Backlash over Emily in Paris is a perfect example of “privilege victims”
Yacht Brokers and self-titled “intellectuals,” the backlash is a beautiful example of privileged elitists blatantly exposing themselves as such.
The show has had its fare of critics since its debut, but the most recent roster is privileged people trying to be being victims of their own entitlement, by complaining how their exorbitant lifestyle is misrepresented.
Some jokes write themselves. That’s what this article is about:
World-class elitists detached from reality
This is a societal problem, really. These stories are a dime a dozen, the most recent being a New York Times article I came across this morning, easily a 30-minute long read, highlighting how American expats living in Paris are fed up with the show and how it portrays them. Yet every person interviewed is an exorbitantly successful and/or wealthy self-obsessed brown-nosers.
There’s a yacht broker, a former “cultural diplomat,” and a self-professed “intellectual,” just to name a few.
There were also a few French locals chiming in there too, and everyone’s complaints are the perfect embodiment of privileged people having so little challenges to face that they can’t find any other reason to consider themselves victims of something. But they really want to be victims of something.
Hypocritical snobs
Among the first cries of grief is a complaint about how the show doesn’t portray the homeless problem in Paris, yet I’m sure that yacht broker is giving his two-cents to every beggar he passes by as a gesture of his goodwill. An author from the US complained the show portrays everyone wearing a red beret, yet one visit to their their website revealed nearly all of their published books feature that exact stereotype, capitalizing on their own complaints? Many make the chief grievance that Emily never learns to speak a word of French, mispronounces everything, and that “being an American expat in Paris is all about trying to seem vaguely French or invisibly American.” Well, guess what:
Most expats don’t actually speak French.
Fact check: 99% of every expat I have met from an English-speaking country, especially Americans, could never be bothered to learn to say a single complete sentence in French. I encounter folks every week who’ve lived as expats for 20+ years and say, with a bizarre sense of pride, “no, I don’t speak French, and I don’t really feel like it.” They have zero interest in integrating. For whatever reason, most American expats live in such a way. Sorry to burst your bubble, mais c’est vrai.
To that point, the yacht broker continued to complain how Emily couldn’t possibly “tell the difference between Dom Pérignon and mushrooms?”
Case in point.
Privileged people trying to be victims, in the snobbiest way possible.
They pretend it’s supposed to be a documentary.
Another complaint was from a “culturalist” claiming to be “an actual former Emily in Paris” who said “Everyone is an exaggeration… it all feels completely absurd.”
Congratulations, after delightfully comparing yourself to the lead character anyway, you learned the first thing about entertainment. CSI depicts every cop as a cool-guy sharpshooter firing their gun every day, narrowly missing bullets, never hitting a single bystander, and always catching the right bad guy alive, without a scratch on them.
Note how any comedian will tell you the first rule of comedy is to exaggerate, to stretch. The show is undoubtedly intended to be satire, to be a fairytale, yet for some reason, that makes you a victim.
On this same topic, “She has an entry-level marketing position and can afford expensive designer dresses. I mean, are they kidding?” All these people claiming they feel so attacked by nothing. Let’s note that the show’s original costume designer was Patricia Fields, the Emmy-award winning Sex and the City costume designer.
That’s the whole point of her attire — and every complainer in the article knows this.
The elitism only gets worse
The next woe-is-me comes from yet another, “dubbed ‘the real ‘Emily in Paris,’” American luxury ad-executive turned food-writer who claims to aspire to be “the Julia Child of kale.”
Well, what an obnoxious toffee-nosed word-vomit introduction… yikes
Some jokes write themselves.
Ironically, she was apparently a consultant for the series during the first season, helping to “shape Emily’s on-screen Paris life.” (She gawks at how she was irked by the third season — so she hates it, but she watched three full seasons?) and how Emily always “seemed to get what she wanted” while never having to deal with the painful realities of French bureaucracy or spiraling rents. Note that this same ad-executive was a consultant for the season where they ran an ad campaign putting beds outdoors in a city riddled with homelessness, as if there’s no such thing as poverty. So, sorry but, that’s a bit of an egg-faced comment.
The irony is how these elitists portray real victims as mere props
The Deputy Mayor of Paris brought up how the show confines every scene to the “ultra-center [that is] inhabited only by the richest people.” That is absolutely true — there’s not a single scene shot near Juares, Pantin, or Noisy-le-Sec. The tent-cities near Bercy or the needles littering the ground near Louis Blanc never make an appearance. And the irony of it all is that the interview is really about the people who live in that ultra-center themselves. And the story is about them seeking sympathy —
Not another word is mentioned about the impoverished population.
(Slight side-note, how do you think they would respond if the show shot a scene in Bercy-Seine at the homeless encampment? I imagine their support of disadvantaged people would evaporate instantly in favor of more self-victimization about how bad it makes them look. So, there’s that).
The article finishes off with how all these “real-life Emilys” say that the show gives them “someone to look down on.”
The true epitome of an ignorant, obnoxiously privileged thing to say — “Finally, I can have a sense of superiority again, someone to look down on without being a literal [insert marginalized group]ist!”
Some jokes write themselves.
This has been the issue since day one, but it only gets worse
At the end of the day, there is no logical cause for complaint. Everyone agrees the show exaggerates — or misrepresents if it makes you feel better, everyone. French people think it portrays them all as snobs. Expats think it portrays them all as uncultured bumbling idiots. So frankly, if everyone is inaccurately represented in a fictional show, then how can anyone actually believe the show harms their identity? The only people dumb enough to believe the show could be an accurate depiction of real life are the uncultured ones you’re trying so hard to desperately show off that you’re not. I have never met a single person, French or foreigner, who has taken anything in this show seriously. So don’t worry, your privilege is not actually under attack. But the reality is, it makes them feel really great to pretend they’re victimized by something, anything at all — yet in the most tone-deaf way possible.
Complaining about how much ignorance a show could have about what it’s really like being a world-class international is the epitome of their own entitlement, ignorance, and arrogance.
It is such a detachment from reality, it pains me that their complaints are what’s considered news.
The moral of this story has nothing to do with the show
The true problem is the well-off entitled individuals who have no desire to get involved in real-world problems, and instead complain how their exorbitant lifestyle is under a fantasy-attack. Like the luxury yacht broker or the self-titled “the Julia Child of kale,” the true irony about Emily in Paris is the show gives privileged people a reason to blatantly expose themselves as such. This is a prime example of one of society’s biggest problems, thinly veiled behind the concept of “news.” As long as even the most privileged people on the planet continue to consider themselves victims too, true victims of social-class gaps and civil/societal infrastructure problems will continue to face the challenges of this gap. Just like stories of homelessness only focusing on how it affects the non-homeless, this is another epitome of ignorance.
In the end, it makes the show totally accurate
If you think about it, the spirit of the show is incredibly on-point — if you reduce these complaints down to their core, that a TV show is misrepresenting exorbitant entitlement, then real-life entitled people living real fairytales complaining about it, epitomizes that. Completely detached from reality, their ignorance of entitlement is the core of their complaint; and their complaints are therefore the epitome of the ignorance of entitlement.
At the end of the day, everyone knows not a single person making a comparison of a real expat to Emily in Paris is actually doing so with any sense of seriousness whatsoever. Everyone knows the show is satire. The victimization isn’t even real, there is no actual issue, everything they’re saying is made up, and these complaints are total bullshit.
Takeaway: These elitists truly believe that Emily in Paris misrepresents what it’s like to be entitled — and they’re calling themselves victims over that.
Some jokes… you get the point. This is why social progress is so hard to make.
