"Chose cinema over potatoes," wrote Canadian short story writer Mavis Gallant, in a section of her journal later published in the New Yorker as The Hunger Diaries. It was 1952. Gallant, down and out in Madrid, pawned her typewriter. Her dodgy agent hadn't sent her cheques. She was desperate, not just for dinner but for distraction. So to the flicks: "I found myself watching the women's clothes, drinking in their texture, appreciating every bite the actors put in their mouths. When one of the characters (because of some imbecility of plot) wore old clothes and pretended to be poor, I was furious and felt cheated, having chosen this over a meal."
Hard times call for dizzy, diverting entertainment. A friend had the nerve to take Gallant to Gone with the Wind. "A crushing waste of a day. Either they were eating wonderful American meals or they were starving and gnawing raw potatoes." Too close to home. She realised why shopgirls adore heiresses and devour gossip columns. "I mean, I understand it - and not just intellectually." Thank you, Mavis. Now I can ditch the guilt about hours of my life spent fending off the human condition via The Bold and the Beautiful, Coronation Street, the surreal freakshow that is Fox News …
In 2020, by any measure a complete gnawed raw potato of a year, Mavis and Covid gave permission to succumb to the narcotic idiocy of Netflix's much-reviled Emily in Paris. It's from Sex and the City's Darren Star. Brace for mad fashion, cuteness, punishing sex talk ... Lily Collins, daughter of musician Phil Collins, is Emily, a harebrained ingenue from Chicago who, by some imbecility of plot, is packed off to Paris to school the French at the surely ironically named marketing firm, Savoir, on how to finish off Western civilisation. Emily speaks no French, not that it would have helped with the cavalcade of chic, sneering Gallic stereotypes she encounters. She's oblivious to everything except what a perfect backdrop the City of Lights makes for selfies.
And yet the show has something to say. That's our excuse for bingeing it while moaning, "Will this ever be over?" Emily's randomly curated discoveries – in France they have roses! Burgers! - attract hordes of online followers. She embodies the existential condition of her generation: I think, therefore I generate content. Cogito, ergo Instagram. She's of a cohort not content to just passively consume the material world she has inherited. You can't blame her.
Current binge: The Crown. Luxe escapism with a side of subversive history. The royal family was the world's longest-running superior soap well before Netflix got its hands on it. This season, the gloves are off. The Diana years weren't the Firm's best work. Like Emily, she lands in a strange country where the locals are hostile and she doesn't understand the rules. Her destruction is played out against scenes of Windsors tramping around Balmoral looking for defenceless creatures to kill. Diana didn't have Instagram but, she once famously promised, she wouldn't go quietly.
