Nicole Kidman outrage in Hong Kong: Star called ‘insensitive’ over politics and COVID

Nicole Kidman isn’t known for courting controversy, but that’s exactly what has surrounded her since she arrived in Hong Kong to begin shooting her new Amazon Prime series about privileged White expatriate women enjoying the high life in the former British colony.

Kidman has been accused of exploiting the sort of “White privilege” she presumably satirizes in “Expats,” starting with the outrage the Hollywood star sparked after getting a special waiver to avoid the multi-day COVID-19 quarantine that’s required of most other travelers.

More recently, the 54-year-old Oscar winner has faced the ire former Hong Kong politicians, exiled in Kidman’s home country of Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. They have urged her to consider the consequences of filming her series in Hong Kong, saying she appears to be collaborating with China’s hardline government.

“What does she have to say to my comrades thrown (in) jail?” exiled Hong Kong MP Ted Hui asked in the Herald.

Beijing, asserting more control over Hong Kong’s local affairs, cracked down on political protests that erupted in 2019 and 2020. Beijing implemented national security laws that led to the arrests of more than 100 pro-democracy politicians, journalists and artists, and exiled thousands of others.

“How insensitive can she be?” Hui continued. “A lot of people have to flee from Hong Kong, and probably they won’t be able to go back home. But she can travel freely from Australia to Hong Kong, and continue her work and go shopping as if nothing has happened.”

Hui is part of a group of exiled MPs lobbying for tougher international measures to be taken against the Hong Kong government. While he said he respected Kidman’s work, he did not think it was the time “for anyone to be cooperating with the regime as business as usual.”

Kidman, who is executive producer for the series, and Amazon Prime have not responded to media requests for comment. The series is based on the novel, “The Expatriates,” which was published before the protests in Hong Kong and before COVID-19 emerged in China and swept across the world.

The novel, by Janice Y.K. Lee, focuses on the daily lives of the city’s expatriate community, and it is supposed to be “a nuanced reading of race and class,” author Chandran Nair wrote in an essay for Time magazine.

Nair said “the filming of the series seems to be making the opposite point: that a world famous white actor can do what they want.”

Nair, author of the upcoming book, “Dismantling Global White Privilege: Equity for a Post-Western World,” took issue with the Hong Kong government’s decision to grant Kidman a quarantine exemption.

The government has adopted China’s COVID-zero strategy by mandating a quarantine for up to 21 days for incoming travelers. Officially, there have been exemptions for those providing “professional services in the interest of Hong Kong’s economic development,” Nair wrote.

Many travelers and business owners, “whose activities have a much more direct impact on the economy than Kidman’s TV series,” are frustrated that they have not been granted the same privileges, Nair reported.

“Many travelers have had to endure 21 days in a cramped hotel room — paying thousands of dollars, with some experiencing PTSD, depression and insomnia long after their confinement,” Nair said.

Kidman, on the other hand, immediately went to live in an $83,000-a-month mansion, Nair said. She and Amazon didn’t wait for the scandal to subside before it started filming.

But others have defended Kidman’s quarantine exemption, including Alex Lo, a columnist for the South China Morning Post, who wrote that the anger has been wrongly misdirected at her.

“It’s really the Hong Kong government’s fault,” Lo wrote. “Her quarantine exemption …  falls entirely within an official scheme that also allows thousands of senior executives, diplomats and their families to skip mandatory quarantine imposed on all other travelers and returnees.”

But the production of “Expats” also has generated more flak following media reports about how the crew “orientalized” a street market by bringing in “exotic” Chinese props such as lanterns and calligraphy scrolls, Nair said.

Hong Kong as imagined by showrunner Lulu Wang and producers Nicole Kidman and Amazon looks nothing like the real place. Why did the cast and crew fly all this way, spend all this money, and put locals at risk just to create an Orientalist mishmash that could be constructed in LA? https://t.co/qUoaUPpo1u pic.twitter.com/OloFGA2FpT

— Black Lives Matter (@bobbiharlow) August 24, 2021

 

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3jv5SkO