Where Did Pleasure Go?
Why loving Emily in Paris feels like an act of resistance
Netflix’s newest hit show, Emily in Paris, is a frivolous tale about a gorgeous American woman who doesn’t speak French and who clumsily romps around Paris after getting sent there to work for the French branch of her marketing agency, Savoir.
The titular character, Emily, has very little tact, an armload of charm, and an Instagram account that inexplicably gains thousands of followers when she posts a picture of a croissant, which is the catalyst to many of the show’s pivotal moments. Emily seems to become a social-media-marketing savant who solves all of her problems by using Instagram as inspiration, leverage, and exposure.
The show is ridiculous, tawdry, and endlessly cheesy — and I absolutely loved it.
Because we live in an era of constant digital surveillance, my phone knows I watched the show and now presents numerous articles and reviews about it on my Google explore page every day. Ever a slave to the machine learning that turns my phone into my own private rabbit-hole of niche interests, I have read several of these articles and reviews, hoping to see some cute listicles on Emily’s best outfits or analyses of which of her love interests are the hottest and why.