Paris in the Americas: Yesterday and Today ed. by Carole Salmon (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Paris in the Americas: Yesterday and Today ed. by Carole Salmon Tom Conner Salmon, Carole, ed. Paris in the Americas: Yesterday and Today. Vernon, 2022. ISBN 978-1 64889-55-0. Pp. 199. Thanks to its political power and cultural capital, Paris has long been the epitome of French culture and has long attracted much attention from abroad—not the least from the Americas where colonization, coupled with an intellectual and artistic fascination with the City of Light, have worked to create a cultural “phantasmagoria” (xi). That said, imaginary Paris has proven stronger than its actual influence since Parisian influences are both real and imaginary. The book is organized into two sometimes overlapping parts. The first examines the cultural influence of Paris in North America while the second looks at South America, focusing on architectural influences of Paris on Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City. The first essay deals with Parisian vaudeville in America and shows how variety theater incorporated aspects of Parisian theater. The second essay discusses how “existential feminism” shaped American fashion. From Humphrey Bogart sosie Albert Camus in his raincoat and half-lit cigarette dangling from his mouth to the first issues of Vogue Magazine in the 1940s featuring ads with French models smoking Gauloises and wearing black turtlenecks, it was obvious that French existentialism was making a mark on American popular culture. Fashion translated philosophy into a daily wearable design and Juliette Greco wore the new existentialist uniform proudly. As the third essay suggests, this invasion of Parisian chic eventually produced the “Jackie effect” which had a civilizing influence on an otherwise rather primitive White House culture. Jackie Kennedy made the White House elegant by creating a novel form of soft power commensurate with American power on the world stage. Chapter 4 studies iconic films such as The Devil Wears Prada (2006) showing how Paris “dominates” (49) the New York fashion scene and American fashion magazines, whereas Chapter 5 looks at the ongoing appeal of Paris in American crime fiction and reviews a long list of Paris-inspired American crime stories by the likes of Cara Black and Louis Bayard, as well as the popular Netflix series Emily in Paris and Lupin: Dans l’Ombre d’Arsène. Part II opens with two essays on the conception of Paris in the South American imagination, comparing Rio de Janeiro’s Avenida Central to the Bd. Saint-Michel and studying the unmistakable French influence in the architectural landmarks of the Mexican capital, especially its “Haussmannian-inspired department stores” (xiii). For American readers, Chapter 9 stands out because it studies America’s debt to French architect Pierre Charles L’Enfant who essentially designed the nation’s capital, more than justifying Washington’s epithet “Paris on the Potomac.” The next chapter looks at the elevated railway gardens in Paris and New York. The final chapter focuses on Buenos Aires, the “Paris of Latin America” and the “Latin answer to New York City” with its “grands boulevards and beaux-arts architecture” (168), eager to emulate the grandeur of the old world. [End Page 227] A conclusion tying everything together would have been invaluable but these essays will be greatly appreciated by an audience of general readers and specialists alike. [End Page 228] Tom Conner St. Norbert College (WI) Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French