An American, Still Very American, in Paris

January 8, 2022
Posted by Jay Livingston

“Emily in Paris” is really about the clothes. I feel a bit irrelevant offering sociological commentary.( For snark regarding the clothes in Season One, see Buzzfeed.)

In Season One, Emily was more or less America personified, and the show’s creators, presumably with American audiences in mind, were all but waving the Stars and Stripes and shouting, “We’re Number One.” Emily, with no knowledge of French culture and customs and unable to speak a word of French, nevertheless manages to outperform the stodgy French on their home field. Emily’s pluck, optimism, and openness, and her new Instagrammatic approaches to marketing triumph over the measured, traditional French way of doing things. (Earlier blog post on Emily are here and here.)

Having established the superiority of American culture, the show can move on in Season Two to matters of the heart, which are more complicated, for while Emily could solve marketing problems with snap of her smartphone, the conflicts of romance are mostly internal. The basic problem is that Emily, in one passionate encounter, has fallen for Gabriel and he for her. But he already has a girlfriend, Camille, whose family company is a client of the marketing firm Emily works for.

In European movies, women in love follow their whims, often without regard for common sense and without planning out the consequences, especially the consequences for others. Men can only try to understand. The classic example is “Jules and Jim,” where a woman’s capriciousness brings the men who love her heartbreak and even death.

Emily tries to be more practical. If her feelings for Gabriel cause difficulties for him and for Camille, she will try to suppress those feelings. She agrees to  a formal agreement with Camille that since Gabriel is the problem, they both agree not to be romantically involved with him. Camille of course has no intention of honoring that pact. It’s hard to imagine a woman in a French movie imposing a bureaucratic solution to restrain feelings of love. But to the American Emily, it seems like a practical, workable solution.

The show is on Emily’s side her. Camille is selfish and scheming, petty and vindictive. She insistst that a business meeting be conducted in French, leaving Emily unable to understand what’s going on. “Emily in Paris” wants us to see her as nasty for this, even though French is the native language of everyone at the table save Emily. Camille, who has just discovered that Emily had sex with her boyfriend, wants only that she not be seduce him away, but in “Emily in Paris” she is the bad guy.

The show makes a deliberate point of the inability of Americans to think accurately about affairs of the heart. After the meeting, Emily’s colleague Luc takes her to film, “ a classic,” he tells her. It’s “Jules and Jim” (the title of this episode is “Jules and Em”). As they talk briefly about the film afterwards, Emily says, ‘If Catherine and Jim had only waited for each other’s letters to arrive before sending another one, there would have been less confusion, and they all would have ended up together.” And she’s right. If “Jules and Jim” had been an American film, it would have had a pragmatic, understandable, and happy ending.