Ukraine’s culture minister Oleksandr Tkachenko has issued a complaint to Netflix over its offensive stereotypical image of a Ukrainian character in its show Emily in Paris.
In a Telegram post, Tkachenko wrote: “We have a caricature image of a Ukrainian woman that is unacceptable. It is also insulting. Is that how Ukrainians are seen abroad?”
Ukrainians are offended at a scene where, Emily Cooper played as a slightly clueless American by Lily goes shopping with a Ukrainian woman with heavy blue eye makeup, who introduces herself with a toothy grin as Petra from Kyiv. The two go shopping, and Petra pulls Emily out of the store while the pair are dressed in merchandise that hasn’t been paid for.
The portrayal of Petra as a shoplifting immigrant fearful of deportation was a “caricature of a Ukrainian woman,” Tkachenko said in a post on the Telegram platform, calling it “unacceptable” and “offensive.”
“Will Ukrainians be seen as such abroad?” he wrote. “That should not be the case.”
