The ‘Beeb’, a.k.a the British Broadcasting Corporation, nicknamed such by Brits, in a playful nudge at the American ‘boob-tube’, is facing a firestorm of sorts over episode 4 of the new sit-com ‘Paul and Harry’ where a Filipina maid is shown being made to dance seductively to try to ‘awaken’ the libido of a seemingly impotent ‘bloke’, and later on being shooed away.
The 57-second clip which is on YouTube is being roundly denounced as racist and demeaning of Filipinas.
The British embassy in Manila has tried to distance itself from the controversy, saying only that the BBC is independent of the government and enjoys considerable editorial and production freedom.
Surely the Brits will likely just sit tight and wait for the headline-grabbing issue to blow over as it likely will.
In a sense, perhaps, the BBC episode might serve as yet another wake up call for how Filipinos, unable to find good jobs at home, continually do face such indignities and labor under even worse circumstances, with Maria Claras hard put to protect their virtue at the hands of lecherous masters.
Was the Beeb really being racist? Or was the episode also meant to remind us Filipinos how out society is consigning its women to lives of servitude, nay slavery, in foreign shores all in exchange for the precious dollars and pounds that prop up the Philippine economy?
It is undenied that Manila actively promotes the export of Filipino labor just so the economy can stay afloat.
With the global financial crisis possibly getting worse before it gets better, how many more replays will there be of the degrading BBC sit-com scene.
Over at the Philippine Senate and House, except for activist lawmaker Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel, no one really seems to mind, with no one authoring a wider Resolution to express the Philippine legislature’s wholesale anger over the incident.
Don’t expect much. The others are all waiting to go on holiday after properly assuring their budget insertions and pork barrel allotments.
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Ding,
Fair enough, though slavery was not my characterization. Indeed, I reckon most Brits actually treat their Filipina maids better than we do. Else, why would they willingly go to England to work, given the tremendous hardships involved. Honestly, if my maids had a chance to work in England, I’d probably be doing laundry tomorrow. Besides even in the clutches of virtual slavery, our OFWs sure make a lot of dough to send back to families back home. For every Flor Contemplacion, how many Filipinos suffer worse from fellow Filipinos but are never heard about? I’m just struck at the characterization of them as “virtual slaves” in the context of a Brit sit com. Filipinos will gain the respect of others by their good works and true accomplishments, not our whining as victims of professions and situations we freely choose to enter. I sympathize with your sentiments and reacted much the same way when Cory Aquino was depicted as a slut. I was wrong then, I think.
@DJB
Really? You reacted to the “Daily Show” gag? I find that hard to believe.
MP,
Sure. That’s why I understand how people here feel the way they do. But I didn’t go for the diplomatic protests, blogswarms or other useless actions. Certainly not now when it seems the world is about to fall into an abyss.
Re: Was the Beeb really being racist?
Don’t think so — in the first place, the Filipino maid portrayal could easily have been a Brazilian maid portrayal.
Secondly, many Filipinos in Britain are for the most part doing either hospital assistant jobs if they are lucky but most of them are doing maid, houseboy work so how else could or should they be portrayed? They’re not teachers, not civil servants, not doctors, not lawyers, not even as shop keepers, etc.
Yes, some folks back home might not like the overall depiction of Pinoys/Pinays as domestic workers in the UK but heck, let’s face it, RP exports most Pinoys to the UK for that purpose (wasn’t it Gloria’s policy to launch them as Super Maids or something?) so we can’t be so onion skinned with regard to how these human exports are portrayed over in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.