IMMIGRANT

 
I did not become an expatriate following persecution or famine. I suppose I could be described as an impulse immigrant. Even now, it is not an easy process to explain. I usually quip that I left France because I don't like cheese.

There are two sides to every individual's decision to move to another country. Like all immigrants, I left something and chose something else.

My immigration was elective. Nothing and no one pushed me away. Actually, forces opposed my decision. My family thought I had lost my mind. And they were partly right: at the age of twenty, I was leaving my country for another which, through movies, seemed more hospitable to my personality.

What was it about France that I was escaping from?

The late 1970s were a time of morosity in France. One had the feeling of a civilization well past its prime. That was discouraging for a young man: no matter what he could try to achieve, it had been done better earlier. I had the impression that there would be wider ranging opportunities in the U.S.

But basically I was not fleeing anything. I was starting over with a clean slate.

What was it about the U.S. that attracted me?

It would be impossible to overestimate the responsibility of American movies in fostering immigration. During my late teen years, films such as Annie Hall, Nashville, and All That Jazz contributed a wonderful picture of the U.S., gritty and exciting: A place where I would fit more comfortably than in the average French movie, not to mention French real life.

And that is, in a way, what immigration is about. You cross a huge divide. From a theater seat, you find yourself on the screen, in a new and temporarily unreal world where everything is a surprise.

Even now, the exhilaration of the experience is never far from my mind. After a difficult day, I walk inside my house, close the door and tell my wife "pack the kids NOW, we're moving to the Philippines." Her usual answer: "be quiet, and empty the dishwasher."

The Emigrants

Flower Drum Song

Seen with the hindsight of immigrants' descendants, or from the viewpoint of the Old Country itself, immigration is often described as a bittersweet if not downright traumatic uprooting.

In her memoir "The Family Silver," Irish-American Sharon O'Brien describes this heavy emotional luggage and how it channeled through her as she played Danny Boy on the flute as a youngster. That is representative of the immigrant experience as perceived by descendants: genuine feelings to be sure, but necessarily tinted by transference.

For an instance of the feelings that remain behind in the Old Country, I could mention a terrifying Swedish film: Utvandrarna (The Emigrants). If Annie Hall, Nashville and All That Jazz were strong magnets pulling me away, The Emigrants scared me with the threats of disease, violence and discouragement. Characteristically it was a Swedish, not an American movie.

As a rule, the children of immigrants do not want to know anything about the process - they want to conform. But if my grandchildren-to-be ask me about leaving France for the U.S., it will actually be easier to relate to them my mother's tears and the nightmares. These remain alive somewhere in me, like a cyst. But another side must be recalled and explained as well: the bewildering fun which even Sharon O'Brien's famine stricken ancestors must have experienced.

It is a fleeting sensation: after a few years it is largely gone and difficult to recapture. For me, that sense of constant surprise and of funhouse distortion which greets all immigrants is best described in a song from the immigration-themed Broadway musical: Flower Drum Song (lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II).

Chop Suey, ChopSuey,
Living here is very much like Chop Suey
Hula-Hoop and nuclear war
Doctor Salk and Zsa Zsa Gabor
Harry Truman, Truman Capote and Dewey
Chop Suey.

For me, the earliest flashcards were Ronald Reagan, Captain Kirk, Private Benjamin, Dianne Feinstein, and Duncan Hines, but they added up to the same kaleidoscopic gallery.

Immigrants don't need a remote control: life keeps flipping the channels for them. Oh how I miss that sensory overload of the first few months.