ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY MY ONLY POST ABOUT THAT “EXPATS” TV SHOW WHICH I HAVE NOT WATCHED

 

There’s a new TV show on Amazon starring Nicole Kidman called Expats, created by Lulu Wang and based on a novel, which is – as the title implies – about wealthy expats. Specifically, American expats in Hong Kong, where I also happen to live as an expat – although in my case, I’m a poor expat rather than a wealthy one, so the first thing I should say is that anything you see in the show is like no life I have ever lived, here or anywhere else.

 

Many of the HK scenes were actually filmed here on location, and if you haven’t heard, it caused a big stir here because the scenes were shot in the thick of the COVID pandemic when HK had serious restrictions in place (masks at all times, only four people allowed to eat together in restaurants which must close after 6pm,  etc), the most stringent of which were immigration rules under which people entering HK had to be quarantined in a hotel for anywhere from one to three weeks, depending on what country they departed from.

 

Kidman and the film crew were all given exemptions to all of this, which did not sit well with those of us whose lives had been impacted by rules that made increasingly less sense as the pandemic continued. It didn’t help that for some outdoor scenes, where Kidman is walking around a street market in Mong Kok, the film crew reportedly decorated the street with lanterns, bird cages and other things – supposedly to make it look more “Chinese”.

 

Anyway, a lot of people were annoyed by this and promised to boycott the show when it came out. I am not boycotting the show, mainly because (1) I don’t subscribe to Amazon’s streaming service and (2) the premise of Expats doesn’t interest me, regardless of its setting. Put simply, I can’t legitimately claim to boycott a show I wouldn’t have watched in the first place.

(Update [added Jan 27, 2:44pm): Also, it seems Amazon isn’t making the show available in HK, for reasons that are currently unclear, but I think we can guess. Developing ...)

 

So I haven’t watched it – but I’ve read some of the reviews, which have been mixed. And this one from Linda Holmes at NPR is quite interesting, as she notes that a big problem with the show is that it seems totally disinterested with the fact that it is set in a city at a time of significant political upheaval and change.

 

The show doesn’t really engage with any of this apart from one episode that has a protest scene, but according to Holmes, it’s done in a very non-specific way that doesn’t say anything about why protests are happening. It’s a backdrop, and barely a plot device as far as the main characters are concerned. And it’s never revisited again.
 
There’s been speculation that this was an intentional choice in order to avoid displeasing the HK govt and Beijing. We don’t know. But I think all of this raises a good question in terms of writing:

 

Does a story HAVE to have something to say about its setting?

 

I don’t think so. The setting doesn’t have to BE the story. You don’t have to set a story in, say, Barcelona, and be obliged to explore the issue of Catalan independence. Ergo, I don’t think Expats is obliged to say anything meaningful about the pro-democracy movement or Beijing’s encroachment thereon, etc. And as some have noted, a show about rich self-obsessed expats being oblivious to the realities around them is at least realistic.

 

However, based on the reviews, it sounds like Wang squandered both the premise (rich oblivious expats with problems) and the setting (HK during a time of political turmoil). She made a rich-people-with-problems drama that could have been set anywhere and uses HK-specific issues at most as shallow plot devices.

 

Again, I don’t think Wang is obligated to tell a story where the developments in HK are more central to the story arc, or to make some kind of social commentary. But I do think it’s a lost opportunity. There’s so much you could do with a story about rich expats living in a city undergoing profound changes. But it sounds like the only reason the show is set in HK is because the original novel was (and from I’ve heard, the novel itself took a similar approach).

 

That might be fine for Wang and her (presumably) US audience, but for those of us who live here it’s yet another example of HK being used as a generic backdrop for Western cinema, mostly for aesthetic reasons (urban canyons, Blade Runner neon, etc).

 

And, you know, it’s nice y’all think our city looks cool (I agree!), but we’re more than a pretty face. So forgive us if we’re not impressed.

 

And yeah, breezing in here during COVID and decorating Fa Yuen Street to make it look more “Chinese” didn’t help.

 

In the city,

 

This is dF