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Nicole Kidman caused a stir when she arrived in Hong Kong amid the pandemic to film the Amazon-backed drama series “Expats.” But, curiously, the entire series is not available in the city where it takes place.
The show, which includes Kidman’s Blossom Films as a producer, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and was uploaded to Prime Video on Friday of last week. In Hong Kong, Prime Video subscribers who search for it receive the message “this video is currently not available to view in your location.”
It is still unclear whether the city government has intervened to prevent the screening of “Expats” or whether Prime Video has given in to self-censorship. Both explanations point to an increasingly difficult environment for media and entertainment in the territory, which sometimes calls itself “Asia’s world city.”
Contacted by Variety, Prime Video had no comment. A Hong Kong government spokesperson said in an emailed statement: “We have no comment on the operating arrangements of individual companies.”
Adapted from the novel “The Expatriates” by Janice YK Lee and directed by Lulu Wang (“The Farewell”), the series follows three American women living in Hong Kong. The series’ narrative examines the things women sweep under the rug, while also exploring issues of class and privilege. VarietyThe review of the series called it “impressive and disturbing.”
Privilege was one of many accusations leveled against the show in mainstream media and online conversations before a still was filmed in 2021 or a script was made public.
Wang and the series drew criticism for the show’s perceived focus on the lives of a minority group of wealthy foreigners. Many of Wang’s social media posts through 2021 were also criticized for an apparent sense of entitlement and indifference to Hong Kong’s political context (she is an American born in mainland China) and her demonstrably incorrect claims that she was making a film. independent.
The city was still recovering from the 2019 pro-democracy protests, which at one point saw 2 million citizens take to the streets before turning sporadically violent in the following months. The anti-government challenge was met with brute force, partially quelled by the arrival of COVID, and firmly silenced in July 2020 when Beijing injected national security laws directly into Hong Kong’s mini-constitution.
Then, despite imposing harsh lockdowns and quarantine measures on its own population, in 2021 the Hong Kong government rolled out the red carpet for Kidman by granting her quarantine exemptions. At the time, it was “a designated professional job…contributing to the essential functioning and growth of the Hong Kong economy.”
The South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s main English-language newspaper, called the production “tone-deaf.” Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald published a news analysis article titled: “How insensitive can it be?”
Contrary to one aspect of pre-production reviews, the finished “Expats” uses an earlier period of pro-democracy protests, known as the 2014 Occupy Central movement, as a recurring backdrop for the stories of the three central characters and their immigrant maids. .
That alone would seem to be enough to get “expatriates” into trouble with the Hong Kong government in the new era of National Security. But the process remains murky.
Since July 2020, the city has adopted a new film censorship law, denied screening permits to three films that were scheduled to be shown at the 2021 Short Wave Film Festival, and witnessed the last-minute cancellation of the premiere. in theaters of the slasher film “Winnie the Bear.” (The character of Winnie the Pooh is considered a playful insult against Chinese President Xi Jinping.) And none of the international documentaries made about the events of 2019 have attempted to be released in the city.
Hong Kong’s film censorship law does not apply to streaming services. But the National Security Law, which criminalizes broadly defined acts of subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, appears to do so.
That probably explains the removal of an episode of “The Simpsons” from the Disney+ streaming service, the closure of several media outlets not aligned with the government and the end of Zunzi’s long-running satirical cartoons in the Chinese-language newspaper Ming Pao.
With the notable exception of the ongoing National Security trial between Apple Daily and Jimmy Lai, the most recent media control cases in Hong Kong have not been litigated. Instead, self-censorship has dominated and been attributed to commercial and amorphous behind-the-scenes pressures.
“Expats” has not been the only surprising absence in Hong Kong in recent weeks. This month, the city’s annual theater awards were stripped of government subsidy and told they could no longer use a government venue. Funding body The Hong Kong Arts Development Council later explained that last year’s awards may have “directly or indirectly harmed or had a negative effect” by involving Zunzi and a freelance journalist who questioned the 2019 police narrative. And, by cutting funding to the awards, the Council “reduces (its) risk of potentially violating” the National Security Law.
If inviting the wrong cartoonist to an awards show is enough to get too close to the red lines of the National Security Law, erring on the side of caution is clearly the safest course of action. And media operators may face more challenges by the end of this year.
The Hong Kong government this week began the process of introducing its own level of security laws, known as Article 23, which are expected to cover treason; “insurrection, incitement to riot and disaffection, and acts with seditious intent”; theft of state secrets and espionage; sabotage; and external interference.
In the short term, city lawmakers have expressed displeasure with “Expats” and the support given to the program.
Lawmaker Doreen Kong Yuk-foon told SCMP that the series put the government in an awkward position because the exemptions granted to Kidman did not lead to an outcome that showed the city in an entirely positive light.
Another, Dominic Lee Tsz-king, said that “the government should at least know if what was being filmed would be good for Hong Kong’s image. From what I understand, it’s about how boring Hong Kong can be and includes scenes from the illegal Occupy Central movement; These cannot be positive for Hong Kong.”