Illustration by Lola Fleming.
Paris: a city everyone wants to visit, viewed as a romantic getaway and a paradise for food lovers. Home to the Eiffel Tower, the most iconic cafés and, of course, the Mona Lisa. Also, for the relevance of this article, the place I grew up in. The city has this aura about it. There’s no doubt about that. It’s not for nothing that it has endless streams of tourists flocking to it each and every year. It attracts people with its streets, its atmosphere, its monuments and buildings, and various other aspects of Parisian life people want to experience for themselves.
What’s funny, though, is that this vision of Paris is definitely not how I view the city. The number of times I’ve heard people respond with excitement when I told them where I was from, asking me about my favourite café or if I ever wore a beret… (spoiler alert: I have. But for Girl Scout purposes.) For the past month, a new sort of reaction has surfaced when my hometown is discussed: “Oh my god, I’ve just finished Emily in Paris! I’m guessing it’s pretty accurate about life there, right?”
And let me stop you right there: it’s really not.
At this point, I’m sure most of us have heard about this show. For those of you who haven’t had the chance to dive into this… interesting experience, let me explain. It’s the story of Emily, a young marketing pro from Chicago who moves to Paris unexpectedly without speaking a word of French, expecting a whirlwind of romance, sightseeing, a dream job… and nice people. Instead, she’s faced with rude Parisians who make fun of her for not speaking French and insult her to her face, and a horrible boss who also happens to be having an affair with a client. To say Parisians aren’t portrayed very well in the beginning of this show is an understatement. Honestly, those clichés just won’t cut it for most French people, and it’s easy to see why – just look at French twitter the weekend after that show was released. A mob of angry Parisians ready to take up arms to call out the way their city was portrayed: an artificial paradise that fits the American idealized vision of Paris that, while cute and charming, does not fit reality in many ways.
While it doesn’t necessarily do harm per se, that vision of Paris is very, very reductive. Limiting Paris to a select number of monuments and famous streets disregards an entire part of Parisian culture, and helps fashion the idea that every Parisian must behave a certain way, dress a certain way or like certain things. I am aware that this is the problem with stereotypes everywhere, and Emily in Paris definitely isn’t the first show to portray one or many cities in a different reality. That is the beauty of artistic license – not everything has to be exact, and in many ways extracting from reality can make people dream and makes the popularity of a TV show.
My main issue with this show is that they really try to pass this vision off as reality, instead of acknowledging that it might not be completely accurate – which helps root these stereotypes a little more in collective imagination. Because at the end of the day, while people mentioning Parisian and French clichés once can be funny, more than that can become annoying and irritating, if not offensive. You know the clichés I’m referring to: a beret, a baguette, a few stripes, extramarital affairs, the cigarettes and the wine… the list goes on and on. Personally, I don’t smoke, I don’t cheat on my partners whenever I have the occasion, and while I do love wine and freshly baked French bread, they aren’t the first thing I think of whenever I wake up. I’ve had snails once in my life and hated it. And the closest I’ve gotten to a frog’s leg was science class.
It saddens me that the first reaction I get when I say where I’m from is either a heavily accented “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?” or a snail joke. Paris is way more than that. Paris definitely is a vibrant city, with way more diversity than that show portrays. Every arrondissement has a different vibe. Every bend of the Seine shows a different side of the French capital, putting visitors into contact with a different culture every step of the way. Walking around this idyllic city also transports you on a journey through time. In every street corner you can find something of historical significance. The architecture reminds you of times past, and even in small parcs or squares you can find a relic of bygone days. Therefore, going beyond the clichés opens you up to an even better vision of the French capital, one that encompasses so many different aspects of life in the city of lights. And that is exactly what Emily in Paris did not, and could not, portray.
It’s poetic yet real, it’s history yet the future, and it’s home.
