The Diplomat

This was a show I watched last month and touched on it in my previous post. But I had and have too much to say and so I thought it required a dedicated post. I will not go into too much detail as this is supposed to be a recommendation post and not a proper review, but if you watch it and want to discuss it, the comment section welcomes you.

I’d been excited to watch this ever since the trailer came out, mainly because it’s about politics, specifically American and British politics, and as an icing, Iran is involved. Yes, in all the wrong ways you would imagine Iran to be involved in the plot of a political drama.

I am not even going to bother about all the things they get wrong about Iran, and to be honest now that the world is seeing what Iranian people- specifically Iranian women- are capable of, I don’t care if they get any details of the regime wrong. At this point, if anyone gets the impression that the regime is not to blame for everything, then one more show depicting false information about Iran isn’t going to change anything.

That said, the storyline is interesting; American ambassador Kathrine Wyler’s deployment to Kabul is rerouted to London when a British Navy ship is attacked by an unknown country.

It’s the sloppy way they attempt at portraying sexism in politics that pushes my buttons.
Kate Wyler is now the ambassador after years of playing second fiddle to her ambassador husband, Hal, who is charming and intelligent and also enamoured by her. Their marriage is on the brink of collapse, with divorce dialogues that are being pushed more by Kate than by Hal. She’s made her decision; she wants a divorce and he is trying to dissuade her. That’s the main reason he’s accompanied her to London.

The portrayal of Kate as this disheveled, non-feminine (in the traditional sense), strong, intelligent woman is inconsistent at best.

She struggles with the basics of personal hygiene, let alone with the appearance requirements of a person in a high political position. I can understand that being forced to wear clothes in which we are not comfortable does not allow for a focus on work, but you’d expect the ambassador to understand the importance of a shower before a professional meeting, or arriving to work with brushed hair.

This is exactly the wrong portrayal radicals are trying to sell as Feminism; a woman that cares so little about how she looks that starts to stink and look like a crow has started calling her head home.
And the constant insistence on her wearing dresses for every meeting is ridiculous. The storyline is just short of having Kate being dragged into a meeting kicking and screaming squirming out of the aforementined dress . If that is how they want to convey that this is not a traditionally feminine woman appearance-wise, then they are truly underestimating their audience. We do not need to be reminded in every episode that she wears “NO DRESSES”.
It is completely possible to look professional and polished in trousers and flats. Believe me.

I’m trying to remember the last time a male political character in TV or film was portrayed in such a devil-may-care-about-my-appearance way and what the reception had been… Do comment if you have any examples.

Then on the other hand we have her double-guessing herself and going to her husband with every single dilemma, asking for his help or at least his advice when she constantly complains about him not being able to take a backseat and keep out of her business and career.

Long story short, the whole successful-strong-intelligent-woman-needs-no-man-to-rule-the-world narrative falls short by any standards in this show.

It is also worth mentioning that the show has a big problem in representing strong women as physically attractive beings.
There are a couple more women who are young and attractive in the obsolete sense of the word; the residence’s assistant or older and practically invisible head of residence. Then again that also coneys how they cannot put “attractive” and “intelligent” in the same female character.

The only female characters that resemble professionalism, intelligence, and strength, all while being polished are the two non-white characters; one Asian and the other African-American. Having witnessed the showrunners’ lack of aptitude in presenting female characters possessing all of the aforementioned qualities, this speaks volumes about the way we perceive minority women still in 2023.

I’m not discouraging you from watching this, as it’s not a bad political drama show. But when it comes to representing what they set out to represent, they failed miserably.

Available on Netflix.