In Paris?

[dhampyresa]

For the past couple days or so, my Parisian/French friends and I have been playing "tag yourself: which Paris cliché are you?" and other things on the same "could this GET any more cliché" vein about the "Emily In Paris" trailer. And gritting our teeth at the sheer US-ness of it all

And we're not the only ones.

It got dragged by fucking Netflix france!

Si Emily était venue dans ta ville et non pas "in Paris", ce serait quoi les gros clichés de la série ?

— Netflix France (@NetflixFR) October 7, 2020

(If Emily had come to your city and not "in Paris", what would be the big clichés of the show?)

Anyway, I am very interested in knowing how "Emily in [your location/subculture/etc]" would be like. Pleas entertain me.

Comments

[angelofthenorth]

Sheep
Leeks
Walking into a pub and everyone switching to Welsh (doesn't happen but we get accused of it)
Castles
Dragons
Rugby
Post industrial landscape
Mountains
Harps and choirs
Daffodils
Welsh costume
Slate
"impossible" language
Chapels

[monksandbones]

Let's see, Emily in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada:

"Well, Canada is basically the United States anyway. I can't believe I need a passport to get there! What do you mean I can't pay in American money? Oh wait, you do accept American dollars but only at parity?"

High tea at the Empress Hotel: "It's so charming! So European! So Olde World!"

Instagramming "totem" poles.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers in red serge uniforms.

[sovay]

(If Emily had come to your city and not "in Paris", what would be the big clichés of the show?)

We're all Irish and/or gangsters and no one pronounces the letter "R." (spatch adds: "We drink at Cheers. And something about baked beans.")

[kore]

OMG, are there shots of the Eiffel Tower and Arc d'Triomph and people saying "Bon Joor" and berets and baguettes and a little bit of a museum for Culture and a ride on a scooter?

//watches trailer

Fuck, I was JOKING. Jesus.

[kore]

Oh right the game! GUESS WHERE EMILY IS, I bet it will be a mystery.

- Space Needle
- Space Needle in a completely incongruous location that IRL would put it either in Puget Sound or the middle of I-5
- Geeky guy wearing Birkenstocks, cargo shorts, and a Hawaiian shirt (dated)
- Snottiest record store clerks in the world
- Double short decaf half-pump skinny white mocha free trade with non-GMO soy and a drizzle of salted caramel
- Grunge
- Plaid flannel shirts
- Ferries
- Pouring torrents of rain with thunderstorms
- No sun, never any sun, just pouring rain, moss on everything, including the cat
- A big 2BR condo that would cost you millions of dollars, inhabited by
- Baristas
- Everyone is a Bernie supporter
- Everyone is vaping everywhere (well, this one's true, or it was before the plague hit)
- Just off the ocean (what is a Sound? What is a Bay?)
- In which you can go swimming
- Hippies
- Hipsters
- Thirty-year-old millionaires
- Everyone has a car
- And that car is a Subaru
- Except for the everyone who has a mountain bike that costs thousands of dollars
- Everyone works for Bill Gates
- Or Jeff Bezos
- Or Google
- Or is a barista

[ng_moonmoth]

Golden Gate Bridge
Cable cars
Fisherman's Wharf: sea lions and crab takeaways
Alcatraz Island
Coit Tower
Lombard Street
Alamo Square "Painted Lady" Victorians
Hills
Shivering tourists in shorts
Fog
City Hall lit up for Pride Month
Castro District
Gay bar or bathhouse (there are still a few left, although most of the really legendary ones, and pretty much all the lesbian bars, are gone)
Folsom Street Fair
Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence
Drag show
(RIP Beach Blanket Babylon)
Grizzled beat poets at North Beach cafe (there are still a few left)
Headliners show up and play at twenty-seat club that doesn't have a sign or a name after their concert
Chinese New Year Parade
Chinatown: Grant Avenue

Yeah, there's a bunch more stuff that could be any major city. And some stuff that says where you are, but you'd need to be a local to get the reference. But these are the ones that immediately give a sense of place.

[dolorosa_12]

Emily in my country of origin would be on a beach, full of blonde, tanned people drinking beer, cooking sausages on a barbecue, and saying 'g'day' a lot, and there would be kangaroos roaming the streets. And none of the actors would get our accent right and would instead sound like Americans trying to do a Cockney accent.

Emily in my current home town would cycle the wrong way up King's Parade, somehow end up behind the college for the iconic skyscape that gets featured in every show/film set here, and would somehow stumble into a bunch of academics and students wearing academic gowns. She would then pop up in a completely different part of town with no indication as to how she cycled there (a portal?).

(Basically it's a bit of a cliché in films and TV shows set in Cambridge that characters seem to wander through one part of town and then suddenly step into another, even though in real life the two places are not next to each other. Likewise, they're always filmed cycling the wrong way down a one-way street, which in reality would see them yelled at loudly by irate professors.)

I am so, so fed up with American media treating the rest of the world as a kind of cliché-ridden theme park for Americans.

[corvidology]

Swamps
Porches
Snakes
Deer hunting
Raccoon hunting
Turkey hunting
Hunting lodges
Church on every corner
Magnolia trees as far as the eye can see
Spanish moss hanging from every tree
Barbecue... well, on everything and everyone has a big one on wheels made out of an old gas tank
Everyone is carrying a gun or a shotgun AND a bible at all times
Everyone is wearing a baseball cap with a trucking logo or a bad taste joke on it
Men all called 'Bubba'
Everyone has visible sweat stains
Women all have Big Hair and dress like they're in Gone with the Wind with shorter dresses

[eller]

What an excellent question! If Emily came to Hamburg, she'd

- arrive in an ugly but very expensive Dirndl dress (which is Bavarian Tracht, but never mind; Germany is Germany) and a tote bag with 'I <3 Hamburg' printed on it
- eat nothing but fish, every day
- teach the uncivilised North Germans how to cook said fish properly, because people in a harbor town that's been there since the middle ages need someone from Chicago to help them figure out the correct philosophy of cooking fish
- make every male who meets her fall in insta-love with her (admittedly, this is not location-specific)
- become a social media star posting videos of her harbor boat trips
- explain the Germans what boats are really supposed to be like
- .... ugh.