Emmys 2020: 'Watchmen' favorite to win Best Limited Series, real horrors of 'Unbelievable' will be obscured
The "limited series" category of the Emmys is always a mixed bag, bridging the gap between dramatized reality and fiction. This year too, the nominations reflect that diversity. We have 'Little Fires Everywhere' based on a novel, to 'Mrs America' that dramatizes the story of the movement to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. There is also 'Unbelievable', based on the 2015 news article titled 'An Unbelievable Story of Rape', competing with the autobiographical 'Unorthodox' and sci-fi fantasy 'Watchmen'.
In the past few years, with the exception of a star-studded drama like 'Big Little Lies', the category has consistently favored well-told dramatizations of historical events — from 'Chernobyl' (2019), to 'The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story' (2018) to 'The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story' (2016). Historical dramas highlight the prestige of the limited TV series category by telling stories that need to be heard but in the popular drama format to reach new audiences.
In that sense, both 'Mrs America' and 'Unbelievable' should be the focus of this year's awards. But with seven 'Creative Emmy' wins, HBO's 'Watchmen' (that has bagged best cinematography, outstanding fantasy/sci-fi costumes, music composition, casting, sound editing and mixing, and single-camera picture editing), is a clear front-runner with a total of 26 nominations, with 'Mrs America' as the runner-up with 10 noms.
'Watchmen' gave us a contemporary spin on Alan Moore's 80s classic graphic novel, updating its Cold War musings to an homage to the 1921 Tulsa race massacre and a commentary on race conflict. Undoubtedly, because of the George Floyd 2020 protests (and riots) and the worsening race relations in the country, 'Watchmen' is timely like no other series on the list. However, between all the fantastical narrative elements of the story, it is a more distant reflection of race reality with masked 'good' police, no less, who fight White supremacists instead of colluding with them.
In comparison, both 'Mrs America' and 'Unbelievable' have something vital and real to say around gender issues. 'Mrs America' shows how conservative 'values' and fear-mongering torpedoed equal rights for women at one point in history, awakening us to the possibility that these same 'values' might now take away the rights of women so painstakingly won over the years, like the right to legal and safe abortions.
But even more relevant is 'Unbelievable' based on a true story of a woman, Marie Adler, who was not believed when she reported she had been raped. She was then consistently retraumatized several times as police officers browbeat her, till she recanted her testimony. This is not old history. This happened in 2015. Despite the overwhelming number of rapes, sexual violence and battery that go unreported, despite the number of serial offenders who rape or attack women with impunity, somehow, the narrative of rape is centered around women crying wolf, and of men 'falsely accused' of rape.
Why 'Unbelievable' is even more poignant is that Marie Adler did not accuse any particular man of rape but rather was accused by the police, her foster guardians and ostracized in the group home she stayed in, of making up the rape story to "get attention". This points to a societal-level belief from the get-go that women routinely lie about something as traumatic and life-changing as sexual assault or rape. Shouldn't this issue be highlighted with an Emmy win so that more people are invested in really listening to women's testimonies instead of starting with the assumption that all women lie?