This year’s Park City Follies

Each year, we make a point to go and see the lampoon of all things Park City at the historic Egyptian Theater on Main Street. The Follies are starring an all local cast and consist of a parody with live music, singing, dancing, and short films.

This year was no exception and the show was pretty good, save for one segment, that my wife and I didn’t really appreciate. It was a spoof on French culture that consisted of mocking everything French, from people’s accent, attitudes and habits, everything done in a grotesque caricature by an actor impersonating a certain “Jacques-Jacques”. 

This had no reason to be there as the show was supposed to be "all about Park City" according to its director, and there was nothing remotely connected to France that had happened for years until now. That French character was presented as if it were associated with Vail Resorts, the entity that owns Park City Mountain and has been a rather negative element in our local life since it took over the management of our ski hills, suggesting implicitly that Vail Resorts and French culture were equally nefarious. 

Why not do the same by making fun of Germans, Italians, Israelis or Maoris? There was obviously no justifiable context for bashing any of these groups either. If “La Compagnie des Alpes” (France’s big ski resort conglomerate) had purchased Alterra or Vail Resorts, or if Rossignol, located at the other end of town, had opened up an American branch of Paris’ Folies Bergères, then the connection would have been understandable. 

Along these lines, there was a spoof about Texas that made sense in the context of newcomers “invading” our community, but we failed to see any impact that French people or their culture could have had on the life of Parkites to warrant their inclusion in the show. Instead, that segment made my wife and I feel like our home country was a nation of dimwits. How would our Courchevel sister-city officials have felt if they had been sitting at this year's Follies? 

As I told the Follie’s director, France is far from being perfect, but its food is good, its national healthcare is the one of the best in the world, it has state-of-the-art high speed trains, a Tour de France, its skiing is very good, abortion is enshrined in its constitution, there’s not a Trump or a Marjorie Taylor-Green in sight and these days, I'd rather be flying in a French-built Airbus than a Boeing. With all that in mind, I asked that same director to cease using French people as a convenient punching bag!