Imagine you’re walking the streets of Paris with a handful of pink peonies after just eating the most delicate and crisp pain au chocolat you’ve ever had, heading to your job where you advertise perfumes and designer brands for a living. That’s not you, though.
That’s Emily in Paris.
Netflix released its newest series “Emily in Paris” on Oct. 2. The story follows the trials and errors of young social media guru, Emily Goldwyn, who moves from Chicago to the City of Love to bring an American perspective to French marketing.
For Emily, this is her big break at the Gilbert Group, a Chicago marketing firm. After finding out she is pregnant, Emily’s boss decides against moving to Paris to assist French marketing company, Savoir. Instead, she sends a spunky, bright-eyed, and overly-romantic Emily (Lily Collins), to take her place.
Darren Star, creator of “Emily in Paris,” hones the skill of escapist television. Collins’ character sports chic ensembles and every scene is aesthetically pleasing. The vibrant visuals of flower bouquets, croissants the size of one’s head, bold lipstick, wine and champagne with decadent plates of meat, cheese, and bread, and sharp cinematography places the audience within French heaven’s reach.
But the visuals of the show only scratch the surface of Star’s attempt to breed jealousy and wanderlust in the hearts of Netflix-bingers. As the audience partly hates to see French stereotypes play out, they also secretly wish they could be Emily.
Whether it’s making a friend with a spunky French girl while trying to shop for local flowers, or dating a philosophy professor whom you met at a cafe one serendipitous evening, or experiencing sexual tension with your neighbor downstairs, “Emily in Paris” addresses every wanna-be Francophone’s adventurous fantasies.
As Collins’ character discovers the ins and outs of the Parisian way, she documents her observations on Instagram. As she moves into her apartment, Emily takes a photo with a standard chic smoulder in front of her window that looks out to the Eiffel Tower. When walking past a cycling studio where several French women have a cigarette break after their workout, she cleverly captions her post, “#SmokinBodies.” With every episode, Emily’s audience witnesses her gradual increase in followers as her enchantment with Paris grows.
That isn’t to say that everything is “La Vie en Rose,” though. As the show embodies a hybrid of “The Devil Wears Prada” and “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” young and naive Emily is faced with workplace challenges: foreign snobbery (since she can’t speak a lick of French), a malicious boss who pounds her with impossible tasks to push her limits, and even womanizing men who try to charm or erringly sexually harass her.
But Emily provides a model for the young girl with dreams to wander Europe, take on an ambitious career, and live a charmed life.
Rather than be stifled by these obstacles, Emily looks for the simple things in France that make life beautiful, ultimately bringing her lessons from living in the city to the drawing board. As she documents the simple things on her own Instagram account, @EmilyinParis, she brings her discoveries and fresh ideas to Savoir to help increase their sales through social media campaigns and even controversy.
As an American in Paris, Emily juxtaposes the American feminist movement to the French way of sensuality, language, and socialization. She creates controversy in the workplace with her future-forward politics, but ultimately forms herself as a heroine of modern thinking, proving the French are so behind.
But although “Emily in Paris,” visually may appeal to the inner-French girl of every young American woman, the irony lies in its simultaneous kiss and diss of the French way.
Spectators have had mixed reviews.
Madeline Fry Schultz, ’18, tweeted, “Emily in Paris is not a good show. Naturally, I watched all 10 episodes.” A reviewer at Vulture wrote, “In actuality, I gulped the entire series down in one evening like a bottle of cheap Bordeaux, finding its cheerfully insane, totally smooth surface and hollow core the perfect cure for what currently ails me (being alive right now).”
The show presents everyday work troubles (some clearly ridiculous for the average person) as Emily struggles to find her place in Paris. But, as she goes about Paris as an example of its disillusioning powers, the show also presents the city and its culture in a superficial and stereotypical fashion. Sure, we all want to go to that Paris, but we all know deep inside that even this not-so-rosy edition of Paris is not a real edition.
