Sandwiched in between the glitter and the red carpet and the insider jokes on stage, something important happened at the Emmy Awards last night. They became a showcase for social change.
This was striking, because it’s 2015 and the national conversation so often seems stalled — focused on such national ugliness as the bigotry of Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, as she flouts the law on marrying same-sex couples, or Donald Trump’s insults to women.
And then, surprisingly, here come people like Viola Davis and Jeffrey Tambor and Jon Hamm and Amy Schumer in a telecast offering us something we all could use: an appeal to our better selves.
Davis made history as the first African-American woman to win best actress in a drama. She movingly used the platform to slam the lack of roles for minority women in television and movies. She won best actress for her role in “How to Get Away with Murder.” She didn’t thank her agent, she quoted abolitionist Harriet Tubman: “In my mind, I see a line. And over that line, I see green fields and lovely flowers and beautiful white women with their arms stretched out to me, over that line, but I can’t seem to get there nohow. I can’t seem to get over that line.”
And she took the moment to remind the world of a simple truth: “The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity. You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there.”
After all, in America, opportunity is all any of us can hope for.
Davis was among the winners in a big night for great women roles, from Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Emmy for her already groundbreaking part as an American vice president ascending through the halls of power, to Frances McDormand’s turn as a retired schoolteacher in “Olive Kitteridge.” Despite these and other wins for women, presenter Schumer jumped us back to Trump-style reality, saying: “Let’s not forget what this night is really about — celebrating hilarious women and letting the Internet weigh in on who looks the worst.”
Indeed, the winners from “Transparent” reminded us that the country — and the world — still have a way to go. Tambor, who portrays Maura Pfefferman, a transgender woman transitioning in her late 50s, won best actor in a comedy series, and in his acceptance speech, he explained that Maura has been so much more than a character to play — she has been a symbol in a civil rights movement. “I had a teacher who used to say, ‘When you act, you have to act as if your life depends on it.’ And now I’ve been given the opportunity to act, because people’s lives depend on it.”
And people’s lives do depend upon society extending equal rights to transgender men and women.
In the same month that Kim Davis was jailed for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses, the director of “Transparent,” Jill Soloway, used her first Emmy acceptance speech to remind us that for someone treated as different, real life is scarier than fiction. Referring to her mother, who is transgender, she said: “Carrie, she could, tomorrow, go and try to find an apartment, and in 32 states, it would be legal for the landlord to look her in the eye and say we don’t rent to trans people. … We don’t have a trans tipping point yet. We have a trans civil rights problem.”
And lastly at the Emmys, Hamm provided a teachable moment of gracious humility in his acceptance of the award for outstanding lead actor in a drama series. He’s been nominated a whopping 16 times and finally won for his portrayal of the royally screwed-up ad man Don Draper, on AMC’s drama “Mad Men.”
“There’s been a terrible mistake, clearly,” he said, adding: “It’s impossible to be named with all of those extraordinary gentlemen. It’s impossible to be standing up here. It’s impossible to have done this show with this incredible cast.” What’s really “impossible” — and inspiring — is to see a successful and famous TV star lose more than a dozen times and emerge to victory with humanity and grace.
The Emmys connected in that way with that humanity Sunday night and showed both how far we’ve come and the rough road that lies ahead before we are all free to live our lives how we want.