Ukrainian Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko said that he has complained to Netflix (Netflix, Netflix) that its popular drama “Emily in Paris” (Emily in Paris) has offended the country’s portrayal of Ukrainian characters.
The play tells the story of a young American woman Emily, played by Lily Collins, who went to work in the French capital Paris. In the second season of the show, a Ukrainian woman, Petra, steals clothes from a department store while shopping with the protagonist Emily. Tkachenko criticized the image of Petra in the play as “humiliating.”
Petra, played by Ukrainian actress Daria Panchenko, is also portrayed in the play as an Eastern European woman with a bad sense of fashion and fear of being deported from France.
“Emily has an exaggerated cartoon-like image of a Ukrainian woman in this Paris drama, which is unacceptable and an insult,” Tkachenko wrote on Telegram. “Is this the image of Ukrainians in foreign countries?” he added.
According to Ukrainian media reports, Tkachenko has sent a letter to Netflix complaining about Petra’s stereotyped image in the show.
Yevheniya Havrylko, a Ukrainian living in Paris, agreed with Tkachenko’s complaint: “You portrayed the image of Ukrainians in episode 4 of the second season. It’s like a low-level joke. It’s an absolute scandal and humiliation.” Public posts on Instagram have so far received more than 75,000 likes.
However, some people defended the show.
For example, a Ukrainian film producer, Natalka Yakymovych, said: “Can’t Ukrainians be a negative character in a TV series? Obviously, we all hope that the woman is from Moscow, but you can’t always want to watch it. To what you want in your heart.”
In fact, this is not the first time “Emily in Paris” has been criticized for its portrayal of roles in different countries. When it went live in the first season, the play caused controversy because of its stereotyped image and style of Paris and its citizens, especially criticized by the local people in France. Because, the French portrays in the play is impolite, wears berets all day, and is often unfaithful in the relationship between men and women.
Taiwanese familyobserve
He Guiyu, a Taiwanese artist who has lived in Paris for many years, also commented that his daughter and partner at home are very impressed with the stereotype of the show’s portrayal of Paris. She said that the waiter in the restaurant in the play asked: “Your son…” This sentence makes the two Parisians in the family yell unreasonable, because “French waiters don’t say that. They all call Mr., Ms. or Miss, instead of calling guests by their relationship.”
Observing the French’s complex of the show, He Guiyu said that “Emily in Paris” is probably like gossip news. Everyone loves to watch and scold them, and the more they scold, the more they love it. “Actually, I think a play is a play. You don’t need to be too serious, but there are still a lot of cultural differences between Europe and America in this play,” she said.
“The focus I saw in the last two episodes is the difference in working methods between France and Americans. Americans really love being bosses, while French people least like someone to be bosses. Usually this kind of end result will be bad.. …. I saw that Emily’s American boss wanted to be the boss as soon as he arrived in Paris. I thought of my work experience in the French workplace, that is, she would definitely be fucked by the French, and it really came true.” He Guiyu told BBC Chinese .
Producer defense
The latest season of the show includes another protagonist, Alfie, a British man who spends a lot of time in bars, drinking beer, watching football and other stereotypes.
The producer of the show, Darren Star, defended the show in the past, saying that he “watched Paris through a fascinating lens and was therefore unwilling to apologize.” Stahl also told The New York Times that he borrowed his personal experience of visiting the city: “I want to show Paris in a very beautiful way and encourage people to fall in love with this city in my own way. .”