Every girl’s fantasy: Emily in Paris

Where: Netflix When:2020

Score: 2/5 Watch again: No

When did I watch: 25/10/2020 Language: English

I was trying to come up with an opinion on Emily in Paris as everyone else seems to have done. I was struggling because my knee-jerk reaction was to hate it, mainly because of the xenophobia. Initially, I wasn't going to watch it, but I had a glass of wine or two, and there was nothing else on. So I formed this opinion: its trash TV with a high budget which is why I can't forgive it for being bad.

First, though Emily in Paris is about a young marketing professional whose boss becomes ill and then Emily gets sent to Paris for a new job instead of her boss. She moves into a top floor French pre-war apartment and works for a fashion company. Emily meets men everywhere, a man on the floor below her and at the coffee shop down the street. She stumbles onto being an influencer with her Instagram account Emily in Paris. Hijinx ensues.

If this plot summary sounds like the life plan of a 16-year-old girl, on the first page of her journal under the words' dear diary', it does. This very reason that it sounds like so many peoples' childhood fantasy of what their life would be at 25 is why people are enjoying this show, without telling anyone they are watching, but maybe also why they love to hate it. However, it's also this simplicity of the storyline and the fantasy itself that allows people to suspend their disbelief over the improbability of the whole thing. Like why is she so fashionable if she used to work for a drugs company and not in fashion? How did she go from being an assistant in the US to becoming the head of marketing in Paris?

The childish nostalgia of Emily does not camouflage the 2D depiction of her as a character. If Emily in Paris had come out ten years ago, maybe more people would have loved it. Still, by today's standards, it seems dated due to the simplifying of femininity into a caricature of American women abroad. In regards to alleged xenophobia, many argued that she experiences a culture shock, but I don't believe that her attitude to people and French culture would go down well if you placed this story anywhere else in the world. By some cultural standards, she is right about the sexism in episode 2's campaign, but that is no excuse for her attitude towards other cultures beliefs on gender and sex, in my opinion. I think this shows depicts the privileged, perceived or otherwise, the attitude of some people in my generation. This is from the same creators as Sex and the City, and I think it holds the same fantasy elements, the caveat of I've never seen Sex and the City. We as a viewer have moved passed these 2D depictions of women on screen, Emily in Paris came out just before shows like The Queen's Gambit which shows a layered and floored female character and still allows for escapism and fantasy.

Emily earns nothing in her social or work life; this is maybe why I think she is so 2D. I never see her character grow through having to fight and work for something which makes the payoff of her success minimal and Emily unrelatable. Emily is lucky in getting the job, in becoming an influencer and instead of her changing her ideas to fit a French market it seems the entirety of France adjusts to fit what she wants and expects of it. More simplistically its as if a child is imagining what her life will be in Paris and forgetting or not knowing that you have to work hard for success.

In the end, there is nothing wrong with the fantasy of Emily in Paris. It is beautiful to look at and acted reasonably well for having a subpar script. But this will always be a costly guilty pleasure rather than a work of art.

Sources

Prendergast, L. (2020) ‘Nous sommes tous Emily in Paris – why can’t we admit it?’ in The Spectator