EWednesday morning, while I was trying to decide if I should do a Yoga video with Adrienne or eat the remaining cream, my mother called to tell me the news. “Emily in Paris has just been nominated for a Golden Globe!” she said.
“What? For which category?” I said. I’m a writer on the show. I tried to avoid reading his reviews, but I don’t live under the rock. It never crossed my mind that our show would be nominated.
“For the best,” my mother said. We haven’t hugged since 2019. She gets her second vaccine in two weeks. Maybe the first one messed with her head.
“The best comedy series?” Are you sure? ”I took a spoonful of cream.
“Yes, Deb, I’m sure. I’m watching TV right now. ”
“Huh. We have Google twice to be sure.
Like Emily, they are both a former American expat based in Paris (as a photojournalist from 1988 to 1992), as well as a former drug dealer: a concert I took after being sexually harassed my job as a journalist (a man Trump just forgave, but I deviate from) when I was a single mother trying to put two kids to college. Emily’s vaginal ring brand manifesto? Cut and pasted from the one I wrote for my marketing job. “Isn’t the vagina male?“It simply came to our notice then. What about Emily’s many faux pas? Let’s just say that in my first month in Paris, when I was a 22-year-old, having dinner with my photojournalism colleagues and one of them asked if I wanted more food, I said, “No, thanks. I’m full.Which doesn’t mean “No, thank you, I’m full,” but rather “No, thank you.” I’m pregnant.”
Did I personally take a look at the show? Of course. Who do not? But not either. Emily in Paris aired a few months after I spent June and July marching for racial justice on the streets of New York with my children. I could certainly see how a show about a white American luxury white sale, in a pre-pandemic Paris escaped by its vibrant African and Muslim communities, could be doubted. Our show also aired shortly after we read Caste by Isabel Wilkerson and swallowed Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You, a work of pure genius about the consequences of rape. “The show,” I told everyone who listened, “deserves to win all the awards.”
When he wasn’t, I was amazed. I May Destroy You wasn’t just my favorite show of 2020. It’s my favorite show ever. It takes the complicated issue of rape – I myself am a survivor of sexual assault – and it inspires her heart, humor, pathos and a story built so well that I had to watch it twice, just to understand how Coel did.
Now, am I glad Emily was nominated in Paris? Yes. Of course. I’ve never been close to seeing a Golden Globe statue up close, let alone being nominated for one. But that emotion is now, unfortunately, tempered by my anger at Coel’s snob. That I can destroy you did not receive any golden globe is not only wrong, it is what is wrong with anything.
Take my friend Deb Dugan, the first woman president and CEO of the Recording Academy. She was brought in to deal with, among other things, grafting, corruption, sexism and the ongoing #grammyssowhite issue. When Deb started doing this – when she started trying to clean the house at the Recording Academy and had to file her own sexual harassment complaint while doing so – she was fired.
Take every room of Hollywood writers. A 2017 Color of Change report showed that 91% of showrunners are white and 80% are male.
Take the recent headlines. That a white woman who assaulted the Chapter was given permission to go on vacation to Mexico, while a nine-year-old black girl was sprayed with police pepper for the crime of asking her father – “You’re acting like a child ! “The police told him, to which he replied, ‘I’m a child!’ – It 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 of our colors, not just some. But we also need to give prizes to shows (and music, movies, songs and musical pieces) that deserve them, regardless of the color of their creators’ skin. Is Hamilton wonderful because Lin-Manuel Miranda is Puerto Rican? Not. It’s great because it hits. In the same vein, the way anyone can watch I May Destroy You and not call it a brilliant work of art or Michaela Coel a genius is beyond my ability to understand how these decisions are made.