Historic Portrayal of Paris in Literature and Films
Paris has many faces, and talented authors and cinematographers from around the world showcase it in various ways. For some, it is a haven for lovers and a city of romantic picnics by the banks of the Seine. For others, it is a place of enrichment; for others, it is a hated dump, the center of dirty streets and pesky homeless, synonymous with poverty and ruined life.
The Parisian theme is closely intertwined with the urban theme. This topic became especially relevant in 19th-century literature, which included the theme of the bourgeoisie (King, 2004). It is impossible to discuss people’s relationships and living conditions without referencing the city’s theme, without conveying its spirit, atmosphere, and the subtle connections that bind its inhabitants to the city. The city becomes a living entity that influences the people living in it, highlighting both its best and worst aspects.
Even though they come from different countries and bearers of dissimilar cultures, the heroes of Le Père Goriot and Emily in Paris were inextricably linked with this city. The authors of the book and the series had a personal affinity for Paris, considering it a source of inspiration. A comparison of two different visions of Paris in this work will enable us to determine whether the city is indeed the romantic capital of the world or a refuge for the rejected homeland.
Depiction of Paris in Le Père Goriot
Honoré de Balzac most fully revealed the image of Paris in his work, in which Paris is a beacon city for ambitious, provincial people. The novel Le Père Goriot marked the beginning of the image of Paris, portraying its splendor and poverty simultaneously. From the novel’s first lines, Balzac places the reader in the catacombs of Paris – the Pension Voquet. This is not an elegant Paris, but a suburb inhabited by small-town people. Simmel remarks on this occasion that the drama of the novel develops in the Parisian hell (1950). One of its tortures is vulgarity and poverty.
The characteristic of the pension Voke emphasizes its antiquity, old-fashioned atmosphere, and the people who fill the boarding house. There is furniture banished from everywhere. They wear out-of-fashion, faded dresses here, and faded, faded eyes are constantly encountered (Boutin, 2005).
This general atmosphere of withering poverty and the cold of the boarding house is compounded by the nauseating smell that pervades here. Balzac not only paints the situation but forces the reader to inhale the stale, poisonous air that the inhabitants of the boarding house breathe (King, 2004). The description of the house of Voke ends with a generalization that, in general, there is a kingdom of poverty here.
This picture of the situation already contains a preliminary description of the actors. The features of their generalized portrait are contained in the description of housing. Thus, the reader is introduced to the atmosphere of this little world, where he meets a young, ambitious, but poor student, Eugene Rastignac, who came to Paris to try to penetrate the highest circles. However, the boarding house is not the only center of the novel. Salons of the Saint-Germain suburb and aristocratic mansions are the object of Rastignac’s desires (Wirth, 1938). These are the two poles of Paris – the bottom and the top, earth and heaven, hell and heaven, where luxury is at the top, and poverty is at the bottom.
Balzac continually juxtaposes these two worlds. While in the salon of the Viscountess, Rastignac remembers the boarding house with deep horror, and in the boarding house, Rastignac thinks about high society. Poverty coexists alongside luxury, and luxury is often found in the background of poverty. Balzac’s top and bottom touch each other, are reflected in each other, and depend on each other – they seem to form a two-fold image (Bentley, 2014). Luxury is at the top because poverty is at the bottom, and poverty is at the bottom because luxury is at the top.
The theme of the boarding house and the theme of light in the novel overlap all the time, and by the end, they are woven into one whole. The same laws govern the bottom and the top. Goriot’s death grows into a grandiose symbol of the general ill-being of the world (Simmel, 1950). The brilliance of the ball is external; it is gilding, but inside, it is dirt and tragedy.
The life of Paris is revealed to Rastignac as an arena of struggle; at the cemetery, looking at Paris, Eugene challenges the city to change him. However, he will not fight against the corrupt world that he has come to know, but only to fight for his personal success. Rastignac does not even think about crushing the foundations on which this vile world of large and small predators rests; he accepts it as it is, joins the game, and recognizes its rules as immutable (Bentley, 2014).
He firmly assimilates the morality of the masters of life, taught to him by Vautrin and revealed by reality. At the beginning of the work, an ambitious student lamented the injustice of the upper world, even to his own fathers. However, under the influence of Paris, he was reborn, and his personality hardened.
According to Le Père Goriot, Paris is a shining city and a center of culture, to which all the provincials, obsessed with the passion to show their talent and conquer the world, aspire. A certain force drives them out of the province, from their native places to Paris, where they become a battlefield for personal success (King, 2004). However, the great city is both a civilizer and a molester because, to use and apply their abilities, young people must first melt them down.
The inhabitants of Paris in Le Père Goriot need to turn youth into perseverance, reason into cunning, credulity into hypocrisy, beauty into vice, and courage into hidden cunning. Paris is a city where incredible luxury and appalling poverty come into close contact and depend on each other. This criminal world reigns in all circles of society and dictates its own gangster laws. Finally, Paris is like caustic acid; it decomposes some, corrodes others, forces others to settle to the bottom, and some disappear, like one of the heroes – le Père Goriot (Matzat, 2004). Others, on the contrary, crystallize and harden, like Eugene Rastignac.
Thus, considering the novel Le Père Goriot, it is possible to compare the two worlds that reign in Paris – the bottom and the top, luxury and poverty. This allows the reader to conclude that these two poles are interconnected; they touch and depend on each other, and the same laws govern the bottom and the top. A person either dies or succumbs to corruption in Paris, as depicted in Le Père Goriot, under the city’s influence.
Depiction of Paris in Emily in Paris
The sensation of 2020 was the Netflix series Emily in Paris. After viewers around the world watched the first ten episodes of the series, many were left wondering why the authors portrayed France and the French in this way. The first cliché about the city was that Paris is a city of rest, and its inhabitants do not have workaholism. For example, the French have a long lunch break and often drink wine with their meals, even if they continue working afterward.
In the series, an irritated Emily goes to lunch at 11:00 and loudly declares to the office that she will do as the French do, which means drinking wine at lunchtime (Star, 2020). Parisians, unlike Americans, believe that alcohol is not a means of intoxication but an exquisite addition to the meal, emphasizing the taste of dishes. Therefore, a glass of wine at dinner is not perceived in Paris as something shameful.
The next cliché about the city is that the inhabitants of Paris are arrogant and rude. They don’t treat outcasts well – for example, people who do not speak French. According to the scene shown in the series, the city’s residents are ashamed and rudely correct the mistakes of a foreigner in French (Star, 2020). The baker, the concierge, and the flower girl are representatives of a city that does not forgive mistakes.
It is also demonstrated in the series that the Parisian services are ineffective. Even the plumber in the series sits down at one’s table to eat croissants before solving household problems (Star, 2020). This demonstrates another negative quality the city has developed among its inhabitants – the thirst for profit at every opportunity.
Emily in Paris also indicates that the city has more competition than friendship. It is hard to make friends with the French in the series. After Emily and Camille quarrel over the fact that they first slept with her boyfriend, Mindy tells Emily that any other friend would understand and forgive, but not a Parisian one. Unlike Americans, Parisians are more straightforward and skeptical of new acquaintances at the first meeting.
The city’s atmosphere generates distrust between the heroes and the surrounding world. Additionally, Paris is portrayed as a city of opportunities and new temptations (Simmel, 1950). Therefore, the French are often fickle in relationships and prone to infidelity. Paris has a romantic reputation, inspired by literature and history, particularly in neighborhoods like Pigalle and the cinema district. Therefore, it is a city that is frivolous.
All Parisian women dress stylishly, like the friendly Camille, beloved by the audience, or the fearsome boss Sylvie. Camille and Sylvie belong to the Bobo (bourgeois Boheme) class and have the taste, time, and finances to hone their style (Star, 2020). Residents of the city do not wear basic things, use discreet colors, and sacrifice comfort in order to look spectacular. Like the city itself, its inhabitants pay more attention to external beauty than to internal values.
In the series, a significant gap exists between the upper and lower classes in Paris. In the first episode, Emily’s boss, Sylvie, calls out to the waiter to bring an ashtray. In today’s tolerant and cautious world, the use of the term “Garson” (translated as “boy” in French) is considered rude (Bentley, 2014). This highlights the rise of the city’s inhabitants from the beau monde. However, moving to the other side of the edge is very easy.
In addition, Paris is changeable, and the city’s success is often fleeting. In the first episode of the second season, Mindy gets a job at a drag club and takes the pseudonym Dame Pipi, which means a woman working in a public toilet. Its tasks include maintaining cleanliness and order. Such workers are often seen at the entrance with a bowl for change (Star, 2020). This is not the most glamorous position, especially for someone accustomed to a luxurious life, like Mindy. Thus, Paris is a city where the upper and lower societies are closely intertwined.
According to Emily in Paris, it is not the most well-groomed capital of the world, and an ordinary tourist risks encountering unpleasant odors in the subway, mountains of garbage just a five-minute walk from Montmartre, and the consequences of dogs being walked on the streets. Paris is not clean, and urinals are installed on the Seine embankment (Star, 2020). Urinals are installed in the city’s tourist places, along with less shocking solutions—toilet cabins for men and women, which automatically clean after each visitor. Despite the city’s romance, there is a lot of dirt in its doorways. Imitating Paris, its inhabitants, despite trying to be perfect, have a set of reprehensible human qualities.
References
Bentley, N. (2014). Postmodern cities. In K.R. McNamara (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to the city in literature (pp. 175-187). Cambridge University Press.
Boutin, A. (2005). Sound memory: Paris street cries in Balzac’s Père Goriot. French Forum, 30(2), 67–78.
King, A. D. (2004). The times and spaces of modernity. Spaces of global cultures: Architecture, urbanism, identity (pp. 65-81). London: Routledge.
Matzat, W. (2004). L’image de la ville et sa fonction dans « Le Père Goriot ». L’Année Balzacienne , 1(5), 303–315.
Simmel, G. (1950). The metropolis and mental life. In W. Weinstein and K. Wolff (Eds.), The Sociology (pp. 11-19). New York: Free Press.
Star, D. (Director). (2020). Emily in Paris [TV series]. Netflix.
Wirth, L. (1938). Urbanism as a way of life. American Journal of Sociology, 44(1), 1–24.