The not-that-tragic triumph of Emilyism
Jason Farago wrote about Emily in Paris and I enjoyed it.
Farago, the New York Times’ art critic, has one of the very few Instagram accounts with tolerable pictures of art. This medium is so completely opposed to everything that is - my apologies in advance for the next 4 words - the autonomy of art, that it seems to take someone who really loves looking at stuff to be able to somewhat overcome the sinister UI surroundings. It doesn’t work on each post, but usually there is a faint ray which passes through, transmitting a fraction of what I imagine to be the the original.
Farago also published over the summer this absolutely beautiful feature. It’s an “interactive” (brrr) writeup on a 16th century painting but the real allure of the piece is that you can really feel someone talking to you while you read it. Conversing, not explaining, yet without a hint of a ‘podcast voice’ of sorts. Showing you like a friend what fascinates him, not presenting. It’s really good.
Now that we’ve established Farago’s ability to look at stuff and talk about it in a way that enables us to look at them too, let’s go back to that Emily in Paris review. I chuckled as I read him bemoaning how the Netflix show capitilized on “his” Parisian café. In a way, it was my café too!
I don’t know how it happened, but my first real apartment in Paris - apart from the strings of AirBNB’s and sublets which preceded it - happened to be in one of the most iconic locations of the 1968 shenanigans, rue Gay Lussac in the 5éme arrondissement. I really can’t take credit for my refined choice, as I was completely oblivious to the fact at the time. Albeit my utter cluelessness, however, I did perceive - as did Farago - that the Café de la Nouvelle Mairie is at the top of the game when it comes to quartier’s cafés.
I spent there a few mornings of jubilation. In the evenings I went in, again and again, to shamelessly purchase takeaway coffee - sure, because the Starbucks on boulevard Saint Michel seemed too far away for a nightly walk in the cold, but also because entering the place, even for a sole minute or two - and though it involved enduring curious looks from the barista which were 100% justified considering my out of place order - was an experience that I couldn’t get enough of. La chaleur might be accounted as the French equivalent for the Danish Hygge, but it’s really a thing of its own. In the case of the Café de la Nouvelle Mairie it also means easy elegance, a conflicting yet peaceful state of diffused density.
“And here was Emily, in one of her stupid outfits, at my cafe” - Farago fumes, and of course I can understand him. Watching the first season last year and seeing one of our regular and most beloved boulangerie getting the overly bright Netflixian treatment - it is located right in front of the Café DLNM - was definitely a bit eerie. And yes, it got more annoying as it was used as background for Emily’s embarrassing selfies, because, as Farago notes:
It shows us the vapidity of the smartphone biographies we all keep compulsively authoring. Some days I wonder if it’s better just to accept that: accept the tragic triumph of Emilyism, accept the basicness that has enveloped us all, rather than make a pitiful last stand for an unmediated life. What else is there to be done? Insist to your friends (and followers) that Netflix’s Paris is a sham, that you alone have discovered the real city? Is this not the most Emily move of all?
Yet, with all said basicness, with all those abhorring outfits, I thought Farago was right to conclude his critique with a willingness “to accept the Emily within”.
A weird moment occurs on episode 9 of the new season. Three minutes in, Emily sits down on a bench in the small square that’s down from her apartment - the square between the cafe and the boulangerie, the square which used to be an almost daily spot for me. There’s almost nothing going on. It’s a strangely long take that almost leads you to believe that an error slid through the editing process. She just sits there, looking for a second up at the clouded blue sky. She is not on her phone. As the shot continues, she even gets rid of her smile. The face muscles loosen up. She is listening to her surroundings, but not too attentively, in a manner that melts the barrier between the outside and the inside. She is closing her eyes as the camera starts swirling around and above her. She is wearing an incredibly idiotic yellow beret but for some reason it doesn’t matter. At that moment she’s not an unbearable televised character nor an exploitive agent, not even a boring expat. She is a person in Paris.