressions in common use: “brushing” (“big hair”) and “C’est completement Dallas!” (“That’s completely Dallas!”). The latter can refer to something vulgar and ostentatious—say, a teased-out-to-there brushing—or something ruthless and cutthroat—perhaps a J.R.—style business deal. A final tribute to the TV show has come in yet another form of American pop culture: the car. The Dallas, equipped with a Peugeot-manufactured engine, is a jeeplike vehicle that converts to a mini-pickup.
Texas Women
Another French darling could out-Ewing the Ewings. Dallas murderess Joy Davis Aylor bore all the hallmarks of les texanes: blond, rich, spoiled rotten. Indicted for arranging the grisly death of her husband’s girlfriend, Aylor fled to Canada, Mexico, and finally France’s Côte d’Azur, where she was arrested and jailed in 1990. Texas authorities may have thought the chase was over, but French officials were so smitten with the pretty prisoner that they fought her extradition for two and a half years, capitulating only after the American ambassador and the Dallas district attorney agreed not to seek the death penalty. French newspapers and magazines trumpeted the Aylor story for years; some were sympathetic (JOY RETURNS TO HELL, blared one headline after her transfer to Texas), but others remained skeptical, labeling her “une femme psychopathe” and “une autre femme qui va affronter la justice texane.” Succeeding Aylor as the most titillating and talked-about texane is white-trash titaness Anna Nicole Smith.
Texas Vacations
Disneyland Paris, which opened in 1992, includes one thousand hotel rooms and an entire Wild West town—complete with blacksmith, general store, and more. Perhaps figuring that Europeans knew no better, Disney took a highly creative approach to geography: The Hotel Cheyenne purports to sit on the “right bank” of the Rio Grande. Farm implements, Navajo rugs, firearms, and lanterns bedeck the Chuckwagon Cafe, which delivers “une cuisine abondante à la manière texane” (“big generous Texas-style portions”). Other attractions include a stockade playground for les enfants, an Indian village, and the Red Garter Saloon, which “transporte ses visiteurs au temps du Jesse James”—although that famous outlaw never made it anywhere close to the Rio Grande.
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