Emily in Paris : Nostalgia, Nationalism and Sepia Cinema in an American Fish-Out-Of-Water Dramedy

The Netflix series Emily in Paris , while highly cliché and problematic, lies at the intersection of two related artistic phenomena from the early 2000s. First, the series represents an evolution of the nostalgic "sepia cinema" wave of films, popularized by filmmakers such as Jean-Pierre Jeunet, toward an Instagram aesthetic. Second, the series engages with "Francofascination" texts from the period, such as Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow's 60 Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong (2003), among others, for American patriotic ends. Using various theoretical models and close readings, the article suggests that Emily in Paris has implications for America's national and nostalgic self-fashioning.