EWhile I was trying to decide on Wednesday morning to do a Yoga with Adrienne video or eat the remaining whipped cream, my mom called me to tell me the news. “Emily in Paris has just been nominated for a Golden Globe!” she said.
“What? For what category?” I said. I am a writer of the program. I tried to read the critique of it, but I do not live under a rock. It never occurred to me that our program is nominated would not be.
“For the best,” my mother says. We have not received a hug since 2019. She gets her second vaccine shot in two weeks. Maybe the first one messed with her head.
“Best comedy series? Are you sure? “I put down a spoonful of whipped cream.
‘Yes, Deb, I’m sure. I’m watching it on TV now. ”
‘Huh. Strange. “I Google it twice to be sure.
Like Emily, I’m both a former American expat based in Paris (as a photojournalist from 1988 to 1992), as well as a former marketer for pharmaceutical products: a concert I took after being sexually harassed from my journalistic job (by a man who just pardoned Trump, but I’m quitting) when I was a single mom trying to put two kids through college. Emily’s brand manifesto of the vaginal ring? Cut and paste from the one I wrote for my marketing job. ‘The vagina is not masculine?‘I thought of that too. As for Emily’s many faux pas? Let’s just say that during my first month in Paris, when I was a 22-year-old engineer, I went out to dinner with my colleagues in photojournalism, and one of them asked if I wanted more food, I replied : ‘No, thank you. I’m plain.“Which does not mean, ‘No thank you, I’m full,’ but rather, ‘No, thank you. I’m pregnant.’
Did I take the criticism of the program personally? Natural. Who would not? But neither. Emily in Paris aired a few months after I spent June and July with my children for racial justice through the streets of New York. I could definitely see how a show about a white American selling luxury whiteness could be arranged in a pre-pandemic Paris free of its vibrant African and Muslim communities. Our program was also broadcast shortly after I read Caste by Isabel Wilkerson and slammed Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You, a work of pure genius on the aftermath of a rape. “The program,” I told everyone who wanted to listen, “deserved to win all the awards.”
When that did not happen, I was stunned. I May Destroy You was not just my favorite program of 2020. This is my favorite show ever. It takes the complicated issue of a rape – I myself am a survivor of sexual assault – and gives it heart, humor, pathos and a story so well put together that I had to watch it twice, just to understand How Coel did it.
Am I now excited that Emily has been nominated in Paris? Yes. Natural. I have never been close to seeing a Golden Globe statue up close, let alone being nominated for one. But the excitement is now sadly tempered by my anger over Coel’s snob. That I may destroy you, not get one Golden Globe nod, is not only wrong, but what is wrong with everything.
Take my friend Deb Dugan, the first female president and CEO of the Recording Academy. She was brought in to deal with, among other things, grafting, corruption, sexism and the ongoing problem of #grammyssowhite. When Deb started doing this – when she actually tried to clean up at the Recording Academy and had to file her own sexual harassment complaint, she was fired.
Take every writing room in Hollywood. In 2017’s report by Color of Change, it was found that 91% of the forerunners are white and 80% men.
Take the recent news. That a white woman who stormed the Capitol was allowed to go on vacation to Mexico while a nine-year-old black girl was pepper sprayed by the police because she asked her father, ‘You act like a child! “The police told her, to which she replied, ‘I am a child!’ – tells you everything you need to know about systemic racism in America.
But my anger is not just about race. Or even about racial representation in art. Yes, we need art that reflects all our colors, not just some. But we must also give awards to shows (and music and movies and plays and musicals) that deserve it, regardless of the color of their creators. Is Hamilton great because Lin-Manuel Miranda is Puerto Rican? No. It’s great because it’s clapping. In the same way, how can someone see how I can destroy you and not call it a brilliant work of art or Michaela Coel a genius, is my ability to understand how these decisions are made.