'Whispers' Season 1: Domestic helps are hidden and expats completely ignored in Netflix's Saudi Arabian thriller
Spoiler Alert for Season 1 of 'Whispers'
Netflix's first Saudi Arabian licensed original is now available to stream on the platform. The eight-episode 'Whispers' features a predominantly Saudi Arabian and female cast and is helmed by the female director Hana Alomair.
'Whispers' follows a family dealing with the death of family patriarch Hassan (Abdul Mohsen Alnimer). Just a few days before the launch of his new company's smart application, he dies in a car accident. Secrets about his mysterious past begin to surface and his wife Amal (Shaimaa Al Fadl) and their daughters Wa'ad (Nada Tawhid) and Sawsan (Norah Al Anbar), will have to deal with the consequences while uncovering what really happened to Hassan.
Undoubtedly, the show mainly focuses on Hassan's family and the other people central to the story, including his sister, Lama (Elham Ali), his colleague, Arwa (Mysoon Alruwaily), his first wife, Samar (Leila Arabi), and his son with Samar, Khaled (Ali Al Sharif).
But is 'Whispers' deliberately hiding Saudi Arabia's expatriate community that includes migrants from South and Southeast Asia who often work as domestic helps and for other menial jobs? At first, it may not seem so, but considering the country's history of exploitation and mistreatment of its migrant laborers, we wonder whether Netflix could have highlighted the same.
Expatriates account for nearly 37% of the population of Saudi Arabia, many of them from countries such as India, Bangladesh, Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, and more. Saudi Arabia is one of the world's biggest importers of domestic workers.
Domestic workers enter Saudi Arabia under the sponsorship or kafala, a system that prohibits them from changing jobs or leaving the country without their sponsor's approval. They are often overworked, underpaid, and abused.
This was highlighted when Tuti Tursilawati, an Indonesian housekeeper was executed in 2018 after she was found guilty of killing her employer in June 2011. However, the Indonesian advocacy group Migrant Care said that Tursilawati had been defending herself from being raped.
While there are many domestic workers who have positive relationships with their employers, accusations of abuse and fraudulent behavior remain widespread in Saudi Arabia, and in most cases, what happens inside a household remains inside, and it's tough for the workers to prove their mistreatment in the hands of their employers.
In 'Whispers', we see Amal's and Hassan's housemaid Mary sparingly, and she is often relegated to the background, only visible when Amal asks her to either prepare the lunch or close a window. That is even better considering that we do not even see the character onscreen most of the time she is referred to, or even when she utters the single line that she has.
But it's not just Mary. When Lama is driven around by an Arab man, we see them having a proper conversation and we even see his face. However, when the other characters are driven by people who speak in accented English (most likely South Asian), we don't see them on the screen at all, with the camera squarely focused on the backseat.
In an interesting and unintended parallel, we can't help but notice that Amal and Hassan's lavish home looks a lot like the luxurious Park family home from 'Parasite'. The multiple Academy Award-winning film depicted the social and class differences between the Park and the Kim families, with the Park family home being the site of the consequences that come from the Park family's mistreatment of the much poorer Kim family.
At a time when 'Gone With the Wind' is being decried over its depiction of African-American slaves, the same must be done for entertainment from other parts of the world. While we understand that 'Whispers' is targeted more towards the local population of the Middle East, attaching Netflix's name to the show must reflect the streaming service's diverse audience. If the show is seeking an international viewership, why deliberately hide the international population that resides in the country, even if they are segregated heavily?
'Whispers' is now streaming on Netflix.