Vice President JD Vance took time out of his busy schedule this week to make a social media video about the most pressing pop cultural artifact of the moment: “Emily in Paris.” The show’s fifth season launched last December and the sixth (and final) season will premiere this Christmas Eve, but Vance had something he had to get off his chest right now.
“You have to watch ‘Emily in Paris,’” he told his legions of fans. “It is, at the risk of overstating it, the Shakespeare of our time.”
For those without a Netflix account or a teenage daughter, “Emily in Paris” is the story of Emily Cooper (Lily Collins), an American marketing executive who moves to France to take a job meant for her boss when said boss gets pregnant. She shares a tiny apartment with Chinese nepo baby Mindy (Ashley Park) and meets her neighbor Gabriel (Lucas Bravo). There is instant chemistry between the two, but Gabriel has a girlfriend. So instead, Emily and Mindy date a string of incredibly handsome and fabulously wealthy gentlemen while going to brand activations and pop-up events in the chicest villages across Europe. There is singing and occasionally berets. It’s a frothy, wannabe influencer’s dream. (But is it Shakespeare? TBD.)
Despite its relatively simple premise, “Emily in Paris” is a surprisingly polarizing show. The series has plenty of detractors and a steady, albeit sometimes self-conscious fandom. But Vance doesn’t love this hit for its stunning locations, its comedic storylines or the outrageous outfits (OK, no one loves it for the Carrie Bradshaw fashion roadkill outfits). He loves it because of what he thinks it says about millennials.
Vance, like many fans, sees Emily as an anti-hero; someone who symbolizes how not to behave. But just like so many men who try to control how women should and should not act in heterosexual relationships, Vance has also missed something quite important.
“What it actually is, it is a massive cultural criticism of millennial decision-making,” he opined, adding that he is improbably young enough to be of the same generation as the erstwhile, bumbling jetsetter. “She goes to Paris, and it’s obvious to everybody watching the show that she should end up with the French chef [Gabriel]. She should marry this guy. They should start a family. Whether in Paris or America, they should build a life together.” But instead, much to the vice president’s dismay, they keep ending up with different people. Quelle horreur!
“The fact that they keep on making atrocious decisions is kind of like the best bit of cultural commentary, I would say cultural criticism, of my generation,” he continues.
But his interpretation of that criticism, at least when it comes to Emily’s romantic exploits, is quite flawed. The reason that Emily and Gabriel don’t initially get together is because Emily has a long-distance boyfriend back in the United States and Gabriel is with a French woman, Camille (Camille Razat), who becomes a close friend of Emily’s. Is the Catholic convert Vance arguing that Emily and Gabriel should carry on an affair? Then there is the plotline at the end of the third season, when Camille initially thinks she is pregnant with Gabriel’s child — would that be the right time for Gabriel to leave her, potentially abandoning his partner and unborn child?
This sounds like the thinking of someone who would watch “Summer House” and root for Amanda Batula and West Wilson.
Narrative needs conflict. No one wants to watch Emily staying up all night changing diapers in that tiny apartment, tending to the next generation of bourgeois Parisians while her husband slaves away in a restaurant. That’s not a commentary on spoiled millennials; that’s just romantic comedy 101.
And, as any fan of “Love Island” will tell you, every union needs to be tested. This is also what happens in Shakespeare, of course. Just look at “As You Like It,” where Rosalind has to dress up like a man (uh oh, a drag storyline) to make sure that she is truly in love with Orlando.
At the end of the day, Emily is straight, charming, white and engaging in a series of mostly monogamous entanglements with the other attractive and eligible people around her. That’s called your 20s. That’s called having a life. There is nothing wrong with a bit of exploring, a bit of international intrigue, a bit of glamor in a lady’s life before she inevitably does settle down and start a family with the French chef in the series finale of Vance’s dreams.
But returning to the question of Emily’s character, Vance is right that she’s not your traditional heroine. He’s just wrong about why. She’s not a true romantic failure, but professionally she’s what you might call a problematic fave. Emily has been in French classes for seasons but can’t manage to order a croissant at a patisserie without sounding like she’s asking for a half soup and sandwich at a Panera Bread off I-95. She is constantly stepping on the toes of her better informed and more culturally knowledgeable superiors. Her many successes are balanced by just as many flops. Emily is depicted as, essentially, a lucky idiot — and perhaps a metaphor for this administration.
But Vance didn’t call out this part of Emily’s story, which is ironic. Because you would think this is the part MAGA world wants to love. It’s a story of cultural imperialism, of hating experts, of thinking that the American way is the best way to do things. So in a sense Vance is right, you really could argue that “Emily in Paris” is a cautionary tale. Too bad he’s lost the plot.
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