Maalaala Mo Kaya, a long-running television program on the ABS-CBN network, is coming under fire for an episode that uses actors in blackface.
MMK, which tells true stories in a fictionalized format, scheduled the episode “MMK: Equal Rights” for airing last night, but the trailer earlier released caught the ire of netizens for the actors’ use of brown foundation and curly wigs to make themselves up as Aetas.
According to MMK’s tweets, the episode starts with Jhong Hilario as Roman King, “an Aeta who led the struggle for the tribe’s right to their lands” (translated from Tagalog). Zaijian Jaranilla plays Roman’s son Norman, who “pursues his studies to expand his knowledge about their rights.”
Looking at the show’s publicity, the episode aims to inspire by sharing a story of determination and courage in the face of societal prejudice and other challenges.
But what catches attention more than the story is the use of blackface on the actors. Blackface is the practice of white or non-black actors of using dark makeup to portray black characters. The term has expanded to mean the use of an actor of an ethnicity other than that of the character, and led to the coinage of other terms such as yellowface, where a white actor plays an Asian character. An example of this would be Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi in the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Blackface and yellowface are offensive because it perpetuates racial stereotypes. In the case of black people, the makeup emphasizes kinky hair and thick lips. In the case of Asians, it’s squinty eyes and buck teeth. In racially diverse countries, the propagation of such stereotypes serves to reinforce racist attitudes and the minority status of the non-dominant races.
In the case of MMK’s ‘Equal Rights’ episode, it’s Filipino or part-Filipino actors who are portraying characters of a particular ethnicity, hence the need for makeup and wigs. But why not choose actors whose appearance more closely resemble the characters? We do not lack for dark-skinned, curly-haired actors.
As it is, the makeup on Hilario, Jaranilla, and Nikki Valdez looks ludicrous and obviously fake, and detracts from the actors’ competent performances.
As for the argument that “there are no Aeta actors,” there is at least one – Garry Cabalic. He won the Best Actor award at the first To Farm film festival in 2016 for his role in ‘Paglipay.’
ABS-CBN has received similar criticism lately for their show ‘Bagani’ which netizens and even some government officials said does not genuinely depict the lumad or katutubo culture as expected based on the show’s title.
The accusation in this case was of “cultural appropriation” for using half-white Filipino actors to play tribal Filipino characters. But the network explained their decision by saying ‘Bagani’ is a fantasy and does not attempt to actually tell the lumad community’s narratives.
About this MMK episode, I don’t think there was any negative intention on the part of its creators. Probably they went the brownface route for convenience’s sake, trusting that audiences would understand that the job of actors is to act, to pretend to be the character and play them as convincingly as they can to make the story come alive, and that makeup is just a tool.
But audiences nowadays seek greater verisimilitude in the shows that they watch. They know that blackface, or ‘colorface,’ to coin a more general term, is wrong and offensive. And they expect content producers to know this and find better solutions to the challenges of accurately portraying a story’s characters.
Other reasons to reject colorface are respect and representation. Underrepresentation, or the lack of it, on screen and in the fictional world can lead to lower self-esteem and a feeling of being invisible or unimportant within society—the research term for this ‘symbolic annihilation.’
But using actors of actual or similar ethnicity, identity, or appearance—for instance, choosing an LGBT actor for an LGBT character—shows respect. It also means a greater measure of representation for different cultures and communities, which helps to increase our understanding and appreciation of them and inspires people who can relate to what they see in media.
Dr. Ortuoste is a writer and communication consultant.
FB and Twitter: @DrJennyO