The Gay Paree trope as used in popular culture. Ah, Paris. France’s capital and one of the world’s great cities. With its wide, bustling boulevards; the …

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“Look at France, oh god, look at France.““If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."— Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable FeastAh, Paris. France’s capital and one of the world’s great cities. With its wide, bustling boulevards; the beautiful Napoleonic architecture of the central arrondissements; the rich, multicolored culture of the Arabs and Africans from the surrounding banlieues; the fast-paced acrobats of Le Parkour hailing from the southern suburb of Évry; the brilliant and captivating Oriental neighborhood of Olympiades; the grand, iconic entrances and stations of Le Métropolitain; and the shiny, futuristic skyline of the modern skyscrapers gathered around the Oh là là, we thought Paris was the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and The Louvre (with its convenient supply of priceless, world-famous works of art) looming over bistros, cafés, art galleries and super-chic shops in Avenue des Champs-Élysées and the Rue de la Paix, Starving Artists in the Latin Quarter (or, during La Belle Epoque, deranged painters in Montmartre), the romantic old bridges over the River Seine, the gaudy music shows at the Moulin Rouge and Folies Bergère, and stuff like street mimes on every corner, with accordion music or/and Édith Piaf songs playing in the background, and snooty French people (the custom of men kissing each other on the cheek may be exploited for Ho Yay) smoking cigarettes and wearing berets, striped shirts and scarves while they carry around baguettes under their arms and a garland of garlic around their neck. And all the buildings are in the style of Haussmann’s 19th-century urban renewal, right…?

Tragic romances set here tend to end with the corpse of some jilted lover floating in the Seine. Also expect any Japanese Tourist expressing their disappointment about the city not being glamorous as they thought.

And also a nice city to host for peace conferences as evidenced by the number of peace treaties signed there.

A place to Have a Gay Old Time. Not to Be Confused with gaily paring (cutting, skinning) things, paring gays, or Gay Purr-ee.

Common tropes associated with Gay Paree include:

• Artsy Beret
• Britain Is Only London (in the sense of “France Is Only Paris”)
• Eiffel Tower Effect
• Everyone Looks Sexier if French
• Everything Sounds Sexier in French
• French Accordion
• French Cuisine Is Haughty
• French Jerk (sometimes)
• Maurice Chevalier Accent
• Perfume Commercial

Examples:

open/close all folders Anime & Manga - Cyborg 009 has a French Ballerina as the local Chick and Team Mom, so the episode depicting her backstory is set in Paris. She remarks on how it hasn’t changed that much from the days she used to live there.

• Mobile Fighter G Gundam has George’s introductory episode settled in a grim, ruined Paris. At some point, the Eiffel Tower even collapses during George and Domon’s fight. (Worth pointing out that this isn’t a specific Take That! against France since the entire planet is in this condition.)
• Ikoku Meiro No Croisee plays this incredibly straight.
• The assassin girls of Noir live here, probably in Trocadéro considering the Eiffel Tower is visible from the window. Strangely, this version has newscasts with the on-screen text in English!
• In the anime for PriPara, the entire city (referred to in-universe as PriParis) is a PriPara with all the standard landmarks present. Paris is the headquarters for the current operating system due to France’s association with fashion and the local Meganii even has a beret and baguettes for epaulettes!

Art - A lot of the imagery of Gay Paree is derived from 19th-century painters, who made life there more colorful, like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s depictions of the Moulin Rouge cabaret, where the part-time dancers part-time harlots dance cancan.

• A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte: At first glance, the painting is a pretty, picturesque depiction of Paris, with well-off Parisians relaxing by the river. However, several other cues (most notably how most of them are bathed in shadow, and things that have been interpreted as allusions to prostitution) suggest it’s less idyllic than it looks.

Comic Books - Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew!: An issue featuring a battle with the Bunny From Beyond shows him converting the storyline’s monstrous egg yolks back to normal in cities all over the world, including Earth-C’s version of Paris, “Parrots” (though the final issue in the run would call it “Purris”), with a shot of its “Eyeful Tower.” A later story would revisit Earth-C’s France but avoided Parrots entirely (in favor of depicting other regions of the country).

• Fantastic Four: Disagreeing with the Superhero Registration Act but not willing to fight his friends, The Thing temporarily moved to Paris for most of Civil War (2006), only returning for the final battle.
• Lula und Yankee (German comic) make a trip there.
• Robin: Tim Drake went to Paris for his first bit of training to become Robin with a martial arts master who wasn’t a member of the Batfamily, went back for a weekend to spoil a League of Assassins plot alongside Nightwing, returned to the city to train under another master located there about a year later and spent some time there early in his career as Red Robin.

Films — Animation - Anastasia: This trope is on full display during the song “Paris Holds the Key to Your Heart”.

• The Aristocats begins and ends in Paris; the middle part of the film takes place in the French countryside and shows the journey back to the city.
• Gay Purr-ee: It’s even in the title. The film is set in turn-of-the-century France, with the bulk of the story taking place in Paris. However, it does acknowledge that other parts of France exist by beginning the story in Provence.
• The Little Mermaid: Chef Louis is, well, Hollywood’s idea of a French cook. His sequence is introduced with accordion music (a cliché that’s always associated with Paris), he has a Maurice Chevalier Accent, speaks about “Nouvelle Cuisine des Champs-Élysées” and even randomly name-drops Maurice Chevalier. This is all Anachronism Stew because the film pretty clearly takes place in either the 18th century or the very early 19th century.
• Ratatouille: Paris is a picturesque modern city, where events in the hospitality industry are apparently considered front-page news. The latter is actually Truth in Television, as fake cheese and wine, rows over ownership of recipes, and chef’s obituaries have all made Real Life headlines. Parisians have joked about the film being “realistic” still… for it gives plenty of screentime to rats, as the city is infamous for its increase in rat invasions due to the neglectful administration of mayor Anne Hidalgo.
• Rugrats in Paris is set in an especially stereotypical version of the place yet also manages to invoke the Far East stereotypes via musical numbers, a visit to a Japanese restaurant, and a dream. Oh yeah, most of the action takes place in a Reptar theme park, so there’s not as much Paris involved as the title would let you think. Yes, the Eiffel Tower is there, and so is the Arc de Triomphe, but not the Louvre. And Notre Dame, where Chas (Chuckie’s dad) and Coco LaBouche’s soon-to-be-ruined wedding took place. One line even had Betty about to fall asleep and asking Didi to “wake her up if she sees the hunchback”. Betty and Didi even lampshade the general lack of French-ness in their trip, at least culinary-wise: eating at a Japanese restaurant at the theme parkDidi: When I came to France, I had dreams of bouillabaise, crepes Suzette, chicken cordon bleu…Betty: Yeah, well, I had dreams of eating with a fork.

Films — Live-Action - Amélie is set in Montmartre (the big white church is the Sacré Coeur, a local landmark), an especially beautiful part of this beautiful city. It used to be known as the artists’ quarter.

• An American in Paris
• Before Sunset takes us from the famous Shakespeare and Company bookstore all the way to the banks of the Seine River.
• Ilsa and Rick of Casablanca “will always have Paris.” There is a long Falling-in-Love Montage showing them there.
• Cleo from 5 to 7 is the story of a young woman wandering in Paris on an early summer day in 1961.
• French Cancan. The entire film’s about the creation of both the Moulin Rouge and its showcase dance.
• French Kiss, starring Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline, involves a woman going to Paris to track down her fiancé. Her oft-frustrated quest to see the Eiffel Tower is a minor plot point.
• Funny Face even has a dedicated song (“Bonjour, Paris!”) for this — incredibly corny and stereotyped to the point of silliness, but sweet.
• Gigi: Bonus points for being set in La Belle Epoque as well.
• Good Grief: The bulk of the film takes place in Paris, emphasizing the romance and artistry of the film’s leads. They’re staying in a flat with a view of the Eiffel Tower, they wine, dine, and shop, and the Louvre is the centerpiece of Marc and Theo’s date.
• Irma la Douce
• While La La Land isn’t set there (except briefly during a fantasy montage), a romantic view of old-world Paris is a subject of fascination for Mia; she credits her grandmother’s stories about it as being her inspiration to become an artist, her play is set there (complete with Eiffel Tower Effect set dressing), and getting an impossibly lucky big break to star in a movie there is what ultimately dashes her chances with Seb.
• Le Divorce
• One scene in Looney Tunes: Back in Action has Brendan Fraser chasing a villain leaving the Louvre… and somehow immediately reaching the Eiffel Tower about two seconds later. (In real life, they’re about 4 km/about 2.5 miles apart.
• The 1957 film Love in the Afternoon, directed by Billy Wilder and starring Audrey Hepburn. The opening narration provides some of the best lampshading of the trope.
• Love Songs: Scenic streets of trendy Paris? Check. Young handsome fashionable Parisians? Check. Complicated love/sex stories? Check.
• Lovers on the Bridge (Les Amants du Pont-Neuf)
• Midnight in Paris has both contemporary and period versions of the city.
• Moulin Rouge! is also set in Montmartre (just like the real thing). Establishing shots dutifully show the Eiffel Tower. The entire city is shown as the centre of romance, excitement, and fun.
• National Lampoon’s European Vacation greatly parodies this. Clark makes the whole family wear berets, and in a following scene, they eat at an atypical cafe outdoors, French Jerk for a waiter.
• North: The French family wear berets, drinks wine, smokes, and watches Jerry Lewis all day.
• Not Okay: Invoked and parodied by Danni’s “memories” of Paris, which are blown up out of all proportion and include a passionate fighting/kissing French couple, a French Accordion, and a mime — because she wasn’t there in the first place.
• About a third of the John Woo movie Once a Thief takes place in the stereotypical Paris as well.
• Many of Maurice Chevalier’s early musicals take place at least partly in this version of Paris. One Hour with You takes place entirely in Gay Paree, and The Love Parade opens there.
• Paris 36: The trope is thoroughly embodied in the songs, most notably those of Douce (Nora Arnezeder), the accordion soundtrack, and the fact that the film concerns a troupe of Parisian cabaret entertainers. That doesn’t mean the film doesn’t include issues of the time, such as the effects of The Great Depression or fascist-leaning nationalism.
• Paris, je t’aime, a 2006 film which consists of eighteen short films set in different districts of Paris, is a virtually express deconstruction of this trope, particularly the last short featuring an American woman who is in many respects the stereotype of an aimless tourist, who recounts in her limited French how she has long dreamed of seeing the city, but who seems to be failing to find the magic and romance she always expected, despite enjoying the sights. Finally, sitting in a public park, observing the mundane but intimate interactions of its inhabitants, she connects in earnest with the city and is overcome with emotion as her true love affair with it begins.
• Paris When It Sizzles : Again, featuring Audrey Hepburn.
• Perfume takes place in 18th-century Paris and portrays the poorer areas as The Dung Ages, making particular mention of the awful smells.
• Paris is home to Inspector Clouseau of The Pink Panther films.
• The 1954 original and 1995 remake of Sabrina send the heroine to Paris on an internship of several years.
• Ninotchka, and its musical remake Silk Stockings.
• Steve in Singles has a postcard of two lovers kissing in Paris and often wishes life and love could be that simple.
• Team America: World Police. After opening on a striped-shirt accordion-playing garlic salesman (which turns out to be a puppet-show for tourists), the first scene ends with a shoot-out around the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower…and the Louvre.
• Seen for about eight minutes at high speed in Claude Lelouch’s 1976 short film C’était un Rendezvous.
• In Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, Sam’s parents go on holiday to Paris. It is shown very briefly, but most of the requisite cliches (Arc de Triomphe, mimes, escargots) are in place.
• Victor/Victoria is set in 1930s Paris, and features a song called “Gay Paree” (which heavily lampshades the Double Entendre of the phrase).

Literature

By works

• Eloise in Paris
• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes spent a chapter touring Paris. The musical spent proportionally more time there.
• The larger part of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, which happens to be a gay but not that gay novel, takes place in Paris.
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame provides one of the greatest aversions, though there are still passages in the novel where the trope is played straight.
• Les Misérables plays straight and averts this trope as the first half of the novel is set in a variety of small towns. But the second the setting changes to Paris cue cafes, bohemians, rich snobs, and revolution.
• The Magic Map: When New York City is talking about her sister cities, she mentions Paris as being able to make people feel “so young and gay”.
• A Moveable Feast: Hemingway’s seminal novel established Paris as the place to be for interwar American artists.
• The Painter from Shanghai: Pan Yuliang studied art in Paris and moved there permanently after 1937.
• A Tale of Two Cities: The second city is Paris.
• Tender Is the Night: Which is why F. Scott Fitzgerald moved there.
• Tropic of Cancer: And so did Henry Miller.
• Much of The Well of Loneliness is set in the, well, gay subculture of early 20th-century Paris.
• A dystopian version of Paris is presented in John Birmingham’s Without Warning as it comes apart during the French Intifada.

By author

• Alan Furst books in general. Alan Furst doesn’t need a woman. Paris is his mistress.
• A few works by Ernest Hemingway are set in 1920s Paris, largely reflecting his experience. While somewhat reflecting the trope (bars and bistros and a generally “gay” lifestyle) he also makes apparent just how shallow the lives of Americans in Paris (many of whom he depicts as Type 2 Eaglelanders) can be. Particularly on display in The Sun Also Rises, wherein he contrasts Paris with Spain (particularly Pamplona and the world of bullfighting).

Live-Action TV - On the first season of The Amazing Race, teams had to travel to Paris and climb to the top of (you guessed it!) the Eiffel Tower and use a telescope to find a flag on top of another landmark, which turned out to be (you guessed it!) the Arc de Triomphe.

• Emily in Paris was noted for its jarring use of this trope. The series takes place in an affluent, picturesque white-washed Paris populated by Frenchstereotypes.

• Daphne in Heroes lives in Paris. And yes, it has the Eiffel Tower clearly visible through a window.

• Duncan Macleod spent half of each season of Highlander in Paris. (save the last season, which, due to it only having 12 episodes, was all set in Paris).

• In “My Master the Spy,” an episode of I Dream of Jeannie, Jeannie tricks Tony into eating lunch with her in Paris. However, he must be in Cocoa Beach at the same time, and voila! he’s there too, which confuses both a French Air Force Officer and Dr. Bellows, who thinks one of the two is an impostor.

• The Ricardos and Mertzes visited Paris during their trip to Europe on I Love Lucy. The establishing shot was of the Arc, Lucy encountered both a street artist and escargot in her first day there, and her hotel room had a head-on view of the Eiffel Tower.

• Interview with the Vampire (2022): In Season 2, most of the Flashbacks are set in Paris (with the exception of Eastern Europe and Louis & Armand’s San Francisco home). The Parisian scenes include the Eiffel Tower, beautiful historic bridges like the Pont Alexandre III, baguettes, cafés, boutiques with the latest fashion, a “permissive laissez-aller sexual atmosphere” where the American Louis could explore his homosexuality in the 1940s without getting arrested, artists, romantic strolls along the Seine, the Louvre Museum, and kissing in front of the Sacré-Cœur Basilica.

• Lois & Clark: Superman makes a few pit-stops here.

• Monk has some involvement with the City of Light:

• In “Mr. Monk and the Paperboy”, Monk solved a murder in France just by reading a newspaper article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

• Partial subversion in the Tie-In Novel “Mr. Monk is Miserable”, where Natalie expects to eat croissants and whatnot while enjoying the rustic splendor of the city. As soon as she sees the lights on the Eiffel Tower, and the Roue de Paris, and the Arc de Triomphe merely because L’Arche de le Defense is visible from the top of it, she launches into a long Character Filibuster (with which the authormay or may not have agreed) about how commercialism and “doing things bigger” has ruined her beautiful city from being the way it was twenty years ago on her honeymoon. Then she finds an enormous Parisian flat with a personal cafe and a waterfall being run by a sewer mutant vagrant (It Makes Sense in Context) and repeatedly waxes poetically throughout the book about how Paris even has better garbage than San Francisco note despite only ever seeing garbage from the 7th arrondissiment. Triple-subverted (or was it?) with a lampshade by the Cloudcuckoolander when the police are completely blase about a criminal plummeting to his death directly in front of them.

• “The Monkees In Paris”: A 1968 episode of The Monkees featuring the guys romping around Gay Paree, while being chased by a Groupie Brigade of faux Fangirls in the form of chic French models (it’s true: they actually had no idea who the Monkees were. At the time, the TV show hadn’t yet aired in France).

• The Prisoner (1967) features a stereotypical French party in one episode.

• The two-part finale of Sex and the City has Carrie moving to Paris with her Russian boyfriend Aleksandr Petrovsky…and being completely miserable there until Big finally arrives to pop the question.

• Star Trek, beginning with the time of The Next Generation, made reference to the President of the Federation keeping offices in Paris. The Presidential Office has a view of the Eiffel Tower. Also in view of the Eiffel Tower, in the aptly named episode “We’ll Always Have Paris,” is a café where Captain Picard once broke off a date with a woman who later marries a man who would go on to develop that episode’s Applied Phlebotinum.

• And everyone from Paris/France is English.

• That being said, there is a partial subversion of this in Next Generation in that Picard, the only actual French character in all of Star Trek, is from LaBarre, a small rural village that is nowhere near Paris.

Music - “The Last Time I Saw Paris,” a song written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II in 1940, is a eulogy for Paris as it existed before World War II. Vera Lynn famously performed it.

• The song “Paris” on Two Houses by Paul Gross (of Due South fame) and David Keeley.
• Dean Martin’s “The Poor People of Paris”: Just got back from Paris, FranceAll they do is sing and danceAll they’ve got there is romanceWhat a tragedy!Every boulevard has loversEvery lover’s in a tranceThe poor people of Paree…
• The 10cc song suite “Une Nuit a Paris” plays up all mock-sophisticated aspects of the trope for laughs, although it involves the murder of a gendarme.

Theater - Several Cole Porter musicals, including 50 Million Frenchmen, Can-Can and Silk Stockings. (This last was just a Screen-to-Stage Adaptation of Ninotchka.)

• Anastasia opens its second act with “Paris Holds the Key to Your Heart,” a number celebrating the glamour and culture of 1920s Paris, complete with cameos by famous people of the era.
• The Madwoman of Chaillot
• The Merry Widow
• The Rose of Algeria

Video Games - The Asphalt series has a race track in Paris. Landmarks from the ninth game include the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, the Notre Dame cathedral, the Paris Metro, and the Seine… all of which can be passed by in a single race when racing at the “To the Seine” track.

• Practically an Invoked Trope in the second installement of BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea which starts off with Elizabeth enjoying herself at a Parisian cafe while La Vie en Rose playing in the background. The sequence captures much of this trope, from lovely views of the Seine River to encounters with friendly painters. It is only when the anachronisms become impossible to ignore that the glamour breaks down: This is not Paris, but rather Elizabeth’s Happy Place based on how she imagined Paris to be.

• Sakura Wars 3 is set in Paris, and features every one of the above tropes, plus (for good measure) a suspiciously Moulin Rouge!-ish cabaret. Oh, and there’s a huge revolver cannon hidden under the Arc de Triomphe….

• Rayman: Raving Rabbids and its sequel seem to have a lot of sections set in Paris—fitting since the developers are French.

• Decidedly less comical example than most: Paris is the capital of the European Federation in EndWar and thus is a major battlefield, featuring the Eiffel Tower at the Europeans’ critical uplink. May be the first time in gaming that Americans get to destroy the Tower… though the Russians can do it if they get there first.

• Speaking of Russia wrecking the Eiffel Tower (somewhat), the Soviets do convert it into a gigantic Tesla Coil in one mission of their campaign in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2. Although you could destroy an imitation of the Arc de Triomphe and Louvre. Incidentally, in Red Alert 1, failing a certain mission as the Allies results in a cutscene of a nuclear bomb going off near the Eiffel Tower.

• Similarly, BattleTanx: Global Assault features a campaign level where the Tower is converted into a laser cannon; the player’s objective is to get to the base of the tower and blow up the generator. Another mission shortly after has the player defending the Champs-Élysées from nearly a hundred enemy tanks (not all at once, thankfully).

• Twisted Metal 2: The Paris level was a small chunk of narrow streets complete with alleys, bistros, boutiques and historical monuments set between the Eiffel Tower (which you could destroy, by the way) and the Notre-Dame de Paris.

• The first and last set of missions in Medal of Honor: Underground take place in Paris.

• The Saboteur is a Wide-Open Sandbox game taking place in a Paris that Those Wacky Nazis have robbed of its color.

• Route de la Seine in Enthusia Professional Racing, where the track’s start/finish take place at the Champs-Élysées and features the Arc de Triomphe seen at the first corner.

• The Paris stages from Gran Turismo 4 sort of count: Opéra passes through Place de la Concorde, Rue de la Paix, Place Vendôme, and the Opéra, whereas George V visits the Arc de Triomphe and Champs-Élysées.

• In Modern Warfare 3, the player can witness the collapse of the Eiffel Tower into the Seine (after calling in an airstrike to take out the invading Russian forces, no less).

• Final Fight 2 has a state set in France. It takes you from the somewhat realistic streets, past little cafés, to an airport. The Eiffel Tower is only seen in the background.

• Lumiose City in Pokémon X and Y is this, to go along with the Kalos region’s general air of Fantasy Counterpart Culture France. Comes complete with the ISO standard general architecture, an Eiffel Tower, and sidewalk cafés. The very first official artwork of the city also included baguettes, berets, snooty people, and oafish tourists.

• Pokémon Legends: Z-A is a sequel to X and Y set entirely inside Lumiose.

• Rhythm Thief & the Emperor’s Treasure is set entirely within Paris. Nearly every popular tourist landmark comes up somewhere in the story.

• Paris is the first big city Yuri and co. gets to visit during the events of Shadow Hearts: Covenant. We can see the Eiffel Tower from Gepetto’s apartment in Champs-Élysées as well as a lovely side-view of the Notre Dame Cathedral after emerging from an alternate exit of the abandoned railway. We’re also introduced to the MagimelBrothers, who certainly put “gay” back into Gay Paree.

• Street Fighter 6’s France stage, Fête Foraine, is quite literallyThe Theme Park Version of Paris, set in a traveling carnival that’s set up shop in the city. The Eiffel Tower, naturally, features prominently in the background.

Visual Novels - In Melody, Amy’s fashion in the Cool Aunt Ending takes place in Paris. And of course you can see the Eiffel Tower from her hotel room.

Web Comics - Bandette is set in a Nouvelle Vague-meets-Tintin fairyland Paris.

• Heartstopper: the main characters go on a Class Trip to Paris as part of their language studies.
• In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, Galatea’s first reappearance after her debut arc shows her living it up in Paris, apparently supporting herself through burglary. She wears a beret and scarf while eating at an outdoor bistro in sight of the Eiffel Tower. When in human disguise, she has a (holographic) cigarette in her mouth.

Web Original - The setting of The Orbiting Human Circus (of the Air) is not only Paris, but the very inside of the Eiffel Tower, where protagonist Julian the Janitor lives and works, and the eponymous fictional radio Variety Show is produced and broadcast from a ballroom at the tower’s top.

• Rats: In Paris: Zig-Zagging Trope, given the setting. The Terrière Hotel, the setting of the series, was originally built up to be a fancy and luxurious “home away from home” in the heart of Paris, several of the returning rats from the prequel series deliberately chose to go to Paris on holiday for its lovely reputation, Paris’ status as the City of Lights plays a major role in Owen’s backstory, and the reputation of French cuisine — particularly bread and cheese — is brought up quite often. However, with the presence of Bounty Hunter and Vigilante Man rats, the Terrière itself being forgotten by time from its heyday due to poor management, and the streets near the Terrière being so polluted from car fumes that a rat would start suffocating if they ventured out across them, it’s definitely not presented as a perfect, idealized place either.

Western Animation - Alice of Wonderland in Paris features Alice travelling to Paris together with a talking mouse.

• The Beatles are in Paris (episode “Thank You Girl”) where their manager (presumably Brian Epstein) locks them in their hotel room without their money so they can’t gorge on French cooking. The boys find a way out anyway and head for a cooking school.

• Blinky Bill has the episodes “A Dog’s Best Friend”, “Blinky Bill Superstar”, and “Paris Au-Go-Go” set there.

• The former episode has Penelope Poodle taken back home there to her beloved Mistress and a cat named Fifi.

• Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers: Paris is the only place outside the USA that appears twice in CDRR.

• The episode “Le Purrfect Crime” takes place in Paris. Several animals (!) are dressed in stereotypical French garb, the showdown takes place on the Eiffel Tower…

• “Love Is a Many Splintered Thing” includes a Flashback with Monty and a certain Femme Fatale mouse in Paris.

• Like most of the examples the Family Guy episode “Foreign Affairs” during Lois and Bonnie’s trip never once do they mention France by name or any of the other cities.

• The Flintstones visited prehistoric Paris in the theatrical movie The Man Called Flintstone. Various sights of Paris were seen during a song number, depicting it as a Stone Age version of this trope. Unusually for the series, Paris doesn’t have a “prehistoric” rock-pun name, though the wood-and-stone-constructed “Eiffelrock Tower” is shown. Paris (and the Eiffelrock Tower) is briefly seen again in the late 1970s special “A Flintstone Christmas.”

• Justified by the Jem episode, “Kimber’s Rebellion”, as the French countess gives them the idea to film a video there.

• Let’s Go Luna!: The France episodes all take place in Paris, but “C’est La Vie A Paris” is dedicated to showing off how the people of Paris value leisure and relaxation.

• Nearly all of the Looney Tunes cartoons featuring Pepé Le Pew center on this portrayal of Paris.

• In the Phineas and Ferbspecial “Summer Belongs to You”, the characters visit Paris. Many landmarks are seen, including the Seine River, the Eiffel Tower, and the Champs-Élysées. Candace, Ferb, and Isabella have various romantic woes (“I’m no fool, Stacy! I’ve seen the oil paintings!”), Baljeet is intimidated by a French Jerk, and a street mime keeps letting a red balloon float away. Angry French Vendor: Hey, you! Stop letting my balloons go! (the mime screams silently and runs)

• The French doll Babette from Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure. All she ever wanted was to go back to her precious town of “Gay Paree”.

• The motion capture animated film Renaissance takes place in a futuristic Paris with Hausmann-style neo-retro architecture.

• Parodied in Rocko’s Modern Life where all the French monuments have become Chokey Chicken eateries.

• The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles visited Paris. Where the Eiffel Tower was on a massive field of grass. Very likely.

• Though it might have been they were trying to render the Champ de Mars but didn’t go into all the details of every and each alley.

• Played straight on a episode of What’s New, Scooby-Doo??

Middle Ground

Live-Action TV - The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon takes place in a Zombie Apocalypse version of France.

• There’s the Eiffel Tower Effect at play naturally, and the first French zombie seen in the initial outbreak in Paris has a beret, but the population of survivors of the apocalypse in the city (particularly those dwelling on the hill of Montmartre) is multiethnic. That being said, Quinn’s gang has sought to recreate some of Paris’ typical glamorous nights in their underground base called Demimonde, by way of a cabaret, complete with drag queens, quasi-naked female dancers, a chanteuse and even some accordion music at one point.

• The episode titles can’t escape the clichés, with “Paris Sera Toujours Paris” (a Maurice Chevalier song, of course…) and “Moulin Rouge”.

Aversions

General - The Gay Paree stereotype originated during La Belle Epoque and most of its aspects date back no further than the 19th century. Thus, works set in pre-19th-century Paris will either avert this trope (usually via The Dung Ages) or else be an Anachronism Stew.

• Since about the late 1980s, the proportion of French fictions set in the banlieues (many of them around Paris) has increased, notably in low-income housing zones with majorities of populations of non-European descent.

Films - In the French film Besties, the views of Paris are not very picturesque outside of a shot on the Sacré Coeur basilica of Montmartre, and the story takes place in a low-income district mostly inhabited by populations of non-European (mostly North African and Sub-Saharan) origin, which the protagonists are from.

• District 13 is set almost entirely in Paris’s worst suburbs. In fact, its American remake Brick Mansions moved the setting not to New York or Los Angeles, but to the only American city with a reputation comparable to the banlieues of Paris: Detroit.
• Frantic presents a modern Paris with plenty of Arabs and Africans in it, and we don’t even glimpse the Eiffel Tower until the end of the movie.
• The French film La Haine rarely ventures inside central Paris, the area surrounded by the Périphérique; instead, most of the action takes place in the surrounding banlieue, more precisely, in the Yvelines (French department #78), west of Paris.
• Averted in both Moulin Rouge! films. Both are set in The Gay ’90s; in the historically accurate 1952 film, the streets are filthy and smelly, muggings are common and prostitutes are frequently arrested. In the 2000s version, the beautiful Moulin Rouge contrasts with the reality of that era (that inner Paris was a slum, and drug and drink addicts lined the streets).
• Mr. Bean’s Holiday has the bumbling titular character arriving in Paris at the start of his vacation, but spends much of the film in the countryside and ultimately arrives in Cannes.
• While set in Paris, Killing Zoe was entirely filmed in Los Angeles. If it weren’t for the French actors, this could be any other Noir picture.
• Ronin (1998) starts and finishes in a realistic grubby corner café in Paris and takes in the Périphérique ring-road, a condemned residential area in the midst of being torn down and a convention hall that could be anywhere.
• Les Misérables (2019) is set in Montfermeil, a impoverished and violent suburb of Paris.
• Jacques Tati’s Playtime is set in an ultramodern section of Paris entirely devoid of familiar Parisian life, aside from one street vendor whom some tourists want to photograph. Shots of Parisian landmarks against the backdrop of steel-and-glass high-rises are used to add to the uncanny feel of its sleek, antiseptic city, reminding us that this is still technically the City of Light.
• Elle gives us one Establishing Shot showing the Île de la Cité and Notre Dame, otherwise the film shows only typical urban neighborhoods which could be in any French city, really.
• Not counting a short prologue set in Iran, French-American Found Footage horror movie As Above, So Below is set in Paris, mostly in the Catacombs. Before the party ventures underground, the beginning is set in modern places (notably a nightclub), and there’s also a few scenes in more classical areas (an old church and a museum), but all the scenes set above ground represent the city as a normal place instead of a glamorous one.

Literature - The Bourne Series has Paris as a rather grim place, where Carlos the Jackal and his “old men of Paris” hang out. No one does any sight-seeing and in the first book, Jason/David and Marie spend a considerable amount of time running for their lives, with Marie also suffering from an attempted rape. Not a happy holiday.

• George Orwell’s first novel, Down and Out in Paris and London: the first half is all about him living a hand-to-mouth existence in Paris, eventually becoming a plongeur (dishwasher) in two different posh restaurants, where he can see the world of overworked, underpaid workers necessary to maintain “Gay Paree.”
• Lampshaded in Neil Flambé And The Crusader’s Curse, when Neil visits La Défense and notes how unlike the traditional image of Paris it is.

Live-Action TV - Engrenages has been described as a French version of The Wire, and features gritty police drama in some of Paris’s poorest and grottiest neighbourhoods.

• The Eddy was filmed in the eastern part of the city (12th arrondissement) and suburbs (Montreuil and Bobigny) that are far less affluent and touristic than the city center. As a consequence, the TV show depicts a far more multicultural, gritty, and popular Paris than usually seen in international productions.
• Lupin: the protagonist immigrated from Senegal to France as a child, and while he mainly targets the Parisian upper class for his schemes, he goes to unsavory places too, such as a banlieue and a prison, with gangs of petty criminals abounding in both.
• The Police ProceduralP.J. also depicts a multiethnic, gritty, not so picturesque and popular Paris (10th and 11th arrondissements) along with all kinds of criminality and social misery that can be found there.

Theater - In Les Misérables, the second half of Act I and all of Act II is set in Paris, but the musical frequently highlights the grittiest, grimiest, bloodiest parts of the city due to the low economic station of much of the cast and the nature of the revolution. The 2012 adaptation was similarly dirty (the sewer sequence, for example, was much dirtier than what is physically possible on stage), although areas set in the wealthier parts of the city (“Do You Hear the People Sing”, for example, or anything set at Rue Plumet), featured the architectural styles, romance, and general cleanliness usually associated with this trope. Neither the Eiffel Tower nor the Arc de Triomphe was featured (the former because it hadn’t been built yet, and the latter because it simply didn’t need to be), and the most iconic Paris landmarks are the Seine River and the Elephant of the Bastille.

Video Games - Assassin’s Creed: Unity: A lot of typical Parisian stuff is present, and the developers managed to squeeze the Eiffel Tower into a game set about a century before its construction, but the game doesn’t shy away from showing the drearier or more mundane parts of the city. And cheesy accents are averted thanks to Accent Adaptation… well, cheesy French ones.

• Deus Ex Paris is under martial law like much of the world, so its depiction is influenced by wartime Paris of the past century. The Eiffel Tower and other famous landmarks are displayed rather gloomily. Everyone smokes and engages in deep discussions of culture, politics and the human condition, even in bars and discotheque.
• Mario Kart Tour: Paris Promenade, true to its name, has drivers race across the idyllic streets of Paris, and the game gives it a stereotypical romantic vibe with French Accordion music and visuals that employ a color palette based predominantly on pink and orange. It makes a return in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe as a Nostalgia Level, thanks to the Booster Course Pass.
• In Street Fighter III: Third Strike, the French character Remy has a stage that is completely bizarre. The other stages are all generally based on real locations from the countries that the fighters represent — 42nd street subway (US), Santos Harbor (Brazil), St Basil’s Cathedral (Russia), the Harrod’s building, London (UK) etc.

Western Animation - Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown, and the subsequent TV special What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown? avoided Paris entirely on a trip to France. Granted, their vision of northern France was pretty generic, except for the accents, and the war memorial they visited in the TV special.

• Averted with the suburban Boulogne-Billancourt setting of Code Lyoko. While it is a suburb of Paris, the city landmarks are never seen. The one landmark that is seen (and actually seen at least Once an Episode as it’s central to the plot) is the abandoned Renault factory on Île Seguin in the Seine that has since been torn down.
• Averted by Miraculous Ladybug. Though it takes place in Paris, and its portrayal of the city looksthe part, it isn’t stereotypical and is pretty much just a backdrop for the series. And any damage as a result of the Monster of the Week is automatically repaired by Ladybug’s powers. That being said, it really says something when the strongest negative emotions Hawk Moth can exploit within an entire city of over two million people are that people are not allowed to feed the pigeons, being called a liar, and being made a fool by the only bully in the entire school.

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Video Example(s):

Paris Promenade

Paris Promenade is a very idyll interpretation of Paris, with some architectural accuracy for good measure.

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Paris Holds the…

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Examples:

open/close all folders Anime & Manga - Cyborg 009 has a French Ballerina as the local Chick and Team Mom, so the episode depicting her backstory is set in Paris. She remarks on how it hasn’t changed that much from the days she used to live there.

• Mobile Fighter G Gundam has George’s introductory episode settled in a grim, ruined Paris. At some point, the Eiffel Tower even collapses during George and Domon’s fight. (Worth pointing out that this isn’t a specific Take That! against France since the entire planet is in this condition.)
• Ikoku Meiro No Croisee plays this incredibly straight.
• The assassin girls of Noir live here, probably in Trocadéro considering the Eiffel Tower is visible from the window. Strangely, this version has newscasts with the on-screen text in English!
• In the anime for PriPara, the entire city (referred to in-universe as PriParis) is a PriPara with all the standard landmarks present. Paris is the headquarters for the current operating system due to France’s association with fashion and the local Meganii even has a beret and baguettes for epaulettes!

Art - A lot of the imagery of Gay Paree is derived from 19th-century painters, who made life there more colorful, like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s depictions of the Moulin Rouge cabaret, where the part-time dancers part-time harlots dance cancan.

• A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte: At first glance, the painting is a pretty, picturesque depiction of Paris, with well-off Parisians relaxing by the river. However, several other cues (most notably how most of them are bathed in shadow, and things that have been interpreted as allusions to prostitution) suggest it’s less idyllic than it looks.

Comic Books - Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew!: An issue featuring a battle with the Bunny From Beyond shows him converting the storyline’s monstrous egg yolks back to normal in cities all over the world, including Earth-C’s version of Paris, “Parrots” (though the final issue in the run would call it “Purris”), with a shot of its “Eyeful Tower.” A later story would revisit Earth-C’s France but avoided Parrots entirely (in favor of depicting other regions of the country).

• Fantastic Four: Disagreeing with the Superhero Registration Act but not willing to fight his friends, The Thing temporarily moved to Paris for most of Civil War (2006), only returning for the final battle.
• Lula und Yankee (German comic) make a trip there.
• Robin: Tim Drake went to Paris for his first bit of training to become Robin with a martial arts master who wasn’t a member of the Batfamily, went back for a weekend to spoil a League of Assassins plot alongside Nightwing, returned to the city to train under another master located there about a year later and spent some time there early in his career as Red Robin.

Films — Animation - Anastasia: This trope is on full display during the song “Paris Holds the Key to Your Heart”.

• The Aristocats begins and ends in Paris; the middle part of the film takes place in the French countryside and shows the journey back to the city.
• Gay Purr-ee: It’s even in the title. The film is set in turn-of-the-century France, with the bulk of the story taking place in Paris. However, it does acknowledge that other parts of France exist by beginning the story in Provence.
• The Little Mermaid: Chef Louis is, well, Hollywood’s idea of a French cook. His sequence is introduced with accordion music (a cliché that’s always associated with Paris), he has a Maurice Chevalier Accent, speaks about “Nouvelle Cuisine des Champs-Élysées” and even randomly name-drops Maurice Chevalier. This is all Anachronism Stew because the film pretty clearly takes place in either the 18th century or the very early 19th century.
• Ratatouille: Paris is a picturesque modern city, where events in the hospitality industry are apparently considered front-page news. The latter is actually Truth in Television, as fake cheese and wine, rows over ownership of recipes, and chef’s obituaries have all made Real Life headlines. Parisians have joked about the film being “realistic” still… for it gives plenty of screentime to rats, as the city is infamous for its increase in rat invasions due to the neglectful administration of mayor Anne Hidalgo.
• Rugrats in Paris is set in an especially stereotypical version of the place yet also manages to invoke the Far East stereotypes via musical numbers, a visit to a Japanese restaurant, and a dream. Oh yeah, most of the action takes place in a Reptar theme park, so there’s not as much Paris involved as the title would let you think. Yes, the Eiffel Tower is there, and so is the Arc de Triomphe, but not the Louvre. And Notre Dame, where Chas (Chuckie’s dad) and Coco LaBouche’s soon-to-be-ruined wedding took place. One line even had Betty about to fall asleep and asking Didi to “wake her up if she sees the hunchback”. Betty and Didi even lampshade the general lack of French-ness in their trip, at least culinary-wise: eating at a Japanese restaurant at the theme parkDidi: When I came to France, I had dreams of bouillabaise, crepes Suzette, chicken cordon bleu…Betty: Yeah, well, I had dreams of eating with a fork.

Films — Live-Action - Amélie is set in Montmartre (the big white church is the Sacré Coeur, a local landmark), an especially beautiful part of this beautiful city. It used to be known as the artists’ quarter.

• An American in Paris
• Before Sunset takes us from the famous Shakespeare and Company bookstore all the way to the banks of the Seine River.
• Ilsa and Rick of Casablanca “will always have Paris.” There is a long Falling-in-Love Montage showing them there.
• Cleo from 5 to 7 is the story of a young woman wandering in Paris on an early summer day in 1961.
• French Cancan. The entire film’s about the creation of both the Moulin Rouge and its showcase dance.
• French Kiss, starring Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline, involves a woman going to Paris to track down her fiancé. Her oft-frustrated quest to see the Eiffel Tower is a minor plot point.
• Funny Face even has a dedicated song (“Bonjour, Paris!”) for this — incredibly corny and stereotyped to the point of silliness, but sweet.
• Gigi: Bonus points for being set in La Belle Epoque as well.
• Good Grief: The bulk of the film takes place in Paris, emphasizing the romance and artistry of the film’s leads. They’re staying in a flat with a view of the Eiffel Tower, they wine, dine, and shop, and the Louvre is the centerpiece of Marc and Theo’s date.
• Irma la Douce
• While La La Land isn’t set there (except briefly during a fantasy montage), a romantic view of old-world Paris is a subject of fascination for Mia; she credits her grandmother’s stories about it as being her inspiration to become an artist, her play is set there (complete with Eiffel Tower Effect set dressing), and getting an impossibly lucky big break to star in a movie there is what ultimately dashes her chances with Seb.
• Le Divorce
• One scene in Looney Tunes: Back in Action has Brendan Fraser chasing a villain leaving the Louvre… and somehow immediately reaching the Eiffel Tower about two seconds later. (In real life, they’re about 4 km/about 2.5 miles apart.
• The 1957 film Love in the Afternoon, directed by Billy Wilder and starring Audrey Hepburn. The opening narration provides some of the best lampshading of the trope.
• Love Songs: Scenic streets of trendy Paris? Check. Young handsome fashionable Parisians? Check. Complicated love/sex stories? Check.
• Lovers on the Bridge (Les Amants du Pont-Neuf)
• Midnight in Paris has both contemporary and period versions of the city.
• Moulin Rouge! is also set in Montmartre (just like the real thing). Establishing shots dutifully show the Eiffel Tower. The entire city is shown as the centre of romance, excitement, and fun.
• National Lampoon’s European Vacation greatly parodies this. Clark makes the whole family wear berets, and in a following scene, they eat at an atypical cafe outdoors, French Jerk for a waiter.
• North: The French family wear berets, drinks wine, smokes, and watches Jerry Lewis all day.
• Not Okay: Invoked and parodied by Danni’s “memories” of Paris, which are blown up out of all proportion and include a passionate fighting/kissing French couple, a French Accordion, and a mime — because she wasn’t there in the first place.
• About a third of the John Woo movie Once a Thief takes place in the stereotypical Paris as well.
• Many of Maurice Chevalier’s early musicals take place at least partly in this version of Paris. One Hour with You takes place entirely in Gay Paree, and The Love Parade opens there.
• Paris 36: The trope is thoroughly embodied in the songs, most notably those of Douce (Nora Arnezeder), the accordion soundtrack, and the fact that the film concerns a troupe of Parisian cabaret entertainers. That doesn’t mean the film doesn’t include issues of the time, such as the effects of The Great Depression or fascist-leaning nationalism.
• Paris, je t’aime, a 2006 film which consists of eighteen short films set in different districts of Paris, is a virtually express deconstruction of this trope, particularly the last short featuring an American woman who is in many respects the stereotype of an aimless tourist, who recounts in her limited French how she has long dreamed of seeing the city, but who seems to be failing to find the magic and romance she always expected, despite enjoying the sights. Finally, sitting in a public park, observing the mundane but intimate interactions of its inhabitants, she connects in earnest with the city and is overcome with emotion as her true love affair with it begins.
• Paris When It Sizzles : Again, featuring Audrey Hepburn.
• Perfume takes place in 18th-century Paris and portrays the poorer areas as The Dung Ages, making particular mention of the awful smells.
• Paris is home to Inspector Clouseau of The Pink Panther films.
• The 1954 original and 1995 remake of Sabrina send the heroine to Paris on an internship of several years.
• Ninotchka, and its musical remake Silk Stockings.
• Steve in Singles has a postcard of two lovers kissing in Paris and often wishes life and love could be that simple.
• Team America: World Police. After opening on a striped-shirt accordion-playing garlic salesman (which turns out to be a puppet-show for tourists), the first scene ends with a shoot-out around the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower…and the Louvre.
• Seen for about eight minutes at high speed in Claude Lelouch’s 1976 short film C’était un Rendezvous.
• In Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, Sam’s parents go on holiday to Paris. It is shown very briefly, but most of the requisite cliches (Arc de Triomphe, mimes, escargots) are in place.
• Victor/Victoria is set in 1930s Paris, and features a song called “Gay Paree” (which heavily lampshades the Double Entendre of the phrase).

Literature

By works

• Eloise in Paris
• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes spent a chapter touring Paris. The musical spent proportionally more time there.
• The larger part of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, which happens to be a gay but not that gay novel, takes place in Paris.
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame provides one of the greatest aversions, though there are still passages in the novel where the trope is played straight.
• Les Misérables plays straight and averts this trope as the first half of the novel is set in a variety of small towns. But the second the setting changes to Paris cue cafes, bohemians, rich snobs, and revolution.
• The Magic Map: When New York City is talking about her sister cities, she mentions Paris as being able to make people feel “so young and gay”.
• A Moveable Feast: Hemingway’s seminal novel established Paris as the place to be for interwar American artists.
• The Painter from Shanghai: Pan Yuliang studied art in Paris and moved there permanently after 1937.
• A Tale of Two Cities: The second city is Paris.
• Tender Is the Night: Which is why F. Scott Fitzgerald moved there.
• Tropic of Cancer: And so did Henry Miller.
• Much of The Well of Loneliness is set in the, well, gay subculture of early 20th-century Paris.
• A dystopian version of Paris is presented in John Birmingham’s Without Warning as it comes apart during the French Intifada.

By author

• Alan Furst books in general. Alan Furst doesn’t need a woman. Paris is his mistress.

• A few works by Ernest Hemingway are set in 1920s Paris, largely reflecting his experience. While somewhat reflecting the trope (bars and bistros and a generally “gay” lifestyle) he also makes apparent just how shallow the lives of Americans in Paris (many of whom he depicts as Type 2 Eaglelanders) can be. Particularly on display in The Sun Also Rises, wherein he contrasts Paris with Spain (particularly Pamplona and the world of bullfighting).

• Eloise in Paris

• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes spent a chapter touring Paris. The musical spent proportionally more time there.

• The larger part of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, which happens to be a gay but not that gay novel, takes place in Paris.

• The Hunchback of Notre Dame provides one of the greatest aversions, though there are still passages in the novel where the trope is played straight.

• Les Misérables plays straight and averts this trope as the first half of the novel is set in a variety of small towns. But the second the setting changes to Paris cue cafes, bohemians, rich snobs, and revolution.

• The Magic Map: When New York City is talking about her sister cities, she mentions Paris as being able to make people feel “so young and gay”.

• A Moveable Feast: Hemingway’s seminal novel established Paris as the place to be for interwar American artists.

• The Painter from Shanghai: Pan Yuliang studied art in Paris and moved there permanently after 1937.

• A Tale of Two Cities: The second city is Paris.

• Tender Is the Night: Which is why F. Scott Fitzgerald moved there.

• Tropic of Cancer: And so did Henry Miller.

• Much of The Well of Loneliness is set in the, well, gay subculture of early 20th-century Paris.

• A dystopian version of Paris is presented in John Birmingham’s Without Warning as it comes apart during the French Intifada.

By author

• Alan Furst books in general. Alan Furst doesn’t need a woman. Paris is his mistress.
• A few works by Ernest Hemingway are set in 1920s Paris, largely reflecting his experience. While somewhat reflecting the trope (bars and bistros and a generally “gay” lifestyle) he also makes apparent just how shallow the lives of Americans in Paris (many of whom he depicts as Type 2 Eaglelanders) can be. Particularly on display in The Sun Also Rises, wherein he contrasts Paris with Spain (particularly Pamplona and the world of bullfighting).

Live-Action TV - On the first season of The Amazing Race, teams had to travel to Paris and climb to the top of (you guessed it!) the Eiffel Tower and use a telescope to find a flag on top of another landmark, which turned out to be (you guessed it!) the Arc de Triomphe.

• Emily in Paris was noted for its jarring use of this trope. The series takes place in an affluent, picturesque white-washed Paris populated by Frenchstereotypes.

• Daphne in Heroes lives in Paris. And yes, it has the Eiffel Tower clearly visible through a window.

• Duncan Macleod spent half of each season of Highlander in Paris. (save the last season, which, due to it only having 12 episodes, was all set in Paris).

• In “My Master the Spy,” an episode of I Dream of Jeannie, Jeannie tricks Tony into eating lunch with her in Paris. However, he must be in Cocoa Beach at the same time, and voila! he’s there too, which confuses both a French Air Force Officer and Dr. Bellows, who thinks one of the two is an impostor.

• The Ricardos and Mertzes visited Paris during their trip to Europe on I Love Lucy. The establishing shot was of the Arc, Lucy encountered both a street artist and escargot in her first day there, and her hotel room had a head-on view of the Eiffel Tower.

• Interview with the Vampire (2022): In Season 2, most of the Flashbacks are set in Paris (with the exception of Eastern Europe and Louis & Armand’s San Francisco home). The Parisian scenes include the Eiffel Tower, beautiful historic bridges like the Pont Alexandre III, baguettes, cafés, boutiques with the latest fashion, a “permissive laissez-aller sexual atmosphere” where the American Louis could explore his homosexuality in the 1940s without getting arrested, artists, romantic strolls along the Seine, the Louvre Museum, and kissing in front of the Sacré-Cœur Basilica.

• Lois & Clark: Superman makes a few pit-stops here.

• Monk has some involvement with the City of Light:

• In “Mr. Monk and the Paperboy”, Monk solved a murder in France just by reading a newspaper article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

• Partial subversion in the Tie-In Novel “Mr. Monk is Miserable”, where Natalie expects to eat croissants and whatnot while enjoying the rustic splendor of the city. As soon as she sees the lights on the Eiffel Tower, and the Roue de Paris, and the Arc de Triomphe merely because L’Arche de le Defense is visible from the top of it, she launches into a long Character Filibuster (with which the authormay or may not have agreed) about how commercialism and “doing things bigger” has ruined her beautiful city from being the way it was twenty years ago on her honeymoon. Then she finds an enormous Parisian flat with a personal cafe and a waterfall being run by a sewer mutant vagrant (It Makes Sense in Context) and repeatedly waxes poetically throughout the book about how Paris even has better garbage than San Francisco note despite only ever seeing garbage from the 7th arrondissiment. Triple-subverted (or was it?) with a lampshade by the Cloudcuckoolander when the police are completely blase about a criminal plummeting to his death directly in front of them.

• “The Monkees In Paris”: A 1968 episode of The Monkees featuring the guys romping around Gay Paree, while being chased by a Groupie Brigade of faux Fangirls in the form of chic French models (it’s true: they actually had no idea who the Monkees were. At the time, the TV show hadn’t yet aired in France).

• The Prisoner (1967) features a stereotypical French party in one episode.

• The two-part finale of Sex and the City has Carrie moving to Paris with her Russian boyfriend Aleksandr Petrovsky…and being completely miserable there until Big finally arrives to pop the question.

• Star Trek, beginning with the time of The Next Generation, made reference to the President of the Federation keeping offices in Paris. The Presidential Office has a view of the Eiffel Tower. Also in view of the Eiffel Tower, in the aptly named episode “We’ll Always Have Paris,” is a café where Captain Picard once broke off a date with a woman who later marries a man who would go on to develop that episode’s Applied Phlebotinum.

• And everyone from Paris/France is English.

• That being said, there is a partial subversion of this in Next Generation in that Picard, the only actual French character in all of Star Trek, is from LaBarre, a small rural village that is nowhere near Paris.

Music - “The Last Time I Saw Paris,” a song written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II in 1940, is a eulogy for Paris as it existed before World War II. Vera Lynn famously performed it.

• The song “Paris” on Two Houses by Paul Gross (of Due South fame) and David Keeley.
• Dean Martin’s “The Poor People of Paris”: Just got back from Paris, FranceAll they do is sing and danceAll they’ve got there is romanceWhat a tragedy!Every boulevard has loversEvery lover’s in a tranceThe poor people of Paree…
• The 10cc song suite “Une Nuit a Paris” plays up all mock-sophisticated aspects of the trope for laughs, although it involves the murder of a gendarme.

Theater - Several Cole Porter musicals, including 50 Million Frenchmen, Can-Can and Silk Stockings. (This last was just a Screen-to-Stage Adaptation of Ninotchka.)

• Anastasia opens its second act with “Paris Holds the Key to Your Heart,” a number celebrating the glamour and culture of 1920s Paris, complete with cameos by famous people of the era.
• The Madwoman of Chaillot
• The Merry Widow
• The Rose of Algeria

Video Games - The Asphalt series has a race track in Paris. Landmarks from the ninth game include the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, the Notre Dame cathedral, the Paris Metro, and the Seine… all of which can be passed by in a single race when racing at the “To the Seine” track.

• Practically an Invoked Trope in the second installement of BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea which starts off with Elizabeth enjoying herself at a Parisian cafe while La Vie en Rose playing in the background. The sequence captures much of this trope, from lovely views of the Seine River to encounters with friendly painters. It is only when the anachronisms become impossible to ignore that the glamour breaks down: This is not Paris, but rather Elizabeth’s Happy Place based on how she imagined Paris to be.

• Sakura Wars 3 is set in Paris, and features every one of the above tropes, plus (for good measure) a suspiciously Moulin Rouge!-ish cabaret. Oh, and there’s a huge revolver cannon hidden under the Arc de Triomphe….

• Rayman: Raving Rabbids and its sequel seem to have a lot of sections set in Paris—fitting since the developers are French.

• Decidedly less comical example than most: Paris is the capital of the European Federation in EndWar and thus is a major battlefield, featuring the Eiffel Tower at the Europeans’ critical uplink. May be the first time in gaming that Americans get to destroy the Tower… though the Russians can do it if they get there first.

• Speaking of Russia wrecking the Eiffel Tower (somewhat), the Soviets do convert it into a gigantic Tesla Coil in one mission of their campaign in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2. Although you could destroy an imitation of the Arc de Triomphe and Louvre. Incidentally, in Red Alert 1, failing a certain mission as the Allies results in a cutscene of a nuclear bomb going off near the Eiffel Tower.

• Similarly, BattleTanx: Global Assault features a campaign level where the Tower is converted into a laser cannon; the player’s objective is to get to the base of the tower and blow up the generator. Another mission shortly after has the player defending the Champs-Élysées from nearly a hundred enemy tanks (not all at once, thankfully).

• Twisted Metal 2: The Paris level was a small chunk of narrow streets complete with alleys, bistros, boutiques and historical monuments set between the Eiffel Tower (which you could destroy, by the way) and the Notre-Dame de Paris.

• The first and last set of missions in Medal of Honor: Underground take place in Paris.

• The Saboteur is a Wide-Open Sandbox game taking place in a Paris that Those Wacky Nazis have robbed of its color.

• Route de la Seine in Enthusia Professional Racing, where the track’s start/finish take place at the Champs-Élysées and features the Arc de Triomphe seen at the first corner.

• The Paris stages from Gran Turismo 4 sort of count: Opéra passes through Place de la Concorde, Rue de la Paix, Place Vendôme, and the Opéra, whereas George V visits the Arc de Triomphe and Champs-Élysées.

• In Modern Warfare 3, the player can witness the collapse of the Eiffel Tower into the Seine (after calling in an airstrike to take out the invading Russian forces, no less).

• Final Fight 2 has a state set in France. It takes you from the somewhat realistic streets, past little cafés, to an airport. The Eiffel Tower is only seen in the background.

• Lumiose City in Pokémon X and Y is this, to go along with the Kalos region’s general air of Fantasy Counterpart Culture France. Comes complete with the ISO standard general architecture, an Eiffel Tower, and sidewalk cafés. The very first official artwork of the city also included baguettes, berets, snooty people, and oafish tourists.

• Pokémon Legends: Z-A is a sequel to X and Y set entirely inside Lumiose.

• Rhythm Thief & the Emperor’s Treasure is set entirely within Paris. Nearly every popular tourist landmark comes up somewhere in the story.

• Paris is the first big city Yuri and co. gets to visit during the events of Shadow Hearts: Covenant. We can see the Eiffel Tower from Gepetto’s apartment in Champs-Élysées as well as a lovely side-view of the Notre Dame Cathedral after emerging from an alternate exit of the abandoned railway. We’re also introduced to the MagimelBrothers, who certainly put “gay” back into Gay Paree.

• Street Fighter 6’s France stage, Fête Foraine, is quite literallyThe Theme Park Version of Paris, set in a traveling carnival that’s set up shop in the city. The Eiffel Tower, naturally, features prominently in the background.

Visual Novels - In Melody, Amy’s fashion in the Cool Aunt Ending takes place in Paris. And of course you can see the Eiffel Tower from her hotel room.

Web Comics - Bandette is set in a Nouvelle Vague-meets-Tintin fairyland Paris.

• Heartstopper: the main characters go on a Class Trip to Paris as part of their language studies.
• In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, Galatea’s first reappearance after her debut arc shows her living it up in Paris, apparently supporting herself through burglary. She wears a beret and scarf while eating at an outdoor bistro in sight of the Eiffel Tower. When in human disguise, she has a (holographic) cigarette in her mouth.

Web Original - The setting of The Orbiting Human Circus (of the Air) is not only Paris, but the very inside of the Eiffel Tower, where protagonist Julian the Janitor lives and works, and the eponymous fictional radio Variety Show is produced and broadcast from a ballroom at the tower’s top.

• Rats: In Paris: Zig-Zagging Trope, given the setting. The Terrière Hotel, the setting of the series, was originally built up to be a fancy and luxurious “home away from home” in the heart of Paris, several of the returning rats from the prequel series deliberately chose to go to Paris on holiday for its lovely reputation, Paris’ status as the City of Lights plays a major role in Owen’s backstory, and the reputation of French cuisine — particularly bread and cheese — is brought up quite often. However, with the presence of Bounty Hunter and Vigilante Man rats, the Terrière itself being forgotten by time from its heyday due to poor management, and the streets near the Terrière being so polluted from car fumes that a rat would start suffocating if they ventured out across them, it’s definitely not presented as a perfect, idealized place either.

Western Animation - Alice of Wonderland in Paris features Alice travelling to Paris together with a talking mouse.

• The Beatles are in Paris (episode “Thank You Girl”) where their manager (presumably Brian Epstein) locks them in their hotel room without their money so they can’t gorge on French cooking. The boys find a way out anyway and head for a cooking school.

• Blinky Bill has the episodes “A Dog’s Best Friend”, “Blinky Bill Superstar”, and “Paris Au-Go-Go” set there.

• The former episode has Penelope Poodle taken back home there to her beloved Mistress and a cat named Fifi.

• Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers: Paris is the only place outside the USA that appears twice in CDRR.

• The episode “Le Purrfect Crime” takes place in Paris. Several animals (!) are dressed in stereotypical French garb, the showdown takes place on the Eiffel Tower…

• “Love Is a Many Splintered Thing” includes a Flashback with Monty and a certain Femme Fatale mouse in Paris.

• Like most of the examples the Family Guy episode “Foreign Affairs” during Lois and Bonnie’s trip never once do they mention France by name or any of the other cities.

• The Flintstones visited prehistoric Paris in the theatrical movie The Man Called Flintstone. Various sights of Paris were seen during a song number, depicting it as a Stone Age version of this trope. Unusually for the series, Paris doesn’t have a “prehistoric” rock-pun name, though the wood-and-stone-constructed “Eiffelrock Tower” is shown. Paris (and the Eiffelrock Tower) is briefly seen again in the late 1970s special “A Flintstone Christmas.”

• Justified by the Jem episode, “Kimber’s Rebellion”, as the French countess gives them the idea to film a video there.

• Let’s Go Luna!: The France episodes all take place in Paris, but “C’est La Vie A Paris” is dedicated to showing off how the people of Paris value leisure and relaxation.

• Nearly all of the Looney Tunes cartoons featuring Pepé Le Pew center on this portrayal of Paris.

• In the Phineas and Ferbspecial “Summer Belongs to You”, the characters visit Paris. Many landmarks are seen, including the Seine River, the Eiffel Tower, and the Champs-Élysées. Candace, Ferb, and Isabella have various romantic woes (“I’m no fool, Stacy! I’ve seen the oil paintings!”), Baljeet is intimidated by a French Jerk, and a street mime keeps letting a red balloon float away. Angry French Vendor: Hey, you! Stop letting my balloons go! (the mime screams silently and runs)

• The French doll Babette from Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure. All she ever wanted was to go back to her precious town of “Gay Paree”.

• The motion capture animated film Renaissance takes place in a futuristic Paris with Hausmann-style neo-retro architecture.

• Parodied in Rocko’s Modern Life where all the French monuments have become Chokey Chicken eateries.

• The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles visited Paris. Where the Eiffel Tower was on a massive field of grass. Very likely.

• Though it might have been they were trying to render the Champ de Mars but didn’t go into all the details of every and each alley.

• Played straight on a episode of What’s New, Scooby-Doo??

Middle Ground

Live-Action TV - The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon takes place in a Zombie Apocalypse version of France.

• There’s the Eiffel Tower Effect at play naturally, and the first French zombie seen in the initial outbreak in Paris has a beret, but the population of survivors of the apocalypse in the city (particularly those dwelling on the hill of Montmartre) is multiethnic. That being said, Quinn’s gang has sought to recreate some of Paris’ typical glamorous nights in their underground base called Demimonde, by way of a cabaret, complete with drag queens, quasi-naked female dancers, a chanteuse and even some accordion music at one point.

• The episode titles can’t escape the clichés, with “Paris Sera Toujours Paris” (a Maurice Chevalier song, of course…) and “Moulin Rouge”.

Aversions

General - The Gay Paree stereotype originated during La Belle Epoque and most of its aspects date back no further than the 19th century. Thus, works set in pre-19th-century Paris will either avert this trope (usually via The Dung Ages) or else be an Anachronism Stew.

• Since about the late 1980s, the proportion of French fictions set in the banlieues (many of them around Paris) has increased, notably in low-income housing zones with majorities of populations of non-European descent.

Films - In the French film Besties, the views of Paris are not very picturesque outside of a shot on the Sacré Coeur basilica of Montmartre, and the story takes place in a low-income district mostly inhabited by populations of non-European (mostly North African and Sub-Saharan) origin, which the protagonists are from.

• District 13 is set almost entirely in Paris’s worst suburbs. In fact, its American remake Brick Mansions moved the setting not to New York or Los Angeles, but to the only American city with a reputation comparable to the banlieues of Paris: Detroit.
• Frantic presents a modern Paris with plenty of Arabs and Africans in it, and we don’t even glimpse the Eiffel Tower until the end of the movie.
• The French film La Haine rarely ventures inside central Paris, the area surrounded by the Périphérique; instead, most of the action takes place in the surrounding banlieue, more precisely, in the Yvelines (French department #78), west of Paris.
• Averted in both Moulin Rouge! films. Both are set in The Gay ’90s; in the historically accurate 1952 film, the streets are filthy and smelly, muggings are common and prostitutes are frequently arrested. In the 2000s version, the beautiful Moulin Rouge contrasts with the reality of that era (that inner Paris was a slum, and drug and drink addicts lined the streets).
• Mr. Bean’s Holiday has the bumbling titular character arriving in Paris at the start of his vacation, but spends much of the film in the countryside and ultimately arrives in Cannes.
• While set in Paris, Killing Zoe was entirely filmed in Los Angeles. If it weren’t for the French actors, this could be any other Noir picture.
• Ronin (1998) starts and finishes in a realistic grubby corner café in Paris and takes in the Périphérique ring-road, a condemned residential area in the midst of being torn down and a convention hall that could be anywhere.
• Les Misérables (2019) is set in Montfermeil, a impoverished and violent suburb of Paris.
• Jacques Tati’s Playtime is set in an ultramodern section of Paris entirely devoid of familiar Parisian life, aside from one street vendor whom some tourists want to photograph. Shots of Parisian landmarks against the backdrop of steel-and-glass high-rises are used to add to the uncanny feel of its sleek, antiseptic city, reminding us that this is still technically the City of Light.
• Elle gives us one Establishing Shot showing the Île de la Cité and Notre Dame, otherwise the film shows only typical urban neighborhoods which could be in any French city, really.
• Not counting a short prologue set in Iran, French-American Found Footage horror movie As Above, So Below is set in Paris, mostly in the Catacombs. Before the party ventures underground, the beginning is set in modern places (notably a nightclub), and there’s also a few scenes in more classical areas (an old church and a museum), but all the scenes set above ground represent the city as a normal place instead of a glamorous one.

Literature - The Bourne Series has Paris as a rather grim place, where Carlos the Jackal and his “old men of Paris” hang out. No one does any sight-seeing and in the first book, Jason/David and Marie spend a considerable amount of time running for their lives, with Marie also suffering from an attempted rape. Not a happy holiday.

• George Orwell’s first novel, Down and Out in Paris and London: the first half is all about him living a hand-to-mouth existence in Paris, eventually becoming a plongeur (dishwasher) in two different posh restaurants, where he can see the world of overworked, underpaid workers necessary to maintain “Gay Paree.”
• Lampshaded in Neil Flambé And The Crusader’s Curse, when Neil visits La Défense and notes how unlike the traditional image of Paris it is.

Live-Action TV - Engrenages has been described as a French version of The Wire, and features gritty police drama in some of Paris’s poorest and grottiest neighbourhoods.

• The Eddy was filmed in the eastern part of the city (12th arrondissement) and suburbs (Montreuil and Bobigny) that are far less affluent and touristic than the city center. As a consequence, the TV show depicts a far more multicultural, gritty, and popular Paris than usually seen in international productions.
• Lupin: the protagonist immigrated from Senegal to France as a child, and while he mainly targets the Parisian upper class for his schemes, he goes to unsavory places too, such as a banlieue and a prison, with gangs of petty criminals abounding in both.
• The Police ProceduralP.J. also depicts a multiethnic, gritty, not so picturesque and popular Paris (10th and 11th arrondissements) along with all kinds of criminality and social misery that can be found there.

Theater - In Les Misérables, the second half of Act I and all of Act II is set in Paris, but the musical frequently highlights the grittiest, grimiest, bloodiest parts of the city due to the low economic station of much of the cast and the nature of the revolution. The 2012 adaptation was similarly dirty (the sewer sequence, for example, was much dirtier than what is physically possible on stage), although areas set in the wealthier parts of the city (“Do You Hear the People Sing”, for example, or anything set at Rue Plumet), featured the architectural styles, romance, and general cleanliness usually associated with this trope. Neither the Eiffel Tower nor the Arc de Triomphe was featured (the former because it hadn’t been built yet, and the latter because it simply didn’t need to be), and the most iconic Paris landmarks are the Seine River and the Elephant of the Bastille.

Video Games - Assassin’s Creed: Unity: A lot of typical Parisian stuff is present, and the developers managed to squeeze the Eiffel Tower into a game set about a century before its construction, but the game doesn’t shy away from showing the drearier or more mundane parts of the city. And cheesy accents are averted thanks to Accent Adaptation… well, cheesy French ones.

• Deus Ex Paris is under martial law like much of the world, so its depiction is influenced by wartime Paris of the past century. The Eiffel Tower and other famous landmarks are displayed rather gloomily. Everyone smokes and engages in deep discussions of culture, politics and the human condition, even in bars and discotheque.
• Mario Kart Tour: Paris Promenade, true to its name, has drivers race across the idyllic streets of Paris, and the game gives it a stereotypical romantic vibe with French Accordion music and visuals that employ a color palette based predominantly on pink and orange. It makes a return in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe as a Nostalgia Level, thanks to the Booster Course Pass.
• In Street Fighter III: Third Strike, the French character Remy has a stage that is completely bizarre. The other stages are all generally based on real locations from the countries that the fighters represent — 42nd street subway (US), Santos Harbor (Brazil), St Basil’s Cathedral (Russia), the Harrod’s building, London (UK) etc.

Western Animation - Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown, and the subsequent TV special What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown? avoided Paris entirely on a trip to France. Granted, their vision of northern France was pretty generic, except for the accents, and the war memorial they visited in the TV special.

• Averted with the suburban Boulogne-Billancourt setting of Code Lyoko. While it is a suburb of Paris, the city landmarks are never seen. The one landmark that is seen (and actually seen at least Once an Episode as it’s central to the plot) is the abandoned Renault factory on Île Seguin in the Seine that has since been torn down.
• Averted by Miraculous Ladybug. Though it takes place in Paris, and its portrayal of the city looksthe part, it isn’t stereotypical and is pretty much just a backdrop for the series. And any damage as a result of the Monster of the Week is automatically repaired by Ladybug’s powers. That being said, it really says something when the strongest negative emotions Hawk Moth can exploit within an entire city of over two million people are that people are not allowed to feed the pigeons, being called a liar, and being made a fool by the only bully in the entire school.

Paris Promenade is a very idyll interpretation of Paris, with some architectural accuracy for good measure.

Top Paris Promenade is a very idyll interpretation of Paris, with some architectural accuracy for good measure.

How well does it match the trope?

★★★★★ 5 (8 votes) Example of:

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