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HONG KONG: A Hong Kong tv present has ignited anger over a Filipina character performed by a neighborhood actress who darkened her pores and skin, within the newest incident of “brownface” in Asia.
Broadcaster TVB forged Canadian-Hong Konger Franchesca Wong to play a Filipina home employee for its collection “Barrack O’Karma 2.”
Wong seems within the present with visibly darker pores and skin and a clip posted by a colleague on Instagram confirmed her making use of make-up to her legs.
“I’m remodeling into one other individual,” Wong mentioned within the video, affecting a Filipino accent.
“I’m sun-tanning proper now,” she added.
Native media opinions this week of Wong’s portrayal have been largely favorable and skipped dialogue of race.
However the determination to darken her pores and skin — and the casting alternative itself — have sparked criticism, notably among the many metropolis’s Filipino inhabitants.
“I do not suppose it is applicable that she needed to darken her pores and skin for the function,” Sabrina Man, a Chinese language-Filipino former actress working in Hong Kong as a mannequin, advised AFP.
“Home employees have achieved a lot for Hong Kong, and I believe it is disrespectful to them and to Filipinos usually to do that,” she added.
“It would not have been troublesome to search for somebody with Filipino heritage to play the function,” she mentioned.
‘Our personal faces’
Jianne Soriano, a Hong Kong-born Filipina author, agreed that there have been loads of Filipino actresses within the metropolis who may have performed the function.
“How may anybody say okay to brownface and suppose {that a} non-Filipino portraying a home helper is okay?” she wrote on Twitter.
“We are able to very a lot inform our story with our personal faces.”
There are about 340,000 overseas home employees in Hong Kong, largely ladies from the Philippines and Indonesia.
Paid a minimal of HK$4,630 ($590) a month, they work six days per week and should reside with their employers, in a metropolis that gives among the world’s smallest flats.
Eni Lestari, a home employee and chairperson of the Worldwide Migrants Alliance, described the TV present’s decisions as “an insult” to home employees who already typically face discrimination.
“Tradition is an expression of inequalities within the financial and political lifetime of the neighborhood,” she added.
Neither TVB nor Wong replied to requests for touch upon Wednesday.
“Brownface” or “blackface” are phrases referring to the follow of darkening an actor’s pores and skin to painting an individual of a distinct race.
The follow has turn out to be taboo in North America and far of Europe the place there was a concerted push for extra various casting and illustration within the leisure trade.
However brownface controversies proceed to crop up in Asia, together with in tv reveals and ads.
Final 12 months a Malaysian pop star apologized for utilizing a darkened girl in a music video that promoted a skin-whitening product.
Singapore’s state-owned broadcaster apologized in 2019 for an advert that includes an actor of Chinese language origin together with his pores and skin darkened.
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