Why are the French so angry about Emily in Paris?
It may still be the city of love, but my better half finds Paris incredibly stupid. They are arrogant and refuse to answer you in English, but when they are in the Netherlands, they expect us to speak French. You hear it: even the Parisian cannot escape the yoke of a prejudice. And now there is that one series.
With much fanfare, Netflix announced the new Emily in Paris. A young woman from L.A. who suddenly moved to the French capital with her derrière, in an apartment that none of us can afford, without speaking a single word outside the door. The series stirs quite a bit among this and that. In this case, the 'this' are Parisians and the 'that' are the rest of the couch kids.
I finished Emily in Paris myself in three evenings because it’s about nothing. It’s like watching Say Yes To The Dress for advanced viewers (only with better clothes by Camille), it can serve as a bedside lamp in the living room, you can do it without paying attention alongside another activity. The storyline is wafer-thin and each episode invariably ends like a romance novel, in favor of Emily who outsmarts the residents of Paris. But honesty compels me to say: the French man and woman do not come off very well. If we are to believe Emily, they start working around lunch, then go for a three-hour lunch with liters of wine, and every Frenchman/woman cheats on someone outside their committed relationship. Furthermore, they believe they are always right and the majority do not speak a word outside the door. What you call a rather unkind representation of reality.
Outdated, says a large part of the viewers and thus problematic. The women in the series are, without exception, thin with abs like cables and they run kilometers a day along the Seine. The older boss Sylvie is jealous of the younger junior marketer Emily. Americans are fat and the French smoke. And so the stereotypes continue rather generously. By the way, did you notice that Emily only has a hangover once? What I say: a fairy tale.
Emily is compared by the press to Amélie, a film that was also not exactly free of clichés, but well-loved among Parisians. But why then so angry about the prejudices they themselves use in Dix Pour Cent? Cécile Narinx points out in the Volkskrant.
the finger on the presumably sore spot: Emily does not compliment Paris and its Parisians, but outsmarts them every episode.
Image: Netflix
