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Why some Fil-Ams slammed sitcom 'Mail Order Family'

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Don Tagala, ABS CBN North America News Bureau

NEW YORK CITY -- Less than 24 hours after criticisms and protests flooded the social media, NBC Entertainment pulled the plug on “Mail-Order Family” – a half-hour sitcom in development about a mail-order bride from the Philippines who was brought to the US to help raise an American widow’s daughters. The project would have employed most likely a Filipino actress and possibly a few other Filipino-American actors in the cast but the premise of the show did not sit well with the Filipino and the Asian-American communities. In a statement, the NBC television network said they purchased the pitch with &quot;the understanding that it would tell the creator&#x27;s real-life experience of being raised by a strong Filipina stepmother after the loss of her own mother.&quot; &quot;The writer and producers have taken the sensitivity to the initial concept to heart and have chosen not to move forward with the project at this time,&quot; the media giant added. While a pilot episode of &quot;Mail Order Family&quot; has yet to be seen, the announcement alone of a Filipina mail-order bride character resulted in a tidal wave of online backlash. Gabriela USA’s <a href="https://www.change.org/p/nbc-stop-nbc-s-mail-order-family-comedy" target="_blank">petition on Change.org</a> has been signed by more than 12,800 people who demanded NBC to cancel the show, saying “women’s issues are not a joke.” &quot;Exploitation and violence against Filipino women is not entertainment! &#x27;Mail Order Family&#x27; is the most recent example of how the exploitation and violence women face is normalized in U.S. mainstream media,&quot; the petition argued. &quot;The mail order bride industry exploits and traffics women who are economically disadvantaged and living in poverty.” Gabriela USA also called for a meeting with the NBC executives to “educate them of the true plight of Filipino women and the economic conditions of the Philippines which forces them into the mail order bride industry and other exploitative industries.” NBC decided to cancel the show even before a meeting took place with the women’s rights group. Another Filipino-American who was disappointed with the bride comedy pitch was Aries Dela Cruz, president of Filipino-American Democratic Club of New York. “Though NBC has had a good record of portrayals and representations of Asian Americans, particularly Filipino-Americans, and provides a crucial media platform for our community in the form of the NBC Asian America, the initial descriptions of this pilot, which dehumanize the unnamed Filipina wife by referring only to her immigration status as her main characteristic,” Dela Cruz said. “It failed to live up to the values and standards set forth by the network,” he added.Dela Cruz was also behind a successful <a href="https://www.change.org/p/droppacman-boycott-nike-until-they-drop-mannypacquiao" target="_blank">petition</a> urging Nike to drop its endorsement deals with boxing superstar and Senator Emmanuel &quot;Manny&quot; Pacquiao after he was quoted as saying that same sex-couples are &quot;worse than animals.&quot; STORY&#x27;S ROOTS Among the creators of the show is writer and executive producer Jackie Clarke, who is known for hit comedy series “Superstore” which stars an undocumented Filipino named Mateo who works at the department store. Several hours before the show&#x27;s cancellation, Clarke tweeted that she hopes to &quot;make the (Filipino) stepmom a fully realized strong activated character.” “I want to make her a kick ass feminist bad ass. I wanna invert the stereotype!&quot; she added, promising to make the character &quot;complex.&quot; In her Tumblr account, Clarke describes herself as writer and actor who &quot;has been sued by both her stepmother and Eve Ensler.” According to the Observer, Ensler, the creator of &quot;The Vagina Monologues&quot; -- considered as one of the most important piece of political theater of the last decade -- threatened Clarke with a lawsuit for using the title &quot;Big Vagina Monologues&quot; for her own play that ran in 2002. Clarke eventually changed the title of her one-woman show to &quot;Mail Order Family&quot; – the same name she of what could have been NBC’s soon-to-be sitcom. In the same Observer article, Clarke was quoted as saying that when her mother died, her father, Paul Clarke, ordered a Filipina bride from a catalogue. Clarke also said that her father lived in the Philippines. “So he has all of these relationships with prostitutes, but he’s like, ‘I don’t sleep with them, Jackie: You don’t know what you can catch. I don’t want any syphilis or anything.’&quot; &quot;He’s there for the women, and you can live like a King over there. He’s middle-aged, Caucasian, attractive, 62 years old. Oh my God, they love him …. I love that guy sooo much, but he is totally nuts,” she said.In an archived blog, Clarke also wrote a critical story critical of Asians, in which she posits that there are two types of men: the sycophantic dater and the guy obsessed with Asians. “The Asian obsessive is a cousin of gay for obvious reasons. An Asian woman is as close as you can get to a boy without a weiner. My Dad was an Asian obsessive metrosexual (back in the &#x27;80s) so I always thought my Dad was a little gay, which is probably the most flattering thing I can say about him,” she wrote. &#x27;COLLECTIVE VICTORY&#x27; DeLa Cruz said he is proud of the Filipino community’s successful collective action against &quot;Mail Order Family&quot; and is relieved that NBC did the right thing in the end. He said that although Clarke&#x27;s story should be told, given the racial hierarchy of film and television in the U.S. and the overall lack of Filipinos represented in high-level positions, the story was &quot;not hers to tell, especially when it is reported by her that her father sexually trafficked and exploited her stepmother and she intended to profit off of this comedy at the expense and humiliation of a community that is rarely represented at all.” Dela Cruz further said that it is telling that most of the prominent roles for Filipinos are often in comedic situations, musicals or cartoon shows -- but rarely in drama, which may have been a better format for a mail-order bride’s story. “Hollywood hasn’t yet figured out how to employ the story of our community and that’s important to remember during the start of Filipino American History month [in October]. We need to be doing better at telling our own stories,” he said.

Less than 24 hours after criticisms and protests flooded the social media, NBC Entertainment pulled the plug on “Mail-Order Family” – a half-hour sitcom in development about a mail-order bride from the Philippines who was brought to the US to help raise an American widow’s daughters.

Less than 24 hours after criticisms and protests flooded the social media, NBC Entertainment pulled the plug on “Mail-Order Family” – a half-hour sitcom in development about a mail-order bride from the Philippines who was brought to the US to help raise an American widow’s daughters.

Why some Fil-Ams slammed sitcom 'Mail Order Family'

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Why some Fil-Ams slammed sitcom 'Mail Order Family'

Don Tagala,

ABS CBN North America News Bureau

Published October 02, 2016 05:44 PM PHT

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Updated October 02, 2016 11:50 PM PHT

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mail order bride

Mail-Order Family

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