How Project Hail Mary Got Me Thinking About French Pride

Part One in a series

Credit: Ballantine Books (left one), Random House UK (right one)

So I was arguing yet again with my husband - but don’t worry, for us it is a very fun and entertaining activity. You would think he would be proud to be French, mais non. Even though it has surely come in handy for him many times. For example, whenever he is at some customer service counter:

Can I help you?

Mais oui, mademoiselle!! [even if she’s clearly middle-aged not young] Eez eet posseeble eef I could get a leetle deescount on zees item?

Usually, the lady will then bat her eyelashes at him in response and say “Why of course, sir! Let me see what I can do. I just love your accent 😍”

Other than being proud of this admittedly very useful ability, my husband keeps having this sort of French inferiority complex. I personally think he needs to move on about surrendering in WWII and all that stuff, but that’s just me.

What does this have to do with the Andy Weir book?

At first glance, the novel Project Hail Mary would seemingly have nothing at all to do with French pride. Or any kind of national pride at all. Because there’s no concept of “nation” in space, in which most of the book takes place. However, some of it does transpire here on planet Earth, where we do have nations. A lot of them. Of which one is France.

In PHM, there is one scientist character, François Leclerc, who plays what I feel is a rather major role as he is a world-renowned climatologist; and if he didn’t do this certain thing, 💯 chance everyone dies. And in the latter part of the book, there was an interrogation scene that schooled me about the fact that the French have developed many international security techniques and protocols.

I was trying to explain all this to my husband. How France is represented at least twice in this book which I and a lot of other people worldwide easily gave ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ in Goodreads (have not properly fact-checked the “a lot of other people worldwide” part). And as far as I can recall, there were ZERO British scientist characters featured in this hugely successful blockbuster novel (again, have not independently verified this with a thorough data analysis) by the author of The Martian. Which everyone loved that book and movie! You see, that’s saying something!! Do the Brits even have any kind of aerospace programs of international repute?!

“But Newton. That’s all I need to say. Isaac Newton.”

My husband then continued by pointing out Einstein was German. It’s like for him, there are only two scientists in all of history and going forward for time immemorial that people should GAF, these couple of non-French ones.

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I for one am a teensy bit annoyed at how the British Empire still has such an unrelenting hold in modern culture and society, despite The Queen Is Dead. I mean how many more centuries do we have to endure how the British keep carrying on about how they keep calm and carry on?! They seriously trot out that kitchen poster you can buy at any dollar store every single chance they get. I mean, yes mad props to Churchill and all; as a Prime Minister he is totes in anyone’s top 5 of all time. But they need to give it a little rest. Can other countries have a chance to shine, please Winston? Would that be OK with you?

I was exasperated that my husband was completely ignoring the fact that France is absolutely no slouch when it comes to his forte, which is STEM. Hello, Rene Descartes?! We would literally not have this very important thing called MAPS if it weren’t for him (the concepts of latitude and longitude are based on the Cartesian coordinate plane system — mon dieu you see it even has his name in there).

In addition, you may have heard of this little famous phrase that is straight up the closest thing there is that can encapsulate in a nutshell the whole goddamn Renaissance/Age of Enlightenment era — “I think, therefore I am.” Yup, it was my dude Rene who said that. And the thing is, Descartes isn’t even the only Frenchman who could rock both math and philosophy at the same time (Pascal’s Wager, anyone?!)

So, here I am today to make the case for France — why they should pivot to being proud and happy, instead of being pouty and going on strike all the time at the drop of a chapeau. The three laws of motion and E = mc² be damned.

French composers are way better than British ones

I wanted to switch to a less contentious arena where it’s indisputable that the French are superior to the Brits. And that’s classical music. Debussy, Saint-Saens, Ravel, Bizet. Even if you don’t know them by their names, for sure you have heard their iconic compositions Clair de Lune, Bolero, “Habanera” from Carmen, and on and on but we don’t have all day.

Notice I didn’t mention Frederic Chopin, whom some people might mistake for being French from his last name. He’s actually Polish. (Which btw, Poland is no joke in the science department either. Marie Curie was born Maria Sklodowska in Warsaw but did all her multiple Nobel prizewinning lifesaving discoveries at The Sorbonne in Paris. So the French rightfully get to claim her as one of their own too.)

On the other hand, I could only think of one famous British classical music composer off the top of my head — Edward Elgar. Again, even if you don’t recognize the name, I guarantee you’ve heard Pomp and Circumstance, aka the song they play at graduations.

With cheating, I did find that I recognized three more English composers by their names. First of all, did not realize Gustav Holst was British (sounds German to me, but I’ll take Google’s word for it). They play his The Planets every year at the Hollywood Bowl, and at other venues where you have to bribe the general public with Star Wars and Harry Potter music to get them to listen to an orchestra. Trumpet Voluntary by Henry Purcell — I do seem to recall that was a bit of a banger from Western music class at college.

I saved Benjamin Britten for last, cannot believe I brain-farted by not summoning him to mind right away like with Elgar. I can listen to Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra all day. A truly sublime masterwork that is on par with, if not superior to, Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf which similarly teaches kids all about the different sections of the orchestra. (Pro tip: If you want to listen to an album that has both, there are several out there; but you can’t do much worse than this one narrated by David Bowie.)

Not to be confused with Benjamin Button

OK fess up. When you read that last paragraph, you may have been thinking “Hey I didn’t know the weird baby from the Brad Pitt movie was a real person, and a British classical music composer at that!” No, Benjamin Britten and Benjamin Button are indeed two separate entities, one being a real person who actually lived, the other being a fictional backward-aging character. Although who knows, I never did get around to watching that movie; so please let me know if I am mistaken, and Benjamin Button is based on a true story.

But the point is, you see with the French composers, I didn’t have to ask a search engine to remember their names or titles of their works. Whereas only Elgar I could rattle off without cheating. I mean, the three Britons I mentioned do indeed have a killer tune each; but to me, it’s like Psy. I’m sure he has other songs besides “Gangnam Style,” but frankly no one knows or cares about them, so they may as well not exist.

For me, you gotta be more than just a one-hit wonder. Even Sir Elton John rated Debussy as one of his favorites. No fellow Englishmen were on his list of classical music composers. Call me crazy, but I will go with the side of the Chunnel that has the more prolific and influential back catalog.

Oh, and speaking of composers having a ton of chart-toppers — I just looked up The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and guess who scored that along with gobs of other prestigious movies? Multiple Oscar-winning French composer Alexandre Desplat, that’s who. Have a gander at the below screenshot of just a mere smattering of his film scores:

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Maybe we’ll revive this French vs. British debate again once the PHM movie starring Ryan Gosling hits theatres. But I haven’t seen his other movie where he played an astronaut yet, so maybe let me do that first. It may take me years to do that though, because I am utterly lacking in a sense of urgency to watch movies or TV shows that most alive people have seen once or even numerous times (I’m looking at you, Indiana Jones and Point Break).

Besides, instead you guys should stay tuned for Part II of my National Pride series of posts, which is very much in the works and will be about a different nation. À bientôt!

This article first appeared on Medium in

Eric Pierce

‘s excellent pub Fanfare

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