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Is Picard's Chateau French enough?

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Enter the nihilists... We got a bit of a nod to that with Picard starting the series with a bit of French. He doesn't have to be perfect, they just need to make an effort. And it was charming.

An effort that was well enough already made during the series with house as seen in "Family." What's irksome here is that it seems like regression on achievement already accomplished. In GEN too, the Christmas Fantasy was in an ornate house that could have easily passed for French. Effort made.
There's no regression. They made him and his life as French here as they ever did in the original series.
 
Does the dog actually understand what he says, or is he just catching the parts that sound like "time to eat" and "wanna go for a ride"?

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Eh the house doesn't matter. Picard's Frenchness has been laughable from the beginning of TNG. The extent of making the character French has never been much better than slap a croissant in Stewart's hand once in a while.
Nah, his Frenchness is just fine. For some bizarre reason some people just expect any nationality other than American to be depicted as an extreme caricature. Kirk didn't constantly yell 'Yee-haw!', eat hamburgers and display shocking levels of myopic ignorance to remind us that he is supposed to be American instead of Canadian like Shatner.
 
It doesn't inform the character in the slightest if it does't register as not French – if we're supposed to look at an Italian building and take it for French.
As someone whose doctoral research dealt with French cultural institutions, including how vernacular architecture is represented by museums, I will say that the Picard home is about as French as the pronunciation of Picard. It has problems. There are clearly elements that call to French Mediaterranean architecture in terms of the windows, the arches, the look of the stone. However, it is all poorly proportioned and ordered in an odd manner. Any Frenchman would recognize the Picard "château" as a McMansion from the establishing shot.
 
Kirk didn't constantly yell 'Yee-haw!', eat hamburgers and display shocking levels of myopic ignorance to remind us that he is supposed to be American instead of Canadian like Shatner.
No, but we do have this:
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There's no regression. They made him and his life as French here as they ever did in the original series.
Expectations are higher now, and the joke of his English Frenchness an old one. It’s the reason he spoke French at the start of the pilot.
Does the dog actually understand what he says, or is he just catching the parts that sound like "time to eat" and "wanna go for a ride"?
Dogs can learn many words, even put sentences together, even if they can speak them back or learn entire languages. Why shouldn’t Picard try to teach him as much as he’s capable of picking up?
Nah, his Frenchness is just fine. For some bizarre reason some people just expect any nationality other than American to be depicted as an extreme caricature. Kirk didn't constantly yell 'Yee-haw!', eat hamburgers and display shocking levels of myopic ignorance to remind us that he is supposed to be American instead of Canadian like Shatner.
See YouTube link above. A touch of Frenchness is not shouting, “Sacré bleu!” while eating escargot.
It looks like it would easily fit in around South France.
As noted several times upthread, the house is in Northeast France, and the previous version of it shown on TNG fit the area perfectly.
 
Expectations are higher now, and the joke of his English Frenchness an old one. It’s the reason he spoke French at the start of the pilot.
Yeah, I was there when TNG started.The character's Frenchness has never been more than a superficial patina. The chateau, the issue here, is just as French as the character ever was which is to say Tartuffe, if you want to bring French into this.
 
What we need to resolve this thread's central question is obviously comparison pictures of a variety of French chateaux. TrekBBS has trained me to believe that it's not a Star Trek discussion until there are useful comparison pictures and, maybe, some speculative diagrams. Only then can we properly elucidate the Truth.

I wish I were joking, but I'm not sure I am...
 
Yeah, I was there when TNG started.The character's Frenchness has never been more than a superficial patina. The chateau, the issue here, is just as French as the character ever was which is to say Tartuffe, if you want to bring French into this.
Yes, the thread about Frenchness would like to discuss Frenchness. Again, no one who doesn’t, doesn’t need to participate in the discussion. I was there from the start of TNG, too, and that matters not a lick. We saw dashes of Frenchness here and there, (maman, merde, Picard’s pride in the French language, the regionally-correct house in “Family,” the house and props and outfits in GEN, that all he wanted for breakfast with Crusher in “Attached” were coffee and croissants, that he was raised in a traditional French vineyard (indeed, one in which nothing ever changed) not in a flat in cosmopolitan Paris or Montreal or Boston or New Peking)....and all those dashes and others still were appreciated.
 
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