Emily In Paris: Romanticizing Ignorance

look i'm not basic so i watched emily in paris this netflix show that everybody really hates i don't know don't yell at me i just wanted to know what the fuss was about my girlfriend watched this show and she told me that it's bad and kind of stupid and paired with the horrible reception and got online bad and kind of stupid was the only information i had about the show but lily collins is in this show and i like lily collins so i decided to sit down and watch the whole thing just to see why people were so upset about it and yeah it's it's pretty bad i think i can say with confidence that emily in paris is probably the dumbest tv series i have watched in years that's coming from someone who watched all seven seasons of pretty little liars i have no shortage of guilty pleasure tv under my belt but emily in paris is so bad on so many levels that it's not really fun to watch because the show is not only mediocre it's also really boring and that's from the first episode to the last one the energy never really picks up but people were not upset at the show for being boring they weren't even mad that it was bad people hate this show because of the really inappropriate and inaccurate way it portrays french culture now that's what immediately picked my attention because it just so happens that i am french and it just so happens that i am from paris so the show's portrayal of my city felt really interesting and i couldn't wait to see how bad they screwed it up at first i thought i was going to watch the show and just laugh my ass off at how inaccurate it all is but i was wrong ah i genuinely felt insulted by this show more than once and the more it kept going the more i understood why so many people around the world were so upset at it emily in paris has a huge racism problem and not just against french people but we'll talk about that more later it is a brutally ignorant show but it is so confident in its ignorance that it also ends up coming across as arrogant and i'm not exactly a politically correct snowflake but this is one specific case where i understand the outrage and i'm gonna try to break down the show and explain why it is so problematic so hold on to your butts because there's a lot of dumb [ __ ] to go through here so amelia in paris is the story of emily cooper a young marketing executive from the united states of america who is sent by her boss to join a marketing firm in paris where she's supposed to give them an american point of view to help their business now don't look at me i have no idea what that means either it's just you know just just accept it okay so she leaves chicago and makes her way to france leaving her boyfriend behind and we follow her as she tries to navigate the new city and the cultural differences she needs to overcome and that's kind of it that's the gist of the show an american girl leaves america and she's really confused now in essence that's not a bad plot there's a lot to do with this but while the fish out of water story is the basis of emily in paris well the show is not really interested in following that now for starters you should know that when people say emily and paris portrays french culture in a very insulting way they're not exaggerating they really dropped the ball here like they really messed up people around the world and major outlets and friends have called this show embarrassing and before watching it myself i thought people were probably being too hard on it but now that i've watched it no they're right it's it's pretty embarrassing the creators of the show kept saying that it is a love letter to french culture but it definitely doesn't feel like one not only because of how insulting it is we'll get to that in a minute but because just by watching the first episode it became very clear to everybody that the people behind this show do not know the first thing about french culture but in a way that's kind of shameful it's amazing isn't it the entire city looks like ratatouille ratatouille is a dish what are you talking about everything that is represented on screen is either some lazy made up [ __ ] or an extremely degrading cliche that has no basis whatsoever emily in paris isn't a love letter to france it's an american vanity project the show portrays french people as a bunch of bumbling idiots but americans are portrayed as a people the world idolizes respects and even looks up to the french in the show think americans are the greatest and they aspire to be more like them and as a french person myself yeah no that's that's not accurate in the first episode everyone is really rude to emily at work and nobody wants to listen to her so i didn't think it was that excessive but then i [ __ ] you not you get a scene where one of her co-workers tells her that the reason they've been so rude to her at work is because her american thinking is so next level that it inspires them to work harder and they think it's intimidating and i know it sounds like i'm making this [ __ ] up but i promise you it's a real thing we are all a little afraid of you what afraid of me how your ideas they are more new maybe they are better and maybe we feel we have to work harder make more money you live to work we work to live oh [ __ ] me this show is a [ __ ] joke every time you start thinking that it might be a little self-aware with its silliness the writers will pull something out of nowhere that will remind you that no this show's not self-aware at all not only do the writers really think that's how french people are they also really seem to think that the outside world thinks americans are [ __ ] superheroes i hate this show that i mentioned that already alright obviously i got a lot of [ __ ] to say but before we continue we need to talk about the biggest problem with emily in paris which is emily herself emily is one of the worst protagonists i have seen in a while and that's including this guy she is truly awful as a character and despite lily collins doing a great job in the role even she cannot make up for how unlikeable emily is excuse me pardon monsieur uh i ordered this medium and it's it's still kind of bloody yeah el amore some steak uh yeah what she said the chef tells me the steak is correct uh well correct for him but not correct for me i suggest you trade uh maybe you suggest you cook it longer yeah i'll take yours no no come on the customer is always right maybe i'll educate the chef a little bit about customer service you think you're gonna change the entire french culture by sending back a steak but i'm an agreeable person people like me that's my strength she is so obnoxious she's condescending entitled and at times sort of racist she's also an extremely disloyal friend she has no respect for people's personal boundaries and she's actually really bad at her job and am i forgetting something oh yeah she has sex with an underage kid in this show an underage kid who is also her friend's little brother oh and if that's not enough she's also [ __ ] that same friend's boyfriend behind her back you're having fun yet now emily being an [ __ ] in itself is not really a problem flawed characters are all over the place and they can be great the problem with all of this is the fact that emily is never presented as being a bad person the show really wants you to root for her and it's like the writers did not realize how unlikable she was if there was some sort of arc for her in which she realized the heirs of her ways and try to be a better person and blah blah blah i'd be on board with that i love a good redemption story that's not the case here the show has no idea that she's a terrible person she goes around doing awful stuff to people all season long and by the time the story ends she has learned nothing she is 100 validated in her [ __ ] and she's actually thriving she has no character arc whatsoever during these 10 episodes it's kind of infuriating to watch actually i'm sorry if i don't fit into your spreadsheet but i like our life in chicago this is paris oh god you're about to say something stupid aren't you this city is filled with with love and romance and light and beauty and passion and and sex which are clearly things that mean nothing to you you know what you can keep your precious air miles stop it get some help her behavior is so appalling but what makes her even more annoying is that she seems to think that everyone else is the problem and not her she's not in the wrong because she makes no effort to fit in the french are wrong because they're not adapting to her presence her boss sylvie is portrayed as a big meanie who is rude because she's always annoyed with emily but it makes complete sense for her to be mad at her she was expecting to work with the boss of an american firm who studied french culture and fashion and instead she got an under-qualified employee with no experience in fashion who doesn't even speak the language she has every right to be annoyed she runs massive operations she needs to get [ __ ] done she doesn't have time for emily and her [ __ ] look you come to paris you walk into my office you don't even bother to learn the language you treat the city like it's your amusement park and after a year of food sex wine and maybe some culture you'll go back from where you came so perhaps we'll work together but no we won't be friends that's why shut the [ __ ] up during the entire show emily tries to teach the french that doing things the american way is the right way to do things the show even goes as far as implying that doing things the american way will make her co-workers better people outside of their professional lives remember when i said this show is an american vanity project do you believe me now and the show doubles down on that quite a bit emily in paris is very committed to making french people look as awful as possible for some reason everyone in paris is really rude to emily and it's like really distracting how extreme they make it seem and the only people who aren't mean to her are men who want to [ __ ] her and i am not kidding when i say that every man she comes in contact with immediately becomes obsessed with her because she's american and i guess they think it's exotic or something also everywhere she goes she just happens to meet a perfect white dreamy frenchman who not only falls madly in love with her within 3 seconds of meeting her but also speaks perfect english that's actually a big logical issue with this show the entirety of the story is about emily trying to fit in in this new country but the show never really commits to showing the massive language barrier she should be facing she doesn't speak a word of french but she also shows no interest in actually learning to speak french whatsoever and yet she can just navigate paris like it's nothing as if language is just a very minor inconvenience to her and aside from a couple of scenes that are trying to be comedic emily has no problem communicating with people it's so ridiculous that it becomes kind of funny after a while but yeah aside from a bunch of men who are way too horny for their own good every french person emily comes across is portrayed as an absolute [ __ ] according to the show french people are stupid sexist racist disagreeable lazy snob impatient condescending they start working at 10 30 in the morning and they still manage to be late they have sex at work they all cheat on their partners they're negligent they're weird and the list goes on honestly for those of you who haven't met me i'm emily cooper and i'm so excited to be here in paris i'm looking forward to getting to know each and every one of you and likewise having you get to know me your name is here my name is luke yes luke why are you shouting sorry and when they're not showing you french people being [ __ ] american characters are sitting around talking about how french people are [ __ ] yes of course i love paris and the food is so delicious the fashion so chic the light's so magical but the people so mean i don't get it what's the point of being married if you're just gonna cheat on your spouse uh maybe after you're married for 20 years you might feel differently i mean the french are romantics but they're also realists you told french people this no wonder they hate you oh not just this they disagree with everything i say that's the french way they're very disagreeable now if you don't know the backlash over this terrible representation got so intense that the cast of the show eventually had to address it publicly lily collins admitted that they kind of dropped the ball and that while the reception of the show was heartbreaking she believes the criticism will give them a chance to improve in the future oh yeah the show was renewed for a second season by the way because god gave up on us a long time ago but the response from the cast that killed me the most came from one of the french actors on the show more specifically lucas bravo who plays one of emily's numerous conquests and he claims i [ __ ] you not that the show's depiction of paris is accurate but it is only a very small and specific part of paris which buddy that's not true why are you lying to me are you a spy were you sent by the americans to infiltrate our culture who are you who do you work for he later admitted that the show may be relying on cliches a little too much but i guess he just didn't want to talk badly about his employers i understand that i'm not mad but if all that is not proof enough for you of how they treat the french as caricatures there's literally a scene where emily sleeps with a guy and he then refuses to shower because he doesn't want to wash her off of him yet and they make it look like it's just a regular ass french quirk like we all do this and we all think it's romantic or something there's another scene where emily tries to communicate with one of her co-workers and her co-worker gets scared because emily is speaking english so she just runs away like she just leaves the office and the show thinks it's really funny because it pulls the same joke twice in the same episode which actually leads me to another one of my biggest problems with emily in paris the show is not funny and yes i know that's not necessarily a problem a lot of my favorite shows are not exactly funny but the problem here is that emily in paris really thinks that it's funny but it's not he has some of the most cringe-worthy comedy i have seen in a really long time and it kind of ruins most of their show honestly the dialogue is really bad yeah and i know that comedy is subjective but given how the show was received i don't think i'm gonna be in the minority here and i'm not kidding when i tell you that this show has no idea what comedic timing is it's completely off sorry i don't speak french ah american yes but did you think that i was french honestly no i was being polite you look american stop doing that that's not how it works yeah the comedy doesn't really work even the romantic aspect of the story is kind of bland emily's main love interest in this show is this dude the the spy from earlier his name is gabriel he's a chef and he's also emily's neighbor and their romance doesn't make a lot of sense the show really needs you to believe that there's a lot of sexual tension between these two but it never really feels like it because they never really have candid interactions every single time emily interacts with gabrielle it's because she needs something from him one time she needs help moving boxes the next time her shower is broken and she needs help communicating with the plumber the time after that she can't get a table at a fancy restaurant her boss wants to take a client to so she calls gabrielle to get a table at his restaurant after it closes and next time she loses a two million dollar watch and needs gabriel to drive her around paris on his scooter to help her find the person who has it and if she doesn't need him for her own personal motivation she just accidentally runs into him which is funny because there is a trend in the show where gabrielle just appears wherever emily is conveniently at the exact moment she needs assistance for something it's kinda ridiculous but really it just goes to show how lazy the writing is in this show even sequences that have very basic dialogue lack logic french characters will randomly have full conversations with each other in english for no reason and sometimes the dialogue just doesn't make sense you're not working i'm working from home you didn't move to paris to sit alone in your room oh i i we're not taking no for an answer you didn't even ask anything yet so yeah emily in paris is a romantic comedy that isn't funny and is also really bad at developing romance you guys really need to step up your game now earlier in this video i said that emily in paris also has a huge racism issue and yeah i was in part talking about how they represent french culture but that's not all of it so if you've been paying close attention you probably noticed that this show takes place in paris and according to statistics paris is one of the five most culturally diverse cities in the world and if you didn't know there are a lot of cities in the world there are so many ethnicities cultures and stories co-existing in paris it has a very unique sense of identity and its look its people and its art it's kind of beautiful and that unique diversity is a big part of why i love paris so much and why i'm so proud to have been born there so imagine my surprise when i came to the appalling realization that out of its entire cast emily in paris only has two characters of color and saying that these two characters of color are entirely made of degrading cliches is the understatement of the century the first non-white character in this show is mindy mindy is emily's friend they randomly meet in a park one day and they bond over nothing and become very close it's just as boring as the rest of the show but hey context mindy is a very dull character she's loud and very eccentric but that doesn't make a character interesting just like the rest of the cast she has no arc she barely has any reasons to be in this show and after a while you come to realize that mindy is a character that has two functions she says racist things and she makes sex jokes that's it that's the only reason this character exists when the show is not busy portraying french people as depraved creatures from hell mindy takes on some screen time to throw some racist [ __ ] at everyone else it's kind of aggressive but for you to understand why it makes me cringe so much it's very important that you keep in mind that all of the racist things she says were written by white writers and when you remember that while watching it gets very uncomfortable very quickly you can't punish people for their thoughts i'm from china we've tried french men never get tired of having sex it's like docking them in a lightning port i mean they can't all be mean oh yes they can chinese people are mean behind your back french people mean to your face just go to lunch and maybe avoid anyone with steak knives what sushi safe or anywhere that's asian although she's mad enough a chopstick can puncture skin don't ask how i know that i had my shot and i blew it you you get more than one shot mindy in china you only get one kid everything is papa sibla the french motto this character cannot get through a single scene without making a racist comment and after a while it gets a little distracting especially because she serves no other purpose in this show and her presence isn't really useful to the plot she will just randomly appear in an episode and say some inherently racist stuff and some bad sex buns in a cafe oh that petite i'd bon appetit him and then that's it you don't really see her again and just to round out the stereotypes there's a hilarious scene where emily asks mindy to sing for her in a public park oh yeah there's a random subplot where you learned that mindy was a failed pop star in china it's really not important and mindy stands up and starts singing la vie en rose by 80th piaf which is the most cliche french song you can possibly think of and that's not even the funny part the funny part is that people around them stop dead in their tracks because they're blown away by mindy singing la viejos and it's supposed to be this like super charming and endearing sequence but if you've lived in paris you know this would never happen paris is one of the busiest cities in the world everything moves a billion miles per hour people don't have time for you and if the people behind the show knew the french as well as they pretend to they would know that nobody gives a [ __ ] about hearing la vienrose it doesn't tingle our french spidey sense or something it's not cute it's not charming imagine a french person showing up to america and publicly singing sweet home alabama in the middle of a park where people are just trying to chill yeah it doesn't sound like a cute saturday afternoon does it the other non-white character in this show is this guy whose name i don't even remember because he's just that useless he's one of emily's co-workers and he's gay and that right there is all the show is ever interested in telling you about him he works with emily and he's gay and i had to read that he's gay online in an interview with the actor who plays him the show doesn't even care about him enough to say that much and the entire point of his existence in this show is to be the most stereotypical gay man the writers could possibly come up with it's kind of hilarious how cliche he is literally all he does is stand in the background and act sassy he doesn't have any other personality traits we don't even know what his job is he's always at the office but we never see him actually doing work why are you here dude he's just the sassy gay guy and the writers are so dismissive of him that i'm pretty sure they made him black so they can kill two birds with one stone and call the show inclusive but really they just wanted to tell a story about attractive white people so he's in a lot of scenes but he never really does anything he's kind of just there looking sassy emily in paris has two characters of color and both of them feel like an afterthought that was forced into the show because the producers had to check it off the list and if they're not just throwing them in a scene to do nothing they use these characters voices to write racist things they find funny because no one can call you out on being racist against asians if you're being racist through an asian's mouth right i really hate this show so yeah emily in paris is as embarrassing as it gets it's a show that romanticizes ignorance and it's not difficult to see why people hate it so much paris is presented as an amusement park french people are awful caricatures and degrading stereotypes and basically everyone sucks unless they're american literally i'm not kidding the only french character who is immediately nice to emily tells her that she's nice because she grew up watching american shows i'm actually kind of shocked that a show like this is being made today and nobody batted an eye before it was released but then again netflix released cuties so what the [ __ ] do i know and outside of all this sea of cultural [ __ ] the show is just really [ __ ] boring it's just bad it doesn't really have a story emily is a terrible protagonist which kills all the fun of following her shenanigans her social interactions make no sense and even within the context of her career which is at the center of the show every good thing she does or accomplishes at work is either by complete accident or by comedic luck so there's nothing engaging there either oh yeah there's this entire side story where emily becomes a social media influencer but halfway through the season that story just disappears and it's never mentioned again did i mention she sleeps with an underage kid in this show i feel like i should mention that again no joke i can't really see anyone above the age of 12 enjoying this show because nothing really happens in it emily in paris is just a bunch of random scene stitched together in chronological order the characters are all pointless everyone is just kind of there all the time so everything is really dull and it feels uninspired as hell every episode relies on a series of impossible coincidences to be coherent and the dialogue is just as lazy as the rest of the writing everything about this show is superficial and just painfully surface level and has no depth whatsoever i like my fun guilty pleasure shows but this is just not it and i bet you can guess that i'm probably not gonna be watching season two i would also be really surprised if the show gets renewed for a season three i'll give emily and paris two out of ten ninja stars go find another show to watch you're better than this [Music] you

Channel: Friendly Space Ninja

Views: 4,397,235

Rating: 4.8676295 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: cTLIIik_o2k

Length: 24min 54sec (1494 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 04 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/toadkarter1993]

Yessss, pretty much every one I have spoken to about this show IRL has one of two responses: (i) it's kinda cringe or (ii) it's decent enough for a romcom.

But there's so much more insidious content under the surface, the racism isn't just stereotypical depictions of the French, which are bad enough as they are - what's truly horrific is that it's pushing the idea that American capitalism is the only way forward and the poor, peasant European cultures should just die out and accept this way of life. Maybe I'm taking things a little to heart here but I was genuinely offended by this show so I'm glad there's people speaking about this stuff lol

[u/MUKUDK]

They pulled a french people don't shower joke? Seriously?

[u/TheYaYaT]

Emily in Paris is just another reflection of the American cultural template which is based off the idea that everyone else idolises America while complaining about them, yet ultimately need their help in the end to make things work.

Coincidentally, this is how the US also thinks of its military

​

btw je vis en France et je dis sans aucune hésitation les français·es sont aussi gentil·le·s que n'importe quelle autre nation, et j'aime bien vivre ici

[u/NorrisOBE]

As someone who has lived in Paris, there's something about the show that really angered me especially when some of my favourite shows of last year (Teenage Bounty Hunters and I'm Not Okay With this) were cancelled after just one season while this fucking show got a second season.

[u/letsstickygoat]

Isn't this the show that was turned down originally when it was about a poc, but then pushed forwards when it was about a white person?

[u/Calembreloque]

Oh boy I had managed to put that show behind me but it seems it's time for me to get irrationally angry again! Aux armes, et caetera.

[u/qareetaha]

It's weird there is such ignorance in these half ass works. I spent few days in Paris and was stunned with many amazing things from culture ( loved a street dedicated to musical instruments) to food even in the smallest restaurants. I would walk for hours every day to explore the city (walked from Moulin Rouge to Eifel tower) and did the same on the last 3 days of my trip.

This same vibe was expressed by many American tourists in my hotel who were equally fascinated with every thing there. I was lucky to see the props of Luc Besson's The Fifth Element. https://youtu.be/W21QAdblPPY So which Paris they are pretending to talk about? I mistakenly assume people in show biz would build on what has been done to do a decent job not to regress to silly levels.

[u/couchecarbone]

French people aren’t oppressed, it may be ignorance but it’s not racism