I tuned in to Emily in Paris, Netflix’s new rom-com series, expecting a European love affair between a young woman and her enviably stylish job. Instead the series is, what can be called, a boomer’s fantasy of a lazy millennial’s life.
In a line, Emily in Paris is: Lily Collins waltzing around Paris in fabulous clothes in picturesque locations, refusing to speak French- largely expecting to be seen as adorable for it- and having wealthy ruggedly handsome men fall for her.
The titular Emily works for a marketing firm in Chicago, until her boss, right before relocating, falls pregnant and Emily has to replace her post in Paris. The catch is that Emily does not speak French and plans to survive on her “fake it till you make it” philosophy. In reality, she sells it as being cutesy and expects everyone to speak English in Paris instead, without so much as asking if they do.
Madhouse of Cliches
Name a stereotype, and within the first three episodes, Emily has not only encountered it, but tried to rectify it and espouse the American way.
The show has been criticized, particularly in France, for promoting stereotypical images of the city and its residents.
“No cliché is spared, not even the most desperate,” wrote Premiere’s Charles Martin in his French-language review last month.
“Cite a cliché about France and the French [and] you will find it in Emily in Paris,” agreed 20 Minutes’ Fabien Randanne.
“The first half of the season is an exorcism of all of the French clichés the writers could think of,” wrote The Guardian’s Rebecca Nicholson in her one-star review. Yet other critics were more forgiving, with Variety’s Daniel D’Addario calling it “a delight” set against “a truly inviting backdrop”.
Paris, drunk in Utopia
Paris is shown as the city where the clouds part, your brain clears, and your soul finds meaning. When Emily tells her Chicagoan boyfriend while walking around Paris, “The entire city looks like Ratatouille.” -it feels as if the character’s entire frame of reference is itself a cartoonish recreation.
Sure, Paris is a city of lights, of beauty, of love and, yes, croissants. But if Emily’s life is supposed to be a millennial woman’s dream come true, then that dream is not built on upward trajectory, money, or the knowledge that she made the world a better place. Rather, it is an intellectually slovenly existence in which a metropolitan city like Paris gets painted as more of an amusement park.
Clueless and Cute
For most humans, the prospect of starting a new job you’re unqualified for in a country where you don’t speak the language would require serious pondering. There would be visa and HR issues too. But for her, these terrestrial conundrums do not exist. And so, Emily goes to Paris what seems like the very next day. In Paris, Emily’s two main conflicts are figuring out how to count flights of stairs in her apartment building and failing to please Sylvie, her new boss at Savoir. She does neither of these things well.
Realistically, Emily’s lack of curiosity about her new city and job would probably get her fired and her unwillingness to adapt to her new environment instead of attempting to “add her two American cents” everywhere would annoy her friends and neighbors. But she somehow succeeds at both places.
Parisian and Perfect for the Gram
Emily starts a new Instagram account (handle: emilyinparis), where she posts pictures and boomerangs of herself doing what Parisians consider touristy. She takes selfies from her balcony overlooking the city and fawning over the Eiffel Tower. Her Instagram following somehow grows exponentially, from nothing to the tens of thousands, because of her clichéd pictures. Her Instagram posts of desserts and cheeseburgers with captions like “cheeseburger in paradise” get extremely popular. She continues to share very mundane things and enjoys the “influencer” status.
Millennial lives on social media are built on work, curation, editing, and planning. But content-blessed Emily gets the right shot on the first try — every single time.
While real-life people have to take multiple shots to ensure one great one for Instagram, in Emily’s world, she can have her cake and caption it “sugar+butter=true love”.
There’s an early scene when Emily first meets her new best friend, Mindy where they are sitting in a Parisian park and Mindy’s charges, two French children, are playing by a fountain. Without asking, Emily snaps and shares a picture of the kid, demonstrating her growing habit of photographing and Instagramming people without their consent. Taking a picture, let alone sharing it, of minors is absolutely wrong and illegal according to France’s Penal Code (Sec 226.1). The gesture takes something beautiful and alive and, with a blunt sense of entitlement, pins it behind hashtags for her trite feed.
Millennial Work Ethic?
The show Emily in Paris largely comes off as written for teenagers, with the creators appealing to the younger audience by wiring the show around the fantasy of a millennial laziness, by propagating the anthem “as a millennial I have a constant need to work all the time, because if you aren’t working, you’re not succeeding”.
The premise of the show creates a utopia for Emily where only she is allowed to resist conventional ideas of self-improvement and personal progress. Emily doesn’t have to listen to her bosses or get better at her marketing job. She tells Savoir that she’s a hard worker, despite barely attempting to learn the language her clients and boss speak. Although literally everyone tells her that to have a life in Paris means learning the language; she does not speak French till the end of the show. She also doesn’t have many promotional ideas for her clients besides “making something popular on Instagram.”
Emily’s upward and onward trajectory is not a traditional career fantasy of slowly mastering and getting better at your job. Rather, Emily’s story is about living an anxiety-free existence without any negative consequences. Emily is never punished for it, nor do we ever witness her reflecting on her possibly embarrassing behaviours. Her clients constantly treat her ideas about “social media engagement” as treasured gospel.
The most irking notion is that she rejects all norms and logic about the way things are supposed to work, but in the end (of nearly every episode) everything works out.
The universe bends to her will, pats her on the back and assures her that she is worthy of every single one of its riches. Wouldn’t it be nice to be Emily?
A thing to consider is that while Emily’s life is idle bliss, the people in her orbit are all working really hard. Her neighbor bro-like boyfriend weighs the dream of owning his own restaurant against his self-respect and relationship with Camille. And most notably, Mindy Chen, one of the fewest people of color in this incredibly white show, speaks at least three languages, has the singing voice of a pop star, and is left at the end of the season with a so-called dream job of a twice-a-week gig singing at an unnamed drag bar while juggling her nanny job.
“Parisians are Mean” and Emily?
If Emily wants people to be kind to her, maybe she should learn a little about local customs and basic manners, if not their language. If you enter a French store, and skip “Bonjour” to start talking in English assuming its their burden to learn your native tongue, people might have reasons to not welcome you. Maybe Emily should also break her habit of lecturing people on how they do it “back home” and expect locals to engage and revere her.
Let’s not forget Emily giving out backhanded compliments (“You’re nice, French AND you speak English?!”) to perfectly nice people and proceeding to sleep with both the juvenile brother AND the boyfriend of the one French girl, Camille, who’s super friendly to her. Why, Emily?
Why I Watched and Recommend and Emily in Paris
After the above discussion I admit this show is far better if you stop looking for reason and just look at the scenery. If there is one thing to say in the show’s favour, it is that it visually looks great- the locations, the fashion, the food, the men, and the ladies; Emily is entirely impractically dressed in every situation, and occasionally her dialogues actually make you laugh (“I am a basic bitch with a bag charm”), and you find yourself craving a croissant while imagining yourself in those pencil heels and matching scarves.
31-year-old Lily Collins flawlessly melts into the nuances of the freshly-graduated employee of the high-fashion environment, Emily Cooper, and plays her child-like charms and expressions to her strength. Meanwhile the performances of Ashley Park (Mindy Chen), Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu (Sylvie) and Lucas Bravo (Gabriel), amongst others, felt like they were giving their best to save the show and the effort showed from their respective places.
Considering the current state of events — a pandemic with no clear end in sight, watching Emily in Paris is like drawing a warm bath for my brain cells as if it were a low-effort form of pleasure. Somewhere amongst all this inanity we find a comforting, ironically thrilling dreamland that disregards everything we’ve been told about professional and personal achievement. Given that the real world has so much grief and drama seemingly packed into every hour, the show’s portrait of a land where nothing bad ever happens feels like a much-needed respite. If times were different, and the pandemic hadn’t exposed how absolutely rotten and stagnant life can feel, I’d probably have dropped Emily in Paris. Right now, I want to watch 10 more episodes.
A second season of the show has yet to be commissioned, but Darren Star has revealed he already has ideas about what its heroine will do next. “She’ll be more of a resident of the city [in season two],” he told Oprah magazine. “She’ll have her feet on the ground a little more.”