Read on Twitter
It's unfortunate though somewhat inevitable that many Malaysians only hear about Dayang Senandong through controversy. It is a real folk tale, but not a particularly famous one https://twitter.com/ComicsByVieN/status/1273916451733123072
The original story of Dayang Senandong or Dayang Senandung is very simple. A princess is "cursed" with black skin. "Black" here doesn't just mean dark but actual jet black skin. To remove the curse, she cuts off ties with her kingdom
She catches the eye, or rather the ear, of a prince who's attracted to her enchanting voice. After the princess gives birth to the prince's son, the curse is removed and it turns out she's fair & lovely
A few years ago, Watson's ran a long ad based on the same story, garnering its own share of controversy despite not being much different from the typical whitening cream commercial https://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/06/08/watsons-malaysia-slammed-after-using-blackface-ad-telling-the-story-dayang-senandong
I found that most people talking about the Watson's ad never heard of Dayang Senandong. Now once again, it appears both the detractors and supporters of the upcoming drama tend to be unfamiliar with the original story https://ohbulan.com/tengah-viral-tentang-dayang-senandong-siapa-sebenarnya-dayang-senandong-ini-kisahnya
The story is meant to teach the value of looking beyond a person's appearance. It also has the standard fairy tale theme of the good-hearted girl getting her "happily ever after" ending
However, Dayang Senandong is a product of its time. A time when dark skin was associated with poverty and fair skin with affluence. People didn't dislike dark skin due to racism, but colourism https://time.com/4512430/colorism-in-america/
Class-based colourism has pretty much disappeared from the western mainstream, though racial discrimination still exists. Asians, however, still retain the love for fair skin. Not just light, but a vampiric pale
Many Asians try to defend the trend for light skin as not being racist but just a local beauty preference. After all, fairness was considered beautiful even in medieval Europe. Snow White was given that name because of her "skin as white as snow"
But I disagree. We can't separate modern Asian colourism from racism because Asians today don't just have a fetish for fair skin, but for stereotypically European features. This has nothing to do with old-school Asian beauty. It's entirely neocolonialism
Asians today like fair skin the same way they like blond hair, blue eyes, high noses, etc. This is in contrast with pre-modern Asians. Indians before colonisation thought European skin looked sickly, and 16th-century Japanese preferred narrow eyes over "horrendous" large eyes
For us in Asia, it often seems that westerners are oversensitive about darkening the skin, since true blackface has no history in our part of the world https://twitter.com/uglyluhan/status/1242715236626399232?s=19
But are Asians really any better when we portray Indians in a similarly stereotypical way for comic relief? This IS our equivalent of blackface https://twitter.com/dollfuckinface/status/1273502089314893826?s=19
Plus, the actress Wan Kayrie isn't blackening her skin for purely cosmetic reasons the way cosplayers do. Her character is meant to represent the unattractiveness of dark skin. How can this not be problematic?
Yes the story of Dayang Senandung is supposed to be about looking beyond the surface, but using skin tone as a metaphor teaches that one colour is better than the other. Not just in Malaysia but around Asia https://metro.co.uk/2019/07/23/racist-cartoon-turns-woman-black-cursed-10446864/
The justifications from supporters prove what I mean. Light is good and black is well known as evil? Yikes. This sort of language is precisely what colonists used to justify racial superiority
For this drama to come out right when systemic racism against blacks is being highlighted through the BLM movement, I can't help but wonder if it's a publicity stunt https://twitter.com/malaymail/status/1273858810357018625?s=19
Badly dancing to trashy mumble (c)rap on Tik Tok with her dark makeup is in extremely poor taste, especially in times like these https://coconuts.co/kl/lifestyle/actress-wani-kayrie-criticized-for-blackface-after-tiktok-video-resurfaces/
I share Malay folklore a lot, and I do encourage their use in pop culture. But what's so special about the insignificant Dayang Senandong that it was in a Watson's ad and now a drama, all within a few years? The plot is as basic as you can get
What lessons are there to be learned from this story? We're already living on a continent where dark skin is hated. Where references to blackness are used as a common slur
If Zeel Production isn't afraid of controversy, they could go where TV3 wouldn't dare, like adaptations of Malay folklore that aren't preachy and don't demonise the pre-Islamic, for example. Settling for another "dark skin bad" story? The writers have no creativity and no balls
If Dayang Senandong is going to have any relevance to the present and future, it will have to be changed somehow. There are possibilities https://twitter.com/nolongerskek/status/1273890101978791937?s=19
