#trick question. hei xiazi no contest

[good--merits-accumulated]

i love reunion so far but apparently its think critically about your fave media tuesday so!! a while ago i got super excited about the village arc in reunion being filmed in myanmar (because hey - that's my country, and you never see it anywhere!) but then was super disappointed and not surprised with how it was actually portrayed. yes, the "we're in, uhhhhhhh, Unspecified Southeast Asian Village" is pretty fucking funny considering i can see the burmese language posters in the back, and yes hei xiazi running weirdly in a htamein gives me a good laugh (huge mood), but beyond that, reunion falls back on old tropes about myanmar and also tropes which i think apply to a lot of SEA countries in general.

these include a general viewing of burmese (read: lots of SEA countries too) culture as primitive and savage while simultaneously exoticising it for, i don't know, the mysticism factor. persecution of ethnic minorities is already a big big problem in myanmar and this portrayal of what I am assuming is an ethnic minority group (although it doesnt look like any of the actual ethnic minorities we have in myanmar to me) really is not doing any favours -_-.

again, reunion is far from the only piece of media to portray us in this way (see also: anna and the king, from what i can remember) but the issue is that myanmar just does not show up in internationally distributed media at ALL and in the rare, rare, rare occasion it does, it's to be shown like this. when we're not uhhhh (checks notes) uncivilised villagers running arcane rituals and mutilating children, we're (checks more notes) violent thugs under the thumb of a corrupt military?

and yes, unfortunately the military thing DOES sort of apply, especially right now (rest in power Ko Jimmy, Phyo Zayar Thaw, Hla Myo Aung, and Aung Thura Zaw), and it deserves to be drawn attention to - but it's not the only thing!! there are other things!! we are so many of us with our own many cultural practices and cool shit that deserves to be appreciated and not exoticised

also, the little girl from the village - please stop chewing betel leaf!! your teeth are going to be so stained!! you can chew betel leaf when you're older 😭

this is really just a very muddy collection of thoughts and i don't know where i'm going with it other than i'd like to write a thing of the tltr cast just having fun in my hometown. visiting a street food stall! going to a pagoda! getting fucking Obliterated by the loudspeakers on the donations truck that comes around every evening (personal experience)!! etc etc there is so much more to my country and others in SEA than this

(just in case: SEA here is an abbreviation for South East Asia)