Interrogating: Emily In Paris
Can Black People Revel In Not Being Represented?
“#EmilyInParis is a very cis-het white feminist meets white arrogance and mediocrity. I find it so chaotic and absurd. But I also love being in white women’s business”.
“Is it just me or is the acting on #EmilyInParis not believable? But I’m really enjoying it though.”
These were my initial impressions of Emily In Paris, a 10-episode Netflix series about the life of young American, Emily Cooper who works as a marketing executive in Chicago. When Emily’s boss unexpectedly falls pregnant and is unable to take her position at French marketing firm, Savoir, the position is given to Emily. Her work at Savoir is to supply the “American perspective” of her former company in Chicago, the new parent company to Savoir.
Generally, Emily In Paris is an easy watch and can be characterised as one of those series you can play in the background while you work or scroll mindlessly through your phone. It presents French people and culture in the city of Paris, using Emily as a foil with her American ways. Unable to speak a word of French, she navigates the city armed with eccentric outfits, language translating apps and a masters degree in marketing.
The series has been widely criticised for its poor representation of French culture by French viewers and critics. In a review for Premier, Charles Martin states:
“[In Emily in Paris] we learn that the French are 'all bad' (yes, yes), that they are lazy and never arrive at the office before the end of the morning. That they are flirtatious and not really attached to the concept of loyalty. That they are sexist and backward, and of course, that they have a questionable relationship with showering. Yes, no cliché is spared, not even the weakest."
This illustrates that the series hinges on cliches and stereotypes to build a particular narrative that is masqueraded as a quirky cultural exchange whenever Emily is in shock and awe of the “French way”. Some of these stereotypes include : sexism, promiscuity, rudeness, laziness, heavy smoking, infidelity and non-monogamy. As much as I can agree with these critiques, as the series makes very broad brushstrokes on the notion of being French, without approaching the storytelling with any nuance, my point of departure on this topic is not Emily’s engagement with French culture or lack thereof.
I am more interested in my own engagement with the show as someone with a vastly different lived experience, to a point where I can absolutely not relate. I have always been intrigued by this phenomenon. We see it most in our desire to watch “trash TV”. A genre in television that is characterised as having little to no educational value, while focusing on disputes and controversy. Take for example reality shows such as Keeping Up With The Kardashians and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. In addition, movies and series that I have been watching incessantly such as Big Little Lies,The politician, Bombshell and most recently Schitts Creek are excellent examples too. The latter mentions might not necessarily be “trash TV”, however they all have one thing in common: they provide me a front row seat into white people’s business.
I enjoy being a voyeur to the chaos of whiteness; the structures that produce white privilege, examining what whiteness is as a race and culture and as a source of systemic racism. These cultural objects become not only an escape from my reality, but a mirror into the crevices of my own world. Emily In Paris is a depiction of privilege, arrogance, ease, and simplicity. Things that I, a black woman living in South Africa, am not normally afforded due to structural injustices.
Perhaps it is because of the lighthearted and unrealistic nature of the series that I gravitate towards Emily In Paris. It has me thinking a lot about our consumption of this kind of content, as marginalised people. I am treading lightly around calling the show escapist, considering that many of these happenings do not provide an escape from my own life but rather expose certain realities. It is for this reason that I would like to propose that we view our consumption of Emily In Paris, and other forms of cultural production alike as a means of collective healing through (frivolous) pleasure.
Upon reading Adrienne Maree Brown’s text on Pleasure Activism, I have become an advocate for collective healing through the pleasure of oppressed people. According to Brown, pleasure is a measure for freedom. In order to reach an abundance of pleasure, we must find ways to increase the “feel good” time in our lives. We ought to create more space for happiness and less space for oppression and repression. This is only heightened when we collectively organise through the notion of pleasure and what that means for us as oppressed people. I would like to argue that the pleasure may sometimes be derived in seemingly frivolous ways, such as binging on trash TV. There is however importance and a great need to do so as this allows us joy, relaxation, community and satisfaction.
American writer and intellectual, Susan Sontag described “camp sensibility” as being entertained by cultural objects that are so excessive and overstated to a point of achieving a form of “failed seriousness”. This camp sensibility is not to be confused with irony. The people concerned with camp do not consume it out of guilt or cynicism. There is a genuine earnestness and reverence for these cultural products. Sontag states that “Camp is a tender feeling”. There is a sense of relatability and or empathy from the viewer. They immerse themselves in the story and enjoy its usually chaotic outcomes. I would not say that Emily In Paris is an example of a camp cultural product, however I do look at my enjoyment of it through the lens of camp sensibility. I also understand that it is very un-camp to discuss camp sensibility at length, considering that one of Sontag’s first points in her widely published text, ‘Notes on Camp,’ states: “To talk about camp is therefore to betray it”. Yet in the same breath, I suppose a modest analysis on Emily In Paris would defy camp. To be camp means being serious about the frivolous, and vice versa. In this case, I am attempting to make sense of a frivolous cultural product and place it within a larger context. A context where people of complex, marginalised and excluded identities exist. I am trying to piece together where we fit, or not, in the alternate reality presented to us by Emily In Paris.
With an academic background in art history and literature, I often have an overzealous mind when consuming cultural texts. My camp sensibility however propels me to allow the writer/ filmmaker to sway me in their direction. Even despite the story not being believable, the camp sensibility causes me to be a naive viewer. This need not be at a fantastical degree. It can simply be a lived experience that I do not identify as my own,while my imagination revels in its depiction. The most glaring example of this is Emily’s lacking grasp of social media marketing in spite of her marketing degree. The reason for her relocating to Paris is to improve Savoir’s global social media reach. Yet she arrives in Paris with her personal social media account of 50 followers. And if this is not believable enough, her account grows to 20 000 followers, while she posts subpar content: blurry selfies with outdated hashtags and a poor understanding of engaging an audience.
Another point that Sontag makes in ‘Notes On Camp’ is how camp gravitates towards the disengaged, depoliticised and or apolitical. While watching Emily In Paris, I felt that the manner in which social issues were raised was very rudimentary in comparison to the level at which issues are being engaged today. An example of this is when Emily makes a post of an image of a vaginal rejuvination brand. She captions it : “The vagina is not male!”. In response to the French word for vagina having a male pronoun. The post goes viral and is retweeted by French First Lady, Bridgette Macron. As much as I believe that this is a somewhat valid point to make and would probably create a dialogue in real life - I do not think it would stand without critique. The discourse around gender has become so advanced through the work of transgender and gender non-binary activists that it seems quite naive to me to be so passionate about the pronoun of the word vagina. It reminds me of those “The future is female” t-shirts that were quite popular a few years ago. The wave of “Girl Boss” feminism has been widely popularised through clothing, stationery, adverts, webinars and pyramid schemes. It is a particular take on feminism that neglects the less aesthetically pleasing side of women empowerment. It tells women we can all be SheEOs, climbing the capitalist ladder in pink power suits. It fails to discuss the rights of transgender and gender non-binary people, gender disparities and the gender pay gap in the workplace. This type of non-intersectional feminism does not fully interrogate the systems of inequality. It advocates for mainly cis-gendered, heterosexual, white women.
According to Sontag, to understand camp is to understand the playing of a role. I understand that Emily In Paris is fiction, yet I allow myself to be fully immersed in it. In order to do this you need a form of double consciousness. Or even multiple consciousnesses.You are not viewing the fictional and frivolous in relation to the real and serious. You are simply seeing them as different. It is nearly impossible to watch Emily In Paris without raising a brow or rolling your eyes every now and then. Emily’s white privilege, unsubstantiated self-confidence and the audacity that propels her in her career,despite being terribly mediocre, are all reasons why I, as a black person who has had to perform excellence to get a foot in the door of my career cannot watch without feeling a sense of jealousy. Yet I am still entertained by the sheer ludicrousness of it all. A part of my pleasure activism as an act of radical resistance is the refusal to be constantly subjected to the overwhelming visibility of black people's pain. I believe that many black people are interested in seeing our human experience depicted in the multiple ways in which it exists : mundane, spiritual, erotic, disciplined, fun, reckless etc. To seek these representations and depictions, even in their most ridiculous forms provides a form of pleasure. I believe that Emily In Paris lies in that liminal space that presents a frivolous and light hearted view on life. Even in the absence of a black experience.
Needless to say, I will be looking forward to a second season of Emily In Paris. I cannot wait to be further amused by her kitsch fashion sense, bot-like Instagram account, French cliches : berets, baguettes and croissants, as well as her unwavering self-confidence. Even while knowing the show has been curated in a way that evades the very real socio-political issues that exist in Paris...
