THE GLORY AWARDS Dean Gloria Feliciano Awards For Outstanding UPCMC Alumni
NOMINATION CRITERIA AND REQUIREMENTS
The Board of Jurors shall weigh the merits and impact of the nominee’s work as well as his or her demonstrated leadership and social responsibility in the mass communications field. There shall be four (4) specific awards criteria with corresponding submission requirements for each:
CRITERIA I: Professional Track Record Requirement: Provide a comprehensive resume showing the nominee’s career trajectory (in reverse order, beginning with the most recent roles), professional achievements, awards and citations. Relevant photos and press clips may be included.
CRITERIA II: Leadership and Social Responsibility Requirement: List down leadership, mentorship and volunteer responsibilities and activities of the nominee—whether in the workplace or through industry, civic or advocacy groups.
CRITERIA III: Results and Impact Requirement: In order to satisfy Criteria III, kindly answer the following in 500 words or less— How did the nominee’s work, activities and initiatives lead to any of the following results or impacts? Legislative action or improved public policy Effective solutions to a societal problem Prosecution of offenders Public recognition for model citizens and institutions Meaningful audience engagement Positive change in attitudes and behaviour of target publics New knowledge or pioneering research in the mass communications field Greater public confidence in the mass communications profession Other relevant results or impacts
CRITERIA IV: Samples of Work Requirement: Submission of work samples that are appropriate to the nominee’s specialization (see details below). Jurors shall evaluate these works using accepted standards of excellence in the nominee’s particular field or discipline.
A. TV and Radio Arts
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Á DVD compilation of at least three (3) programs where the nominee is credited as writer, creator, producer, presenter, editor, or director B. Journalism for Print or Online At least four (4) of the nominee’s published works in PDF format; or submit links to enable online viewing of the nominee’s works. The websites should have been publishing journalistic pieces regularly and continuously for at least one year.
C. Broadcast Journalism (TV/Internet Video and Radio/Podcasting) DVD compilation of at least four (4) aired or posted segments that were written, produced, and/or presented by the nominee.
D. Photojournalism DVD compilation of at least ten (10) different published photos, with or without captions but should include publication dates and names of media outlets that published the photos.
E. Communication Research (Market, Social or Academic/Scholarly Research) Full text in PDF format of at least two (2) completed research reports, papers or projects which the nominee authored or co-authored. Executive summaries of each work must be included if not yet part of the published text. The research topics must be relevant and worthy contributions to the body of knowledge in mass communications and allied disciplines.
F. Filmmaking DVD compilation of at least two (2) feature or documentary films that were written, produced, shot and/or directed by the nominee. The films must have been screened in commercial theaters, film festivals, scheduled TV broadcasts, and other public viewing venues.
G. Allied Disciplines* * Marketing Communications: Advertising or marketing campaigns on TV, print, radio, digital, new media, events, etc. * Public Relations: Strategic campaigns and programs in corporate or government communications, public affairs, community relations, reputation & crisis management * Development Communications/Social Advocacy: Mass communication tools and techniques to support the non-profit, civil society or volunteer sectors in addressing complex social problems and/or pursuing the globally recognized UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Sample works under Allied Disciplines should be the summaries of at least two (2) communications campaigns or programs undertaken by the nominee. Each summary should be presented in the following standardized outline: (I) Title; (II) Communication Challenge or Problem; (III) Objectives or Targets; (IV) Innovative or Out-of-the-Box Approaches for Disseminating Messages; and (V) 2 | P a g e
Á Results, Impact or Outcomes of the Campaign or Program. Support materials such as photos, videos, ads, collaterals and press stories may be attached.
H. Performing Arts DVD compilation of the nominee’s best work in film, television, and/or live stage
SUMMARY OF FOUR (4) REQUIRED SUBMISSIONS
1. Comprehensive Resume 2. List of Leadership, Mentorship and Volunteer Responsibilities 3. Reply to Question About Results And Impact (500 words or less) 4. Sample Works
FINAL REMINDERS REGARDING SUBMISSIONS 1. Please include a 1-page cover sheet containing the following basic information: a. Full Name of Nominee b. Course/Major in UPCMC c. Years Enrolled in UP (e.g. 2001-2005, 1998-2008) d. Organizations Joined in UPCMC (if any) e. Current Occupation f. Home Address g. E-mail Address h. Mobile Phone Number i. Civil Status j. Titles of the Work Samples Submitted for Evaluation
2. Entries may be submitted online via [email protected] or delivered to the to the UPCMCAA office c/o Ms. Kat Ramos, Plaridel Hall, College of Mass Communications, UP Diliman, Quezon City.
3. Sample work submissions in DVD should be labeled properly and delivered to the UPCMCAA office.
4. DEADLINE for all submissions: Friday, 15 September 2017.
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Á THE GLORY AWARDS Dean Gloria Feliciano Awards For Outstanding UPCMC Alumni
COVER SHEET a. Full Name of Nominee
Jose Hernani Segovia DAVID b. Course/Major in UPCMC
A.B. Journalism (cum laude) B.A. Film & Audiovisual Communication (cum laude) c. Years Enrolled in UP (e.g. 2001-2005, 1998-2008)
1971-1975 (HS); 1975-1979 (A.B.); 1984-1986 (B.A.) d. Organizations Joined in UPCMC (if any)
UP Journalism Club Cineastes Studio UPCMC Alumni Association e. Current Occupation
Professor of Cultural Studies f. Home Address
Inha University College of Social Science 100 Inha-ro, Nam-gu Incheon 22212, Korea g. E-mail Address
+82(-10) 3173-7688 i. Civil Status
Single j. Titles of the Work Samples Submitted for Evaluation
Please Refer to “Samples of Work” on Separate Page
Á Joel David [Jose Hernani Segovia DAVID]
PROFESSIONAL TRACK RECORD
1. Education
1.1. New York University Ph.D. Cinema Studies, May 2002 Dissertation: “Primates in Paradise: The Multiple-Character Format in Philippine Film Practice” (defense date: December 18, 2001; adviser: Robert Sklar, Ph.D. [†]; panelists: Toby Miller, Ph.D.; Ellen J. Paglinauan, ABD [†]; Robert Stam, Ph.D.) M.A. Cinema Studies, May 1994
1.2. University of the Philippines (UP) [national university] B.A. Film (cum laude), April 1986 A.B. Journalism (cum laude), April 1979 High School, April 1975
2. Teaching Experience 2013- Professor for Cultural Studies [Tenured Position] (formerly Associate Professor, 2008-12), Department of Communication & Information, College of Social Science, Inha University, Incheon, Korea Courses handled: Graduate: Digital Humanities, Film Theory, Media & Culture, Visual Narratology; Undergraduate: Cyberspace & Culture, Gender & Culture, Intercultural Communication, Introduction to Cultural Studies, Introduction to Film, Mass Media & Society, Media & Culture, Media Genres, Media & Narrative, Media Orientalism, Reading Seminar (The Prince, The Red and the Black, Discipline and Punish), Star Texts in Popular Culture, Theory of Film & Video 2017 Lecturer, Department of English, Ateneo de Manila University Course handled: Undergraduate: Star Texts
2002-11 Associate Professor (initially Instructor 1987-94, then Assistant Professor 1994-2002), UP Film Institute (formerly Department of Film and Audiovisual Communication), CMC Courses handled: Graduate: Advanced Film Theory & Criticism, Cinema & Nation, Historical & Critical Research Methods in Film, Political Economy of Media, Seminar in Film Studies, Skinema: Film Pornography, Thesis; Undergraduate, current curriculum: Philippine Cinema (General Education course), Communication & Media Ethics, Film Theory & Criticism, History of Philippine Cinema, Introduction to Film, Research in Film, Thesis; Undergraduate, previous curriculum: Introduction to Communication (for Communication Research Dept), Feature Writing (for Journalism Dept), Editing & Processing, Experimental Film, Film & Literature, Film Criticism, Film Internship, Film Operations & Procedures, Film Seminar, Image of the Filipino in Film, Introduction to Film, Performance for Film & Audiovisual Productions, Special Projects, Thesis Additional workload (2002-08) included: survey and proposal of Ph.D. Film program; membership in the Quezon City Film Development Commission; membership-at-large in the University Curriculum Committee; proposing of courses for Multimedia Studies program for UP Open University; co-proposing and defense of M.A. Media Studies (Film) program and General Education courses in Film for UPCMC; lecturing and technical advising for Bicol University Summer Internship Program; coordinating (as Chair of UPCMC Colloquia Committee) of lecture-presentation on photojournalism by Prof. Steve Raymer of Indiana University and National Geographic
2004-07 Visiting Faculty at Hallym University School of Communication, including performing as liaison for the Hallym – UP Student Exchange Program Á David, Jose H. S. : Professional Track Record Updated July 2017 Page 2 of 3
Courses handled: Undergraduate: Business Writing, Film Reviewing & Criticism, Film Genres, Feature Writing, Intercultural Communication, Media & Society, Media Orientalism, Television Planning & Scriptwriting
2006-07 Lecturer, Department of Communication and Information, Inha University Courses handled: Undergraduate: Film Reviewing & Criticism, Mass Media & Society
Summer 2005 Lecturer, Division of International Education and Exchange, Yonsei University Course handled: Undergraduate: Culture & Communication
1990-91 Lecturer, Department of Art Studies, UP College of Arts and Letters Course handled: Undergraduate: Philippine Cinema & National Culture
1986-87 Lecturer, Department of Mass Communication, Lyceum of the Philippines Courses handled: Undergraduate: Introduction to Film, Film Theory, Writing for Film
3. Published Works in Book (or Open-Access Volume) Form Pen name: Joel David Website: Amauteurish! (URL https://amauteurish.com)
3.1. As Author Manila by Night (Vancouver: Arsenal, 2017 forthcoming). Last entry in Queer Film Classics Series (2009-17), edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays. SINÉ: The YES! List of 100 Films that Celebrate Philippine Cinema (with Jo-Ann Q. Maglipon, Mandaluyong City: Summit Media, 2017 forthcoming). One-shot canon project (initiated in 2011), covering all full-length Philippine feature films from earliest available sample to the present. Book Texts: A Pinoy Film Course (Amauteurish! original digital publication, 2015). Sampler of articles from the first four solo-authored books. Millennial Traversals: Outliers, Juvenilia, & Quondam Popcult Blabbery (Amauteurish! original digital publication, 2015). Wages of Cinema: Film in Philippine Perspective (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1998; Amauteurish! digital edition, 2014). Fields of Vision: Critical Applications in Recent Philippine Cinema (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1995; Amauteurish! digital edition, 2014). The National Pastime: Contemporary Philippine Cinema (Metro Manila: Anvil, 1990; Amauteurish! digital edition, 2014).
3.2. As Editor “Nora Aunor and the Philippine Star System,” forum of Kritika Kultura 25 (August 2015): 46-48, 248-378. “Media & Diaspora” (Violeda A. Umali, co-editor) special issue of Plaridel 11.1 (February 2014): i-iv, 1-172. “OFWs in Foreign Cinema,” monograph of Kritika Kultura 21/22 (August 2013): 557-643. “A Closer Look at Manila by Night,” forum of Kritika Kultura 19 (August 2012): 6-272. Huwaran/Hulmahan Atbp.: The Film Writings of Johven Velasco (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2009). Proceedings of the Whither the Orient: Asians in Asian and Non-Asian Cinema Conference, Kimdaejung Convention Center, Gwangju, Korea, 28-29 October 2006 (Seoul: Asia Culture Forum, 2006).
3.2. As Contributor “녹슨 팔과 가려운 손가락; 두테르테 대통령의 마약과의 전쟁에 대한 문화적 시각,” in제5회 국가폭력과 트라우마 국제회의 (Gwangju: Trauma Center, 2017): 103-12. Á David, Jose H. S. : Professional Track Record Updated July 2017 Page 3 of 3
“Grains and Flickers,” in Remembering/Rethinking EDSA, eds. JPaul S. Manzanilla & Carolyn Hau (Pasig City: Anvil, 2016): 172-87. “Intrigues, Maneuvers, Interventions: Screen Images of the Korean War and its Aftermath,” in 4PKSS (Philippines-Korea in the Changing Asia: Drawing Connections): Proceedings of the 4th Philippine Korean Studies Symposium (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Department of Linguistics, 2015): 4, 25-49. “Las edades de oro del cine Filipino: Una reevaluación crítica” and “The Golden Ages of Philippine Cinema: A Critical Reassessment,” in Cinema Filipinas: Historia, teoría, y crítica fílmica (1999-2009), ed. Juan Guardiola ([Andalucía]: Juna de Andalucía, Conserejía de Cultura Fundacíon El Legado Andalusí, [2010]): 37-48 & 217-24 resp. Various articles in The Urian Anthology 1990-1999, The Urian Anthology 1980-1989 and The Urian Anthology 1970-1979, ed. Nicanor G. Tiongson (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, Tuviera, & Morato respectively, 2010, 2001, & 1983 respectively). “Orientalism and Classical Film Practice,” in Global Makeover: Media and Culture in Asia, ed. Danilo Araña Arao (Quezon City: Asian Media and Culture Forum; and Development Center for Asia Africa Pacific, 2010): 139-54. “Awake in the Dark: Philippine Film During the Marcos Era,” in Philippine Studies: Have We Gone Beyond St. Louis?, ed. Priscelina Patajo Legasto (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2008): 227-43. “냉전시기필리핀의영화정책,” in동아시아 냉전문화의 역학: 1960~70년대 냉전기 동아시아 지역의 문화변동과 국 민국가의 문화정치학 세미나, 성공회대학교 동아시아연구소 (Seoul: Institute for East Asia Studies, Sung KongHoe University, 2009): 277-96. “Philippine Film History as a Site of Postcolonial Discourse,” in Geopolitics of the Visible: Essays on Philippine Film Cultures, ed. Rolando B. Tolentino (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2000): 3-12. Various co-written articles, in Philippine Film and Philippine Literature, vols. 8 & 9 resp. of the CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art, ed. Nicanor G. Tiongson (Manila: Cultural Center of the Philippines, 1995). “Holy Pain,” in The Literary Apprentice, ed. Rene O. Villanueva (Quezon City: University of the Philippines, 1982): 142-51.
4. Awards & Distinctions 2016 FACINE Gawad Lingap-Sining (Culture Nurturer Award), Filipino Arts & Cinema International Festival; the first award to recognize a Philippine film scholar and critic 2008-16 Inha University Research Grants 2012-14 Inha University Publication Incentive Awards (for Kritika Kultura articles) 2008 UP Centennial Professorial Chair 2008 Teodoro Valencia Professorial Chair for Journalism, UP 2008 Best Ensemble Performance (for Manwal sa Paggawa ng Pelikula), Ateneo Video Open 2008 UP Centennial Book Award (for Wages of Cinema) 2007 Lily Monteverde Professorial Chair for Film, UP 2006 UP International Publication Awards (for GLQ and Asian Journal of Women’s Studies articles) 2002 Ramon Cojuangco Professorial Chair for Broadcasting, UP 2001 UP Presidential Dissertation-Writing Grant 1998 100 Books for the Centennial of the Philippine Revolution (for Wages of Cinema), UP 1996 National Book Award for Film Criticism (for Fields of Vision), Manila Critics Circle 1993 Fulbright-Hayes Full Grant (for M.A. studies, New York University) 1991 National Book Award shortlist for Essay-Writing (for The National Pastime), Manila Critics Circle 1990 First Place (Short Feature Category, Film Division), UP Alternative Film and Video Festival 1986 Most Outstanding Student, UP System 1986 Most Outstanding Film Student, UPCMC 1978 First Place (Short Story Writing, English Division), UP Literary Contest 1975 Journalist of the Year, UP High School Á Arsenal Pulp Press Series Info Page Page 1 of 6
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BOOKS | AUTHORS | CATEGORIES | NEWS | ABOUT ORDERING | MEDIA RESOURCES | CONTACT | BLOG NEW TITLES Arabian Nights Becoming Unbecoming BESTSELLERS Blood, Sweat, and Fear Categories: Browse Category Series: Browse Series 1. Conflict Is Not Abuse The Boy & the Bindi 2. Scarborough Candyass 3. Blood, Sweat, and Fear QUEER FILM CLASSICS is a critically acclaimed film book series that The Case of Alan Turing 4. Everything Is Awful and launched in 2009; the series will cover twenty-one of the most important and Chowgirls Killer Party You're a Terrible Person influential films about and by LGBTQ people, made in eight different countries Food between 1950 and 2005, written by leading LGBTQ film scholars and critics. 5. Decolonize Your Diet Conflict Is Not Abuse 6. even this page is white The Queer Film Classics are edited by two of Canada's leading queer film The Dad Dialogues 7. The Remedy critics, Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays, both Arsenal Pulp authors and Don't Tell Me What to Do 8. Tomboy Survival Guide affiliated with Concordia University in Montreal. "We're elated with the amazing Everything Is Awful and 9. The Last Gang in Town quality of the contributors and the fascinating variety of the films which will be You're a Terrible Person part of the series," Hays says. "I know this will make a terrific contribution not 10. a place called No Homeland only to the burgeoning field of queer film studies but also to moving images Female Trouble culture as a whole." Home and Away The Last Gang in Town SUBSCRIBE TO Waugh adds: "There's something stirring about this project that brings together Niagara Motel NEWSLETTER several generations of queer artists and writers - and onscreen characters! - in this extended trans-historical, trans-identity family. Some of my favorite films of a place called No Enter your email: all time are in the lineup and are going to find a new audience through this Homeland initiative. I'm glad we're able to include documentary and experimental films as The Remedy SUBMIT well as mainstream features, since they have played key roles in the growth of Rough Patch our cultures and communities." Scarborough Titles in the QFC series, both available and projected: Such a Lovely Little War Tomboy Survival Guide 2009: Gods and Monsters (Bill Condon, USA, 1998) by Noah Tsika Law of Desire (Pedro Almodovar, Spain, 1987) by Jose Quiroga Trash (Paul Morrissey, USA, 1970) by Jon Davies FORTHCOMING TITLES ... 2010: Farewell My Concubine (Chen Kaige, China, 1993) by Helen Hok-Sze Leung Montreal Main (Frank Vitale, Canada, 1974) by Thomas Waugh and Jason Garrison Fire (Deepa Mehta, Canada/India, 1996) by Shohini Ghosh
2011: Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, Italy, 1954/1971) by Will Aitken Zero Patience (John Greyson, Canada, 1993) by Wendy G. Pearson Word Is Out (Mariposa collective, USA, 1977) by Greg Youmans
2012: Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock, USA, 1951) by Jonathan Goldberg
2013: Paris Is Burning (Jennie Livingston, USA, 1990) by Lucas Hilderbrand
2014: L.A. Plays Itself (Fred Halsted, USA, 1972)/Boys in the Sand (Wakefield Poole, USA, 1971) by Cindy Patton I've Heard the Mermaids Singing (Patricia Rozema, Canada, 1987) by Julia Mendenhall
2015:
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C.R.A.Z.Y. (Jean-Marc Vallee, Canada, 2005) by Robert Schwartzwald Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives (Lynn Fernie and Aerlyn Weissman, Canada, 1992) by Gerda Cammaer and Jean Bruce
2016: Arabian Nights (Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italy, 1974) by Michael Moon
2017: Female Trouble (John Waters, USA, 1974) by Chris Holmlund Manila by Night (Ishmael Bernal, Philippines, 1980) by Joel David
TO COME: Scorpio Rising (Kenneth Anger, USA, 1963) by Robert Cagle
"Judging by these first three entries of Arsenal Pulp Press's new series Queer Film Classics, the editors Matthew Hays and Thomas Waugh have made a brilliant innovation in queer film studies, providing a welcome queer complement to the Briish Film Institute's series of monographs on classic films.There's something irresistibly compelling about a monograph devoted to one movie, a chance to revel in the select pleasures and special world of a single film. From a queer perspective, the meditation on a single film takes on a particular urgency, one charged with political as well as esthetic and personal concerns. Each of these wonderful treatments has much to teach us, not only about the art of film but also the queer ways in which films can transmit meaning to audiences." --Cineaste
"Each book offers a close reading of an underrated film, which restores that film to significance within queer history. The kinds of queerness at issue in these accounts are as distinct as the films' respective styles, and it is in their powerful elaboration of the relation between the two that the books, and the series, break new critical ground." --Film Quarterly
"Arsenal Pulp Press' Queer Film Classic series has established itself as the premiere source of critical acumen about queer film." --Richard Labonte, Book Marks
"Beautiful and comprehensive little compendia." --Liberty Press
Titles from Queer Film Classics
Arabian Nights By (author) Michael Moon Series edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays
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C.R.A.Z.Y. A Queer Film Classic By (author) Robert Schwartzwald Series edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays
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Death in Venice A Queer Film Classic By (author) Will Aitken Series edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays
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Farewell My Concubine A Queer Film Classic By (author) Helen Hok-Sze Leung Series edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays
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Female Trouble A Queer Film Classic By (author) Chris Holmlund Series edited by Matthew Hays and Thomas Waugh
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Fire A Queer Film Classic By (author) Shohini Ghosh Series edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays
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Forbidden Love A Queer Film Classic By (author) Jean Bruce and Gerda Cammaer Series edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays
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ISBN: 9781551526089 Availability: In Stock. Usually ships in 24 hours.
Gods and Monsters A Queer Film Classic By (author) Noah Tsika Series edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays
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I've Heard the Mermaids Singing A Queer Film Classic By (author) Julia Mendenhall Series edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays
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L.A. Plays Itself/Boys in the Sand A Queer Film Classic By (author) Cindy Patton Series edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays
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Law of Desire A Queer Film Classic By (author) Jos� Quiroga Series edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays
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Manila by Night
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By (author) Joel David Series edited by Matthew Hays and Thomas Waugh
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Manila by Night By (author) Joel David Series edited by Matthew Hays and Thomas Waugh
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Montreal Main A Queer Film Classic By (author) Thomas Waugh and Jason Garrison Series edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays
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Paris Is Burning A Queer Film Classic By (author) Lucas Hilderbrand Series edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays
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Strangers on a Train A Queer Film Classic By (author) Jonathan Goldberg Series edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays
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Trash A Queer Film Classic By (author) Jon Davies Series edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays
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Word Is Out A Queer Film Classic By (author) Greg Youmans Series edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays
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Zero Patience A Queer Film Classic By (author) Susan Knabe and Wendy Gay Pearson Series edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays
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YES! Magazine (cover design, top), October 2016 issue, page 16 feature.
Á Joel David [Jose Hernani Segovia DAVID]
LEADERSHIP & SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
1. Workplace
2002-04 Additional Assignment as founding Director (formerly Officer-in-Charge of UP Film Center), UP Film Institute Workload included: finalization of proposal to merge UP Film Center and CMC Film Dept. into the UP Film Institute; supervision of two Faculty Coordinators (one for Academic Programs and another for Extension); formation of Working Committee to work out programs, plantilla changes, and rationalization of spaces; overseeing of construction of 3-storey Film Building as part of the CMC Media Center, and of turnover of equipment grant from Japan government; management of lecture series and workshops; coordination with Central Administration on personnel and budget matters, and with industry representatives on curricular matters; mentoring of junior faculty, including constitution of panels for local and international conferences
1997-2001 Supervisor of Research Assistants (formerly Research Assistant, 1994-97), Haver Analytics
1982-86 Head of Writers’ Section, Experimental Cinema of the Philippines (detailed from National Media Production Center, both defunct) Workload included: preparation of information materials on all ECP events and screenings; research, interviews, and preparation of info materials for the annual Manila International Film Festival; editing of journals and all in-house publications; finalization and production of annual reports; occasional participation as juror for short film festivals, scriptwriting contests, and film criticism competitions
1978-79 Managing Editor, Philippine Collegian (UP weekly student newspaper) Workload included: planning and evaluation of issues; supervision of presswork; writing of articles, reviews, and columns
2. Affiliations
2016- Founding Member, UP Alumni Association in the Republic of Korea 2016- International Advisory Board Member, Kritika Kultura 2013- International Advisory Board Member, Plaridel: A Philippine Journal of Communication, Media, and Society 2009- Founding Member, Association of Filipino Educators in Korea (formerly Philippine Resource Persons Group); Head of Research, 2016-17 2007- Member, Modern Language Association of America 2007- Member, Asian Studies Association Á David, Jose H. S.: Leadership & Social Responsibility Updated July 2017 Page 2 of 7
1993- Member, Society for Cinema and Media Studies (formerly Society for Cinema Studies) 1995-96 Bibliography Coordinator, Modern Language Association of America 1990-92 Founding Member and Secretary, Kritika (formerly Young Critics Circle) 1980-85 Member and Corporate Secretary, Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino (MPP, Filipino Film Critics Circle) 1980-82 Secretary, Cine Gang, Inc. (sponsor of “Filmstrips” revival series in 1980 and publisher of Ricardo Lee’s Brutal/Salome, National Book Award-winner, in 1981) 1979- Inductee, Phi Kappa Phi International Honor Society and Pi Gamma Mu International Social Science Honor Society 1978-79 Honorary member, UP Journalism Club
3. Academic & Scholarly Activities (partial listing)
3.1. Lectures
2017 “Gender Film Criticism,” Online Lecture Series for the Pelikulove website (forthcoming) 2017 “Understanding Film and Culture,” Lecture for the College of Arts and Letters of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, Main Campus, Sta. Mesa, Manila 2016 “Cold Word Wars: Philippine Film as a Critical Activity,” Keynote Lecture for the 23rd Filipino Arts & Cinema, Diego Rivera Theater, City College of San Francisco 2015 “Intrigues, Maneuvers, Interventions: Screen Images of the Korean War and its Aftermath,” Keynote Lecture for 4th Philippine Korean Studies Symposium, University of the Philippines, Quezon City 2015 “Campus Journalism Today & Tomorrow,” Lecture for Symposium on Campus Journalism, Metro Manila College, Quezon City 2012 “Phantoms of Paradise: Philippine Presences in Non-Pinoy Cinemas”, 1st Kritika Kultura Global Classroom Series (topic: “Contingencies of Meaning”), Ateneo de Manila University, Quezon City 2008 "Understanding Film," paper delivered at CMC Faculty Colloquium 2004 "Multiple Choices, Multiple Voices: Critical Possibilities of the Milieu Movie," paper delivered at 40th Communication Colloquium, Institute for Communication Arts and Technology, Hallym University, Korea 2004 "Literalized Communities: The Pinoy Milieu Movie’s Aesthetic and Social Dimensions," paper delivered at CMC Faculty Colloquia as Ramon Cojuangco Professorial Chair lecture 1993 "Queer Representation in Philippine Cinema," paper (with video excerpts) delivered at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center in New York, sponsored by the Gay Asian & Pacific Islander Men of New York
3.2. Participation
2012 Proponent and Coordinator, “Manila by Night: Up Close & Personal” and “Manila by Night: A Long Take,” Asian Cinema Studies Society Conference in Hong Kong 2010 Coordinator and Overseas Liaison, 1st Asian Media Cooperation and Cultural Exchange Conference in Manila 2008 Proponent and Moderator, "Media Coverage of Gender Issues in Asia" panel at the 8th ASEAN Inter-University Conference on Social Development in Manila 2008 Discussant, "Human Interaction & Social Dimensions" panel at the Korea’s Changing Roles in Southeast Asia: Expanding Influence and Relations in Seoul 2006 Proponent and Coordinator, Whither the Orient: Asians in Asian and Non-Asian Cinema Á David, Jose H. S.: Leadership & Social Responsibility Updated July 2017 Page 3 of 7
conference sponsored by the Asian Culture Forum in Gwangju, Korea 2006 Respondent, "Koreanovelas in Asia" panel at the Cultural Space and Public Sphere in Asia conference, Seoul, Korea 2004 Coordinator and Instructor, Film Module of the Bicol University Summer Internship Program at the UP College of Mass Communication in Diliman, Quezon City 2003 Proponent and Coordinator, Freeze-Frame: New Issues in Philippine Cinema conference at UP Visayas College Cebu, Cebu City 2003 Proponent, "Philippine Cinema in the Eagle’s Shadow" panel of Sangandaan (Crossroads) 2003: An International Conference on Arts and Media in Philippine-American Relations, 1899-2002 in Quezon City 1995 Proponent, "PeregriNations: the Philippines as a Nation in Cinema" panel of the Society for Cinema Studies Annual Conference in New York City 1994 Proponent and Moderator, "A Socio-Political Reading of the Cinema of the Philippines" panel at the "Asian Cinema: Poetics & Politics" Annual Ohio University Film Conference in Athens, Ohio 1994 Proponent, "(In)Dependent Film Practice in a Third-World Setting" panel of the Society for Cinema Studies Annual Conference in Syracuse, New York 1994 “Pelikulang Pilipino: A Review of Contemporary Philippine Cinema” resource person at Columbia University, New York, originating edition of “Sa Pinilakang Tabing” (On the Silver Screen), an annual Philippine film retrospective sponsored by Liga Filipina and Arkipelago
3.3. Attendance
2008-11 Annual Faculty Seminars of Inha University, held at Jeju, Daegu, and Busan resp. 2003 "Adobe Premiere Non-Linear Video Editing" workshop sponsored by the Philippine Center for Creative Imaging in Makati City, Philippines 1993 "Continuity and Change in the US Political System" seminar sponsored by the US Information Agency and administered by the Institute of International Education in Washington, D.C. 1988 "Group Training Course on Educational Television Program" sponsored by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and Nihon Hoso Kokai (NHK) at the NHK Communications Training Institute in Tokyo, Japan 1988 "Video Production Workshop" sponsored by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand 1987 "Summer Workshop on Film Acting" sponsored by the Movie Workers Welfare Fund (Mowelfund) Film Institute at the Mowelfund Plaza, Quezon City, Philippines
3.4. Papers Read
2017 “Rusty Arms & Itchy Fingers: A Cultural Perspective on President Duterte’s War on Drugs,” Lecture for the 5th International Conference on State Violence and Trauma, Gwangju City, Cholla Province, Korea 2014 "Constructions of Authenticity in Selected Films of Nora Aunor," paper delivered at the Asian Cinema Studies Society International Conference in Macau 2013 "The Cold War and Marcos-Era Cinema in the Philippines," paper delivered at the International Conference on Social Science and Management in Bali, Indonesia 2012 "Sound and Fury, Signifying: Aural Dimensions of Manila by Night," paper delivered at the Asian Cinema Studies Society conference in Hong Kong 2011 "Vague Stirrings: Feminization as Unconscious Resistance in Orientalist Imagery," paper delivered Á David, Jose H. S.: Leadership & Social Responsibility Updated July 2017 Page 4 of 7
at the Association for Asian Studies & International Convention of Asian Scholars Conference in Honolulu, Hawai’i 2010 "Problems and Prospects in the National Cinemas of Korea and the Philippines," paper delivered at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in Los Angeles, Calif. 2009 "Video Piracy as an Instance of Neocolonial Resistance," paper delivered at the Agency, Activism, and Alternatives Conference of the Studies of Public Inter-Asian Culture, Equality, and Solidarity, in Seoul 2008 "The Philippine Culture Industry (with Emphasis on Cinema)," paper delivered at the Institute of East Asian Studies Colloquium in SungKongHoe University, Seoul 2008 "The Cold War and Marcos-Era Cinema in the Philippines," paper delivered at the 8th ASEAN Inter-University Conference on Social Development in Manila 2007 "Cold-War Film Policy in the Philippines," paper delivered at the Dynamics of Cold War Culture in East Asia: Cultural Changes in the Region during the Cold War in the 1960s-70s and Cultural Politics of the Nation-State conference in Seoul, Korea 2006 "Indochine and the Dynamics of Gender," paper delivered at the Whither the Orient: Asians in Asian and Non-Asian Cinema conference in Gwangju, Korea 2006 "Condemned Property: Film Piracy in the Philippines," paper delivered at The Film Scene: Cinema, the Arts, and Social Change conference in Hong Kong 2005 "A Yearning for Tenderness: A Scenario for Korean Cinema," paper (co-written with Shin Dong Kim) delivered at the National, Transnational, and International annual Asian Cinema Studies Society conference in Shanghai, China 2005 "Cutthroat Archipelago: Video Piracy in and around the Philippines," paper delivered at the Culture Industry and Cultural Capital conference in Seoul, Korea 2004 "Gender and Sexuality in Mobile Communication" panel respondent at the International Conference on Mobile Communication, Seoul, Korea 2003 "Chosen Few: Minimal Multi-Character Patterns in Recent Filipino Films," paper delivered for Freeze-Frame: New Issues in Philippine Cinema conference at UP Visayas College Cebu, Cebu City 2003 "A Certain Tendency: Europeanization as a Response to Americanization and Other Issues in the ‘Golden-Age’ Studio System," paper delivered for "Philippine Cinema in the Eagle’s Shadow" panel of Sangandaan (Crossroads) 2003: An International Conference on Arts and Media in Philippine-American Relations, 1899-2002 in Quezon City 1995 "A History of the History of a History-to-Be," paper delivered for "PeregriNations: the Philippines as a Nation in Cinema" panel of the Society for Cinema Studies Annual Conference in New York City 1994 "A Cultural-Policy Experience in Philippine Cinema," paper delivered for "A Socio-Political Reading of the Cinema of the Philippines" panel at the "Asian Cinema: Poetics & Politics" Annual Ohio University Film Conference in Athens, Ohio 1994 "Practice Makes Perfect," paper delivered for "(In)Dependent Film Practice in a Third-World Setting" panel of the Society for Cinema Studies Annual Conference in Syracuse, New York 1993 "Fictions in Flux: Documentary Dimensions of Philippine Cinema," paper delivered at "Documenting Fictions: Documentary Dimensions of the Fiction Film" conference sponsored by the Centre Universitaire de Luxembourg American Studies Center, Clark European Center in Luxembourg, Fondation Promomedia, Bibliotheque Nationale, Cinematheque Municipale, and American Embassy in Luxembourg City 1989 "Ethics (Rather than Aesthetics) First," paper delivered for "Aspects of Philippine Film" panel of the Third International Philippine Studies Conference at the Philippine Social Science Center in Diliman, Quezon City
Á David, Jose H. S.: Leadership & Social Responsibility Updated July 2017 Page 5 of 7
3.5. Evaluative Tasks
2006 Chair, Selection Committee for the Asia Culture Forum’s Asian Youth Culture Camp and Asia’s Future Initiative Fellowships 2003 Chair, Board of Judges for the Philippine Collegian Editorial Examination 1990-92 Film Desk Coordinator for Kritika Film Citations 1990 Board of Judges for the Short Film Awards of the Film Academy of the Philippines 1985 Screening Committee member of the ECP Annual Scriptwriting Contest 1984-85 Board of Judges for the Short Film Awards of the UP Film Center 1980-85 Board of Jurors for the Urian Awards of the MPP 1978 Board of Jurors for the UP Essay-Writing Contest
4. Media Activities
Pen name: Joel David Website: Amauteurish! (URL https://amauteurish.com)
4.1. Periodicals
2012- Resident reviewer for The FilAm e-magazine (http://thefilam.net) 1987- Contributor to various journals including Kritika Kultura; GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies; and Asian Journal of Women’s Studies (all ISI-listed); and in Asian Studies: Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia; Manila Review; Southeast Asia Studies; Plaridel: A Philippine Journal of Communication, Media, and Society; Kultura; and Philippines Communication Journal 1987-91 Resident film critic (Filipino and foreign films) for National Midweek magazine 1980s- Freelance film & media contributor (i.e., articles, reviews, criticism) and issue editor for various Filipino and foreign publications including Korea Times and JoongAng Daily
4.1.1. Selected Journal Articles
2017 “A Certain Tendency: Europeanization as a Response to Americanization in the Philippines’s ‘Golden Age’ Student System,” Unitas: A Quarterly Review for the Arts and Sciences (forthcoming). 2017 “The Transnational Pastime: An Interview with Joel David” (interviewed by Paul Douglas Grant) Plaridel: A Philippine Journal of Communication, Media, and Society 14.1 (June): 135-45. 2017 “Remembering the Forgotten War: Origins of the Korean War Film and Its Development during Hallyu,” Kritika Kultura 28 (February): 112-46. 2015 “Firmament Occupation: The Philippine Star System,” Kritika Kultura 25 (August): 248-84. 2015 “Alien Abjection in the Morning Calm: A Singular Reading of Horror Films from beyond Southeast Asia” (co-written with Ju-Yong Ha), Plaridel 12.2 (August): 201-23. 2014 “Phantom Limbs in the Body Politic: Filipinos in Foreign Cinema,” Plaridel 11.1 (February): 35-60. 2014 “A Critical Consideration of the Use of Trauma as an Approach to Understanding Korean Cinema” (co-written with Ju-Yong Ha), Asian Studies: Journal of Critical Perspectives in Asia 50.1: 15-50. 2013 “Phantom in Paradise: A Philippine Presence in Hollywood Cinema,” Kritika Kultura 21/22 (August): 560-83. 2013 “Pinoy Film Criticism: A Lover’s Polemic,” Manila Review 3 (August): 6-8. 2012 “Film Plastics in Manila by Night,” Kritika Kultura 19 (August): 36-69. 2012 “Thinking Straight: Queer Imaging in Lino Brocka’s Maynila (1975),” Plaridel 9.2 (August): 21-40. 2011 “Primates in Paradise: Critical Possibilities of the Milieu Movie,” Kritika Kultura 17 (August): 70-104. 2006 “Indochine and the Politics of Gender,” Asian Journal of Women’s Studies 12.4 (Winter): 61-93. Á David, Jose H. S.: Leadership & Social Responsibility Updated July 2017 Page 6 of 7
1990 “A Second Golden Age,” Kultura 2.4 (January-March): 14-26. 1986 “Local Cinema in Today’s Mass Media,” Philippines Communication Journal 1 (December): 69-71. 1984 “Perseverance in a Neglected Dimension,” Diliman Review (March-April): 66-72.
4.1.2. Selected Journal Reviews
2017 “Seeds in the Garden of Letters: A Review of The End of National Cinema by Patrick F. Campos” (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2017), Humanities Diliman: A Philippine Journal of Humanities 14.2 (July-December, forthcoming). 2017 Book review of Rolando B. Tolentino’s Contestable Nation-Space: Cinema, Cultural Politics, and Transnationalism in the Marcos-Brocka Philippines (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2014), International Journal of Asian Studies 14.1 (January): 112-15. 2013 “Pinoy Filmfests 2013,” Manila Review 4 (February): 29-32. 2012 Book review of May Adadol Ingawanij & Benjamin McKay (eds.), Glimpses of Freedom: Independent Cinema in Southeast Asia (Ithaca: Cornell University, 2012), Southeast Asian Studies 1.3 (December): 529-33. 2009 Book review of Bliss Cua Lim’s Translating Time: Cinema, the Fantastic, and Temporal Critique (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), Asian Journal of Women’s Studies 15.4 (Winter): 124-32. 2006 “Queer Shuttling: Korea – Manila – New York” (review of queer film festivals), GLQ 12.4 (2006): 614-17. 1989 “Text vs. Texture” (film review of Macho Dancer, dir. Lino Brocka), Kultura 2.2 (July-September): 26-33.
4.2. Films
2007 Performer for digital film Manwal sa Paggawa ng Pelikula (Karl Fredrick M. Castro, producer/director/writer; Best Short Film at 2008 Philippine Women’s University Independent Film Group Festival) 1994 Performer for 16mm. black-and-white films Get out More Often and Tabula Rasa (Roger Hallas, director/writer) and Four Days of Heartbreak (Bliss Lim, director/writer), all produced in New York City 1993 Director/writer of Letter from Manila (16mm. black-and-white sound film, featuring Chris Millado, Tom Bikales, Hilary Haman), produced in New York City 1990 Character performer for MRN Films' Andrea, Paano Ba ang Maging Isang Ina? (Gil Portes, director and Ricardo Lee, writer), five prizes as Best Picture from various Philippine awards bodies 1986 Producer/director/writer of Short Film: Isang Short Film (super-8mm. color sound film, featuring Ben Bañares, Senedy Que, Malou de la Cruz, Rollie de la Cruz, Mac Alejandre, Sammy Mojica et al.), exhibited at the Quezon City International Super-8 Film Festival 1986 Script researcher for Zenith Productions' Four Days in February (Marilou Diaz-Abaya, director and Jose Dalisay Jr., writer; feature on the 1986 "people-power" revolution) 1986 Production assistant and atmosphere person for Regal Films' Asawa Ko, Huwag Mong Agawin (Emmanuel H. Borlaza, director and writer; released 1987) 1985 Co-producer/director/writer/performer of Kababata (super-8mm. color sound film, featuring Raul Regalado, Milo Paz et al.), exhibited at the ECP Annual Short Film Festival 1980s English subtitler (from the Filipino) for various international festival competition entries, including San Sebastian International Film Festival best film Cain at Abel (Lino Brocka, director and Ricardo Lee, writer)
Á David, Jose H. S.: Leadership & Social Responsibility Updated July 2017 Page 7 of 7
4.3. Print/Radio/Video/Television/Stage
2008-present Adviser/reader/critic of various Ph.D., & M.A. research theses for Inha University’s communication and digital culture programs 2002-10 Adviser/reader/critic of various Ph.D., M.A., & B.A. research and production theses and dissertations (including UP Film Institute’s 2010 Special Awardee for Best Thesis), as well as student projects for UP Film Institute and Bicol University internship trainees 2006-07 Adviser of various undergraduate speech projects, including Regional Grand Prizewinner for IYF English Speech Contest (Gangwon-do, Korea) and first-place winners for Hallym English Speech Contest and Hallym International English Speech Contest 1992-93 Co-host of Kritika, weekly radio program in Filipino and English on culture and criticism aired over DZUP in Metro Manila 1992 Adviser for UPCMC Most Outstanding Production Thesis winner Lino, Tinimbang Ka (Telemachus Diwa, Willison Ke, and Edwin Pascasio, directors/writers) 1990 Performer for UPCMC Most Outstanding Production Thesis winner Big Flick in the Sky (Kenneth Angliongto, director/writer) 1986-92 Assistant/unit director, co-writer, and/or script researcher for various projects commissioned by the National Media Production Center, Commission on Elections, and UP Office of the President 1986-87 Scriptwriter for This Week in Manila (broadcast in San Francisco, USA) and researcher for Nightline: Manila (broadcast in Metro Manila), including Catholic Mass Media Awards and Cultural Center of the Philippines prize-winning episodes
Á Joel David [Jose Hernani Segovia DAVID]
RESULTS & IMPACT
JOEL DAVID had started his academic film activity around the same time that the University of the Philippines was exploring the possibility of offering a full-blown program in the field. For his first undergraduate degree in journalism, however, only one subject (Cinematic Arts in the then-Department of Humanities) was available, along with courses in broadcast scriptwriting and playwriting. He wrote reviews for Philippine Collegian and, as a freelancer, off-campus publications. As a result, he became the youngest member at the time of the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino, where he became its corporate secretary. To supplement his freelance activities, he and a few other film buffs formed a group, Cine Gang, which conducted a successful (pre-video-era) film-revival series and published film books; its first outing, Ricardo Lee’s back-to-back screenplays for Brutal and Salome, won a special prize during the first National Book Award from the Manila Critics Circle.
David continued his film training via on-the-job activities. He wrote reviews and criticism for various newspapers, magazines, and journals, culminating in a five-year resident-critic stint at National Midweek. He also engaged in film policy, promotion, and education as Head of the Writers Section at the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines. While with the organization, he saw an opportunity to publicly release the integral version of Ishmael Bernal’s Manila by Night because of the ECP’s call for a liberal screening policy in the wake of protests that began with the Aquino assassination. When the ECP learned that an undergraduate degree in film was finally available at UP, it sponsored David’s bid for a second degree. The ECP was dissolved with the ouster of the Marcos regime, but David was able to complete the program and become the country’s first and only bachelor’s-degree holder in film. He spent a few years in various media capacities, including production assistantships for several commercial film projects.
In 1987, David began teaching at the UP film program, with the late Dean Ellen Paglinauan as his mentor in the then-recently emergent field of screen cultural studies. He was able to publish two books of his reviews and articles, winning raves and recognition (including the MCC’s first National Book Award for Film Criticism). He was also selected for a Fulbright scholarship for an M.A. in Cinema Studies at New York University, the top-ranked institution for the field. Upon completing the degree, he was informed of his selection for NYU’s doctoral program in Cinema Studies – a degree that he pursued via a combination of partial grants, work, and student loans.
He returned to UP and, with the help of Professor Paglinauan, enabled the formation of the Film Institute from the merger of the film program and the UP Film Center. His first project was the passing and defense of an M.A. Film program and a reorganization of the new Institute’s staffing pattern. David left UP in order to seek a means to repay his graduate-school student loans, and found viable employment in Korea. On his way to becoming the only Filipino to acquire tenure in a Korean university, he continued his scholarly and critical activities, including Korean cinema in his list of scholarly pursuits. He posted all his out-of-print publications on his archival blog Amauteurish!, conducted a six-year canon-formation activity for Summit Media’s YES! magazine, and edited special issues (on Manila by Night and Nora Aunor, among other topics) for Kritika Kultura, the Philippines’s only humanities journal listed with the Institute for Scientific Information. In recognition of his contributions, David was the first Filipino to be give a life-achievement prize for film scholarship and criticism, the Gawad Lingap-Sining, during the 2016 FACINE Film Festival in San Francisco, California.
Á THE GLORY AWARDS Dean Gloria Feliciano Awards For Outstanding UPCMC Alumni
SAMPLES OF WORK
CRITERIA IV: Samples of Work Requirement: Submission of work samples that are appropriate to the nominee’s specialization (see details below). Jurors shall evaluate these works using accepted standards of excellence in the nominee’s particular field or discipline.
B. Journalism for Print or Online At least four (4) of the nominee’s published works in PDF format; or submit links to enable online viewing of the nominee’s works. The websites should have been publishing journalistic pieces regularly and continuously for at least one year.
Articles:
“The Fantasy World of Rey de la Cruz.” New Day (October 6, 1986): pp. 12-14, rpt. in Millennial Traversals. PDF copy, as posted on Amauteurish!
“A Second Golden Age.” Kultura 2.4 (January-March 1990): pp. 14-26, rpt. in The National Pastime. PDF copy, as posted on Amauteurish!
“The Ten Best Filipino Films” (Melanie Joy C. Garduño, co-author). National Midweek (July 4, 1990): pp. 125-136, rpt. in Fields of Vision. PDF copy, as posted on Amauteurish!
“Kim Dae-jung and the Aquinos.” Korea Times (June 2, 2009): p. 15, rpt. in Millennial Traversals. PDF copy of original post.
“Punch Tackles Fil-Korean’s Search for Mother.” ABS-CBNnews.com (November 28, 2011), rpt. in Millennial Traversals. PDF copy of original post.
“A National Artist We Deserve.” TheFilAm.net (June 21, 2014), rpt. in Millennial Traversals. PDF copy of original post.
Book:
Fields of Vision: Critical Applications in Recent Philippine Cinema. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1995. Digital Edition: © 2014 by Joel David & Amauteurish Publishing, All Rights Reserved. URL https://amauteurish.com/ 2014/04/23/fields-of-vision/. PDF copy of Introduction & Table of Contents.
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Á Journal publications:
“Thinking Straight: Queer Imaging in Lino Brocka’s Maynila (1975).” Plaridel: A Philippine Journal of Communication, Media, and Society 9.2 (August 2012): pp. 21-40. PDF copy of original post.
“Phantom in Paradise: A Philippine Presence in Hollywood Cinema.” Kritika Kultura 21-22 (August 2013): pp. 560-583. PDF copy of original post.
Website:
Amauteurish! Active WordPress blog. Opened April 2011, published June 2014. URL: https://amauteurish.com/. PDF copy of “About” page.
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Á About Latest Remarks Books Articles Reviews Extras Contact
Amauteurish! MOVIES AS OUR LIFE-SAVING TIME-WASTER….
Suggested Features Millennial March 19, 2014 Non-titles listed here may be Traversals – The descriptions of articles or chapters, rather than their actual titles. Links will open with the Fantasy World of formal title of the text, along with Rey de la Cruz the text itself. By Joel David • Annual Filipino Film Chart The surge of renewed interest in the suspicious circumstances surrounding Sole-Authored Books the death of too-young Pepsi Paloma in 1985 has still not raised any • The National Pastime eyebrows regarding what subsequently happened to her rabble-rousing • Fields of Vision • Wages of Cinema manager, Rey de la Cruz. Shot dead in the optical clinic where he lived, de la • Millennial Traversals Cruz had deliberately cultivated an unsavory reputation – but mainly in his • Book Texts: A Pinoy Film Course showbiz affairs. When Communist party renegade Felimon “Popoy” Lagman was also slain by unidentified assassins, the Bukluran ng Manggagawang 23rd FACINE Film Festival Pilipino, which he led, mentioned that an arrest warrant for him still had to be • Gawad Lingap Sining Citation served for the murder of de la Cruz. So the question of who killed de la Cruz, • 2016 FACINE Lecture unlike the issue of whether poor Pepsi was murdered, appears to have been resolved, but only because his supposed killer can no longer attest to or deny Special Lists the charge. [This article originally appeared in the Business Day supplement • Film auteurs, play directors, & New Day (October 6, 1986: 12, 14), with the unqualified support and book authors encouragement of the section editor, Daisy Catherine L. Mandap, who now • National Midweek articles • Journal publications heads the Hong Kong-based Sun publication; an earlier interview with Rey de la Cruz, along with other star-builders, appears here.] Criticism • A Second Golden Age • The Trouble with Golden Ages • More on the 2nd Golden Age • Ten Best Films Survey (1990) • An Awards Exercise • Pinoy Film Criticism • Fallout over Criticizing Critics Interviews (of J. David) • Re Amauteurish! (P.D. Grant) • Re The National Pastime (V. Ira) Interviews (of Others) A tall leather chair behind an appropriately imposing table provides film • Ishmael Bernal (A. Vasudev) personality Rey de la Cruz, incidentally Doctor of Optometry, with a suitable • Bien Lumbera position from which to survey prospective applicants, patients, and • Doy del Mundo interviewers who get to sit on depressed and low-backed receiving chairs. “I • Rey de la Cruz have always been a star-builder,” he smiles beatifically, “even when I was still a • Pio de Castro III student. Everything you see here, without exception, comes from the blood, • Ramon Reyes sweat, and tears I invested in my work in the movies.” Fil(m)ipiniana • SineManila “Everything” I took to include an entire floor space of a relatively tall building • Focus on Filipino Films (1983) in the Lilliputian backside of Quiapo, two blocks near the subject’s famed • Transcription Chapter (1983) optical clinic, where a rugged male attendant directs correctly credentialed • Roundtable on Criticism (2014) curiosity-seekers like me to search the doctor’s residence downstreet. “You • Sight & Sound section (2002) won’t miss it,” he assures me, and sure enough, the first building that seems to assert an air of dignity in this polluted part of the district yields Rey de la This Blog (& Me) Cruz’s name, and nothing else, for the fifth-floor portion of its directory. • How to Use Amauteurish! • Reviews & Recommendations The address where de la Cruz holds court will immediately impress the • Joel Who? outsider with its overabundance of the trappings of fast accumulated wealth. A • Marcos & the Movies pair of gossiping old women, an alert girl Friday, a half-dressed teenage kid, • Movie Labor Á and some children quietly at play make sure that you get ushered into the right These Blogs (for Me) parlor, instead of the kitchen, bathroom, or private chambers where, de la • 1505 Film Avenue (N. Costales) Cruz clarifies later, starlets Lampel Cojuangco and Mishelle Zobel, his latest • Addicted to Movies (J.J. David) acquisitions – rather, alagas, reside. • Another Sani Day (S.C. Ajero) • Cinema Bravo (J.B. Estillore et Distinctions al.) • Closely Watched Frames (N. Dr. de la Cruz starts out by showing a recent issue of Asia magazine, which Manaig) featured him in a sidebar on an article on the local bold-movie trend. “I was • Critic after Dark (N. Vera) also voted ‘Most Controversial Guest of the Year’ in See-True”[1] – he points • Death of Traditional Cinema (M. to a plaque on a side table – “and was interviewed for Channel 2’s Variety Macarayan) program as well as another international magazine.” • Film Police Reviews (A. dela Cruz et al.) Then he quickly gets to the point. “I don’t understand why people take my • The Knee-Jerk Critic (R.E. Lopez) controversial status against me. I provide a living for my discoveries, I give the • Lilok Pelikula (R. Bolisay) masa the entertainment they want, and I make a living in the process – ano’ng • Magsine Tayo! (J. Devera) masama duon? I even agreed to become barangay captain of Quiapo to be able • Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino to render more and systematic service to my fellowmen, and then a nuisance • Missing Codec (E. Deyto) like Polly Cayetano questions my appointment, charges me in court for • New Durian Cinema (T. exploitation of minors, and calls me a pimp on the air. Sa dami ng sumasakay Mangansakan et al.) sa akin, kailangang mag-rationalize ako, otherwise matagal na sana akong • NOOD.ph: Pinoy Movie Reviews Atbp. nawalan ng pag-asa.” • Omnitudo (A.D. Mendizabal) Sooner or later it becomes clear to even the most casual observer that the very • Pelikulove (E.O. Marfil et al.) subject of Rey de la Cruz may require some rationalizing too. I had interviewed • Pinoy Rebyu (S. Labastilla) • #Pop #Culture #Diva (A. del him a half-decade ago for an omnibus write-up on the state of star-building in Mundo) the country[2] and, in contrast to pros like Jesse Ejercito and Douglas Quijano, • Present Confusion (J. Tawasil) he had seemed much more guarded and tentative way back then. • Space-Aso (R. Cerda) • Tablestretcher (L. Maburaot) “Marami na akong na-build up,” he continues, “and each time na me • Tagailog Special Presents (M. kumakalas sa akin, I’d tell myself tama na, ayoko na. And then me bagong Pangaruy Jr.) dumarating, me responsibilidad na naman ako, balik na naman sa star- • Takilya ni Leaflens (L.L. Cantor) building.” • Video 48 (S. Santos) • WickedMouth (G. Tabarejos) At this point he cannot seem to resist a digression. “Tulad nung case ni Lala • Young Critics Circle Montelibano – hindi ko naman intensyon na mang-iskandalo. I heard she wanted to break away from me, so when I learned she was appearing in See- True, I presented her with her real mother, as if to tell her, ‘We are all responsible for other people in our lives, so don’t forget whom you are responsible for.’ E siguro, her adoptive mother thought the real mother was there to get back Lala, di pati yung thirty-percent commission niya sa bata e mawawala, kaya ayun, nagkagulo na.” Although aware that the incident has generated a generous amount of public outrage, de la Cruz will admit that at the most “I tell only white lies, in the interest of promoting a movie. Sino naman ba’ng hindi gumagawa nuon? Pero if ever I resort to a gimmick, ginigimikan ko lang ang totoo. Example: yung Tondo-girl gimmick ko ke Myrna Castillo, maraming nagalit doon dahil hindi raw kapani-paniwala na me ganung kaganda sa slum area. Nag-white lie na ako nung pino-promote yung launching movie niya, when I said na me tattoo siya sa boobs, pero it turned out na mas effective yung gimmick ko kesa sa promotion nung pelikula.” In the long run, he has seen to it that, as far as he’s concerned, only good comes out of whatever vulgarities he foists upon the public to capture their attention. “Hindi alam ng marami,” he explains, “na behind all the publicity, I train my discoveries to become model citizens. Lahat ng social graces ini-introduce ko sa kanila. Pati sa acting, me workshop sila conducted at my expense, exclusively for them.” He proudly points out that two of his female stars have attained well-earned reputations as serious actresses, even though one of them – Rio Locsin – had a painful and public falling-out with him, and another – Sarsi Emmanuelle – has been having difficulty in sustaining her popularity because of alleged professional indifference. The JQ Connection “If you still cannot take what I’m doing,” he says between chuckles, “blame Joe Quirino.” As his journalism professor at the Manuel L. Quezon University, the inimitable JQ took him away by introducing him to Mars Ravelo and Jose “Doc” Perez. The former may account for his propensity in plotting komiks- like twists and turns to publicize his wards, but it is the Sampaguita Pictures mogul he credits for teaching him “the ABCs of star-building. All in all Doc gave me ten valuable tips, all of them confidential.” That was twenty years ago, when the Stars ’66 batch of discoveries had a Á tantalizing effect on him, coming as he did “fresh from a small town in Cagayan, where I was the seventh among eleven children; ako lang ang bakla, ako lang ang napadpad sa showbiz, at ako lang,” he finishes with relish, “ang nakapagpaaral sa twenty-five na kamag-anak ko, some of whom are now big- timers in the States.” He strokes a thinning crop of hair and directs his professorial mien toward a forever-gone era of innocence, of roses and lollipops and Zandro Zamora. “I was only twenty when I started out. I had ten thousand pesos, all my savings, to begin with, so I bought my first car, a second-hand Triumph Herald, para maging karapat-dapat kay Zandro Zamora. Bini-build up ko siya pero nasira ang ulo ko sa kanya, masyado ako naging possessive. We parted ways as friends – if he ever considered me a friend – pero since then babae na lang ang kadalasang bini-build up ko. I get too involved with my men, and then they get involved with my female discoveries, as in the case of Gil Guerrero and Myrna Castillo. People get the impression tuloy na pinapares-pares ko yung mga alaga ko.” After he made it big with Rio Locsin in the mid-’70s, he launched Myrna Castillo (initially as Rio Locsin II, to replace the then already-gone original) and, after she paired off with Guerrero – only to lately return to de la Cruz – he launched his first batch of female starlets. Because of their literally commercialized designations they became known collectively as the “softdrink beauties”: Coca Nicolas, Sarsi Emmanuelle, and the tragic Pepsi Paloma, who figured in a messy rape case (capped by an exploitation vehicle) before she allegedly took her own life. Introduced along with them was what de la Cruz describes as “the only uncola, Myra Manibog.” Then the “hard-drink beauties” followed – Remy Martin, Chivas Regal, Vodka Zobel, and Brandy Ayala; only the last, according to de la Cruz, “has survived in showbiz. The rest are in Japan earning two thousand dollars a month each as live entertainers.” Trendsetting De la Cruz’s arrival as a promo personality was accorded a dubious form of flattery during the early ’80s when his concept of launching discoveries in batches was imitated. Into the movie pages (as well as a few actual productions) marched the “street beauties,” who sported such throw-away appellations as Ayala Buendia, Aurora Boulevard, Remedios Malate, Lerma Morayta, and Bridget Jones. A parade of pulchritudinous hopefuls has been following suit since, assuming de la Cruz-inspired sobriquets like Lyka Ugarte, Claudia Zobel (another tragic waste), and, in keeping up with his latest batch, Cristina Crisol and Elsa Enrile. Yes, he has decided to contribute his share to the political awakening of the country by presenting, on the heels of the runaway Lala Montelibano, the “revolutionary beauties,” complete with farcically flippant anecdote: “Nagkita-kita raw sila sa EDSA during the revolution, hindi na makauwi sa dami ng tao, so they decided to stay together with the rest of people power.” An enumeration of what sound like noms de guerre, instead of screen names, follows, showing that by now, the guy has crossed the line between wordplay and downright irreverence: “Aida Dimaporo, sixteen; Ava Manotoc, Vanessa Ver, and straight from Cebu, Lota Misuari, all nineteen; plus a tribute to my tormentor, Polly Cayetano, seventeen. I chose those names,” he hastens to add, “because I want people to become less emotional about political personalities. I’d like to see them smile when they hear those names.” But what about the names’ real owners? “My legal research reveals that there’s no law against using other people’s names. Of course I might desist if the origs want me to, pero I’m sure that if they see the girls, with their beauty and sex appeal, baka matuwa pa pati sila.” What de la Cruz tries his best to suppress is the notion that his girls are “available” – the subject of his interview with Asia magazine. “If ever they do it on their own, I have to make sure na hindi naa-associate yung ginagawa nila sa akin.” He applies the same tack to an even more sensational recent development in local film practice: “Beware, I tell them, if your director wants you to do penetration scenes, because I can’t be around to keep watch all the time. Ask yourselves na lang, in a practical way: gusto niyo ba, type niyo ba yung makakapareha niyo, tama ba yung bayad sa puri niyo, and dapat, money down. Kung maaatim ng kalooban niyo e bakit hindi, basta hindi kayo pinupuwersa. Pero kung ako ang tatanungin kung ano’ng advice ko, sabihin niyong sabi ko, huwag.” Legacies Á By a mysterious coincidence a side door opens, and out drifts a pale and fragile wisp of a girl in housefrock, smiling shyly at everyone present and receding before anyone could figure out what she was about. “Si Lampel Cojuangco,” Rey de la Cruz whispers, almost conspiratorially. “Hindi na ’yan mabobola ng producer sa mga penetration scenes.” For every extreme development de la Cruz has required a balancing factor; it must be alarmingly reflective of the times that he claims to have resorted recently to, of all things, Bible-reading. “Dito ko kinukuha ngayon yang mga lessons na ina-apply ko sa kanila,” he says, picking up a voluminous edition from his desk and putting it down just as quickly. One wonders how far he is willing to enforce the scarily stiff Judeo-Christian tradition on his present and prospective talents. “Me male applicant pa nga aka dito from the States” – he takes out photos of a mean-looking Oriental in progressive stages of dishabille and spreads them over the scriptures – “at mahina na yung dalawang walk-in applicants a day, from both sexes, sa akin. That’s because I can claim now that my stars get sold partly on the basis of their association with me. Pati masa nakikilala na yung hitsura ko.” Talking about his image and popularity leads him to articulate his longing for “a legitimate ‘bold’ center, para magka-outlet ang artistic bold films, para ma- develop ang taste ng local audience, at higit sa lahat, para may pagkakakitaan ang mga taong umaasa sa ganung klaseng hanapbuhay, kesa mapilitang gumawa ng mas masama pa. I don’t understand why people get mad when the censors get strict, tapos they get mad again when there are bold films released. Most of all I don’t mind being associated with bold, pero ayun na nga, it’s always taken against me.” Maybe you’ve become a symbol of sorts? I suggest. Rey de la Cruz smiles. He seems to like the idea. Notes [1] A then-popular TV talk show featuring mostly film personalities, hosted by Inday Badiday (screen name of Lourdes Jimenez Carvajal, sister of magazine editor Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc). [2] “Star-Building Pays,” Times Journal (May 26, 1980): 21, 23. Back to top Return to Millennial Traversals contents
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Suggested Features The National April 24, 2014 Non-titles listed here may be Pastime – A Second descriptions of articles or chapters, rather than their actual titles. Links will open with the Golden Age formal title of the text, along with By Joel David the text itself. When Ishmael Bernal used the exact same term “Second Golden Age” in his • Annual Filipino Film Chart last major interview, with Aruna Vasudev (16-23), I knew that it had effectively supplanted Bienvenido Lumbera’s coinage “New Philippine Sole-Authored Books Cinema” in his “Problems in Philippine Film History” (193-212); even a • The National Pastime foreign “history” volume like Bryan L. Yeatter’s mostly dispensable write-up • Fields of Vision observes a 1974-85 periodization (129-65) that acknowledges a “Second • Wages of Cinema Golden Era” without any clue about its provenance – a sign that the idea had • Millennial Traversals • Book Texts: A Pinoy Film Course become paradigmatic. Not that that was my intention though; in fact I deliberately maintained a non-titular preference for the 23rd FACINE Film Festival uncapitalized “second,” even though I succumbed to standard capitalization • Gawad Lingap Sining Citation practice later. The essay was the opening salvo (to use Patrick D. Flores’s • 2016 FACINE Lecture review description) in a series of provocations that I was hoping would initiate productive, even dissentious, exchanges. Yet even the negative Special Lists responses to The National Pastime seemed willing to accept, or maybe • Film auteurs, play directors, & reluctant to question, the premise behind the assertion that the martial-law book authors era ironically provided a fecund playing field for cinema, or shall we • National Midweek articles say Ciné-mah. My own attempt at questioning the Golden Ages idea was (to • Journal publications me) too late, too rushed, and too reasonable (see “The Golden Ages of Criticism Philippine Cinema: A Critical Reassessment”), even if it also happened to be • A Second Golden Age the first to do so. Nevertheless I submit that the following article encapsulates • The Trouble with Golden Ages Marcos-era film policy and its overall-favorable impact on film practice, as • More on the 2nd Golden Age well as film observers’ urgent need to find useful historical frameworks for • Ten Best Films Survey (1990) further applications (and incidentally, to fellow Nora Aunor fans: • An Awards Exercise “Performances of the Age” is only a section of the present article, not a stand- • Pinoy Film Criticism alone write-up). “A Second Golden Age” was originally published in the • Fallout over Criticizing Critics October-December 1989 issue of the Cultural Center of the Philippines journal Kultura (pp. 14-26 – p. 14 is below), then edited by Bien Lumbera; its title was Interviews (of J. David) modified by the publisher of The National Pastime (where it appeared on pp. • Re Amauteurish! (P.D. Grant) 1-17) to include the parenthesized phrase “An Informal History.” • Re The National Pastime (V. Ira) Interviews (of Others) • Ishmael Bernal (A. Vasudev) • Bien Lumbera • Doy del Mundo • Rey de la Cruz • Pio de Castro III • Ramon Reyes Fil(m)ipiniana • SineManila • Focus on Filipino Films (1983) • Transcription Chapter (1983) • Roundtable on Criticism (2014) • Sight & Sound section (2002) This Blog (& Me) • How to Use Amauteurish! • Reviews & Recommendations • Joel Who? • Marcos & the Movies Talk has been current, but not ardent enough, about the recent conclusion of a • Movie Labor second Golden Age in Philippine cinema. Of course the notion of a Golden Age Á has its share of reputable disputants. No less than Eddie Romero, who surged These Blogs (for Me) forward at the start of what may be considered our filmic Golden Age II, cited • 1505 Film Avenue (N. Costales) ancient Greece in claiming that no such period of clear and concentrated • Addicted to Movies (J.J. David) artistic achievement could be reasonably circumscribed anywhere. On the • Another Sani Day (S.C. Ajero) other hand lies a just-as-ancient necessity of defining parameters for purposes • Cinema Bravo (J.B. Estillore et of easier classification and, more important, to enable contemporary al.) observers to draw significant lessons therefrom. Presuming that Golden Ages • Closely Watched Frames (N. do exist, no other period becomes more needful in finding out how and why Manaig) they do than that immediately following the conclusion of such a one. • Critic after Dark (N. Vera) • Death of Traditional Cinema (M. More to the point of Romero’s argument, however, would be the obvious Macarayan) difficulty in pinpointing specific periods of artistic productivity. The flowering • Film Police Reviews (A. dela Cruz of Athenian culture could be studied intensively within the context of entire et al.) • The Knee-Jerk Critic (R.E. Lopez) centuries of ancient Greek life; true, certain important artists and philosophers • Lilok Pelikula (R. Bolisay) were contemporaries of one another – but this was more of the exception, the • Magsine Tayo! (J. Devera) rule being one major practitioner being followed, chronologically speaking, by • Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino another who would either break away from the elder’s school or tradition, or • Missing Codec (E. Deyto) venture completely on his own in a new, unpredictable direction. • New Durian Cinema (T. Mangansakan et al.) The soundness of Romero’s assertion actually derives from the fail-safe • NOOD.ph: Pinoy Movie Reviews construction of his logic. Nothing in human history can ever compare to the Atbp. Greeks’ cultural exploits – and so, if we grant that they never had a Golden • Omnitudo (A.D. Mendizabal) Age, then there never could have been any such thing since. Rather than • Pelikulove (E.O. Marfil et al.) despair over our modern-day limitations in the face of such insurmountable • Pinoy Rebyu (S. Labastilla) criteria of excellence, I believe we could do well enough in assessing ourselves • #Pop #Culture #Diva (A. del for more sober, though perhaps less immortalizing, reasons. By this account a Mundo) Golden Age need not be a wholly intensive and sustained national outbreak of • Present Confusion (J. Tawasil) cultural creativity. A limited period in a specific field, defined according to the • Space-Aso (R. Cerda) concentration of output relative to periods preceding and succeeding it, should • Tablestretcher (L. Maburaot) prove adequate for the moment. • Tagailog Special Presents (M. Pangaruy Jr.) Golden Age I • Takilya ni Leaflens (L.L. Cantor) • Video 48 (S. Santos) The first Golden Age in Philippine cinema has had slightly varied reckonings of • WickedMouth (G. Tabarejos) its exact duration. All, however, agree to the inclusion of the entire decade of • Young Critics Circle the 1950s. The most important feature of this period was the political stability brought about by postwar reconstruction and the aggressive suppression of the Communist insurgency, paralleled in film by the stabilization of the studio system. That this phase ever came to a close indicates the short-sightedness of the solutions being applied. Reconstruction commits itself only to the attainment of a previous level of accomplishment (in this case the prewar situation), whereas insurgency addresses itself to the overthrow of a government on the basis of a problem – agrarian reform – more persistent that its leaders’ understandable aspirations to political power. The movie industry’s studio system, in seeking to institutionalize professionalism and (incidentally?) control the means of distribution, overlooked the natural inclination of talents, including stars, to seek more abundant means of remuneration outside the system if necessary, as well as the willingness of independent production outfits to forsake the studios’ long-term advantages and meet the demands of talents in return for faster and more immediate profits. Hence the interval between the first and the second Golden Ages saw the rise of the independents and the superstars, backgrounded by the revitalization of the peasant-based insurgency and an engineered economic instability that paved the way for the imposition and eventual acceptance of fascist rule. Back to top A Near-Golden Age The declaration of martial law in 1972 promoted hopes for an end to the country’s political and economic difficulties. It also may have forestalled a creative resurgency in local moviemaking, brought about through a subsequently admitted social experiment by censors chief and presidential adviser Guillermo de Vega, who was latest assassinated under mysterious circumstances. A casual view of the products of the pre-martial law seventies reveals what we might have been headed for: socially conscious and psychologically frank products, without a compulsion to alienate the vast majority of moviegoers, even in the most artistic instances. Apparently neutral or even antipathetic projects actually allowed for a lot of leeway in the selection of material and Á permutations of form and expression. Most significant was the proliferation of bomba or hard-core sex films, the direct result of de Vega’s extreme libertarianism; but just as important were the counter-reactions, the musicals and love triangles, that provided relief in opposing formats, even for serious practitioners. Moreover, regional (Cebuano-language) cinema had mellowed at the latter portion of a wondrously long curve, providing assurances of alternatives for Manila-based practitioners (which included Emmanuel H. Borlaza and Leroy Salvador), as well as an additional stable for the recruitment of onscreen talent, notably the Amado Cortez – Gloria Sevilla and Eddie Mesa – Rosemarie Gil clans. Ismael Bernal came up with the last major black-and-white Filipino film and the most important debut of his generation with Pagdating sa Dulo. Lino Brocka, who was to share with Bernal the rivalry for artistic supremacy in the Golden Age that was to come, rebounded quick with a pair of highly inspired komiks-adapted titles for his studio base, Lea Productions, namely Stardoom and Tubog sa Ginto, plus an otherwise effective Fernando Poe Jr. epic, Santiago. This era, rather than the mid-seventies as commonly supposed, also signalled the maturation of Celso Ad. Castillo. In another Poe-starrer, Asedillo, as well as in a horrific bomba entry, Nympha, he exhibited a fascination for unconventional visual values and thematic daring, properties that were to serve him well during the latter part of the decade. Other names associated with academe- and theater-based artist circles made their mark with relatively serious attempts, including Elwood Perez with Blue Boy and Nestor U. Torre with Crush Ko si Sir. Perhaps more significantly, a number of scriptwriters who were to figure prominently during the forthcoming Golden Age first figured here, with either solo or shared credits: Torre with his debut film, Bernal with Luis Enriquez’s Ah, Ewan! Basta sa Maynila Pa Rin Ako!, and Orlando Nadres with Tony Cayado’s Happy Hippie Holiday. Brocka, after writing for Luciano B. Carlos’s Arizona Kid, provided breaks for several scriptwriting aspirants, among them Nadres with Stardoom, Mario O’Hara with Lumuha Pati mga Anghel, and Alfred Yuson with Cherry Blossoms. Right after Marcos’s martial-rule clampdown, and in a sense a consequence of the aforementioned near-anarchic (and therefore procreative) bent, came names like Peque Gallaga and Buth Perez with Binhi, Romy Suzara with Tatlong Mukha ni Rosa Vilma, Jun Raquiza with Dalawang Mukha ng Tagumpay, and George Rowe with Paru-Parung Itim, Nora Aunor’s first production, serious film, and (it wasn’t to be the last such combination) box- office flop. Rolando Tinio wrote for Bernal’s Now and Forever and Ricardo Lee, using the pseudonym R.H. Laurel, for the late Armando Garces’s Dragnet. Pre-Golden Age II Critics currently carping at the discernible decline in the quality of film output relative to the period prior to the 1986 revolution should actually have more to be grateful for, aside from the usual evolutionary benefits of better technology and more formalized media, even film-specific, education. At least an excess of film awards, a heritage of the just-concluded second Golden Age, ensures that truly deserving products will now have a greater chance of acquiring recognition, no matter how belated. In the first half of the seventies all we ever really had was the Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences (FAMAS), then suffering a downswing in sensibility from which it has never fully recovered; and so, despite the long list of titles mentioned above, its early seventies best-film winners were forgettables like Kill the Pusher, Mga Anghel na Walang Langit, Nueva Vizcaya, and Gerardo de Leon’s regrettable Lilet. Keeping the faith were Bernal, Perez, and Joey Gosiengfiao with their usually combinative Sine Pilipino/Juan de la Cruz Productions; Castillo with his horror films; Raquiza with this thrillers; Suzara with his sober dramas; and Nora Aunor with her admirable acting vehicles, including the only project that could boast of crediting both de Leon and Lamberto Avellana, the omnibus Fe, Esperanza, Caridad. It was Brocka, however, who returned from a period of inactivity with two productions that combined the then-impossible characteristics of being both major and personal, Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang in 1974 and Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag in 1975. The direct beneficiaries of this renewal of artistic consciousness in film included Brocka himself, with his three-in-one Tatlo, Dalawa, Isa; Perez with his three-in-one Isang Gabi, Tatlong Babae!; Gosiengfiao with the last Filipino black-and-white movie La Paloma, ang Kalapating Ligaw; Castillo with his careful revivification of the bomba (later Á to be called “bold” and initiated with the wet look) in Ang Pinakamagandang Hayop sa Balat ng Lupa; and Bernal with Mister Mo, Lover Boy Ko. Back to top Golden Age II: Beginnings Maynila could properly serve as the marker for the second Golden Age of Philippine cinema. It was a more precious and accomplished work than the same director’s Tinimbang, and ushered in a tendency toward new talents and novel projects that was to intensify in the coming year. Brockas’s triumphs, overwhelming even the FAMAS, can be regarded as the conclusive cause, especially in the light of his current and still single-handed renewal of filmic consciousness, this time on an international scale, with his post-’86 works Macho Dancer and Orapronobis. There are, however, other attributable semi- or even non-industrial reasons for the phenomenon. The relative sanguinity brought about by the sudden infusion of foreign loans (before these assumed malignant proportions), coupled with the enforced stability of early martial rule, encouraged several newly prosperous entities to invest their money in a business that could be both glamorous and profitable. The youthful mass audience of the early seventies was prepared for a divergence and diversification of its favorite diversion, which was to culminate in a sophistication of its command of visual language that may still be extant at present. De Vega’s widow, Ma. Rocio, took over after his death and, for some reason or other, saw fit to return to his pre- martial law policy of libertarianism – which the military was to exploit as an excuse for its small-scale takeover of film-censorship prerogatives. Maynila’s impact was meanwhile long-ranging enough, boosted as it was by the earlier success of Tinimbang, and a whole new breed of filmmakers came to the fore; in chronological order: Lupita Concio (later Kashiwara) with Alkitrang Dugo, Eduardo Palmos co-directing Saan Ka Pupunta, Miss Lutgarda Nicolas?, Behn Cervantes 1976’s first debutant with Sakada, O’Hara with Mortal, Dindo Angeles with Sinta! Ang Bituing Bagong Gising, Gil Portes with Tiket Mama, Tiket Ale, sa Linggo ang Bola, and Mike de Leon with Itim. And these were just the ones who either started big or had major follow-up projects. A cursory look at the 1976 Filipino filmography would reveal a handful of other new names which would probably be of interest to those determined to delve deeper into the dynamics of the period. Again, however, the writers ought to sustain more productive study than the also-rans: Clodualdo del Mundo Jr. was responsible for the adaptation of Maynila from the novel by Edgardo Reyes, who himself was to cross over presently into the medium with Bernal’s Ligaw na Bulaklak. Preceding them were newsmen Antonio Mortel and Diego Cagahastian, who co-wrote Mister Mo, Lover Boy Ko, and fictionists Alberto Florentino and Wilfredo Nolledo, who were to be joined shortly by Jose F. Lacaba in Gosiengfiao’s omnibus Babae…Ngayon at Kailanman. Mauro Gia. Samonte was to write for Castillo’s Tag-ulan sa Tag- araw, Jorge Arago for Bernal’s Nunal sa Tubig, and Marina Feleo-Gonzalez for Kashiwahara’s Minsa’y Isang Gamu-gamo. Lamberto Antonio collaborated with O’Hara on Brocka’s Insiang, Roy Iglesias with Eddie Romero on the latter’s Ganito Kami Noon…Paano Kayo Ngayon?, and Gil Quito with del Mundo (and Ricardo Lee without credit) on Mike de Leon’s Itim. Sakada would have been the military establishment’s typical target for repression, but it unfortunately enjoyed the endorsement of de Vega; Danilo Cabreira’s Uhaw na Bulaklak, Part II served the purpose even better, deflecting as it did potentially confrontational politics toward the issue of moral rectitude; typically again, both titles had new writers-Lualhati Cruz (later Bautista) and Oscar Miranda for the former, Franklin Cabaluna for the latter. Guideposts for the Times Three developments, all of the same kind, served to temper the disheartening reality of the military’s assumption of local film censorship. The fact that the reconstituted body announced itself as “interim” in nature, implying an eventual return to civilian rule, was belied by its initial action of enforcing stricter measures, to the point of requiring the approval of storylines and screenplays and imposing a code that seemed deliberately directed against the output of serious practitioners. An entire catalog of anecdotes, sometimes humorous and often infuriating, primarily comprising dialogs between military censors and intelligent film practitioners, awaits documentation and will Á definitely help in particularizing the naïveté and arrogance of Filipinos suddenly imbued with power and influence. The already mentioned developments actually consist of the introduction of award-giving mechanisms by three sectors who were to make bids of varying degrees of urgency on mass media in general, and film in particular: the Catholic Church, government, and intelligentsia. The Catholic sector, in reviving its Citizens’ Award for Television, expanded it to encompass locally existent media of communications. Significantly, the first Catholic Mass Media Awardee for film was Nunal sa Tubig, which had seen rough sailing with the censors. The government, for its part, centralized all the annual city festivals in the newly organized metropolitan area in one major undertaking held during the lucrative spell between Christmas and New Year. The first few editions were either idealistic or disorganized or both, so that sensible film producers tended toward a policy of reserving prestige productions for this season. Despite occasional protestations from the bloc of foreign-film distributors and an ill-advised attempt to require developmental messages during the late seventies, the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) has endured as the government’s singular contribution to the pursuit of quality in local cinema, its awards being coveted not so much for the prestige they bestow as for the free and favorable publicity they afford otherwise commercially imperiled releases. The third, and for our purposes the most important, film awards for this period consist of those handed out by the reviewers’ circle, the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino (MPP), organized in 1976 and barely in time for the first flowering of the second Golden Age. The Urian awards, as these were called, served to recall and amplify the impact of the first MMFF in their echoing of the latter’s best-picture choice, Ganito Kami Noon. In fact the FAMAS, so as not to be left too far behind, selected another MMFF entry, Minsa’y Isang Gamu-gamo, for its top-prize winner, and observed the Urian’s dark-horse selection of Nora Aunor as the year’s best actress for her performance in her latest flop-production, O’Hara’s Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos. The Urian remained the most serious award-giving body for the most part of its first decade of existence, employing a system of viewing assignments, repeated screenings, and exhaustive deliberations that would have proved perfect had it been implemented conscientiously and consistently. Whatever the turnout of the MPP’s choices for any given year, the fact remains that its nominations were generally reliable reflections of the industry’s achievements in the medium, and thereby serve as better indicators of the state of the art than the awards themselves. This point was to be driven home as early as the next year of its existence. Where the MMFF actually defied the cultural establishment, which responded by withdrawing the prizes it handed out to Castillo’s Burlesk Queen, the Urian responded against the film as a representation of the MMFF’s process, selecting an academically defensible but less artistically vital entry as its year’s winner, and coming around to the Burlesk Queen filmmaker by awarding his next-year entry, which like the previous year’s winner was period and epic in scope. Such subjectivity of vision, coupled by a preference for underdog nominees, prompted Brocka, the fourth best-director awardee, to castigate the group and reject its future commendations. Nevertheless, as mentioned earlier, the MPP’s process right up to the deliberation of prizewinners was refined enough to ensure the accommodation of accomplishments major by the reasonably highest possible standards of filmic evaluation. Back to top Four Peaks By this account it becomes evident that the performance output of the local film industry’s best and brightest tended to observe peaks and valleys, instead of a consistent (and therefore easily predictable) plateau or slope. The first was of course the already described beginning, that yielded Maynila on one end and Ganito Kami Noon on the other. The second was a good four years after, when the highest artistic point of the Golden Age and, by reasonable extension, of Philippine cinema thus far, was attained with Bernal’s Manila by Night. Afterward major-status entries on the order of Bernal’s innovations with filmic milieu arrived with regular frequency, with Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s Moral two years later; Brocka’s Miguelito: Ang Batang Rebelde still another three years after would close the era, curiously with the same director who helped open it. This regularity of productivity was in fact cut short by the 1986 revolution, in much the same way that Proclamation 1081 ended the early seventies’ creative Á outbursts. Sociopolitical upheavals may be the most obvious, but definitely not the only, similarities between the periods in question. Prior to 1986, as before 1972, an era of moral permissiveness held sway in cinema. Immediately after the upheavals, audiences tended to shy away from moviegoing, and had to be lured back with blatantly commercial products that all but outlawed conscious attempts at artistry. The second Golden Age in this regard was distinguished by some of the riskiest filmmaking projects in local history: during the turn of the decade, one movie after another vied in laying claim to being the most expensive Filipino production ever, with audiences seemingly willing to reward these efforts if only for the sheer audacity of the claims. Each artistic peak mentioned, in fact, also had clusters of other big-budget, even period productions attending it. Maynila was period by necessity, since early martial rule forbade derogatory references to the Marcos regime; Ganito Kami Noon combined an ideological concern – the origin of “Filipino” as a historical designation – with the period of its metamorphosis, the transition from Spanish to American colonial rule. Romero was to further flesh out his pursuit of the identity of the Filipino with some other big-budget and period titles: Aguila, which covered the current century; Kamakalawa, which was situated during the pre-Spanish mythological era; and Hari sa Hari, Lahi sa Lahi, which was begun during but released after the Golden Age, and set also during the pre-Spanish era of regional trade relations. None of these other movies attained the balance between technical competence (Aguila would have been the closest) and storytelling superiority (Kamakalawa excelled only in this aspect) manifested by Ganito Kami Noon, and meanwhile Romero, who was a movie-generation removed from Brocka and Bernal, was exceeded in medium-based modernization by the practitioners who were to follow. Brocka, on his part, responded to international exposure with a deliberate and sometimes disconcerting minimalization of his filmic abilities. Insiang, Jaguar, Angela Markado, Bona, PX, Cain at Abel, and Bayan Ko (Kapit sa Patalim) (in order of release) all may have followed Maynila chronologically, but actually antedate it in terms of the filmmaker’s capability of matching sweeping social concerns with an appropriately expansive vision. Aside from this, their distinction of having had international exposure in various festival venues here and abroad could perhaps only develop a case for Brocka as an auteur in the now-conventional sense of the word, where one work will have to be viewed in relation to all the rest before it could be appreciated. Miguelito, on the other hand, as a vastly improved reworking of Tinimbang Ka, is a contemporary but still-critical view of the body politic with its social and, more important, dramatic distensions intact, rather than deflated to microcosmic dimensions as Brocka had been wont to do in the case of the other films. Bernal benefited the most from the effervescence of this period, mapping out a strategy that may have seemed erratic during the time but which denotes in retrospect the most impressive directorial figuring out and working over of the medium since Gerardo de Leon adopted the principles of deep-focus realism. Like de Leon, Bernal proceeded to adopt a foreign trend, this time the then- emergent character-based multi-narrative process, first experimenting with limited success in Nunal sa Tubig then introducing commercial elements on a more modest scale in Aliw. The greater profitability of the latter, in terms of both audience and critical reception this time, most likely emboldened him enough to return to large-scale businesses in Manila by Night, which in turn may have overstretched his technological capabilities somewhat but also served to accommodate his contributions to an international filmmaking mode, in a way that de Leon never managed to. Manila by Night in effect proved that a personalized and multi-stylized approach to this manner of presentation of subject matter was possible, and that the filmmaker could choose to oppose the expectation of a final and logical conclusion and still justify an open-endedness in terms of his material. After such an accomplishment a more conventionalized orientation overtook Bernal – one that drew from the domestic dramas and comedies he directed prior to Manila by Night, the most memorable being Ikaw Ay Akin. His only other epic-scale project since, Himala, recalled Nunal sa Tubig in its choice of material (the eternal countryside, as contrasted with the contemporary big city in all of his other films), but the treatment this time observed classic unities rather than the versatilities which had brought him attention in the first place. Bernal’s other multi-character projects fared even less triumphantly, among them Ito Ba ang Ating mga Anak?, Working Girls, and The Graduates. A Working Girls sequel, released after the Golden Age, so dismayed everyone involved that Bernal has since tended to inhibit himself from such ventures, Á concentrating instead on small-scale projects where he had considerable success right after Manila by Night: Relasyon, Broken Marriage, and Hinugot sa Langit, among others. New Generation Expediently for Brocka and Bernal, as well as Romero and, in a sense, Castillo before them, the second Golden Age lent an aura of legitimacy to the infusion of new blood into the system. Early on Mike de Leon and O’Hara persisted with always prestigious and occasionally remunerative projects; with the arrival of the eighties, the splashy debuts of women directors Marilou Diaz-Abaya and Laurice Guillen recalled the heyday of Kashiwahara, then already inactive. It was Peque Gallaga, however, who demonstrated that even newcomers could buck the system and turn it to their advantage: first he won the scriptwriting contest of the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines (ECP) for the storyline proposal of Oro, Plata, Mata, then acquired the right to direct it, and saw it right through copping a special jury prize from the Manila International Film Festival (MIFF) as well as major Urian awards, including best film. Curiously, however, succeeding aspirants could not duplicate Gallaga’s procedure; the closest anyone came to doing so was in using the ECP venue, the Manila Film Center (MFC), as Tikoy Aguiluz did for Boatman, rather than directing ECP productions, as Pio de Castro III and Abbo Q. de la Cruz were to discover after finishing Soltero and Misteryo sa Tuwa respectively; in this instance the dynamics of governmental support for the industry supplied the causative factors, and a thorough investigation of the matter would yield invaluable lessons for the future. Before Gallaga’s virtual one-man coup, the female directors managed to call attention to themselves as viable entities; but how much of the appreciation was prepared by prevalent feminist sentiments still has to be quantified. Guillen had a modest and well-appreciated hit with her first film Kasal?, then after a box-office trauma went on to a more notable achievement with Salome, which won the Urian best-film prize. Diaz-Abaya, on the other hand, saw her first production, Tanikala, sink to the depths of anonymity – and her investment along with it, but rebounded vigorously enough with the MMFF multi-awardee and box-office placer Brutal. In common with the early ascendency of these two was their scriptwriter, Ricardo Lee. Coming from a shared distinction (with Jose F. Lacaba) for Brocka’s box-office bomb but Urian winner and Cannes Film Festival competition entry Jaguar, Lee had his first solo masterstroke with Brutal and followed up in an even bigger way with Salome. His association with Bernal cemented as consultant for Manila by Night and writer for Ito Ba, Relasyon, and Himala, he proceeded to devise a female-humanist (typically mistaken for feminist) milieu movie, Moral, which Diaz-Abaya directed. Moral stands as the only other Golden Age product clearly in the same league as Manila by Night; the other possible sharers of this category would be Miguelito and, from the first Golden Age, Gregorio Fernandez’s Malvarosa – both of which suffer inadequacies that disallow declarations of unqualified masterliness. Thereafter Lee’s collaborations with Diaz-Abaya would result in relatively less satisfactory products, particularly Karnal and Alyas Baby Tsina. He subsequently realized higher degrees of literacy in cinema in his scripts for Mel Chionglo’s Sinner or Saint and Chito Roño’s Private Show, produced at the tail end of and released after the Golden Age; more fulfilling accomplishments, however, were awaiting him in other film-related media, notably journalism, metafiction, and playwriting, all of which he would turn to after the Golden Age. The other directors fared fairly enough in establishing a respectable level of artistic sensibility in their works. Gallaga had a slightly better epic than Oro, Plata, Mata in Virgin Forest, which met with a counter-reaction probably inevitable considering the earliness and eagerness of the initial response that greeted him. After dabbling in melodrama with Unfaithful Wife, he would make one last epic, the fantasy feature Once Upon a Time, which had the misfortune of being released during the period of transition following the Golden Age, when no movie could hope to recoup its investments. Thereafter he would concentrate on and rise in favor against for expertly handling the horror genre, which would facilitate his return to epic filmmaking with Isang Araw Walang Diyos. Back to top Fringes of the Avant-Garde Á Gallaga deserves a more lasting recognition for his revitalization of the sex film in Scorpio Nights, released at about the same period as his Virgin Forest and Aguiluz’s Boatman, and for the same venue, the MFC. In being less defensive about its social conscience, Scorpio Nights turned out to be a more effective evocation of proletarian decadence than any local erotic movie ever made. Two significant directors, Castillo and Mike de Leon, reached their prime in the medium during the middle part of the Golden Age, then settled for relative obscurity afterward. Castillo came out with a series of mostly sex films that never matched the precocity of Burlesk Queen, while de Leon observed the Stanley Kubrick model, emulated to a lesser extent by Gallaga, of dabbling in one genre after another. His comeback in 1980 after a three-year hiatus resulted in a major-status movie that has managed to outlast all his other works so far, the political absurdist comedy-musical Kakabakaba Ka Ba? Along with Brocka, de Leon became a prominent figure at Cannes, where his subsequent output – the thriller Kisapmata and propagandistic Sister Stella L., plus Batch ’81, his misanthropic contribution to milieu delineation – were exhibited to mostly favorable commentaries. After an excursion into melodrama that disappointed him but not his financiers, de Leon shifted, right with the close of the Golden Age, to video with a feature, Bilanggo sa Dilim, that exemplified his directorial coming-of-age. O’Hara similarly advanced in expertise as the period wore on. After making a financially fruitful comeback (after an absence about as long as de Leon’s), he came up with a partially successful milieu movie, Bulaklak sa City Jail, and followed up a previous action-thriller, Condemned, with another, Bagong Hari. Mostly O’Hara continued his association with Nora Aunor, who had more resounding results with Brocka and Bernal, but nevertheless managed to augment her store of talent with O’Hara. One last directorial debutant, Chito Roño, whose Private Show came out almost too late for the Golden Age, bears comparison with the aforementioned names. In the period to come, Brocka, by virtue of his conscious holding back, may have already reprised his role as harbinger of what ought to turn out to be another, or at least an extension of the previous, Golden Age. Chionglo, Gallaga, O’Hara, Roño, and Mss. Diaz-Abaya and Guillen are in a position to assume artistic leadership, with Bernal, Castillo, and de Leon making authoritative contributions alongside Brocka, and Romero upholding the value of verified virtues in the craft. The writer will be privileged with greater responsibility, as indeed almost all of these enumerated individuals are capable of scripting their and others’ works if desirable or necessary. Ricardo Lee will continue holding forth as a major non- directing filmmaker, with del Mundo, Lacaba, and newer members like Jose N. Carreon (Ikaw Ay Akin, Broken Marriage), Jose Dalisay Jr. (Miguelito), Rosauro de la Cruz (Scorpio Nights, Virgin Forest), and Amado Lacuesta Jr. (Hinugot sa Langit, Working Girls) regularly providing thematic worth and structural strength. A number of other writers, including Armando Lao and Bibeth Orteza, may have had apprenticeships during the Golden Age, but would seem to have considerable opportunities of playing the field thence. Performances of the Age Award-sweeping became the in thing, what with the addition of more and overlapping bodies to the already flourishing FAMAS, Urian, MMFF, and CMMA – to wit, the Philippine Movie Press Club (PMPC), with its Star trophy, and the Film Academy of the Philippines (FAP). Two of these, the FAP and the FAMAS, claim to be industry-based recognitions, although the FAP is more systematically organized according to guilds; this advantage of legitimacy also brings with it the disadvantages of the prevalence of popularity choices, just as between the Urian and Star, the former may comprise a number of serious critics, but the latter possesses the humility necessary for thoroughgoing review and evaluation processes. Despite the propensity of these groups, both collectively and as individual bodies, in setting records for favored artists, the outstanding performance of the period belongs to that of Nora Aunor in Himala, which was honored only by the MMFF. Aunor had been possessed with a search for superior acting vehicles, and threw away a lot of her own money in the process, since in essence she mostly had to run against the preferences of her mass supporters. With Brocka she made perceptible strides in ensuring her lead over the rest of the pack, particularly in Ina Ka ng Anak Mo and Bona. But all that was really required of her was a project that had enough scope to demonstrate her far- reaching prowess, with a minimum of editorial manipulation. In Himala the Á director and writer seemed to have agreed to a mutual stand-off, thus amplifying the theatrical potential of an expansive locale with protracted takes; stage-trained talents ensured the competent execution of histrionic stylizations, with the climax set on an open-air platform before a hysterical audience. It was a truly great actress’s opportunity of a lifetime, and Nora Aunor seized it and made it not just her role, but her film as well. Not since Anita Linda in Gerardo de Leon’s Sisa (circa the first Golden Age) had there been such a felicitous exploitation by a performer of ideal filmmaking conditions – and in this instance, Himala has the decided advantage of being major-league and universal. Other consistent stand-outs during the period – and these would be formidable enough as they are – demand to be taken in terms of body of work, not any individual movie: Vic Silayan for Ligaw na Bulaklak, Kisapmata, and Karnal; Gina Alajar for Brutal, Salome, Moral, and Bayan Ko; Nora Aunor for whatever title she appeared in during the eighties, regardless of budget, intention, or box-office result. Record-setters of this period, specifically Phillip Salvador, Nida Blanca, and Vilma Santos, deserve mention if only for the skills and supreme good fortune necessary in attaining their respective feats. Among newcomers, only Jacklyn Jose of Private Show seems to hold forth promise of an order comparable to most of those listed herein. Back to top Institutional Developments What factors could have contributed to this concentration of creativity? The only trend that could be cited with confidence is something commonly perceived as a hindrance, its claims to patronage notwithstanding: active governmental intervention. The irony here can be traced from the very beginning (of the second Golden Age, that is) – the militarization of film censorship, and even beyond, if we were to particularize the controls on culture that the declaration of martial law brought about. With the fullest possible flowering of the Golden Age during the turn of the decade, the irony could not but have heightened further. The government then set in motion the machinery of total institutional support that was to be known presently as the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines. To be sure, a compounded series of half-hearted inclinations betrayed the ultimate objectives of the ECP. First it was founded not to respond to any industrial necessity, but to legitimize the then First Lady’s Manila International Film Festival. Then, to appease a First Daughter angered by the kidnapping of her paramour, control of the legitimizing body was turned over to her; this must have been perceived as a shrewd decision, since Imee Marcos-Manotoc, perhaps partly out of her rebellion against her parents, had been soliciting the advice of Marcos oppositionists in culture, most of whom had castigated the first MIFF. The granting to her of ECP was expected therefore to placate both her and too-outspoken Filipino film artists. Palace politics in this regard kept the Marcos family too busy among themselves to pay attention to the moves of film practitioners. Film producers meanwhile were lured by the prospect of greater returns on investment with the introduction of an international venue (specifically the MIFF’s film market module) on these very shores. Hence films with big budgets and attendant artistic ambitions began to see the light of, er, theatrical exhibitions. Marcos-Manotoc herself proved to be sincere about her responsibilities, at least during a crucial early phase of her assumption of ECP leadership. The rejection of the MIFF was just a signal to Malacanang of her sincere intentions. By then she had several projects running simultaneously, most of which had a highly favorable impact on film as artistic endeavor. Witness: the production of scriptwriting contest winners, subsidies for worthy full-length film proposals, tax rebates for deserving productions, exhibition of otherwise shunned or banned releases, plus a number of relatively minor benefits – first- rate screening venues, a library of film titles and books, short-film competitions with cash incentives, book and journal publications, archival research and preservation, seminars and workshops, etc. The arrangement was too good to be true, and eventually succumbed to the regime’s self-destructive tendencies, embodied in this instance in the irrepressible Imelda Marcos. Once Marcos-Manotoc had been distracted by her election to the so-called legislature, the ECP quickly went moribund, with funds hemorrhaged for the alleged promotion of MIFF in foreign countries and with the MFC operated according to a prohibitive maintenance cost. This Á meant that not only would all charitable functions cease, including film productions and subsidies, but also only sure-fire highly profitable titles, which then as now denoted hard-core sex films, could be exhibited at the MFC’s exclusive venues. The expected denunciation by the industry of the ECP’s exemption from censorship and taxation, premised on the grounds of unfair competition, was reinforced in part by a bid for survival by the censors body, which with the ECP had reverted to civilian status; a retaliation was also in order, since the ECP under Marcos-Manotoc had initiated moves to outlaw film censorship. All this controversy served to act as check on the choice of films for MFC exhibition, ensuring that the new leadership would resort to artistic quality (the very same excuse invoked for the MIFF), if nothing else, as defense. The outcome, in practical terms, was a handful of local erotica, including the previously mangled Manila by Night, unmatched in art consciousness relative to any other period in local history. The Marcos government, however, could not stem the tide of the anti- dictatorship movement, especially as fortified by the outrage over the Aquino- Galman assassination, and the post-Imee ECP proved to be a most attractive target. In the end the by-now predictable, and thereby ineffectual, Marcos solution of establishing institutions or transforming existing ones to conform ostensibly to legal requisites was applied to the ECP. The body was dissolved and another one, the Film Development Foundation of the Philippines (FDFP), set up in its place, without any change in the organization itself, save for its avowal of now being less public in nature; in fact it was intended to enjoy the best of both worlds – semi-private and thus exempt from censorship, semi- public and thus exempt from taxation. That the FDFP did not differ from ECP except in name would have induced a renewed struggle for the formation of a truly responsive organ for institutional support, but at this point the nation’s attention was diverted by the snap elections that led to the people-power uprising that in turn expelled Marcos, shut down his film institution for good, and drew to a close the second Golden Age of Philippine cinema. Intrinsic Reasons The futility of pinpointing institutional causes, a legacy of materialist orientations which even artists are prone to resort to, becomes evident when we take other national experiences into consideration. In South American countries, whose colonial and religious histories most closely resemble the Philippines’ own, artistic creativity has always been a direct function of political freedom. The same observation applies to contexts closer to home – in neighboring Asian countries. One would expect that the combination of both features – Hispanization and Orientalism – would only strengthen this correlation between the practice of politics and the production of art. Not only do the Marcos years disprove this extrapolation; the few years since provide enough dramatic contrast to further affirm this deviation from an otherwise logical deduction. Part of the answer may lie in the Machiavellianism of the Marcos regime, its perverse pleasure in playing cat-and-mouse games with its opponents. In the case of industry-based artists, who themselves are no strangers to such dialectics between ideals and realities, this inculcates a disposition toward subtlety and the sublime. This answer could of course cut both ways. A practitioner may just as well be cowed by the double jeopardy of having to please both an immediate boss and an Orwellian Big Brother, and if the displeasure of either may already mean the loss of career and prestige – in short, everything for the artist – then the displeasure of both would amount to sheer terror, if not paralysis. In actuality, a number of local filmmakers did exhibit indications of the latter syndrome, but these may on the whole be balanced by the others who found favor with either a producer or the regime, in certain cases one against the other. In the end we could only grant that a major factor for the occurrence of the second Golden Age lies in the superstructure itself – more concretely, in the confluence of film artists who somehow attained a level of individual maturity and collective strength within roughly a common time frame – a force, in effect, capable of transforming what would normally be political and industrial liabilities into aesthetic assets. This situation couldn’t be too phenomenal; a similar one was realized in Italy during the neorealist era. Locally, the trend toward the organizing of artists, Á systematization of training (resulting in one extreme in the introduction of formal film studies at the State University), and the expansion of art consciousness in alternative film and related formats all betoken this contemporaneous ripening of occasional genius, regular expertise, and general resourcefulness in the country’s most popular mass medium. Final and conclusive proof of course lies in the works themselves – over a decade’s worth of major contributions to the art of cinema, on the whole outstanding by any standard, awaiting a comprehensive presentation to a global community that remains all the poorer for not having had the opportunity to strike the proper acquaintance so far. Works Cited David, Joel. “The Golden Ages of Philippine Cinema: A Critical Reassessment.” Cinema Filipinas: Historia, teoría y crítica fílmica (1999-2009). (Andalucía): Juna de Andalucía, Consejería de Cultura Fundación El Legado Andalusí, (2010): 217-24. Lumbera, Bienvenido. “Problems in Philippine Film History.” Revaluation: Essays on Philippine Literature, Cinema and Popular Culture. Quezon City: Index, 1984. 193-212. Vasudev, Aruna. “Cast in Another Mould.” Interview with Ishmael Bernal. Cinemaya 27 (April-June 1995): 16-23. Yeatter, Bryan L. Cinema of the Philippines: A History and Filmography, 1897-2005. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2007. Back to top Return to The National Pastime contents
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About Joel David Teacher, scholar, & gadfly of film, media, & culture. [Photo of Kiehl courtesy of Danny Y. & Vanny P.] Á About Latest Remarks Books Articles Reviews Extras Contact
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Suggested Features Fields of Vision – May 4, 2014 Non-titles listed here may be Ten Best Filipino descriptions of articles or chapters, rather than their actual titles. Links will open with the Films Up to 1990 formal title of the text, along with By Joel David the text itself. • Annual Filipino Film Chart Sole-Authored Books • The National Pastime • Fields of Vision • Wages of Cinema • Millennial Traversals • Book Texts: A Pinoy Film Course 23rd FACINE Film Festival • Gawad Lingap Sining Citation Before this report came out as the cover story of National Midweek, canonical • 2016 FACINE Lecture surveys of Philippine cinema were extremely delimited, essentially dismissible Special Lists novelties. The most extensive one I remember was a national daily’s Sunday • Film auteurs, play directors, & supplement asking a handful of respondents to list their three “best” films – book authors without any attempt at tabulating the results and arriving at (the semblance • National Midweek articles of) a group consensus. Among the several quantitative exercises I decided to • Journal publications undertake, this was the one that took off and refused to be shot down despite the limits that inhered even here, in the very first attempt. Although these are Criticism discussed at length in the article, it still bears pointing out that: the circle of • A Second Golden Age respondents is not homogeneous – a positive quality in terms of • The Trouble with Golden Ages diversification of choices, but an essential flaw in the sense that the relative • More on the 2nd Golden Age exposure of individuals might have been too wide for comfort; this means • Ten Best Films Survey (1990) that some people might have seen more available (and a few later- • An Awards Exercise unavailable) titles and would therefore be potentially better-informed than • Pinoy Film Criticism others. In discussing the results with some of my colleagues, we speculated • Fallout over Criticizing Critics that the ideal, in terms of having an “informed” circle, would be to get Interviews (of J. David) together a team and watch all the possible canonical candidates to be able to • Re Amauteurish! (P.D. Grant) have common premises for deliberation. None of the succeeding internet-era • Re The National Pastime (V. Ira) exercises has done this, although all of them attempt to update the list below and a few managed to gather a larger number of respondents. Hence even if Interviews (of Others) my intention was to provide as many examples of film canonizations in order • Ishmael Bernal (A. Vasudev) to dispense with them and move on to serious critique, an “ultimate” • Bien Lumbera canonizing project still remains to be accomplished. • Doy del Mundo • Rey de la Cruz • Pio de Castro III • Ramon Reyes Fil(m)ipiniana • SineManila • Focus on Filipino Films (1983) • Transcription Chapter (1983) • Roundtable on Criticism (2014) • Sight & Sound section (2002) This Blog (& Me) • How to Use Amauteurish! The by-line for the article was “Joel David, with Melanie Joy C. Garduño”; • Reviews & Recommendations when it was anthologized in Fields of Vision, I included Professor Violeda A. • Joel Who? Umali as project consultant, as well as the list of students who conducted the • Marcos & the Movies survey, a roster that included Ann Angala, Ely Buendia, and Kim Atienza. • Movie Labor Á Looking over the now-faded respondents’ submissions, I noticed how I later These Blogs (for Me) discussed the answers that my Midweek colleague, Raul Regalado, submitted, • 1505 Film Avenue (N. Costales) and noted in his sheet that he preferred one film to be upheld over the rest of • Addicted to Movies (J.J. David) his equally ranked choices. The adjustment has been incorporated in the • Another Sani Day (S.C. Ajero) report below. The Midweek publication date was July 4, 1990 (pp. 3-9), while • Cinema Bravo (J.B. Estillore et the inclusive pages in Fields of Vision (which added the helpful qualifier “Up al.) to 1990” in the title) were 125-36. • Closely Watched Frames (N. Manaig) Ten best lists are sure to secure attention and controversy. The procedure – • Critic after Dark (N. Vera) taking a survey of acknowledged authorities in the field concerned and tallying • Death of Traditional Cinema (M. the data to arrive at a final ranking – is fraught with booby traps, beginning Macarayan) from the issue of whom to take into account as respondents, through the • Film Police Reviews (A. dela Cruz validity of the statistical methods employed, right down to the presentation of et al.) • The Knee-Jerk Critic (R.E. Lopez) results, if not the results themselves. Any activity with intense cultural • Lilok Pelikula (R. Bolisay) participation will inevitably provoke the issue of standards and, compared • Magsine Tayo! (J. Devera) with the challenge of critical writing, survey-taking would seem to be a more • Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino exact, though perhaps less lasting (and, in addition, too guiltily easy) resort. • Missing Codec (E. Deyto) The entire science of statistics can be arguably ascribed to this innate passion • New Durian Cinema (T. for comparative evaluation, and nowhere in recent years has this been more Mangansakan et al.) heatedly exhibited, outside of economics, than in film. • NOOD.ph: Pinoy Movie Reviews Atbp. The standard reference in film listings is the decadal survey by the British • Omnitudo (A.D. Mendizabal) magazine Sight and Sound, which has been responsible for the reputation of • Pelikulove (E.O. Marfil et al.) Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane as the best movie of all time – at least for the past • Pinoy Rebyu (S. Labastilla) three decades, and never mind if the second best onward could not seem to be • #Pop #Culture #Diva (A. del established, or if one’s viewing gets upended by great expectations unfulfilled. Mundo) All other critical institutions have their own means of bestowing rank, most • Present Confusion (J. Tawasil) visibly the outstanding achievement trophies proffered by every major award- • Space-Aso (R. Cerda) giving body. • Tablestretcher (L. Maburaot) • Tagailog Special Presents (M. In the Philippines, similar attempts at duplicating the Sight and Sound activity Pangaruy Jr.) have been made, except that the statistical universe, small as it already is, has • Takilya ni Leaflens (L.L. Cantor) never been represented comprehensively enough; mostly the respondents • Video 48 (S. Santos) were confined to the survey-taker’s circle of acquaintances, if not the survey- • WickedMouth (G. Tabarejos) taker herself bothering to inform the public of her own opinions and • Young Critics Circle preferences. In 1982, as secretary of the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino, I undertook such a project limited exclusively to the members of what was then after all the country’s only organized group of film commentators. In the end, after collating and tabulating everything, I had to conclude that the number of respondents was still not enough – that on the basis of sustained industry evidence, there was still a critical community somewhere left unrepresented; leakage of the results found its way to the movie press, but I decided that at that point, silence would be the more sensible course of action to take. Between then and now two crucial developments intervened: the Philippines’ first and so far only degree program in film was opened at the University of the Philippines, providing me with the opportunity of exploring (in my various preparations and sometimes with my students) the various forms and directions of critical thinking in local film practice; furthermore, the February 1986 revolution, for a complex of reasons whose long-term worth still has to be determined, placed an effective halt to the intense and concentrated artistic output in cinema which I had elsewhere called our second Golden Age. In my third year of handling the UP film criticism course, I decided that the students, what with the consistent upgrading of our curriculum’s theoretical foundation, might be ready for a ten-best exercise. Proposed as a class project, the activity generated sufficient enthusiasm for an entire class of about twenty to publish forms and follow up the responses of more than fifty people, using our expanded definition of film critic, to wit: published film criticism (which should be differentiated from film reviewing) is only a small, perhaps even relatively insignificant proportion of true critical activity; most criticism may in fact be unarticulated by both audiences (which would be nearly impossible to tease out, except in terms of box-office patronage) and artists, who provide proof of their capabilities in the progressions evident in their output. Hence the list consisted of a number of practicing writers on film (including Manunuri members), plus those film artists whose body of work could be defensibly classified as exhibiting critical exploration and growth. Necessarily directors and scriptwriters constituted this grouping, with a much lesser number of producers, performers, and technicians. For a number of reasons not everyone could be surveyed. Within the time frame of the first semester of Philippine academic year 1989-90, some respondents were out of town or the country, or were otherwise indisposed by their work schedules. The whereabouts of a few could not be determined, and Á some (mostly those contacted by mail) just did not bother to reply. Certain personalities declined on the bases of delicadeza and apprehension over the consequences of such an undertaking. All in all twenty-eight individuals submitted their lists of Filipino films ranked from best to tenth-best, with three providing no ranking, another three submitting less than then and six submitting more the most of which was seventeen. The complete list of lists so to speak, with titles enumerated per respondent, makes up Table 1. Numerical values equivalent to the ranking given were assigned the films, with averages given for those titles stipulated to have equal rank (for example, three titles all ranked first would each carry a value of two, the number corresponding to the middle rank). A total of eighty-one titles was tallied, with thirty-three or over forty percent being mentioned only once, and two top- notchers being mentioned sixteen times. To provide as much equal opportunity to each film as possible, as well as clarify the relative rankings of those mentioned against those which the respondents may have seen but did not rank, we planned a second phase in which the complete listing would be returned to the respondents, for them to indicate those which they had seen and to rank these further as carefully as possible. Again, time constraints overtook the execution of such a plan inasmuch as several respondents delayed in submitting their lists. In the end the waiting period took a good part of the semester, necessitating the cancellation of the second phase and leaving the tabulation for me to accomplish. The list of titles mentioned, in alphabetical order, is given in Table 2, with year of release and director(s) following in parentheses, with films mentioned only once being marked by an asterisk. As might be expected, the most number of films, about thirty, comes from the current (1980s) decade, with even one unreleased title, Orapronobis, listed (Mel Chionglo, who had viewed only the rushes, also gave it special mention). The preceding decades decline in terms of frequency of mention – sixteen titles from the 1970s, nine from the ’60s – until we come to the 1950s, where twenty-three films are named; this may be attributable to the long-standing reputation of that era as the first Golden Age of Philippine cinema. Another surprisingly strong showing, considering that a good part of the decade suffered a shutdown in production because of the war, was the listing of three titles from the ’40s. On a sadder note is the inclusion of one of the three pre-war features still in existence (the only film from the ’30s figuring in the survey); relative to this would be the need to raise an alarm about the condition of all remaining Filipino films – some of which have seen their very last screening (Hanggang sa Dulo ng Daigdig at a Manila Film Center retrospective), exist only in reduced format (Sa Atin ang Daigdig in 16mm.), failed to have their negatives preserved (Sisa being only a duplicate of another positive), or worst of all, persist only in the memory of those who have seen then (Daigdig ng mga Api, among several others). Thirty-two directors were mentioned, about a dozen of them deceased. Gerardo de Leon heads the list with twelve complete films plus two installments in omnibus projects, followed equally by Ishmael Bernal and Lino Brocka with nine each, Mike de Leon with six, and Lamberto V. Avellana and Peque Gallaga with four apiece. Three titles each are ascribed to Marilou Diaz- Abaya, Manuel Conde, and Gregorio Fernandez, while Celso Ad. Castillo, Cesar Gallardo, Eddie Romero, and Mar S. Torres share two titles each. Those mentioned once include Tikoy Aguiluz, Cesar J. Amigo, Augusto Buenaventura, Tony Cayado, Behn Cervantes, Abbo Q. de la Cruz, Armando Garces, Laurice Guillen, Lupita Aquino-Kashiwahara, Mario O’Hara, Gil Portes, Maryo J. de los Reyes, Chito Roño, Manuel Silos, Octavio Silos, Artemio Tecson, Carlos Vander Tolosa, and Robert Ylagan. Aside from Gerardo de Leon, those credited with episodes in omnibus films are Avellana, Manuel Silos, and F. H. Constantino. Given these results, two approaches were possible, providing in effect a two- step procedure. One, the first, was to tabulate the frequency of mention of each film; all the films scored frequencies of two and above except for thirty- three as already mentioned. Next was to total the ranks of each film and divide this by the number of respondents, to get the average ranking. With this operation it would be possible to order each title according to its relative position on a scale from the smallest (i.e., the closest to a perfect “1”) to the largest average ranking, which turned out to be “17.” A comprehensive list would be too baffling without the breakdown and computation of figures, and too overdone with these, so as a sample demonstration, Table 3 contains the ranking of the thirty-three films which had only one respondent each. In the end there were three types of ranking possible, two of them conforming Á to the top-ten mode of requirement. The first, with nineteen films in all, is a tabulation of the respondents’ number-one choices. The second is a ranking according to the frequency of mention of individual titles: the top films Ganito Kami Noon…Paano Kayo Ngayon? and Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag shared sixteen respondents, while the tenth, Moral, had eight, which quite neatly turns out to be half of the maximum. The third and, in the best way, final ranking is that done after the computation described earlier had been carried out, and the list confined, like the earlier ranking, to films mentioned by eight respondents and above; necessarily this would contain the same titles as the second ranking, but rearranged in consideration of the individual values accorded them by the respondents. The value of the first ranking, the number-one choices, is that these are the titles that the respondents felt strongest about during the survey; it would be safe to say that each individual respondent wouldn’t mind finding her choice of number one making it to the magic circle, if not the very top. The second ranking is more independent of subjective opinion, since the films mentioned here presumably came about after the more emotional issue of determining the top-rank holder had been settled. On the other hand, such a ranking did not take into account the relative opinions of each respondent: most, for example, mentioned Ganito Kami Noon and Maynila, but does this mean they’d give either title top-rank as well? The answer is provided by the so-far final ranking, in which Manila by Night, mentioned by ten, turned out to be higher in their esteem. In keeping with further categories formulated by James Monaco for a decade- wide survey published in Take One, I checked the individual respondents’ respective lists against the final ranking and came up with originality quotients, wherein none or the least number of choices tallied with the results, and accuracy quotients, wherein all or the most number of choices did. Agustin Sotto had a perfect originality quotient – more remarkable since he also had the most number of titles, seventeen. Next in line were Marra PL. Lanot with one choice out of ten, Armida Siguion-Reyna with two, and Ishmael Bernal, Vic Delotavo, Nestor U. Torre, and Romeo Vitug with three each (although Torre listed only five Filipino films in all). No one on the other hand had a perfect accuracy quotient, but Butch Francisco, Christian Ma. Guerrero, and Nicanor G. Tiongson came up with seven correct titles, followed by Mario Hernando with six, and Marilou Diaz-Abaya with five out of seven. Petronilo Bn. Daroy, Laurice Guillen, Nick Lizaso, and I also scored with five choices, while all the rest – Mario Bautista, Mel Chionglo, Isagani Cruz, Nick Cruz, Justino Dormiendo, Jose F. Lacaba, Bienvenido Lumbera, Antonio Mortel, Tezza O. Parel, Raul Regalado, Eddie Romero, and Raquel Villavicencio – selected four each, roughly the average performance of the entire body of respondents taken as a whole. The final outcome can of course be subjected to criticism in various ways, but at this point I believe two things must first be pointed out: the individuals who submitted their lists took the risk of opening themselves to all manner of dissension, and not everyone would have the courage or conviction to do the same; more important, such results as presented should be regarded as the beginning of healthy debate, rather than the final word on the matter. Among the urgent by-products that should begin to see light would be the already- mentioned need for archival preservation of this vital aspect of our cultural heritage, and the development of the practice of revaluation, which may be generally (and mistakenly) perceived as too much of a luxury for these times of crises that we live in. A more or less regular revision of a ten best list would belong to this agenda, and that should probably be the primary context of this existing ranking – as the first, not the last, of its kind. Back to top Table 1. List of Individual Choices Marilou Diaz-Abaya [submitted only 7 titles]: 1 – Manila by Night; 2 – The Moises Padilla Story; 3 – Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang; 4 – Kisapmata; 5 – Moral; 6 – Ganito Kami Noon…Paano Kayo Ngayon?; 7 – Badjao. Mario Bautista [submitted 2 titles listed as #10]: 1 – Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag; 2 – Nunal sa Tubig; 3 – Ikaw Ay Akin; 4 – Minsa’y Isang Gamugamo; 5 – Insiang; 6 – Manila by Night; 7 – Bayan Ko (Kapit sa Patalim); 8 – Sister Stella L.; 9 – Bukas…May Pangarap; 10.5 – Brutal; 10.5 – Moral. Á Ishmael Bernal: 1 – Sisa; 2 – Anak Dalita; 3 – Kundiman ng Lahi; 4 – Sawa sa Lumang Simboryo; 5 – Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang; 6 – Boatman; 7 – Burlesk Queen; 8 – Moral; 9 – Kisapmata; 10 – Genghis Khan. Mel Chionglo: 1 – Jaguar; 2 – Batch ’81; 3 – Bona; 4 – Kisapmata; 5 – Himala; 6 – Salome; 7 – Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag; 8 – Oro, Plata, Mata; 9 – Burlesk Queen; 10 – Sister Stella L. Isagani Cruz: 1 – Itim; 2 – Jaguar; 3 – Ganito Kami Noon…Paano Kayo Ngayon?; 4 – Himala; 5 – Manila by Night; 6 – Genghis Khan; 7 – Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag; 8 – The Moises Padilla Story; 9 – Badjao; 10 – Portait of the Artist as Filipino. Nick Cruz, S.J.: 1 – Biyaya ng Lupa; 2 – Sakada; 3 – Sister Stella L.; 4 – Insiang; 5 – Miguelito: Ang Batang Rebelde; 6 – Hinugot sa Langit; 7 – Batch ’81; 8 – Himala; 9 – Broken Marriage; 10 – Ganito Kami Noon…Paano Kayo Ngayon? Petronilo Bn. Daroy: 1 – Genghis Khan; 2 – Nunal sa Tubig; 3 – Manila by Night; 4 – Ganito Kami Noon…Paano Kayo Ngayon?; 5 – Anak Dalita; 6 – Oro, Plata, Mata; 7 – Orapronobis; 8 – Insiang; 9 – Hubad na Bayani; 10 – Sawa sa Lumang Simboryo. Joel David [submitted 11 titles]: 1 – Manila by Night; 2 – Moral; 3 – Ganito Kami Noon…Paano Kayo Ngayon?; 4 – Malvarosa; 5 – Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag; 6 – Sa Atin ang Daigdig; 7 – Miguelito: Ang Batang Rebelde; 8 – Kakabakaba Ka Ba?; 9 – Virgin Forest; 10 – Himala; 11 – Orapronobis. Vic Delotavo [submitted 14 titles]: 1 – Daigdig ng mga Api; 2 – Hanggang sa Dulo ng Daigdig; 3 – El Filibusterismo; 4 – Noli Me Tangere; 5 – Ifugao; 6 – Sanda Wong; 7 – Dyesebel; 8 – Medalyong Perlas; 9 – Bicol Express; 10 – Sawa sa Lumang Simboryo; 11 – Ganito Kami Noon…Paano Kayo Ngayon?; 12 – Oro, Plata, Mata; 13 – Insiang; 14 – Pahiram ng Isang Umaga. Justino Dormiendo: 1 – Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag; 2 – Nunal sa Tubig; 3 – Salome; 4 – Kisapmata; 5 – Oro, Plata, Mata; 6 – El Filibusterismo; 7 – Daigdig ng mga Api; 8 – Biyaya ng Lupa; 9 – Insiang; 10 – Badjao. Butch Francisco: 1 – Oro, Plata, Mata; 2 – Kisapmata; 3 – Manila by Night; 4 – Hinugot sa Langit; 5 – Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag; 6 – Ganito Kami Noon…Paano Kayo Ngayon; 7 – Anak Dalita; 8 – Batch ’81; 9 – Biyaya ng Lupa; 10 – Relasyon. Christian Ma. Guerrero [submitted 12 titles]: 1 – Burlesk Queen; 2 – Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag; 3 – Ganito Kami Noon… Paano Kayo Ngayon?; 4 – Biyaya ng Lupa; 5 – Anak Dalita; 6 – Oro, Plata, Mata; 7 – Himala; 8 – Insiang; 9 – Itim; 10 – Aguila; 11 – Virgin Forest; 12 – Misteryo sa Tuwa. Laurice Guillen: 1 – Sisa; 2 – The Moises Padilla Story; 3 – Insiang; 4 – Oro, Plata, Mata; 5 – Salome; 6 – Biyaya ng Lupa; 7 – Kisapmata; 8 – Ifugao; 9 – Anak Dalita; 10 – Burlesk Queen. Mario Hernando: 1 – Anak Dalita; 2 – Biyaya ng Lupa; 3 – Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag; 4 – Manila by Night; 5 – Ganito Kami Noon…Paano Kayo Ngayon?; 6 – Sister Stella L.; 7 – Batch ’81; 8 – Kisapmata; 9 – Nunal sa Tubig; 10 – Bayan Ko (Kapit sa Patalim). Jose F. Lacaba: 1 – Daigdig ng mga Api; 2 – Anak Dalita; 3 – Sawa sa Lumang Simboryo; 4 – Nunal sa Tubig; 5 – Himala; 6 – Insiang; 7 – Ganito Kami Noon…Paano Kayo Ngayon?; 8 – Salome; 9 – Brutal; 10 – Bona. Marra PL. Lanot [submitted without any specification of order]: 5.5 – Bona; 5.5 – Brutal; 5.5 – Himala; 5.5 – Hinugot sa Langit; 5.5 – Inay; 5.5 – Jaguar; 5.5 – Kung Mangarap Ka’t Magising; 5.5 – Sakada; 5.5 – Tatlong Taóng Walang Diyos; 5.5 – Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang. Nick Lizaso: 1 – Noli Me Tangere; 2 – Tatlong Taóng Walang Á Diyos; 3 – Himala; 4 – Itim; 5 – Ganito Kami Noon…Paano Kayo Ngayon?; 6 – Badjao; 7 – Anak Dalita; 8 – Oro, Plata, Mata; 9 – Kisapmata; 10 – Anak Dalita. Bienvenido Lumbera: 1 – Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag; 2 – Nunal sa Tubig; 3 – Ganito Kami Noon…Paano Kayo Ngayon?; 4 – Kisapmata; 5 – Noli Me Tangere; 6 – Isumpa Mo, Giliw; 7 – Kundiman ng Lahi; 8 – Biyaya ng Lupa; 9 – Kadenang Putik; 10 – Bayan Ko (Kapit sa Patalim). Antonio Mortel: 1 – Minsa’y Isang Gamugamo; 2 – Badjao; 3 – Anak Dalita; 4 – Noli Me Tangere; 5 – Kisapmata; 6 – Itim; 7 – Himala; 8 – Oro, Plata, Mata; 9 – Ito ang Pilipino; 10 – Isang Araw Walang Diyos. Tezza O. Parel [submitted only 9 titles]: 1 – Himala; 2 – Moral; 3 – Jaguar; 4 – Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag; 5 – Itim; 6 – High School Circa ’65; 7 – Kakabakaba Ka Ba?; 8 – Kisapmata; 9 – Broken Marriage. Raul Regalado [submitted in alphabetical order but subsequently specified one “all-time favorite”]: 1 – Moral; 6 – Boatman; 6 – Burlesk Queen; 6 – Kakabakaba Ka Ba?; 6 – Ganito Kami Noon… Paano Kayo Ngayon?; 6 – Manila by Night; 6 – Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag; 6 – Private Show; 6 – Scorpio Nights; 6 – Virgin Forest. Eddie Romero: 1 – Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang; 2 – Kisapmata; 3 – Manila by Night; 4 – Moral; 5 – Scorpio Nights; 6 – Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag; 7 – Hinugot sa Langit; 8 – Salome; 9 – Tatlong Taóng Walang Diyos; 10 – Paradise Inn. Armida Siguion-Reyna: 1 – Insiang; 2 – Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag; 3 – Miguelito: Ang Batang Rebelde; 4 – Hinugot sa Langit; 5 – Virgin Forest; 6 – Brutal; 7 – Relasyon; 8 – Bayan Ko (Kapit sa Patalim); 9 – High School Circa ’65; 10 – Working Girls. Agustin Sotto [submitted 17 titles]: 1 – Mga Ligaw na Bulaklak; 2 – Sanda Wong; 3 – 48 Oras; 4 – Geron Busabos: Ang Batang Quiapo; 5 – Hanggang sa Dulo ng Daigdig; 6 – Juan Tamad Goes to Congress; 7 – Luksang Tagumpay; 8 – ₱1,000 Kagandahan; 9 – Apat na Taga; 10 – Jack en Jill; 11 – ROTC; 12 – Sino’ng Maysala?; 13 – Cofradia; 14 – Dyesebel; 15 – Badjao; 16 – Giliw Ko; 17 – Ibong Adarna. Nicanor G. Tiongson [submitted 11 titles]: 1 – El Filibusterismo; 2 – Ganito Kami Noon…Paano Kayo Ngayon?; 3 – Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag; 4 – Insiang; 5 – Jaguar; 6 – Broken Marriage; 7 – Anak Dalita; 8 – Himala; 9 – Moral; 10 – Oro, Plata, Mata; 11 – Sisa. Nestor U. Torre [submitted a list of “15 Good Movies” including 10 foreign titles]: 1 – El Filibusterismo; 2 – Ganito Kami Noon…Paano Kayo Ngayon; 3 – Itim; 4 – Manila by Night; 5 – Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag. Raquel N. Villavicencio: 1 – Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang; 2 – Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag; 3 – Biyaya ng Lupa; 4 – Badjao; 5 – Sakada; 6 – Ganito Kami Noon…Paano Kayo Ngayon?; 7 – Minsa’y Isang Gamugamo; 8 – Jaguar; 9 – Itim; 10 – Insiang. Romeo Vitug: 1 – Biyaya ng Lupa; 2 – Anak Dalita; 3 – Hanggang sa Dulo ng Daigdig; 4 – Sawa sa Lumang Simboryo; 5 – Insiang; 6 – Relasyon; 7 – Salome; 8 – Burlesk Queen; 9 – Paradise Inn; 10 – Karnal. Back to top Table 2. Alphabetical List of Titles [Asterisks indicate films mentioned only once – cf. next Table] Aguila (1980, Eddie Romero)* Anak Dalita (1956, Lamberto V. Avellana) Apat na Taga (1954, Mar S. Torres)* Badjao (1957, Lamberto V. Avellana) Batch ’81 (1982, Mike de Leon) Á Bayan Ko (Kapit sa Patalim) (1985, Lino Brocka) Bicol Express (1957, Gerardo de Leon et al.)* Biyaya ng Lupa (1959, Manuel Silos) Boatman (1984, Tikoy Aguiluz) Bona (1980, Lino Brocka) Broken Marriage (1983, Ishmael Bernal) Brutal (1980, Marilou Diaz-Abaya) Bukas…May Pangarap (1984, Gil Portes)* Burlesk Queen (1977, Celso Ad. Castillo) Cofradia (1953, Artemio Tecson)* Daigdig ng mga Api (1965, Gerardo de Leon) Dyesebel (1953, Gerardo de Leon) El Filibusterismo (1962, Gerardo de Leon) Ganito Kami Noon…Paano Kayo Ngayon? (1976, Eddie Romero) Genghis Khan (1950, Manuel Conde) Geron Busabos: Ang Batang Quiapo (1964, Cesar Gallardo)* Giliw Ko (1939, Carlos Vander Tolosa)* Hanggang sa Dulo ng Daigdig (1958, Gerardo de Leon) High School Circa ’65 (1979, Maryo J. de los Reyes) Himala (1982, Ishmael Bernal) Hinugot sa Langit (1985, Ishmael Bernal) Hubad na Bayani (1977, Robert Ylagan)* Ang Ibong Adarna (1941, Manuel Conde)* Ifugao (1954, Gerardo de Leon) Ikaw Ay Akin (1978, Ishmael Bernal)* Inay (1977, Lino Brocka)* Insiang (1976, Lino Brocka) Isang Araw Walang Diyos (1989, Peque Gallaga and Lore Reyes)* ₱1,000 Kagandahan (1948, Gregorio Fernandez)* Isumpa Mo, Giliw (1947, Gerardo de Leon)* Itim (1976, Mike de Leon) Ito ang Pilipino (1966, Augusto Buenaventura)* Jack en Jill (1954, Mar S. Torres)* Jaguar (1979, Lino Brocka) Juan Tamad Goes to Congress (1959, Manuel Conde)* Kadenang Putik (1960, Cesar Gallardo)* Kakabakaba Ka Ba? (1980, Mike de Leon) Karnal (1983, Marilou Diaz-Abaya)* Kisapmata (1982, Mike de Leon) Kundiman ng Lahi (1959, Lamberto V. Avellana) Kung Mangarap Ka’t Magising (1977, Mike de Leon)* 48 Oras (1950, Gerardo de Loen)* Mga Ligaw na Bulaklak (1957, Tony Cayado)* Luksang Tagumpay (1956, Gregorio Fernandez)* Malvarosa (1958, Gregorio Fernandez)* Manila by Night (1980, Ishmael Bernal) Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag (1975, Lino Brocka) Medalyong Perlas (1956, Lamberto V. Avellana, F. H. Constantino, Gerardo de Leon, and Manuel Silos) Miguelito: Ang Batang Rebelde (1985, Lino Brocka) Minsa’y Isang Gamugamo (1976, Lupita Aquino Kashiwahara) Misteryo sa Tuwa (1984, Abbo Q. de la Cruz)* The Moises Padilla Story (1961, Gerardo de Leon) Moral (1982, Marilou Diaz-Abaya) Noli Me Tangere (1961, Gerardo de Leon) Nunal sa Tubig (1976, Ishmael Bernal) Orapronobis (1989, Lino Brocka) Oro, Plata, Mata (1982, Peque Gallaga) Pahiram ng Isang Umaga (1989, Ishmael Bernal)* Paradise Inn (1985, Celso Ad. Castillo) Portrait of the Artist as Filipino (1966, Lamberto V. Avellana)* Á Private Show (1985, Chito Roño)* Relasyon (1982, Ishmael Bernal) ROTC (1955, Octavio Silos)* Sa Atin ang Daigdig (1965, Cesar J. Amigo)* Sakada (1976, Behn Cervantes) Salome (1982, Laurice Guillen) Sanda Wong (1955, Gerardo de Leon) Sawa sa Lumang Simboryo (1952, Gerardo de Leon) Scorpio Nights (1985, Peque Gallaga) Sino’ng Maysala? (1957, Armando Garces)* Sisa (1951, Gerardo de Leon) Sister Stella L. (1984, Mike de Leon) Tatlong Taóng Walang Diyos (1976, Mario O’Hara) Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (1974, Lino Brocka) Virgin Forest (1985, Peque Gallaga) Working Girls (1984, Ishmael Bernal)* Back to top Table 3. Ranking of Films Mentioned Only Once 1 Mga Ligaw na Bulaklak 2.5 Ikaw Ay Akin 2.5 48 Oras 4.5 Geron Busabos: Ang Batang Quiapo 4.5 Malvarosa 7 Inay 7 Kung Mangarap Ka’t Magising 7 Private Show 10 Isumpa Mo, Giliw 10 Juan Tamad Goes to Congress 10 Sa Atin ang Daigdig 12 Luksang Tagumpay 13.5 P1,000 Kagandahan 13.5 Medalyong Perlas 17.5 Apat na Taga 17.5 Bicol Express 17.5 Bukas…May Pangarap 17.5 Hubad na Bayani 17.5 Ito ang Pilipino 17.5 Kadenang Putik 23.5 Aguila 23.5 Isang Araw Walang Diyos 23.5 Jack en Jill 23.5 Karnal 23.5 Portrait of the Artist as Filipino 23.5 Working Girls 27 ROTC 28.5 Misteryo sa Tuwa 28.5 Sino’ng Maysala? 30 Cofradia 31 Pahiram ng Isang Umaga 32 Giliw Ko 33 Ang Ibong Adarna Back to top Table 4. Ranking 1: Number-One Choices Á Thrice mentioned: Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag Twice mentioned: Biyaya ng Lupa Daigdig ng mga Api El Filibusterismo Manila by Night Sisa Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang Once Mentioned: Anak Dalita Burlesk Queen Genghis Khan Himala Insiang Itim Jaguar Mga Ligaw na Bulaklak Minsa’y Isang Gamugamo Moral Noli Me Tangere Oro, Plata, Mata Table 5. Ranking 2: Frequency of Mention 1.5. Ganito Kami Noon…Paano Kayo Ngayon? 1.5. Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag 3.5. Insiang 3.5. Kisapmata 5.5. Anak Dalita 5.5. Himala 7.5. Manila by Night 7.5. Oro, Plata, Mata 9. Biyaya ng Lupa 10. Moral Table 6. Ranking 3: Integration of Individual Rankings 1. Manila by Night 2. Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag 3. Anak Dalita 4. Biyaya ng Lupa 5. Ganito Kami Noon…Paano Kayo Ngayon? 6. Moral 7. Kisapmata 8. Himala 9. Insiang 10. Oro, Plata, Mata Back to top Return to The National Pastime contents
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------Posted : 2009-08-23 20:48 Kim Dae-jung & The Aquinos Updated : 2009-08-23 20:48
By Joel David
After the suicide of former Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, the news of the death of Kim Dae-jung would confirm, in the minds of democratically minded observers, the passing of an era. Those with a pan-Asian sensibility would find further confirmation of that remark in the overseas death of still another symbol of another anti-dictatorship struggle, that of Corazon "Cory" Aquino in the Philippines.
Two prominent names in the parallel historical experience of the two countries, linked by the involvement of the U.S. as each country's wartime liberator - the Philippines from Japan (Korea's colonizer) and Korea from the Communists in the North and from China. North Korea conducts 6th nuclear test; most powerful ever Indeed, an enterprising film epic might well show the paths of Kim and Aquino's husband, Benigno North Korea claims successful test of "Ninoy" Jr., virtually crossing each other during the Korean War, which the then-teenage Aquino H-bomb warhead for ICBM covered as a newspaper correspondent. Fearful, yet people dismiss chance of war Ninoy Aquino subsequently parlayed his reportage into a script, eventually turned into a much- US considers deploying strategic celebrated but now-lost film titled Korea, directed in 1952 by Filipino National Artist Lamberto V. weapons to S. Korea Avellana. N. Korea claims successful H-bomb test for ICBM Authorities look into McDonald's Further cinematic license, though a likelier occurrence, would depict the Aquinos and the bulgogi burger Catholicized Kims socializing during their exile in Boston, perhaps during a spiritually uplifting Food shortage forces reduction in celebration of Sunday Mass. Pyongyang population China urges North Korea to stop As survivors of their respective countries' triumphant pro-democracy movements, Kim and Corazon 'wrong' action Trump weighing withdrawal from free Aquino were each seen, by commentators looking at both national experiences, as the other country's trade with S. Korea: report version of herself or himself: Kim as the Aquino of Korea, Aquino as the Kim of the Philippines and N. Korea seen preparing for another each the Nelson Mandela of Asia. ICBM test
The comparison may be inaccurate in several crucial areas - for one thing, it was Ninoy, not Cory, who returned from exile just as Kim did, but Kim was not assassinated upon arrival as Ninoy Aquino was - but there was widespread global acclaim that sealed the similarities between the two former presidents: Cory Aquino's "Woman of the Year" distinction in Time magazine (an honor for which Imelda Marcos would surely have gladly walked barefoot), and Kim's Nobel Peace Prize.
The outpouring of grief that attended each leader's recent demise threatened to shape up as the latest challenge against each one's respective current President Lee Myung-bak and Gloria Macapagal- Arroyo.
At some point in the late ex-presidents' last few months, in fact, each one expressed oppositional dissatisfaction with her or his present-day successor, with Aquino even suggesting she could resume her presidential functions if ever the need for a replacement came up. Gimje Horizon Festival Yet amid the waves of nostalgia washing over the mostly middle-aged middle classes of Filipinos and Koreans, one would hear insistent rumblings of dissent, and not always from supporters of the incumbent leaders either.
Kim, the allegations go, handled the aftermath of the IMF crisis in a manner that made Korea more vulnerable to foreign intervention, and pursued his Nobel to the extent of pandering (possibly including a cash-for-summit arrangement) to a regime that has proved weirdly incapable of reciprocating properly. But Kim's Korea was Shangri-La in contrast to Aquino's Philippines. She resisted the long- (and still-) overdue exigency of land reform in order to retain the family hacienda, agreed to repay an entire clutch of corruption-ridden foreign loans (including the ultimate white elephant, a nuclear plant constructed near earthquake fault lines and a now-active volcano), and otherwise responded to a string of horrendous political, economic, and natural disasters ― including increasingly violent coup attempts, multiple and extensive daily brownouts, and the worst volcanic eruption of the last century ― by hurrying to prayer, a manner admirable for a mother, or mother superior, but not a serious President, even in the Third World.
In the end it all comes down to the reality that resilient people will devise ways of coping, and good democracies enable (pardon the appropriation) people power by allowing the population to change ― or retain ― its elected leaders every so often. Á If Filipinos were too aghast, then, that Ferdinand Marcos's arrogant, sexist, and self-serving prophecy ― that Aquino would prove an even worse Chief Executive than he ― had somehow come true, by 2009 they could take heart that Roh Moo-hyun's supporters still remembered, during his funeral, to use the color yellow that Aquino, following her late husband's prescription, had adopted for her admittedly righteous and courageous anti-dictatorship campaign.
We see this principle played out ― down to the level of schools and families, and way across the Pacific during George "Dubya" Bush's presidential term ― in which those who best embody certain cherished causes do not necessarily have equally sterling management skills.
But if people continue to select charismatic candidates who turn out to be utter duds (Filipino Exhibit A: Joseph Estrada), it could only mean either that they refuse to learn their lesson, or that they still believe in miracles.
Just to ensure that the former scenario never fully plays out its tragic outcome, we ought then to constantly remind ourselves of our heroes' failures, alongside their finest achievements. Such an option might keep us awake longer, but it would help future generations abide the past more securely.
The author is an associate professor for cultural studies at Inha University in Incheon.
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Home > Global Filipino
'Punch' tackles Fil-Korean's search for mother
By Joel David, Inha University Posted at Nov 28 2011 09:32 AM | Updated as of Nov 28 2011 05:32 PM
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SEOUL, Korea - The latest Korean blockbuster film is a departure from the disaster releases that had been dominating the local box-office since Bong Joon-ho’s "The Host" set an all-time record in 2006. What is even more surprising about the current hit, Lee Han’s Punch (Wandeugi), is that it is nothing like its title at all – closer to an air kiss from a distant lover on a dreamy autumn afternoon.
Yet Punch also partakes of the same elements that marked the disaster-film cycle set off by The Host: it is insistently and daringly populist, and it looks at Korea during an age of global interaction (on which more later). More important for practitioners of film everywhere, it demonstrates the admirable willingness of Korean talents to grapple with the exigencies of genre production, constantly searching for ways to infuse difficult and complex material with accessible treatments.
The manner in which Punch reconfigures melodramatic requisites, for example, exhibits its makers’ expert grasp of the strategies of excess and containment – i.e., one should provide an unusual amount of the genre’s primary element (chills in horror, laughs in comedy, tears in melodrama, sex in pornography, etc.) yet ensure that the narrative eventually returns to a condition of normality in order for the viewer to achieve catharsis and closure.
Surprisingly, the element that Punch elects to overindulge in is the exact opposite of what its genre stipulates. Lee (drawing from a recent popular source novel) provides a series of comic set-ups that serve to subtly foreground the pathos endured by the characters, so that toward the end, when the central tearjerker scene is staged, one could hear even male viewers unable to hold back their sniffles – a smiling-through- tears approach more devastating than what manipulative Hollywood dreck like Titanic, for all their outsize budgets, are able to achieve. The ending, happy but not (yet) triumphant, confirms that although the movie might have masqueraded for the most part as a comedy, it has remained true to its melodramatic ideals.
The plot concerns a street-smart young man, Wan-deuk (the Korean title “Wandeugi” is a jokey variation on his name). Generally well-behaved although unable to control his bouts of rage, Wan-deuk remains devoted to his diminutive hunchback father and struggles to maintain a decent performance in high school.
Unfortunately for him, his teacher, Dong-joo, insists on singling him out in and outside the classroom, and harasses him even at home, since he lives across from the rooftop quarters Wan-deuk shares with his father and “uncle,” a mentally challenged man his father befriended and trained for his dance performances. As a child Wan-deuk used to wander the provincial cabaret where his father tap-danced, but since the father believed that his son will have a better future by studying in Seoul, he decided to move there (near Dong- joo’s place, as it turned out) and earn a meager living by selling trifles at markets outside the city. Á The turning point arrives when Dong-joo, also a minister at a church that assists illegal immigrants, discovers that Wan-deuk’s mother is a Filipina who abandoned her family right after weaning her son from breast milk. The news traumatizes Wan-deuk, who already resents Dong-joo seriously enough to pray in church for his teacher’s demise. The process by which the narrative illustrates how these estranged characters manage to accept one another and discover reserves of strength in themselves is enabled by an impressive traversal of the delicate line separating humor from tragedy, without tumbling over into either extreme.
Key to the success of this type of undertaking is the performances. The title character is played by (from the perspective of world cinema) a newcomer, Yoo Ah-in, whose credibility as a mature-beyond-his-years teenager derives from parallel real-life experience as a high-school dropout. The actual lead, however – the character responsible for driving the plot forward – is Dong-joo, played with flourish and acute comic timing by Kim Yun-seok, previously identified with violent, even literally bloody film noirs. The supporting cast – Park Su-young and Kim Yeong-jae as father and “uncle” respectively, and Park Hyo-ju and Kang Byeol as Dong- joo and Wan-deuk’s respective love interests – partake of the same bounteous reserve of colorful representation steeped in what hip-hop artists would describe as dope realness.
Search for Filipina mother
Even a seeming anomaly like the casting of Yoo Ah-in, whose character looks like neither of his parents (and better than both, actually – star-is-born alert, everyone), makes complete sense for people who marry inter- racially as a matter of course – not among Koreans, but among Filipinos. The fact that he is endowed in several other respects adheres to the biological principle, recognized in Philippine culture (and recently being acknowledged in the US), that positive traits tend to emerge more prominently in hybrid offspring.
Yet as mentioned earlier, a successful genre project also requires the curse of containment. In Punch this is brought about in the portrayal of Wan-deuk’s mother, who functions more as cipher than as character, remorseful over her initial abandonment, resolved to make amends to her husband and son, relieved that through them she might finally find some ease over her hardscrabble existence. The rupture in this formulation derives from the fact that the role is essayed by Jasmine Lee, who in real life started as an immigrant wife in Korea but succeeded in becoming a national celebrity after the untimely death of her husband.
The source novel’s character was actually Vietnamese, although the temptation to change her nationality to Filipino was understandable: the Philippines has virtually become an extension of Jeju-do, the primary warm- weather destination for vacationing Koreans, many of whom choose to stay longer (for English training and business investment), sometimes for good. Yet where most other Asian wives would have remained helpless, hampered by differences in both culture and language, the typically Westernized and English-speaking Filipina would have been able to clamber her way up the social ladder one way or another, especially if she’d had the “good education” that Wan-deuk’s father quietly boasted to his son.
A kinder way of responding to this potential shortcoming is by answering that first, gender politics cannot be a national priority in a country that is technically still at war and whose economy lacks a Third World that it can exploit, thus situating its population in a perpetual crisis position even amid its First-World prosperity; and second, a culture whose pre-modern Confucian ideology is even more resolutely patriarchal than its current conservative-Western aspirations has no model for feminist enlightenment anywhere within itself (Indeed, a previous all-time Korean blockbuster, Lee Jun-ik’s The King and the Clown, signifies how deeply misogyny can underlie any well-intentioned queer text.) Á Like The Host, Punch compensates in the next best possible way, by presenting its male characters as society’s Other, feminized in relation to the relatively powerful and wealthy majority. It remains then for Korea’s Asian Others – Filipinos and other immigrant populations – to continue demonstrating how and why gender progressivity is not merely ethical, but in fact beneficial and indispensable in strengthening the strands of the social fabric.
The author is Associate Professor for Cultural Studies at Inha University and a member of the Philippine embassy in Korea’s Resource Persons Group. Author of several books, he holds a Ph.D. in Film from New York University and had taught at a number of other institutions including the University of the Philippines, where he was founding Director of the Film Institute.
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Categories About Us Advertise A National Artist we deserve Posted: June 21st, 2014 ˑ Filled under: Entertainment ˑ 1 Comment September 2017
Nora Aunor: Screen idol of the working class
By Joel David Of whether Nora Cabaltera Villamayor, legally a senior citizen of the Philippines and permanent resident of the U.S., is an accomplished artist there can be no doubt. One might inspect the record of her multimedia accomplishments – as recording artist, television performer, stage actress, concert act, and film producer and thespian – and concede that she may have excelled in many, if not most, of these areas; one might even be a serious observer of any of these fields of endeavor (as I have been) and assert that no one else comes close, although many certainly aspire to her level of achievement. Not surprisingly, the rejection by President Benigno Aquino III of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts’s endorsement of Aunor has occasioned a number of impassioned and articulate responses, starting with social networks, by now filtering through mass media, and inevitably destined to land in scholarly discussions, with the Philippines’s own major indexed humanities journal, Kritika Kultura of Ateneo de Manila University, slated to publish a special section early next year devoted to her. (Personal disclosure: I am in charge of this specific project, as forum editor.) The nature of the reactions should not surprise anyone attuned to Philippine popular culture: The late-1960s working-class devotees who demanded for, and got, the teen idols they wanted have since grown along with them, many gentrifying and positioned in various capacities all over the globe. It would have been instructive for the president’s culture team to have looked into the origin of what National Artist for Literature and Magsaysay Awardee Nick Joaquin described as a phenomenon, in one of his landmark journalism articles. For way before the 1986 middle-class people-power revolt that restored the oligarchy that Aquino effectively represents, an earlier, limited, though genuinely working-class form of people power, comprising mostly rural migrants working as factory and domestic labor, discovered the pleasures of pop-culture consumerism and ignored the dictates of the then-already enfeebled studio system of the so-called First Golden Age of Philippine cinema. Rather than flock to the presentations of the typical European-featured and bourgeoisified talents then still being insistently launched by the major studios, the new urbanites, still capable of earning disposable income without seeking overseas employment, used their peso-votes to signify what types of idols they preferred. Today’s intellectuals replicate an error of historical interpretation when they position Aunor and her teen-star rival, Vilma Santos, as belonging to the native-vs.-mestizo division that observers during that time believed was at play: although Santos first emerged as a child star during the waning years of the Golden Age, her fairness did not conform to the anti-Asian requisites of the time; grown-ups with distinctly Oriental features would have been relegated to serious secondary roles as male villains or femmes fatales or, at best, comic roles (where, instructively, the biggest star, Dolphy, had to suppress his Chinese surname). Hence the masses’ new choices represented iconographies long withheld by the elite-controlled studio system, with the two biggest stars no longer male, and either morena or chinita (as their types used to be termed). By the arrival of the 1970s, the more Western-looking types accommodated this new demand for transformative appearances by exploring unusual options, including the pornography genre now remembered as bomba – also a reference to then-emerging student and labor unrest. Since then this social experiment in discovering new types of media performers for popular consumption has Á either ended or changed, depending on what perspective one opts to adopt. East Asian-type candidates have managed to swing the door wide open, thanks to the example initiated by Santos and followed through by the middle-brow Chinoy-ethnocentric efforts of Philippine cinema’s most successful producer, Lily Yu Monteverde. But proof that this progressive window has long slammed shut lies in the fact that no other brown-skinned female star has emerged since Aunor. To confound matters for the race- and class-conscious arbiters of social acceptability, Aunor’s Otherness was too close for comfort to her mass adulators’ condition – i.e., like them she was born poor and far from the capital city, enduring the then-standard harsh treatment reserved for those perceived as unable to call on socially influential contacts for protection, cursed with disproportionate ambition and fated to rely on wit, talent, and industry to attain her dreams. Not surprisingly, for the period of what might count as her on-the-job internship, she displayed an earnest studiousness, carefully enunciating her song lyrics and delivering over-rehearsed renditions of even the most casual lines of dialogue and investing whatever spare funds she had in art or period film projects that baffled her fans and accounted for her occasional impoverishment (by movie-star standards). Nevertheless, when her artistic maturity had peaked, roughly toward the close of the 1970s, the fruits of such unmatched discipline and struggle went on glorious display and earned her an entirely new generation of followers, many of them academically trained in cultural and media appreciation. I remember suspecting her then of finagling her performance record by paying attention to only her serious projects (as other serious performers and directors were wont to do), and watching the several potboilers she appeared in during her many periods of financial difficulty: to my amazement, each one, without exception, was stamped with a level of expertise that performing arts majors would have killed for. This background also helps explain her disdain for the trappings of social respectability, having realized (as the most serious artists do) that the widest range of experiential possibilities can always be harnessed in the service of interpretive craft. Small wonder that when she had the assurance of serious coverage during her current career resurgence, she spelled it out for the world, without apologies: chemical dependencies, multiple (including same-sex) partners, neuroses and anxieties, an inexplicable wanderlust, regret in the innocence of the now-lost past and hope in the uncertainties of the future. It was a source of amusement for me to see her fans scrambling to rationalize her statements, with a few of them abandoning their devotion to her because of their fundamentalist religious beliefs. Less amusing was the spectacle of a supposedly enlightened presidential administration decreeing, in effect, that it did not want to be represented by such a powerfully transgressive figure. Its ignorance of the artistic temperament gets exposed when we look up the list of names who had already made it to the ranks of the country’s officially endorsed masters and see that the best among them had made use of similar methods of exploring truths and realities. The kind of sensibility that counts a public record like Aunor’s as contaminated by her less-than-“exemplary” lifestyle encourages medieval institutions like the Catholic Church to attempt a takeover of official cultural functions; worse, it plays into the dangerous oligarchic fantasy that a commodified, infantile, unexceptional mass culture is the perfectly satisfactory consequence of a wholesome moral existence. Joel David is Professor for Cultural Studies at Inha University in Incheon, Korea. He was founding Director of the University of the Philippines Film Institute and maintains an archival blog at Amauteurish.com.
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day wrote: June 22, 2014 at 2:06 pm this is madness! this is insane! just because nora aunor resembles noynoy aquino’s “best fren”, ate glow?! geez, he is such a mean and shallow man! Reply
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Suggested Features Fields of Vision April 23, 2014 By Joel David Non-titles listed here may be descriptions of articles or chapters, rather than their actual titles. Links will open with the formal title of the text, along with the text itself. • Annual Filipino Film Chart Sole-Authored Books • The National Pastime • Fields of Vision • Wages of Cinema • Millennial Traversals • Book Texts: A Pinoy Film Course 23rd FACINE Film Festival • Gawad Lingap Sining Citation • 2016 FACINE Lecture Special Lists • Film auteurs, play directors, & book authors Fields of Vision: Critical Applications in Recent Philippine Cinema • National Midweek articles came out in 1995, when I had just finished my master’s and started doctoral • Journal publications work at New York University. I’d dropped by Ateneo de Manila University Criticism Press right after The National Pastime came out, to see if they might want to • A Second Golden Age sell copies in their book shop, and instead got something better: an assurance • The Trouble with Golden Ages that they would publish my next volume. I compiled the pieces I took out from • More on the 2nd Golden Age the original manuscript submission to The National Pastime, then I realized • Ten Best Films Survey (1990) that there were too many reviews of foreign films and that the new volume • An Awards Exercise required something else to distinguish itself from its predecessor. So I axed the • Pinoy Film Criticism non-Pinoy film reviews and requested a deadline extension, and for the next • Fallout over Criticizing Critics couple of years I undertook a series of non-standard approaches in my capacity as National Midweek’s “resident film critic” – multi-film Interviews (of J. David) commentaries, a canonical survey, an awards exercise, a scenes listing, meta- • Re Amauteurish! (P.D. Grant) analyses, and so on; I was hoping to do at least one semiotic reading of any • Re The National Pastime (V. Ira) scene or scenes in any then-current release, but I couldn’t find anything I Interviews (of Others) could focus on. I left for the US for my Fulbright-funded graduate studies as • Ishmael Bernal (A. Vasudev) soon as I submitted the new manuscript. I requested (and got) a detrital cover • Bien Lumbera design, something in the spirit of the B’s, with my then-roommate Roger Hallas • Doy del Mundo providing a cover photo of an “indeterminate” scene (actually the Jardin du • Rey de la Cruz Luxembourg) and an author’s pic taken at the Museum of Modern Art. • Pio de Castro III Coordinating by snail-mail from the other side of the planet, however, had its • Ramon Reyes drawbacks: the section intros I wrote got compiled as the book intro, since the introductory essay I drafted never arrived; these are restored in the Fil(m)ipiniana appropriate sections below, as is the aforementioned intro. The book was the • SineManila first (and sole) nominee, and subsequent winner, in the film criticism category • Focus on Filipino Films (1983) of the Manila Critics Circle’s National Book Awards. It was cited in some of the • Transcription Chapter (1983) “final” pre-digital film-studies texts, including The Oxford Guide to Film • Roundtable on Criticism (2014) • Sight & Sound section (2002) Studies (ed. John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) and Robert Stam’s Film Theory: An Introduction This Blog (& Me) (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2000). [Cover design: Fidel Rillo; cover & author’s • How to Use Amauteurish! pics: Roger Hallas; press director: Esther M. Pacheco; dedicatees: Prescy & • Reviews & Recommendations Maria Prescy, Demetrio, & Jose’s Aristides, Gamaliel, Leonides, & Aaron. For • Joel Who? larger image, please click on picture above.] • Marcos & the Movies • Movie Labor Á Contents of the Digital Edition These Blogs (for Me) © 2014 by Joel David & Amauteurish Publishing; All Rights Reserved • 1505 Film Avenue (N. Costales) • Addicted to Movies (J.J. David) Introduction (as originally drafted) & Section Intros • Another Sani Day (S.C. Ajero) • Cinema Bravo (J.B. Estillore et Part 1: Panorama al.) • Closely Watched Frames (N. The “New” Cinema in Retrospect Manaig) • Critic after Dark (N. Vera) Part 2: Viewpoints • Death of Traditional Cinema (M. A. Creations Macarayan) • Film Police Reviews (A. dela Cruz et al.) Three Careers • The Knee-Jerk Critic (R.E. Lopez) • Umiyak Pati Langit (1991) • Lilok Pelikula (R. Bolisay) • Bago Matapos ang Lahat (1991) • Magsine Tayo! (J. Devera) • Ganito Ba ang Umibig (1991) • Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino Directors-Editors • Missing Codec (E. Deyto) • Kaaway ng Batas (1990) • New Durian Cinema (T. • Angel Molave (1990) Mangansakan et al.) Maryo J. and Mr. de los Reyes • NOOD.ph: Pinoy Movie Reviews • My Other Woman (1990) Atbp. • Underage Too (1991) • Omnitudo (A.D. Mendizabal) Persistence of Vision • Pelikulove (E.O. Marfil et al.) • Bakit Kay Tagal ng Sandali? (1990) • Pinoy Rebyu (S. Labastilla) Cool Film • #Pop #Culture #Diva (A. del • Hot Summer (1989) Mundo) Long Flight • Present Confusion (J. Tawasil) • Birds of Prey (1988) • Space-Aso (R. Cerda) • Tablestretcher (L. Maburaot) Indigenous Ingenuity • Tagailog Special Presents (M. • Andrea, Paano Ba ang Maging Isang Ina? (1990) Pangaruy Jr.) No End in Sight • Takilya ni Leaflens (L.L. Cantor) • Kung Tapos na ang Kailanman (1990) • Video 48 (S. Santos) Head Held High • WickedMouth (G. Tabarejos) • Gumapang Ka sa Lusak (1990) • Young Critics Circle B. Speculations
Family Affairs • Pido Dida (Sabay Tayo) (1990) Sequacious and Second-Rate • Pido Dida 2 (Kasal Na) (1991) • Anak ni Baby Ama (1990) Woman-Worthy • Kasalanan Ba’ng Sambahin Ka? (1990) • Hahamakin Lahat (1990) Demachofication • Kristobal (1990) Men and Myths • Bala at Rosaryo (1990) Ma(so?)chismo • Barumbado (1990) • Kasalanan ang Buhayin Ka (1990) I.O.U. • Kahit Singko Hindi Ko Babayaran ang Buhay Mo (1990) Mudslung • Ibabaon Kita sa Lupa (1990) • Ayaw Matulog ng Gabi (1990) Movable Fists • Walang Awa Kung Pumatay (1990) • Iisa-Isahin Ko Kayo (1990) • Apoy sa Lupang Hinirang (1990) Class Clamorers • Too Young (1990) • Shake, Rattle & Roll II (1990) • Biktima (1990) • Ama, Bakit Mo Ako Pinabayaan? (1990) Sedulously Cebuano • Eh…Kasi…Bisaya! (1990) C. Positions
ASEAN Affair Carnival Cinema Á • Cinevision 2000 (1989) Classroom, as Theater Film Critics Speak Shooting Crap Fleshmongering Firmament Occupation Blues Hit Parade Part 3: Perspectives Worth the While Ten Best Filipino Films Up to 1990 One-Shot Awards Ceremony Afterpiece: The Last of Lino Back to top
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About Joel David Teacher, scholar, & gadfly of film, media, & culture. [Photo of Kiehl courtesy of Danny Y. & Vanny P.]
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This entry was posted on Wednesday , April 23rd, 2014 at 1:18 pm and tagged with Criticism, History and posted in Book. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Á Thinking Straight: Queer Imaging in Lino Brocka’s Maynila (1975)* Joel David
The separation in so-called public political discourse and private identity issues attained recent cultural cutting-edge status in the articulation of gender issues. In view of the artificiality of disciplinary boundaries, this paper seeks to evaluate the potential of queer politics (focused on gay-male practice) within the exploratory terms provided by a major city film, Lino Brocka’s Maynila: Sa mga kuko ng liwanag (1975), produced during martial rule. The area of application of this analysis will be Philippine popular culture, in consideration of the country’s position as a post-colonized territory that had set up a dictatorial regime to facilitate neocolonial control by the US.
Keywords: Philippine cinema, postcoloniality, queerness, Marcos era, Maynila (1975)
Queer, or actually gay, representations of Filipinos in their own cinema can be seen in what may be the most significant gay-themed works produced in the country during the period of Ferdinand Marcos’s dictatorship (the martial law period was effectively in place from September 1972 to March 1986, with a largely symbolic “paper lifting” in January 1981). The most prominent body of work has been Brocka’s tackling of homosexuality at regular intervals: from his early Tubog sa Ginto (1971) to Ang Tatay Kong Nanay (1978), including the peripheral gay characters in Maynila: Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (1975), Mananayaw (1978), and Palipat-lipat, Papalit-palit (1982) in his middle period, to Macho dancer (1988) (planned during but produced after the Marcos period) which also led to a few sequels by his associates after his death. The gay character assumed a more realistic, if not sympathetic, treatment in other filmmaker’s treatments, scoring points in otherwise straight milieux in Peque Gallaga’s Scorpio Nights (1985)and Marilou Diaz- Abaya’s Moral (1982) and assuming lead-character capability (along with a Plaridel • Vol. 9 No. 2 • August 2012 21-40Á wide array of gender outlaws, including lesbian, bisexual, polyamorous and sex-professional Others) in Ishmael Bernal’s Manila by Night (1980). Gay characters still managed to sustain high visibility immediately after the collapse of the Marcos regime, but at the risk of comic treatment bordering on ridicule, which culminated in the rise and fall of Roderick Paulate (his contemporary equivalent would be Vice Ganda, whose Praybeyt Benjamin has become the all-time local box-office hit as of 2011). Lesbians on the other hand also had their share of exposure, but in a different manner. The depiction of female sexuality, even in its same-sex dimension, was vulnerable to the cynical exploitation of women’s issues in order to justify graphic portrayals of female anatomies in near or outright pornographic conditions. Another, though less hell-raising, problem was the appropriation of feminist exigencies in the pursuit of reactionary-propagandistic ploys. Danny L. Zialcita’s T-bird at Ako (1982) saw the lesbian converted by a casual encounter with an exponent of machismo, a treatment to be repeated immediately after the People Power revolt in Pepe Marcos’ Tubusin mo ng Dugo (1988) and reveling in its inequity in various Roderick Paulate films that paired the star with Maricel Soriano – i.e., the lesbian turns woman while the gay remains gay in the end; the lesbian in Moral, though not condemned outright, is also accorded less significance than the gay male couple who interact with one of the major characters. This is the same for most other lesbian characters, including one in Diaz-Abaya’s Alyas Baby Tsina (1984). Only in post-Marcos releases, starting with Mel Chionglo’s Isabel Aquino: I Want to Live and Gil Portes’ Class of ’91 (both 1991) do lesbians acquire recognizable dimensions and maintain their sexuality consistently throughout the film. In order to focus more squarely on the period in question, this paper will be looking at the country’s most significant city film prior to the 1980s, Lino Brocka’s Maynila: Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (1975), which by at least one account (David, 1990) jump-started the so-called Second Golden Age of Philippine cinema.
Conditions of Production Postcoloniality may be the only Marxist-based holdover that both retains its claims to liberationist ideals and stands to benefit from the interdisciplinary crossings-over of the “post” (-modern, -structuralist) era. Queer theory, on the other hand, can be seen, at least chronologically, as a permutation of studies in feminism, gender and sexuality. I take care to qualify these discourses as “theoretical” because the evidence of artistic practice – in filmmaking, especially – demonstrates the ease with which both queer and 22 David • Thinking Straight Á postcolonial positions could enrich one another, not only by complicating the issues they raise, but also by supplying some needed sources of additional rage and humor. This paper aims to reconsider the problematic terms of progressivity of the film whose impact effectively defined the cinematic imaging of the city of Manila; understandably, the film, along with Ishmael Bernal’s Manila by Night (1980), contends for canonical ranking as the country’s all-time best output, and both titles have been read comparatively since their emergence (see, for instance, del Mundo, 2001; and Tolentino, 2012). As an example, the first comprehensive reader, which came out in 1994, on colonial discourse and “post-colonial” theory, introduces the field by elaborating on the contributions of discourses on race and ethnicity, then adds in closing that “The dynamics of gender and sexuality are, of course, central issues” (Williams and Chrisman, 1994), all the while making references to feminist and gender writings and none whatsoever to non-heterosexual positionings. In the course of this paper I would also contend that even the most radical possibilities in queer writing, those deriving from arguments on lesbian “perverse” sexuality, stop short of making overt political prescriptions, thus effectively closing down certain avenues for transformative applications. The aforementioned reader makes as clear an articulation as any about the increasing inadequacies of standard postcolonial approaches, particularly in its extended introductory critique of the standard source of contemporary views on race and ethnicity in postcolonial relations, Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978). The authors argue that the notion of Orientalism, while helpful in bringing to the fore the manner in which Othering has entrenched itself in Western culture, also lends itself to a certain amount of containment (Williams and Chrisman, 1994), evidenced in debates on political correctness – i.e., respect as its own compensation – and aspects of multiculturalism, specifically those concerned with “alternative” lifestyling and canon-formations. Sara Suleri (1994), in “Woman Skin Deep: Feminism and the Postcolonial Condition,” circumscribes these problematics by noting how these difficulties arise mainly in Western-centered discussions because of the intrusion of a third term in the race-ethnicity axes – i.e., that of (the theorist’s potentially lucrative) profession (1994, p). More recent studies of queer sexualities in the Philippines have emerged since the period covered by the aforementioned texts. Michael Tan inspected Filipino male sexual behavior (Tan, 1995), focusing at one point on sex workers with a view to effective implementation of safe sex (Tan, 1999); Martin F. Manalansan (2003) inspected how gay Filipinos negotiated a transition Plaridel • Vol. 9 No. 2 • August 2012 23Á from a developing country to a highly developed center (New York City); Fenella Cannell (1999) and Dana Collins (2005) provided close observational studies of homosexuality in rural and in urban settings, respectively; the problematizations of the bakla (an older and more abject conceptualization of male homosexuality) are presented by such authors as Mark Johnson (1997), J. Neil C. Garcia (2000) and Bobby Benedicto (2008); while studies on Filipino lesbianism, though comparatively more recent and therefore fewer thus far, can be seen in the output of Kale Bantigue Fajardo (2008) and Libay Linsangan Cantor (2012). The preponderance of anthropological studies corresponds to the need for careful and accurate descriptions of conditions that are still in the process of discovery by global scholars; Fajardo, in fact, cautions against the heteronormativizing impulses in closely narrativizing any complex “alien” cultural phenomena (2008, p. 419). In pursuit of a more definite historical incident in Philippine queer politics, this paper will be inspecting the interactions of two texts, a film release and a lengthy article that bucked the then-prevalent trend of critical approbation. By way of moving from the theoretical to the practical, as well as from the general to the specific, two early examples of foreign (printed) texts, both gazing at Filipino sexualities from unexpected positions and understandably though hastily resisted by local scholars, will precede the presentation of the film release and the article in question.
The Feminist Imperative The entry point for interfacing discussions of queerness and postcoloniality was and remains feminism, deriving from the observation that the (not- a lways-fema le) Orient a l Ot her tended to be fem i n i zed i n t he West. The posit ive result of the intervention of feminists in postcolonial discourse can be seen as threefold in nature: the introduction of reverse discourse, as formulable in the admittedly simplistic polemic “What’s so bad about feminization/femininity anyway?,” the extension to the political realm of lessons in gender struggles, and the disclosure of the realities of oppression even among the colonized, in that women in this situation, to begin with, suffer the twin burdens of gender and political colonization. The Philippines as object of observation serves to further extend this articulation of the controversy via its historical circumstance of having been the United States’ only successful attempt at (post-)colonization, with a narrative of resistance antedating and resembling that of Vietnam, minus the latter’s advantages of having allies in the Cold 24 David • Thinking Straight Á War superpower split as well as in liberal Western media and activist circles, suppressed and overturned for the most part of the current century. A casual glance at two available contemporary sources of Westerners gazing at Filipino sexuality, both of which have been disparaged in standard Filipino queer scholarship, helps drive home the point of the disadvantage of working within a culturally alien framework of analysis. The first, an empirical study of comparative homosexualities in a number of national contexts including the US, lumps together the Philippines along with the other Third- World countries, presumably on the basis of their common experience of Hispanic colonization, as its way of explaining the fluidity of Philippine male sexuality (Whitam and Mathy, 1986). Although the study favorably compares the option of machismo, which justifies homosexual relations within the binary of masculine dominance and feminine submission, to that of American heterosexuality, the authors also acknowledge that the Philippines is unique in representing the erotic tradition “of Southeast Asia, the most tolerant area of the world with respect to variant sexuality” (pp. 144-145). The other text, a tourism guide to gay Philippine life, avoids the pitfall of seeking explanations by way of analogous Western, specifically Latinate, tradition, but nevertheless resorts to basic still-Western categorizations in describing Filipino men thus: “‘Straight’ is gay and gay is gayer” – this as a chapter subtitle, immediately followed by the observation that “Filipino sexuality has many hard to explain (sic) aspects” (Itiel, 1989, p. 10). More knowingly, the guide differentiates between Philippine male sexuality and machismo by asserting that “Being ‘straight’ in the Philippines doesn’t dictate one’s sexual role play” (p. 11). The reason I insist that the text ultimately falls back on an even more basic and naturalized Western framework draws from the text’s insistence on defining gay-available straight men as not straight, and therefore merely “straight.” While I feel it is imperative to look further into a perversion of what is already “perverse” to begin with, it would also be helpful to see what the implications of such an insistence on Westernized categorizations lead to. Granting the feminization of the Other already imposed by Orientalism, the fact that such potentially gay men can still be called “straight,” even with quotation marks, implies, if these men were Western, the condition of bisexuality, as valorized by Freud himself. But again, since these men are not men enough by virtue of their Otherness, then as non-men (and therefore, still within Westernized terms, women), their capacity for straightness marks them as lesbians. This may be seen at best as tying in with recent queer discourses on lesbian “perverse” sexuality, but before celebrating such a discovery by delving into the Plaridel • Vol. 9 No. 2 • August 2012 25Á discourses themselves, what should also be pointed out is that this is perhaps the surest way of explaining another, and far more anomalous, phenomenon – that of virtually erasing real lesbians in Philippine sexual discourses. This is accomplished by any of a number of means: regarding women homosexuals as capable of heterosexuality since all it would take is for them to assume the passive term within a sexual encounter; enforcing masculinist expectations even within non-sexual contexts, thus depriving lesbians of the advantage of seeking communal support among themselves – a prerogative stigmatized, as it were, as feminine and therefore open only to gays and straight women; and suppressing sexual options by providing sublimational alternatives – single- women careers, the nunnery, old-maid aunthood, foreign labor (primarily as domestic help, secondarily as sex workers). At this point the paper will be revisiting a now nearly forgotten circumstance in the production of a major Philippine city film, Brocka’s Maynila: Sa mga kuko ng liwanag (1975). The specific case will involve possibly permanently lost footage and operate according to the terms, reminiscent of the archeological analysis prescribed by Michel Foucault (1972), that still- available traces can provide in order to approach as closely as possible the issues obtained during the period. In his comparative evaluation of major Filipino city films, scriptwriter Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr. (2001) opined that “Brocka’s image of an exploitative city represents a social condition, a political problem; in the process, a growing consciousness of a need to change arises” (p. 93). Rolando B. Tolentino (2012) extended this insight by remarking that the film “can also be read as a derailing of the Marcosian project of image- and nation-building. Martial law and the dictatorship had … [only succeeded in] raising the question of who really benefited from the undertaking.”
Manila and Masculinity The highly contained controversy that emerged in the wake of Brocka’s adaptation of Edgardo Reyes’s novel can be inferred from some of the major reviews that greeted it. Bienvenido Lumbera, writing in the Philippine Daily Express, opined toward the end that “The insertion of the sequences pertaining to [lead character] Julio’s involvement in the callboy trade does seem like an intrusion, for the characters from the story proper seem to have dropped out for the duration of the episode” (1975, p. 203). Another review, from the Times Journal, mentioned as one of the movie’s memorable scenes that of “vicious callboys ganging up on a teenage homosexual prey inside the men’s room of a movie house” (Hernando, p. 213) – a description that will be 26 David • Thinking Straight Á unfamiliar to anyone whose familiarity with the film derives from either the international print or any of the several video versions. The full controversy originated in a now little-known article, tellingly titled “A brief on Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Or why Maynila should ever be masculine)” and published in a literary journal of the national university. The author, Ave Perez Jacob (1975), following the romanticization of masculinity and expression of casual homophobia still acceptable during the period, peppered his writing with derogatory references to “homos,” “fairies,” and “bakla” (Filipino for “faggot”), and criticized the film for “[emasculating] an austere masculine novel” (p. 70) which nevertheless ultimately managed to resist efforts “to sissify a manly novel about an ever masculine city” (p. 77). While agreeing with the adaptation’s censoring of the lead character’s possibly accidental murder of a man in a botched robbery attempt (p. 70), the author then mentions how the film’s “palpably stale and run-of-the-mill” reunion between the narrative’s doomed lovers was “a lousy mean way to culminate [lead character] Julio’s search. But in the context of the protracted (almost a quarter of the movie’s length) bakla interlude, that suits Brocka perfectly” (p. 75).1 The parenthetical description in the preceding quotation would be a puzzlement to people who had watched the film only since its original release. At 125 minutes, a quarter would constitute over half an hour, when the detour of Julio into the world of gay-for-pay sex work in existing versions would be 16 minutes, or about half that amount. The explanation is that the Julio-as- rentboy sequences were trimmed and the final scenes, where the brothel workers were brought to a seaside resort, were cut entirely after the movie’s initial theatrical run in July 1975; the trimmed version was screened during the movie’s reissue the next year, after it had swept the Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences (FAMAS) awards. The longer version, which would also have considerably lengthened the total running time, accounts for a then-publicized shot, actually a location still and now mistaken for an indeterminate soft-core glamour pose, of lead performer Rafael Roco, Jr., in bikini briefs (Figure 1). Between the callboy sequences in the brothel (which is the only portion that remains in existing prints) and on the beach, the narrative follows Julio, who goes along with his mentor Bobby and the latter’s circle of sex-work professionals. Following the then-prevalent terms of desire, the members, who at one point operate as a semi-underworld gang, are all straight-acting – which the film suggests is the reason for their ready acceptance of Julio, whose hesitation is read by everyone as confirmation of his heterosexuality. Plaridel • Vol. 9 No. 2 • August 2012 27Á Although his first customer in the brothel (who utters the last line retained from the originally extended sequence) complains about Julio’s passivity during love-making, the movie appears to assume that Julio continues to be welcomed in the “life” despite his lack of inclinations (and concomitant skills) because of the greater degree of manliness bestowed on him by his working-class experience. The highlights of Julio’s queer detour include a depiction, per an older colleague’s recollection, of “the real-life Tambakan alley Figure 1. Rafael (Bembol) Roco, Jr. as Julio Madiaga in now- missing sequence in Lino Brocka’s Maynila: Sa Mga Kuko ng in Santa Cruz [the squalid Liwanag (1975). (Cinema Artists publicity still) residential section of a low- end retail district] where an elderly half-blind pimp named Cleopatra ruled over his harem of hustlers. At the top floor, the laundry line of briefs hanging outside the window signaled interested gays on the street below if there were available men upstairs” (Bernardo, 2012). Another major sequence took place, as adduced in the aforementioned Times Journal review, in a movie venue along Rizal Avenue, the Ideal Theater, then known as the venue for MGM releases. Since MGM specialized in musicals, the Ideal screen was framed as a proscenium arch, with the illusion of a stage platform extending from the curtains, which were in turn of two types: horizontally parted “travelers” (opened only before the first screening and closed after the last) and vertically lifted drapes. In this sequence, Julio agrees to be set up by Bobby and his friends as bait for any closeted homosexual cruising in the darkness of movie screenings. The group, posing as undercover vice cops, would then pounce on the victim and shake down the latter in order to extort quick (though rarely hefty) profits. 2 28 David • Thinking Straight Á During the final extended beach sequence, the longest single setting in the film, Julio (still consistent with his hesitant responses in the initial brothel sequence) continues to reject a series of effeminate yet increasingly illustrious clients, until he turns violent against some of them, occasioning stereotypical “screaming-fag” hysterics among the supporting performers. Fired on the spot by the brothel manager, Julio then turns to drink and lies on the sand, seeking sympathy from Bobby, the man who, claiming heterosexuality, had befriended him in Liwasang Bonifacio (formerly Lawton Plaza) and introduced him to sex work, strictly as a means of income; the sequence, as I remember, also contains possibly the most impressive of the film’s several beach scenes, shot during magic hour, with color saturation intensifying along with the emotional tension in the scene. When Bobby, no longer able to control his same-sex desire, plants a kiss on him, Julio responds with disgust, says something to the effect of “I thought you were different from them but you’re also just another bakla,” and abandons him. The next sequence (recognizable to viewers of still-existing copies), where Julio calls on Pol, a former construction co-worker, then follows.
Recriminative responses The aforementioned series of sequences, apparently now permanently lost except for the first (brothel-set) extract, incited more negative responses than the film as a whole. This may have come as a surprise to the filmmakers, especially the director, considering that martial law had been declared only three years earlier and its repressive effects would have become increasingly evident by then; in fact in a few months’ time another film, Behn Cervantes’s Sakada (1976), would be banned after its initial run; in the same year, a soft- core potboiler, Danilo Cabreira’s Mga Uhaw na Bulaklak, Part II, would serve as justification for militarizing the Office of the President’s Board of Censors for Motion Pictures. One possible explanation for Maynila’s exception from initial harassment (although years later its export permit would encounter difficulty) is that the director had just realized the ultimate cinephiliac pipe dream: a self-produced epic project that turned into a blockbuster and swept the industry awards. Although highly critical of political authority and traditional values, the 1974 film, titled Tinimbang ka Ngunit Kulang (translatable as the biblical book of Daniel’s shekel [Chapter 5], or “You were weighed but found wanting”), was actually – by virtue of its rural setting and heroic male figure – containable within the terms of moral and economic reform espoused by the New Society of the martial-law regime. Plaridel • Vol. 9 No. 2 • August 2012 29Á Hence, the emergence of the article constituted a potentially upsetting challenge to a film whose director had aspired to bring radical (because critical) thinking from the countryside into the capital city. Maynila set itself within defensible limits by providing a period title, “1970” (deleted in the international version, with the initial run in Paris using the title Manille ’75), at the end of the opening credits, but nevertheless retained a provocative edge by featuring a workers’ protest march toward the end, coinciding – and potentially conflicting – with Julio’s increasingly murderous fury over the murder of his recently rediscovered childhood sweetheart, Ligaya. What may have been surprising was the excessive nature of the dissenting commentary, focused on a narrative detour that Brocka had earnestly believed lay in the spirit of strengthening the moral ascendancy of the lead character; as he stated:
I was accused of sensationalizing the homosexual episode. But that’s a misconception. I have two reasons for including it. Fi r s t t o r e c o n c i l e t h e m at e r i a l w i t h t h e d e m a n d s o f t h e i n du s t r y and second to give a context in which Julio understands the despair of Ligaya. The story is the dehumanization of this man and I know of many students who enter into prostitution…. When Julio finally meets Ligaya and sleeps with her in a motel room, he understands her travails thanks to his homosexual experiences. He understands what it is to sleep with Ah Tek. The two know what it means to be dirtied. (Sotto, 1993, p. 225)
The several problematic pronouncements in this interview excerpt – the judgmental attitude toward sex work, the assumption of the validity of homophobia, the acceptance of the weak nature of a “good” woman, and the expression of disgust toward an Asian Other (whose name cannot even be authenticated, intended as it was to resound with “atik,” slang reversal of the Filipino word for profit) – should entirely be taken in the historical context in which Brocka outgrew each position and reflected his perspectival shifts in his succeeding film projects, all the way until his untimely death in a car accident in 1991.3 Per the account of the scriptwriter Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr., Brocka may have erred in neglecting to clear the additional episodes with Edgardo Reyes, author of the source novel; Del Mundo also accounts for the fact that the movie’s literary handling of recognizably 1960s Tagalog slang undergoes 30 David • Thinking Straight Á a linguistic shift into more contemporary modes of expression, including “swardspeak” or gay lingo, which began emerging in the ’70s:
When Lino made the suggestion to add the excursion into the gay underworld, I asked him and Mike [de Leon, producer and cinematographer] to clear it with Edgardo Reyes. I doubt if they did. Anyway, Lino and I talked about his ideas. Finally, I scripted it myself. The dialogue would naturally differ from the rest of the film. The character of Bobby belongs to a different group. The dialogue separates him from the world of the construction workers. (Del Mundo, email interview, 2012)
In this context, Jacob’s article provides an impassioned, personalistic and extended denunciation of the aforementioned episodes. It opens with a lionization of Tondo as the proper masculine representation of Manila, embodied in the author’s selection of an unnamed ideal resident:
Of larger-than-life figures, there was a man living alone in a working-class house…. One would knock timidly, respectfully, on his door and be overwhelmed by a rare presence. He was of the stuff that made Tondo muscular and masculine, stentorian and great. Across a coffee table or from an improvised platform, his voice vibrated with visceral and intellectual conviction. (Jacob, 1975, p. 64)
This tone of ironically unexamined homoeroticism, redolent of all- male cultures such as the priesthood and the military, typically requires hysterically homophobic declarations in order to assure the reader that the author’s love of manliness does not extend to feminized penetrative desire. At one point the article recounts an account, worth quoting extensively, of an incident that recalls the first scene where Bobby befriends Julio, as well as the now-lost Ideal Theater scene:
The homos (poor creatures!) haunted the ruins of Intramuros like vampires in search of fresh blood. They were mostly mestizos,… the products of Ermita and similar ilustrado enclaves. An expert blow-job they would demonstrate on anybody in need not so much of perverted sex as fare money Plaridel • Vol. 9 No. 2 • August 2012 31Á or a free meal. Instances there were when a guy or two of one’s company would play the decoys while the rest lay crouched and hidden in the tall talahib grass. At a given signal, as the fairies gathered round moaning and squealing in vulgar admiration of succulent Tondo meat, the ambushers would jump at them yelling like demented maniacs. And the homos would scamper away shrieking hysterically, disappearing as ghosts in the shadowy nooks and crannies of old Intramuros. (Jacob, 1975, p. 66)
Desire and its Discontents The queer-baiting story just quoted exhibits more than just an obsession with the idea of homosexual sex, the same way that religious fundamentalists tend to focus on the protocols of sexual intercourse with a view, articulated by Michel Foucault (1990), toward regulating rather than repressing them. While demonstrating a token concern by referring to “homos” parenthetically as “poor creatures!” and the homophobes as “demented maniacs,” the passage also implicates the author himself, either as voyeuristic participant or as over-invested researcher, in its detailed recounting of an event pregnant with symbolic retaliation by Tondo’s “real men” against the as-it-were aptly effete and exploitative exemplars of the ruling class. Yet the colorful word choices and the SOV (subject-object-verb) construction of phrases like “Instances there were” (before being more popularly termed “Yoda talk” since the 1977-1983 Star Wars film series) – these actually evince a poetic affectation that discomfortingly aligns the author with his much-derided Ermita and ilustrado circles. In the standard psychoanalytic terms of projection bias and reaction formation, the apparent femininity of the loverly appreciations of masculinity as well as the self-consciously literary stylistics would provoke a strong degree of homosexual panic in the author, in the same way that closeted persons are currently understood to be even more anti-queer than genuine heterosexuals, or that the most vocal homophobes are suspected of harboring same-sex desires. The exact role played by the article in the decision of the film’s producers to shorten or outright delete these sequences may be difficult to ascertain by now, although we may find some confirmation in Del Mundo’s confirmation that he and the producer, not Brocka, took responsibility for the trimming inasmuch as “it was unnecessarily long” (2012, email interview). (In the existing version, Julio visits Pol right after his first night in the brothel, where a lapdog-cuddling customer scolds him for failing to “sing-and-dance” – 32 David • Thinking Straight Á i.e., engage in oral and anal homosexual sex; the ellipsis suggests that Julio immediately abandons the prospect of surviving as a rentboy.4) Yet what remains is that the article demonstrates a highly homoeroticized concern for Julio, the novel and the city (with Tondo, the squatter district, as its idealized center); and yet, ironically, the sequences in their entirety unequivocally conform to the article’s excessive and unapologetic homophobia, the underside of its unabashed celebration of a masculinity ascribed in a series of synecdochic links to the Tondo tough-guy worker --and therefore to the Manileño, and therefore to the Filipino. (One further way of arguing that Maynila upholds traditional normativity is in its casting judgments: the lead couple are relatively fair but not Asiatic, while the performers selected to play the foreman, the aspiring yuppie and the fake recruiter are darker- skinned; the recruiter, a hoarse-voiced woman, is repeatedly described by Julio as swine-like and is depicted as always unpartnered and independent, and thereby possibly lesbian or at least non-heterosexual.) A larger overlooked problematic in this exchange is the fact that, like the article, the extended gay-hustler sequences (still perceivable from the short scenes that remain – see Figure 2) are arguably anti-queer; the film,
Figure 2. Top (l-r): Bobby befriends Julio, who’s spending the night at Mehan Garden; Bobby brings Julio to his well-furnished apartment; Julio discovers a friend in bed with Bobby. Middle (l-r): Bobby explains his profession during breakfast and convinces Julio to try it out; Bobby introduces Julio to other people at the gay brothel; Cesar, the brothel owner, undresses Julio to “sample” him. Bottom (l-r): Julio evades Cesar’s attempt to kiss him; Ricky, a brothel regular who selects Julio, scolds his dog Bullet for interrupting his session with Julio; after Ricky expresses disappointment in Julio, the latter calls on an old friend, Pol, next morning. (Cinema Artists, frame captures by author) Plaridel • Vol. 9 No. 2 • August 2012 33Á like the article, is consistent in its sentimental protectiveness toward Julio Madiaga. Possible proof of this is that the film, unlike the novel, dispenses with an episode wherein Julio, entirely by accident, attempts to rob a stranger at night – in Agrifina Circle, incidentally another area for locals cruising for sex partners – and winds up killing his victim; and in defiance of the novel, the article approves of this potentially romantic instance of censorship since Julio’s motive would allegedly be “definitely mercenary and utterly condemnable, patently not in keeping with his character as a poor but decent young man” from a far-flung provincial island (Jacob, 1975).5 Yet an acknowledgment within the article of the novel’s autobiographical nature also raises the possibility that, in contending over Julio, each side in this debate – film and article – is struggling for the ultimate romantic quest: the right to represent not so much the body, but rather an embodiment, of the author. In the light of these mutually problematic responses to the queer potential in a major entry in contemporary Philippine film culture, as manifested in this circumscribed example, the larger concern of what would be acceptable within the Philippine cultural context may be as good a starting point as any. In terms of queerness informing postcoloniality, what can also be made clear is that the finessing of radical principles using the earlier articulated concepts of lesbian “perversion” calls for grounding within specific and necessarily postcolonial contexts of struggle. Certain end-goals could be propounded for the moment, and in the spirit of thoroughgoing “per version,” one may advocate for the realization of a post-patriarchal and post-phallic order, impossible as these may be within existing psychoanalytic theorizations. Post-patriarchal practice may, as Teresa de Lauretis (1994) has suggested, confront the incest taboo, but from alternative horizontal sites – among siblings, for one thing – rather than the still-patriarchal observation of either parent as partner. Post- phallicism may take on the different suggestions of a number of authors – the anus in Guy Hocquenghem’s text (1993, pp. 97-100), the hand in De Lauretis, the lesbian phallus in Butler, even the pen in Vijay Mishra and Bob Hodge’s “What is Post(-)colonialism?” (1994, p. 283). Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s clamor for willful perversion in “How to Bring Your Kids up Gay” can perhaps serve as the provisional call to arms:
... the wish for the dignified treatment of already gay people is necessarily destined to turn into either trivializing apologetics or, much worse, a silkily camouflaged complicity in oppression – in the absence of a strong, explicit, erotically invested affirmation of some people’s felt desire or need that 34 David • Thinking Straight Á there be gay people in the immediate world. (Sedgwick, 1993, p. 79; emphasis in original)
Sexuality as resistance The foregoing study had begun with a textual panorama of queer-film texts in the Philippines. After introducing basic studies written on queer sexualities in general and focusing on the Philippines in particular, it then presented some left-field texts that suggested that queerness in traditional Philippine culture did not always require a liberatory effort from the repressions wrought by religion. Tradition, or certain crucial aspects of it, ensured that native society would guarantee a space of tolerance. Hence the homophobic treatment of gay male-oriented sex work that stands in stark contrast to the presumed openness of Philippine cultural toward queer difference. The standard narrative of Second Golden Age Philippine cinema is that Maynila’s “other” city film, Ishmael Bernal’sManila by Night (1980), provided a corrective balance to the earlier film’s weaknesses. Manila by night had strong gay and (anti-)heroic lesbian characters, casually polysexual men and women, and consistently ambiguous dramatis personae rather than the class-based dualist presentation of Maynila. The later release also utilized a multi-character framework that served to overturn the heroic linear mode of the Brocka opus. This derives from certain aesthetic associations that have been made with attempts at periodizing the history of the city. Gavin Shatkin (2006), as an example, marks out the city’s years as colony as distinct from the Marcos years as its period of modernism, and the post-Marcos era through the present as the global-capitalist period. This teleological arrangement would be useful in understanding political and economic dynamics, but it also endangers cultural evaluation by presupposing that certain approaches associated with earlier periods would be inferior to those of later ones – hence the linear dualist narrational design of Maynila, by being associable with Classical Hollywood (which began and flourished mostly during the years of the US’s colonization of the Philippines) would have had to yield to the superiority of the relatively more modern multi-character and open-ended presentation of Manila by Night. This however would be an inadequate estimation of Brocka’s output, partly because it conflates a development specific to US culture with Philippine history (i.e., Classical Hollywood actually persisted in the US beyond the end of the colonial occupation in the Philippines); more significantly, the focus on singular film-texts delimits the appreciation of artists who actually had extensive and prolific careers. In this regard, a major Plaridel • Vol. 9 No. 2 • August 2012 35Á factor in the misunderstanding of the role of Maynila in its filmmaker’s auteurist development lies in the manner in which it is perceived by his appreciators. Having started as the resident blockbuster director of Lea Productions, one of the more stable independent studios to have emerged in the 1960s, he undertook a self-imposed absence from film activity, then returned triumphantly with a series of self-produced titles, Maynila among them. Rather than regarding this phase as his symbolic liberation from the strictures of studio production, we may just as well argue that this period extended his studio association, even if the studio happened to be one where he could call the shots. After this phase, in fact, he neither attempted to set up any stable long-term production outfit nor allowed himself to be exclusively contracted with any single company. From this perspective, it would be possible to observe that after the series of films by his production outfit that included Maynila, Brocka then had the luxury to reconsider whether he could resolve any gaps and weaknesses in his earlier output, especially in light of how other Filipino filmmakers were able to articulate their vision of and for Philippine society. With Maynila as the peak of an earlier stage in his development, rather than the start of a new stage that extended all the way to his final films, we would be able to trace not only how he managed to sharpen his faculties in terms of politically committed filmmaking, but also how he reconfigured (with varying degrees of success) his views on the role of female, queer, and racial Others. Toward the end of his prematurely interrupted career, after an intervening stage of production geared toward foreign release via the festival circuit, he had rediscovered the fulfillment provided by his peak output during his studio-based years: “a commercial project with social content. In fact, before he died, he was doing a lot of work with this third type, and he was very excited about it,” according to Ricardo Lee, one of his most active scriptwriters (Dalisay, 1993, p. 76). This is probably the likeliest reason for the massive public turnout for Brocka’s wake and funeral – his audience’s celebration of his reconnection with them, their mourning for the long list of projects intended to bear serious messages while providing sufficient entertainment, and their appreciation of the attention he had devoted to his own growth and development as an artist for the people.
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Maglipon, J.-A. Q. (1993). The Brocka battles. In M. A. Hernando (Ed.), Lino Brocka: The artist and his times, pp. 118-154. Manila: Sentro Pangkultura ng Pilipinas. Manalansan, M. F., IV (2003). Global divas: Filipino gay men in the diaspora. Durham: Duke University Press. Plaridel • Vol. 9 No. 2 • August 2012 37Á Mishra, V., and Hodge, B. (1994). What is post(-)colonialism? In P. Williams and L. Chrisman (Eds.), Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory: A reader, pp. 276-290. New York: Columbia University Press. Reyes, E. (1986). Sa mga kuko ng liwanag (In the talons of light). Originally serialized in Liwayway (1966-1967). Manila: De La Salle University Press. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Vintage. Sedgwick, E. K. (1993). How to bring your kids up gay. In M. Warner (Ed.), Fear of a queer planet: Queer politics and social theory, pp. 69-81. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Shatkin, G. (2006). Colonial capital, modernist capital, global capital: The changing political symbolism of urban space in Metro Manila, Philippines. Pacific Affairs, 78 (4), 577-600. Sotto, A. L. (1993). On Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag. Interview with Lino Brocka. In M. A. Hernando (Ed.), Lino Brocka: The artist and his times, pp. 222-225. Manila: Sentro Pangkultura ng Pilipinas. Suleri, S. (1994). Woman skin deep: Feminism and the postcolonial condition. In P. Williams and L. Chrisman (Eds.), Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory: A reader, pp. 244-256. New York: Columbia University Press. Tan, M. L. (1995). From bakla to gay: Shifting gender identities and sexual behaviors in the Philippines. In R. G. Parker and J. H. Gagnon (Ed.), Conceiving sexuality: Approaches to sex research in a postmodern world, pp. 85-96. New York: Routledge. Tan, M. L. (1999). Walking the tightrope: Sexual risk and male sex work in the Philippines. In P. Aggleton (Ed.), Men who sell sex: International perspectives on male prositution and HIV/AIDS, pp. 241-262. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Tolentino, R. B. (2012). Marcos, Brocka, Bernal, city films, and the contestation for imagery of nation. Kritika Kultura 19 (August): 114-137. Posted online at http://kritikakultura.ateneo.net/images/ pdf/kk19/marcos.pdf. Vera, N. (2002). Maynila at the edge of greatness. Noelmoviereviews, Yahoo Groups (10 August): n.p. Posted online at http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/noelmoviereviews/message/325. Vergara, B. (2010). Lino Brocka, Maynila: Sa mga kuko ng liwanag (1975). Film, Eyeballs, Brain blog entry (21 March): n.p. Posted online at http://filmeyeballsbrain.com/2010/03/21/lino-brocka- maynila-sa-mga-kuko-ng-liwanag-1975/. Whitam, F., and Mathy, R. M. (1986). Male homosexuality in four societies: Brazil, Guatemala, the Philippines, and the United States. New York: Praeger. Williams, P., and Chrisman, L. (1994). Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory: An introduction. In P. Williams and L. Chrisman (Eds.), Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory: A reader, pp. 1-20. New York: Columbia University Press.
End Notes *An earlier draft of this paper was presented as a lecture in 1993 at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center, sponsored by the Gay Asian & Pacific Islander Men of New York (special thanks to Chris Millado and Paul Pfeiffer). Invaluable assistance toward the completion of this paper, particularly in terms of sourcing and reproducing archival material, was provided by Theo Pie and Corvic Boy Cuizon. 38 David • Thinking Straight Á 1The film’s scriptwriter, Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr., responded in an interview to Jacob’s critique that “I was not familiar with the setting of the novel so much so that I had to ‘visit’ the places like a tourist. I visited the places to help me visualize the scenes.” Del Mundo also pointed out that at the time of the controversy, the presumably progressive-minded article writer was working in a Marcos agency (e-mail interview, 2012). 2Having only seen the initial run as a college freshman, I could not accurately reconstruct the missing sequences. An open query I posted on the Cinephiles! group page of Facebook resulted in several threads’ worth of interested responses but extremely few actual first-hand recollections. Traces of these sequences may still be gleaned from several sources, however. The Internet Movie Database as of the present (September 2012) lists several cast members whose roles suggest other forgotten scenes, including the owner and customers of a discotheque. Jojo Abella, the performer who played Bobby, the complex sympathetic-yet-sinister character who introduces Julio to this liminal existence and also eventually causes him to reject it, was described by another performer, Bernardo Bernardo (star of Ishmael Bernal’s city film, Manila by night [1980]), as having subsequently “migrated to the US and from what I hear was a victim of a road-rage shooting” (2012). Brocka also alluded to more footage that was unused even in the initial cut: “It’s a pity that we had to set aside the scene wherein [Bobby] visits his parents in Bulacan. It’s a family with modest means. The parents do not know that he is in the flesh trade. Many of these male prostitutes have this background” (Sotto, 1993, p. 225). 3The closest that Brocka had come to a single-text repudiation of these early positions may have been in Gumapang ka sa lusak (1990), ostensibly a thematic sequel of his 1980 Cannes Film Festival competition entry Jaguar (locally released in 1979). Gumapang ka featured a kept woman challenging her lover, a town mayor, who with his wife decides to silence the mistress because of the liability the latter poses to the mayor’s political ambition. She is helped by a fan of hers, a naïve provincial (suggesting a more realistic update of Maynila) who calls on his better-off friends for help; the one who provides them with money and shelter is the scion of a Chinese businessman. A more extensive discussion of the problematic imaging of the Chinese villain in both novel and film is provided in an entry on the film in the blog Film, Eyeballs, Brain (Vergara, 2010). The glaring absence in Gumapang ka though is that of any queer character; this may be explained by the fact that Brocka had already revisited the gay-hustler episode of Maynila in Macho dancer, to be further expounded in a later endnote. 4Two years after Maynila, Christopher de Leon (an earlier Brocka protégé) starred in an adaptation of Paraisong parisukat (originally 1974), directed by Elwood Perez from the play written by Orlando Nadres, whose earlier gay coming-out play, Hanggang dito na lamang at maraming salamat (1974), originally featured Brocka and Maynila lead actor Rafael (Bembol) Roco, Jr. Titled Masikip, maluwang: Paraisong parisukat (1977), the film version featured a virtual blow-by-blow recap of the lost beach sequence in Maynila, with de Leon playing the Roco role; whether this suggests that Nadres had been involved in the lost Maynila sequence, or Perez was performing an homage, has not been determined. In Brocka’s Macho dancer (1988), a post-Marcos film that reprised several themes of Maynila including male prostitution and white slavery, the now-secondary character who searches for his kidnapped sister (rather than the childhood sweetheart of Maynila) re-enacts the deleted sequence of Maynila, in the sense that he introduces the main character to the world of Plaridel • Vol. 9 No. 2 • August 2012 39Á urban male prostitution, now revealed as sensationally sordid; also, depressed after discovering the circumstances in which his sister had been sold as a sex slave, he seeks sexual comfort with the main character, who responds with wonderment (rather than the homophobia in the deleted sequence of Maynila) – possibly as an overdetermined reaction to sympathizing with his friend, wishing to provide comfort, and discovering the possibility of an emotional connection in sexual contact. For a more detailed exploration of the configuration of male sexualities in Macho dancer and the sequels made after Brocka’s death, see Reuben Ramas Cañete (2011). 5Among film critics, Noel Vera has made the most extensive commentary on the film’s revision of Julio’s character as an already-guilty murderer even prior to his attack on Ah Tek: “Julio’s crime colors our perception of him, makes him less passive, less of a victim or innocent; it makes our feelings for him more ambivalent and complex.… The advantage [in the film’s excision of the murder scene] is that Julio’s destruction is made all the more dramatic…. The disadvantage is that the film is more simplistic in its treatment of Julio. Brocka has streamlined and intensified Reyes’s novel, but at the cost of emotional complexity” (2002). Despite making the unfounded claim (possibly from adopting the dated Western idea of contamination, whereby the nature of sexual contact defines the person) that Julio “has homosexual tendencies,” the review provides a convincing argument of the film’s romanticized reconceptualization of the lead character. Brocka, for his part, had earlier been asked about the accusation of racism and provided a surprisingly cavalier disclaimer thus: “It could have been an Indian national or an American. But in the Philippines, the Chinese have servants whom they turn into their concubines. I have nothing against the Chinese. A year after the film was shown, they were still protesting” (Sotto, 1993, p. 226). Vergara mentions certain consequences of such nonchalance, including a once-prevalent “ugly spate of kidnappings of Chinese Filipinos” (2010, n.p.) that took off after Brocka had died. Yet insiders were fully aware of Brocka’s self-critical responsiveness: Jo-Ann Q. Maglipon reported not just his about-face from an anti-Left to a Left- sympathetic position (1993, pp. 131-132) but also his spirited defense of Chinese producers against an openly anti-Chinese censors chair (p. 124). It would have been reasonable to speculate that, if the kidnapping-for-ransom trend had started while he was still alive, Brocka would have been one of the first to openly denounce it, even at the expense of his personal security.
JOEL DAVID is Associate Professor for Cultural Studies at Inha University in Incheon, Korea. He is the author of a number of books on Philippine cinema. He was also conference coordinator and proceedings editor of the Whither the Orient event held in Gwangju, Korea in 2006, and was founding Director of the University of the Philippines Film Institute (corresponding email: [email protected]). 40 David • Thinking Straight Á David / Phantom in Paradise 560
PHANTOM IN PARADISE: A PHILIPPINE PRESENCE IN HOLLYWOOD CINEMA
Joel David Inha University, South Korea [email protected]
Abstract The Philippines’ experience with its last foreign occupant, theUS , resulted in an entire clutch of problematic “special relations” that, coupled with the country’s responses to the challenges of self-government, ultimately led to a global dispersal of the population, effectively turning the Philippines into the major Asian nation arguably most reliant on its citizens’ overseas remittances. This paper takes the position that diasporic Filipinos, for a variety of reasons starting with the effectiveness of maintaining unintrusive presences in alien cultures (including the acceptance of menial positions), have possibly developed and have enabled others to perceive them as silent and discreet figures once they step into the circuits of globalized labor exchanges. Not surprisingly, elements traceable to the Philippines and its fraught relationship with America show up in the output of Hollywood. The special instance of a transitional (late-Classical and early new-Hollywood) melodrama, Reflections in a Golden Eye, adapted from a Southern Gothic novel by Carson McCullers, will be inspected for its pioneering depiction of queer postcoloniality in the transplantation of a Filipino male “housemaid” in the troubled middle-American home of a war returnee.
Keywords globalization, novel-to-film adaptation, queerness, postcoloniality
About the Author Joel David is Professor for Cultural Studies at Inha University in Incheon, Korea. He holds a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies at New York University, where he studied as a Fulbright scholar. He is the author of a number of books on Philippine cinema, Fields of Vision (Ateneo de Manila UP), and was guest editor of the Kritika Kultura Forum titled A Closer Look at Manila by Night (2012). He was also conference coordinator and proceedings editor of the Whither the Orient event held in Gwangju, Korea in 2006, and was founding Director of the University of the Philippines Film Institute.
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The whipping tail is not more still / Than when I smell the enemy Writhing in the essential blood / Or dangling from the friendly tree ...... Reflected from my golden eye.
T. S. Eliot, “Lines for an Old Man” (1939)
The Philippines has remained a presence in global culture, initially via its status as the first European colony in Asia, and later as the United States’ first (and so-far only) colonial territory. The introduction of cinema to the country coincided with the period of transition from Spain to the US as colonial occupant, attended by a protracted, lethal, and ultimately unsuccessful war of resistance directed at the invaders’ armies. Not surprisingly, early but still-accessible moving images of the country constituted exotic everyday scenes in the case of Spain, followed by often-doctored or restaged events in the Fil-American War—each type favoring the country that controlled access to the then-still nascent technology: Spain and its claims of colonial efficiency, and the US with its need to justify its acts of aggression. In the latter case, since the US film industry eventually took the lead in dominating world cinema after the first few years led by the French, the Philippines has been a recurring presence, sometimes too subtle to be recognized by anyone except Filipinos themselves. Although granted formal independence in 1946, the Philippines is regarded by political economy experts, including Paul Krugman, as closer to the neocolonial “banana republic” model, more typical of Latin America than of postcolonial Southeast Asia (cf. Krugman et al.). Not surprisingly, the official native language, Filipino, has retained traces of Spanish and English words (consequently requiring the addition of several letters and abandonment of the phonetic principle in the original Tagalog orthography); just as significantly, a few Tagalog words such as “boondocks” and “amuck” have found their way into the English dictionary, just as unusual terms such as “comfort room” (referring to toilet) persist in Filipino English—with the aforementioned examples explicable only as century-old US military lingo. The significance of language will be brought up later, when one of the later technological innovations in the medium of film was the addition of synchronous sound. Far more relevant to the present paper’s concerns is the fact that the Philippines—whether as geographic locale (including warfare territory), source of migrants, flashpoint in debates on Manifest Destiny and Benevolent Assimilation, and so on—had inevitably started showing up in popular culture texts, in varying degrees of straightforwardness, and may arguably have become American culture’s gateway to Orientalist consciousness. The cataloguing of songs, literary works, and films has understandably tended to focus on direct references rather than metaphorical or atmospheric influences, and has yielded output that
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had once been classified as “low” culture such as marching tunes, pulp fiction, and B-movies. In this paper I will attempt to look at how what we may term a Philippine presence has become a more widespread phenomenon, owing to globalist consciousness bolstered by the government-supported dispersal of the country’s citizens in pursuit of gainful employment. The study will then propose a genealogical originary moment in tracing the roots of the Orientalist imaging of the diasporic helper from the perspective of a specialized realm of practice: a 1967 film, adapted from a 1941 novel, that inspects the consequences of American incursions in Asia, bearing with it all the ambivalence that such a project carried in the light of the US’s historical trajectory from former European colony to Asian colonizing power. The text, titledReflections in a Golden Eye, is set mainly in an army post, during the time immediately before the eruption of the Second World War, when the colonial project was still in progress but the wider justification for stronger American presence in Asia, even after the vanquishing of European colonial forces, in the region, still had to be fought over. Significantly, the film’s time frame was transposed, mainly to accommodate limitations in production design (Thompson 49), to 1947, when the war had ended and, more relevant to the present study, the US had just granted political independence to its first (and so far only) formal colony—the same one that it had “liberated” twice, first from Spain, its European colonizer, and more recently from Japan, its wartime enemy. Interest in the global aspects of Filipinos in relation to cinema has surged roughly since Andrew Higson’s prescription of integrating foreign (or “Hollywood”) film releases in studies of non-US national cinemas. Not surprisingly, the “globalization” of the Philippines can be traced in the country’s popular culture as far back as the earliest available samples (cf. Cine 3-22). Some studies related to this pursuit include: Bliss Cua Lim’s “American Pictures Made by Filipinos,” an article-length inspection of US drive-in movies produced in the Philippines; Jose B. Capino’s Dream Factories of a Former Colony, a coverage of American presences in Philippine cinema; and Andrew Leavold’s “Bamboo Gods & Bionic Boys,” his dissertation (in progress) on Philippine-made films exported to foreign markets. While these studies provide useful insights in terms of allowing access not only to more-or-less still-available material as well as the determination of the filmmakers’ avowed goals based on interviews and press statements, the gap that this study wishes to address covers the obverse: films that were made not by Filipinos, but concerned the nation anyway in terms of including references, images, and/or issues pertaining to the country and its inhabitants.1 Indeterminate Figurations
The advantage available to scholars inspecting films produced in the Philippines, even by foreigners, will largely be diffused, occasionally opaque, and at worst
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(apparently) irrelevant to anyone attempting to look at Philippine presences in overseas productions. The issue of Orientalism, if one were to date it according to Edward Said’s fundamental text, would be over three decades old by now. By cultural studies standards, it would be old enough to have undergone the modifications and repudiations that usually render similar issues unrecognizable beside their original formulations. Yet the word itself continues to be encountered in a number of recent publications devoted to contemporary concerns, just as the concept of Oriental Studies, which Orientalism has made unacceptable, has been virtually replaced with Asian Studies and its variations in area studies (cf. Klein, Marchetti). In terms of classical film theory, however, critiques of Orientalism could not have arrived at a more opportune moment as they did when Said’s Orientalism was published in 1978. André Bazin’s What Is Cinema? volumes had just been translated from the French and published in the US, constituting as it were the last major pieces of classical theorizing in film. A consideration of the intertextual tensions between Said’s and Bazin’s works took a little longer, however, owing perhaps to the initially compartmentalized nature of their fields —sociocultural history on the one hand and film studies on the other. Orientalism in itself has proved to be still vital, notwithstanding the reservations expressed against it from within the ranks of cultural theorists, for three reasons: first, criticisms of Said’s ideas may have centered on the contradictions in his positions or the ultimate futility of his visions, but all acknowledge the importance of his formulation of Orientalism as an instance of a more enlightened but still racially implicated view of the West’s Other; second, as already mentioned, Said’s call for a reinspection of writings and activities throughout history in the light of Orientalist thinking is far from having been definitively accomplished; and third, the notion of an apparently benevolent though no less insidious approach to the study of non-Western culture has been the key to further considerations of racism and its historical transformations. Genealogizing the Specter
The fact that we are dealing with a film version of a work of fiction that has been considered an aberration in the usual deeply humanist output of novelist Carson McCullers clues us into the significance of the film adaptation (Fig.1). It will therefore also be necessary for any further expansion of this paper to trace the processes of thinking on Orientalism since the publication of Said’s volume, with special focus on cinema, a realm of practice which, though passed over by Said in favor of critiquing literary texts, was regarded by then-contemporary philosophers as more vital in displaying social and historical modes of perception, proceeding from its effectiveness in articulating the perspectives of colonial power.
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Fig. 1: Reflections in a Golden Eye book author Carson McCullers, as guest of the director of the film adaptation, John Huston, in St. Clerans, the latter’s Irish residence.
In this respect, I would proffer a reconsideration of a much-cited text, Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx, as the unexpected embodiment of an allegory for the Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) condition. Diasporic working-class subjects would not have much choice in configuring a strategy for survival in cultures that generally prove hostile toward them, whether by virtue of ideological difference or by the reality-based perception that the citizens of the host country may be deprived of work opportunities—a form of outsourcing of local industries without having to leave the corporation’s country of origin, inasmuch as the members of the foreign labor force are conveniently within the host nation’s borders. From the perspective of the overseas worker (of which the present author is classified as one), the required behavioral mode approximates that of the guerrilla confronted by a fascist regime, where the diasporic subject has to avoid standing out in public, pretend acquiescence or satisfaction even with oppressive conditions, assist compatriots whenever possible without drawing undue attention, and remain alert for opportunities either to effect pragmatic change or to escape to illicit sources of pleasure or legitimate vacations, reminiscent of an aspect of hauntology where the subject wishes to return but remains (cf. repetition and first/last time in Derrida 10). From the perspective of the host nation’s security officials, such conduct resembles
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that of the globalization-era radical-change agent, the terrorist interloper—a principle that demonstrates how “At a time when a new world disorder is attempting to install its neo-capitalism and neo-liberalism, no disavowal has managed to rid itself of all of Marx’s ghosts” (Derrida 37). The Pinoy diasporic worker is marked by the terms of the euphemistically “special” RP-US relations, where the process of colonization and subsequent neo- colonization has succeeded so well that the Asian aspiration to attain modernity via development could only be fulfilled not by the standard industrialization procedure observed by the Philippines’ neighbors, but by externalizing, so to speak, the citizens’ colonial mentality in inciting them to seek new colonizers anywhere that these might exist and offering these new masters the possibility of owning new souls. The use of the metaphysical term “soul” herein is deliberate: the OFW, who (in more than half of cases) would be female and who, in all likelihood, performs in a foreign country’s service sector, toils at tasks that the host country’s citizens would be unable to assume in the present, whether these be triple-D (dirty, dangerous, difficult) industrial functions at less-than-minimal compensation, sexually demeaning tasks as wives or prostitutes, potentially exploitative labor as domestic help, and so on. By serving as reminders of their hosts’ impoverished past, the workers demonstrate how “there is never any becoming-specter of the spirit without at least an appearance of flesh” enacting the function of “autonomized spirit, as objectivizing expulsion of interior idea or thought” (Derrida 126). Tragically, this condition takes its toll first and foremost on the worker-as-specter, recultured and deracinated, alienated from both host country and home nation: “How do you recognize a ghost? By the fact that it does not recognize itself in a mirror” (Derrida 156). Film as Colonial Tool
By way of further explication, film as a colonialist tool had proved to be hugely successful in the US’s imperialist adventure in the Philippines (de Pedro 26). Having purchased the rights to ownership of the country from Spain in the 1898 Treaty of Paris, the turn-of-the-century government proceeded to legitimize its claim by staging a mock battle, duly celebrated in early films by Thomas Edison, wherein American ships “defeated” the Spanish armada in Manila Bay. TheUS then was confronted by the anti-Spanish Philippine revolutionary army, in encounters, also celebrated in early American films, that decimated as much as a fourth of the country’s population, reminiscent of then-still-recent campaigns against Native Americans and foreshadowing accounts of atrocities decades later in Viet Nam; to defuse mounting opposition within the US itself, the colonial administration declared the Fil-American war over by 1902, despite the fact that waves of US regulars had to be sent over for the next two decades to suppress what the American government claimed were widespread instances of banditry.
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Cinema, introduced in prototypical form in 1897 (Cine 37-44), fit in propitiously in this schema, since there was in practice no national language to speak of: the official ones, circa the 1936 Constitution, were English, which was imposed as a medium of instruction; Spanish, which was resented by the populace due to the refusal of Catholic and colonial authorities to allow the natives to learn the language during the Spanish regime; and Tagalog, which was the language of the Manila- based collaborationist region (cf. “Sharon’s Noranian Turn” 323-31; see also Cine 30-37). Despite the specificities of the Philippine cultural situation, the success of film in assuming the dimensions of a national language may have served to confirm convictions in the West (as well as among the local Westernized elite) that the medium had essentially universalistic properties. In fact, the other then-emerging superpower, the USSR (Lenin n.p.), formalized a decision that mirrored the plan of the American colony’s interior secretary, Dean Conant Worcester, in legislating film as a primary propaganda tool (Deocampo, Film 29-64; see also San Andres interview). And inasmuch as hauntology spectralizes itself in media (Derrida 50- 51), we turn to a ghostly text, one in which virtually all the players are gone, and which had also been largely overlooked for most of the time since its emergence. Reflections in a Golden Eye (hereafter Reflections) was adopted for film in 1967, over a quarter-century since the novel’s publication in 1941. Significantly, this was the year when the French New Wave’s impact on the rest of Europe had finally managed to overthrow the only remaining stronghold of Classical Hollywood cinema—within the US itself, via the box-office success of and critical controversy over Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde.2 Director John Huston, who shared Irish roots with and displayed deep personal affection for Carson McCullers, invited her to his home in Ireland, where McCullers visited after the movie’s release; she was then already in declining health, and died just after returning to the US.3 In cognizance of the then-brewing ferment in film expression, Huston had selected the singular McCullers novel that dwelled on psychosexual symbolism (Fig. 2); he cast then-voguish performers such as Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor, and insisted, though unsuccessfully, on a literal application of the title by tinting the entire film in a golden hue. More in the spirit of the 1960s cultural upheavals, Huston not only convinced Brando, who was initially resistant to the role, to play a closeted homosexual military officer; he also cast a non-white performer, Zorro David, to play the effeminate and unruly domestic helper that a homecoming American military Fig. 2: Belgian film poster ofReflections couple would bring from the Philippines. in a Golden Eye, with title translated into French and Dutch.
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Unfortunately for Huston, reception to his adaptation was generally hostile, and though he was no longer a blockbuster talent, the film stands as one of his rare box- office failures.4 Critics were divided on the merits of the stars’ performances, but were unanimous in expressing disapproval, if not disgust, over David’s character, Anacleto, as well as David’s performance (Fig. 3). This has led to a film-and- novel Othering that remains exceptional in the body of work of both the author, McCullers, and the auteur, Huston. An additional historical irony for Huston is that he had built a reputation for expert adaptations and would continue to do so even after the failure of Reflections in a Golden Eye, and some of his most admired projects dwelled precisely on the issue of territorial expansion and colonization, as evidenced in his earlier adaptations of B. Traven’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, C. S. Forester’s The African Queen, and James Helvick’s Beat the Devil (screenplay by McCullers’ nemesis, Truman Capote); and in his later adaptations of Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King as well as Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano. There would be further resonances in Reflections in a Golden Eye’s record of its star performers—i.e., in Brando’s subsequent defense of his bisexual experimentation,5 and in Taylor’s devotion to her gay male admirers, solidified in her position as leading supporter for AIDS research. Fig. 3: Anacleto (Zorro David) demonstrates to his These adjustments in celebrity employer an expression for “grotesque.” lifestyles were consistent with the times and would probably have emerged regardless of what film projects Brando and Taylor were associated with. The more significant, and probably indexical, consideration is the obscurity that befell Zorro David (Fig. 4), not to mention his character. I have been attempting to track down the Filipino performer since my graduate studies years in the 1990s, and the most I have come up with is a name associated with a few performances at the LaMama Experimental Theater in New York City, and some information that this individual, who might not even be the same person as the one in Huston’s film, had moved to Florida, leaving no contact information available from the usual internet sources. Considering that all of the major celebrity talents behind the movie are no longer alive, it might be possible to speculate that David (unrelated to the present author) would be of an age too advanced to be requested to sit for an interview, and to discuss a possibly unpleasant, or even traumatic, showbiz experience.
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In the admittedly morbid “celebrity deathwatch” website Is X Dead?, Zorro David’s date of birth is given as 23 June 1932, which would make him about 80 years old as of the early 2010s. In the shorter of two readily available literary texts referencing him, David’s misarranged name figures in a poem titled “Singaw” [Vapor], written by E. San Juan, Jr. The poem’s subtitle states, originally in Taglish (a linguistic blend of Tagalog and English): “A playful invention of David Zorro, ‘houseboy’ in Reflections of a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers” (n.p.). The poem, also in Taglish, does not mention David or his personal circumstances beyond the title, but instead Fig. 4: Zorro David publicity still for Reflections in a devotes itself to anti-colonial Golden Eye. material such as verbatim quotes from the most devastative and/or deceitful orders made by American military commanders during the Fil-American War. The other text partakes of a deliberate unreliability by virtue of its status as an overtly satirical letter, published on a humor website, addressed to “Dr. Dean Chair, School of Underfunded Liberal Arts, Cash Strap State College,… Middle America,” by a self-described “independent scholar.” Nevertheless the author relates how he
spent a day at the Harry Ransom Center (University of Texas, Austin) examining the Carson McCullers Collection. I looked for any evidence to the origins of Anacleto, or to the whereabouts of Zorro David…. What I found was shocking, or epiphanic—a letter from Zorro David to Carson McCullers thanking her for the role. Before immigrating to the United States after World War Two and later working for Saks [Fifth Avenue] in New York City, the orphan Zorro David had lived in Orani, a small town on the Bataan peninsula. (Labrador y Manzano n.p.)6
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A Fort in the South
There is a movie version of a novella filmed a few years ago that was murdered by the critics. Besides the author, the participants of this travesty included a legendary director, two major Oscar-winning film stars, two notable costars, a few untried actors, and a horse.... (Russo and Merlin 9)
On the other hand, we have the character John Huston had fleshed out, from Carson McCullers’s still-unfathomed inspiration. The links between the author and her character are more direct than we might be led to expect, with their homosexuality as just the starting point.7 Although openly admitting to the influence of D. H. Lawrence’s short story “The Prussian Officer” as well as Isak Dinesen’s memoir Out of Africa (Russo and Merlin 9-13), McCullers had never been to the Philippines, as far as anyone, including herself, has recounted, yet her understanding of Anacleto displays not just empathy, but also appreciation of his role as postcolonial intruder. There are acts and lines of dialog in the novel, some of them omitted in the course of streamlining the film adaptation, that indicate how she relished the cadence and humor of Anacleto’s mannerisms. In one telling example, where the film has Anacleto substitute the word “suddenly” for soon, with his mistress, Alison, correcting him immediately, the novel has Anacleto deliberately use the wrong word in talking to Alison’s husband, Morris, with the knowledge that it would confuse and possibly annoy him, and with no one correcting him in this instance. In this and several other minor details the novel accumulates more transgressive gestures than the filmscript, none more pointedly ironic and darkly humorous (in more ways than one) than Leonora’s complaint about undertaking (and failing at) a literacy challenge, writing invitations for her party; she remarks, in the film, “I’ve been working like a fool for three days gettin’ everything ready,” whereas in the novel the word she uses instead of fool is “nigger.” At this point it would be necessary to outline the main players in the narrative, duly announced in the opening of the novel but truncated in the film’s quotation. In fact, the movie opens and closes with a superimposed intertitle of the same 16-word sentence, culled from the novel’s first paragraph, which says: “There is a fort in the South where a few years ago a murder was committed.” Significantly, the novel’s next sentence, which lists the main characters, is dropped in the film: “The participants of this tragedy were: two officers, a soldier, two women, a Filipino, and a horse.” McCullers’s formulation signifies that her text will be multiple-character in nature (David 72), indicating a plot that will operate with three or more equally significant protagonists and that will resist conflation into either the traditional heroic narrative or the dual hero-antihero or hero-romantic interest structure. In John Huston’s film version this narratological configuration could not be carried over. The stylistic innovations of the French New Wave and the resultant intensification of European art cinema would be initially manifested in theUS via
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the choice of themes as well as in audiovisual subversions of Classical Hollywood film language, including the recuperation of formerly derided commercial genres. The deconstruction of linear plot mechanics, or what I would call the delinearization of character-based storylines, would not occur in American cinema until much later, with the narrative experimentations impressively realized by Robert Altman, culminating in Nashville (David 76-79). In Reflections, the production process operated on the assumption that the production had two stars, Brando and Taylor, as well as two supporting performers, Brian Keith and Julie Harris, with Zorro David listed ahead of the rest of the cast. Robert Forster was introduced, so to speak, and effectively distracted audience attention from the horse by appearing stark naked with the animal in several of their scenes together (Fig. 5).
Fig. 5: Pvt. L. G. [“Ellgee” in the novel] Williams (Robert Forster) on Firebird, both au naturel (DVD frame capture).
Brando and Taylor essay the roles of Major (a Captain in the novel) Weldon Penderton and his wife Leonora, while Brian Keith and Julie Harris play Major Morris Langdon and his wife Alison, both couples living in residences adjacent to each other. Forster plays Private Williams, caretaker of Leonora Penderton’s horse, Firebird. It is the Langdons, played by supporting performers, who bring back the Filipino houseboy, Anacleto, after Morris’s tour in the Pacific. Weldon Penderton displays symptoms of self-homophobia, which are manifested in his excessively masculine role-playing and his oppression of the effete Captain Weincheck, a classical-music appreciating bachelor and close friend of Alison Langdon and Anacleto. The obvious primary corroborator of her husband’s desperate attempts to compensate for his sexual impotence, Leonora mocks Weldon with what he calls
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her slatternly behavior and carries on a fairly indiscreet affair with Morris Langdon (Fig. 6). At one point she takes off all her clothes and climbs the staircase while calling her husband a prissy, saying “Son, have you ever been collared and dragged out into the street and thrashed by a naked woman?” Weldon screams “I’ll kill you” a few times but crumples eventually in abject resignation. It is during this incident that Private Williams, whom Weldon had scolded for failing to follow his instructions in clearing the backyard for Leonora’s annual party, peers into the house and gets fixated on her soft and curvaceous figure. Huston underlines this moment by providing an extreme close-up of Private Williams’ eye, with Leonora reflected in it. With the movie’s intended gold tinting, restored in theDVD version (initially exclusively available on Warner Home Video’s Marlon Brando Collection), Leonora—as played by Taylor (effectively reprising her Oscar-winning turn in Mike Nichols’s adaptation of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) and her body double—becomes the first reflection in his golden eye.8 Meanwhile, in the other household: as a result of Morris’s negligence and owing to the trauma of losing her daughter before the baby had turned a year old, the increasingly emotionally unstable Alison had cut her nipples off with a pair of garden shears. This act, depicted in clinical detail in the novel, is brought up only verbally, as a pre-narrative development in the film during a conversation between Leonora and Morris prior to one of their illicit encounters; this was due to impositions by a studio censor, who also attempted to discourage the novel’s scenes of masturbation and overt expressions of homosexual desire, as well as Weldon’s sadistic stuffing of a wet kitten in a mailbox (Russo and Merlin 60). Weldon Fig. 6: The sexually repressed Maj. Weldon decides to take up Leonora’s challenge Penderton (Marlon Brando) and his earthy that he is not man enough to ride her wife Leonora (Elizabeth Taylor). horse, Firebird. When the animal races through the forest and throws him off, Weldon whips it savagely, then finally breaks down and cries; whereupon Private Williams literally crosses his path to comfort Firebird, and Morris watches, his crying interrupted, as the unclothed assistant performs his duties as stable hand. Leonora learns of Weldon’s abuse of
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Firebird during her party, takes her riding whip, and beats her husband with it in front of their visitors. Double Whammy
At this point two parallel tragedies, centered in each of the households, build up to their tipping point. Alison notices a man sneaking into the Penderton home, and thinking her husband has become too bold about his adulterous behavior, she heads to Leonora’s bedroom, only to find Private Williams crouched by the sleeping woman’s bedside, sniffing her clothes. She goes home to her husband, escorted by Weldon, as Private Williams sneaks out, and declares that she wants a divorce and will be leaving next morning with Anacleto. Morris becomes more despondent with the departure of his wife and her helper, exacerbated when he learns that Alison had died after only a few days on her own, and Leonora once more falls into a sulking and quarrelsome mood, this time with her lover. Weldon, meanwhile, seems to have finally attained a state of equanimity and contentment, and we eventually realize this is because he has admitted his weakness for other men, particularly for Private Williams. This results in a triangulated state of secret desires—Weldon for Private Williams, and the latter for Leonora, for whose clothes he has developed a fetish. During the movie’s climactic evening Weldon sees Private Williams attempting to sneak into his home, and thinking that the enlisted man has come to express a similar attraction and possibly consummate their mutual desire, he waits in his bedroom. When he sees Private Williams go into Leonora’s room instead, he takes a gun and shoots the intruder, thus waking up his wife and alerting her lover to the incident. The story, as I have just told it, would also be the way that critics have recounted it. Yet in subsequent re-viewings, with cross-references to the novel, it became evident to me that Anacleto, although dismissed by most of the characters—most resoundingly by the guests in Leonora’s party—is actually the presence on which the plot’s themes and developments turn. His initial appearance instantly foregrounds the very element that Major Weldon denies in himself—an assertion of a state of queerness, defiant in the conservative context of a military camp.9 He serves as a source of amusement for Alison (Fig. 7), in much the same way that Firebird arouses both pleasure and tenderness in Leonora; both horse and Filipino, it may be noted, are the elements enumerated in the novel’s first paragraph (starting with “There is a fort in the South,” used as the film’s prologue and epilogue) known to the rest of the characters by only one name. Most significantly, Anacleto serves as the Other of an Other—i.e., the civilian, colonial, racial, and sexual counterpart of Private Williams. Being male and lower-class, both of them serve their military officers’ families devotedly, with Private Williams enjoying the additional privilege of being straight, white, and uniformed.
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In an earlier draft of the script, by openly gay novelist Christopher Isherwood, Langdon winds up chasing Anacleto (a nonextant scene in the novel); Isherwood also updated the setting to the mid-1960s Vietnam War era and described the character as a “gook houseboy” (Russo and Merlin 59). Yet it is Anacleto who enacts the final, perplexing act of anarchic subversion— Fig. 7: Anacleto (Zorro David) amuses by disappearing completely, and Alison (Julie Harris), as much as he annoys mysteriously, once Alison has died. In her husband, Lt. Col. Morris Langdon doing so, his presence in the narrative (Brian Keith). becomes ironically more powerful. The same way that Derrida remarks that phantom limbs make “the non-sensuous sensuous” (151), or that the home country marks its citizens’ absence by insisting on their presence via their infusion of material support, Weldon virtually becomes Anacleto, by virtue of his readiness to come out (at least to Private Williams), but Morris, the true-blooded American male who had served in the colonial outpost, begins expressing a disturbing fondness for his now-missing servant. Perhaps in doing so Morris may be displacing his desire for Alison without admitting his error in neglecting her, as a standard psychoanalytic reading might suggest; but closer to McCullers’s personal circumstance would be the possibility of Morris finally realizing, and accepting, that Anacleto combines what had been for him physically impossible despite his heteronormative condition: Alison’s cultured gentility and Leonora’s free-spirited openness, necessarily irreconcilable according to social convention because of the subversive rupture that their combination could engender. Ironies
Without Alison to confide in, Leonora has to contend with her husband’s excessive admiration for life in the barracks, among enlisted men (side by side of course with the unmentioned and unmentionable Private Williams); then with Morris, she has to listen to how he wishes to have made a man out of Anacleto, so he could have saved the Filipino from what he described as “that other mess,” meaning high European culture, specifically ballet and painting. With Anacleto’s disappearance, the triangle mentioned earlier transmutes into a broken chain of desire: Weldon for Private Williams, who in turn desires Leonora, who desires Morris, who desires the invisible, idealized Anacleto.10
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In this sense, the mutual affection between Alison and Anacleto, mistress and servant, is extended after Alison’s death, but with only Alison’s survivor, Morris, expressing desire, and the object, Anacleto, now gone. In this respect, Anacleto at last becomes the repository of the narrative’s Others—the biological females (Alison and Leonora), the servant (Private Williams), the men with masculine lack (Weincheck and Weldon)—and is thus configured by the narrative as the symbolic counterweight to the increasingly isolated straight white male authority figure of Morris; in Derrida’s eerie formulation (originally intended for a different context), “The one who disappeared appears still to be there, and his apparition is not nothing. . . . We know better than ever today that the dead must be able to work” (97). In fact, following the social protocol of the period, Zorro David had initially attempted to “act straight,” much to the disapproval of Huston, who (also in observance of old- school masculine protocol) could not inform the actor the kind of performance he wanted until the latter managed to figure it out for himself (Russo and Merlin 88). It would not be far-fetched to conclude that Huston’s insistence on queer performativity in David’s reading of the role has turned out to be more feminist than critics were able to anticipate, not only from providing the twist in Morris’s longing for the colonial subject, but also in upsetting the standard perception that the later arrival of women from the colonizing center disrupted the supposedly paradisiacal relations between masculine colonizers and female colonized subjects (cf. the phenomena of interracial marriage, concubinage, and métissage, among others, subsequently discussed in studies of the Dutch East Indies by Ann Laura Stoler, especially Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power). In (the admittedly now-limited) terms of political economy, Anacleto’s physical disappearance holds additional import in terms of his relation to the exploitative nature of capital. Having started from a characterization that may be most accurately described as “queer” only via exclusionary logic—i.e., not definitively straight, gay, asexual, or transgender—he may be seen as navigating/negotiating the rigid binaries of American gender relations, but rather than maintaining this unsatisfactory-because-unresolvable arrangement by either engaging in perpetual motion or surrendering to a fixed category, he elected (or allowed the author, as well as reader, to elect) a hauntic option that dumped the onus of mourning, per the full title of Specters of Marx, on his masters rather than on his people, thereby anticipating the then-still-unformulated response to Derrida’s text:
How does one circulate within this new determination of being? At this crucial point, deconstruction refers back to a radical questioning of the problem of life and death, the opening of an experience of ethics and community. It’s at this crucial point that a discourse on ethical resistance unravels, one that reflects on the experience of the gift and of friendship, that feels a certain affinity with the messianic spirit and reaffirms the undeconstructability of the idea of justice. (Negri 9-10)
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The narrative ends with the killing of Private Williams by the sexually scorned Major Weldon Penderton. The terrible irony here is that Penderton will win the war of the sexes, if he retreats once more into the closet, which would be not just the likeliest but also the only available recourse for him. One of Alison’s last declarations was that Leonora was sleeping with an enlisted man, in addition to her affair with Morris—an observation which had led people around Alison to believe that she was heading once more for another nervous breakdown. By permanently silencing Private Williams, Penderton will be able to parlay Alison’s misperception into a condemnation, a reverse outing in effect, of the affair between Leonora and Morris, thus ridding himself of his castrating wife and duplicitous neighbor, as well as punishing his object of desire for betraying him, as it were, for his own wife. The only ghost that remains, with the true potential for haunting Weldon Penderton as the narrative’s only clear victor, is that of Anacleto. Although the Major has effectively discredited Leonora and is positioned to expose Morris as an adulterer, Anacleto’s specter could serve to remind him of a past that would be impossible to shake off: his homosexuality, his envy and hatred of men who had arrogated such freedom (to the point in which he wound up stealing a precious collectible, a phallic silver spoon, from Captain Weincheck), the devil-may-care capacity to enjoy life displayed by Leonora, who may as well be the woman that Anacleto sees when he looks at his reflection in the mirror, and most of all his similarity (as now-invisible servant) and difference (as still-living and therefore threatening presence) with Penderton’s murder victim. Just as Anacleto, platonically desired by Alison, had frustrated (by his absence) Morris’s desire to possess his spirit, and Private Williams, sexually desiring Leonora, had frustrated (by his inadvertent refusal) Weldon’s desire to possess his body, so, in a larger political analogy, has the development of a global underclass—in the US via the propagation of capitalism over the likes of Williams, and outside it via (neo)colonization—proved to be the element that serves to disrupt the continual deployment of masculinity, even an upright, racially uncontaminated, and militarized version of it. The Continuing Past
In the narrative text of Reflections in a Golden Eye, we are proffered an example of how the civilizing and Christianizing motives of colonization have been transmuted by history into a masculinizing project imbued with Freud’s formulation of the predicament of desire (cf. Young). By providing a resistant subject who accommodates his masters’ peculiar demands yet triumphs via disappearing into a faceless social system, the text serves to recall the standard response of natives forced into a state of submission: accept the terms of surrender dictated by the colonizers, then conduct guerrilla warfare when the opportunity to do so arises. It should come as no surprise to recall that, during the Filipino-American War,
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the Filipino revolutionaries’ greatest military triumph (and the US Army’s worst overseas defeat, up to that point) was when they managed to overrun a local town occupied by American troops by dressing as women in mourning and concealing their weapons in the coffins they bore, assisted in their mission by at least one houseboy employed by a US Captain (Dumindin n.p.). The Americans declared victory not long afterward by the expedient process of exterminating nearly the entire population of the island as a form of retaliation, but the mark of distressed special relations, where the desired native lass could turn out to be a male assassin in disguise, had been able to facilitate a queering of the struggle, a condition that testified as much to the ambiguity of Americans’ investment in their country’s colonial expansion as well as the creativity of the response of their Oriental targets. In this respect, the monologue that Anacleto utters (the character’s most extensive), in the days before the relationship between his masters and their lover/ rival next door deteriorated beyond repair, turns out to be more than just the expression of (from the military camp’s viewpoint) a harmless though slightly loony desexualized servant. He begins by telling Alison that he dreamt about Catherine, whom we surmise is Alison’s dead baby, “holding a butterfly in my hands.” Then he becomes increasingly perturbed, saying that the insect turned into Morris’s riding boot with newborn mice inside, trying to climb all over him.11 Then he just as suddenly eases into his earlier state of tranquillity and provides a seemingly inchoate series of observations, the entire outburst marked by a remarkable degree of uncanny derangement, demonstrating Warren Montag’s comment that linear time “has no place in the hauntic,” and hence “To speak of specters, the lexicon of ontology is insufficient” (71): Dreams, they are strange things to think about. In the afternoons in the Philippines, when the pillow is damp and the sun shines in the room, the dream is of another sort than in the North. At night, when it is snowing, then it is—Look, a peacock. A sort of ghastly green with one immense golden eye, and in it, these reflections of something tiny and—tiny and he[ makes a face and Alison says “Grotesque”]—exactly.
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Notes
The author acknowledges the funding support provided by Inha University toward completion of this project. An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the “(En) Gendering Philippine Studies” panel of the 2011 joint conference of the Association of Asian Studies and the International Convention of Asian Scholars at the University of Hawai’i; the author wishes to acknowledge fellow panelists Vina Lanzona, Jacqueline Aquino Siapno, and Oona Thommes Paredes for conducting a highly productive session that in essence has continued all the way to the present. The framework was reworked during the author’s Kritika Kultura Global Classroom lecture, for which the faculty and attendees of the Ateneo de Manila University’s Department of English similarly provided indispensable insights. The paper is offered to the memory of Ellen J. Paglinauan, former Dean of the College of Mass Communication at the University of the Philippines, who had first suggested the nature of the study, supplemented with her percipient impressions of watching the film, after having read the novel, during its year of release.
1. A prototype would be Rolando B. Tolentino’s article, titled “‘Subcontracting’ Imagination and Imageries of Bodies and Nations,” tackling “internal transnational developments between the Philippines and Asia Pacific” (148), focusing specifically on a Hong Kong and a Japanese film produced during the 1990s. 2. In 1967, when both Bonnie and Clyde and Reflections in a Golden Eyewere released, Arthur Penn was a ripe 45-year-old who nevertheless would have been young enough to have appreciated the emergence and heyday of the French New Wave in the 1950s. John Huston, who ironically would continue to be fairly active into the late 1980s as a Hollywood filmmaker, was already over 60 that year. Per the Internet Movie Database, Reflections cost an estimated $4.5 million but yielded, as of 1968, only $2.1 million in US rentals. 3. A shot (Fig. 1) in Ireland of Huston with McCullers radiantly smiling from her sickbed was used for the publicity of Reflections. Nevertheless the notoriously manipulative director’s admiration and concern for his guest was effusive and sincere, and spanned the decades since he first met her until he was able to adapt her novel and invite her to Ireland (An Open Book 330-35). Beyond Reflections’ release schedule and McCullers’s lifetime, Huston kept in mind her appreciation of James Joyce’s “The Dead” as her all-time favorite short story and, at eighty years of age, strove to complete a well-received adaptation of it as his very last directorial output. 4. In his autobiography, Huston defensively described Reflections as “one of my best pictures. The entire cast [including Zorro David] . . . turned in beautiful performances, even better than I had hoped for. And Reflections is a well- constructed picture. Scene by scene—in my humble estimation—it is pretty hard to fault” (An Open Book 333). Beyond this comment, he made no mention of the generally hostile response to the finished project, much of which may have been influenced by the original critical reaction to McCullers’s novella; even in written
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form, for example, the character of Anacleto was singled out in the New Yorker’s review (which also insinuated that the author had plagiarized D. H. Lawrence’s “The Prussian Officer”) as “an aesthetic Filipino houseboy, one of the most preposterous characters I have met in modern fiction” (Fadiman 67)itself a preposterous example of class and cultural racism that relies on the premise that the words aesthetic, Filipino, and houseboy are incompatible with one another. 5. A relatively recent book by Darwin Porter is cited by observers as “proof” that Brando remained bisexual for most of his youth; it also contains visual “evidence” of Brando (or someone similar-looking) fellating an unidentifiable partner, supposedly his long-term friend Wally Cox (404). Village Voice columnist Michael Musto, an authority on American celebrities and queer lifestyles, cautioned in an email message that “Porter (if that’s even his real name) isn’t reliable at all. His books make outrageous claims about dead stars and to me, they seem either based on hearsay or completely made up” (reply to author’s query, 28 Jan. 2012). A more sober (than Porter’s) critical appreciation of Brando after his death cites the way he inhabited the role of the closeted gay major . . . not through a surface mincing around but by hinting at the foiled machismo of the man (although the provenance of the major’s strangled, half Southern drawl and half plummy British lisp as Brando devised it correlates with no known geographical locale on this earth) (Merkin, n.p.). By way of demonstrating Brando’s advanced (for its time) perspective on identity politics, his guest appearance on the Dick Cavett Show’s 12 June 1973 episode, several years after completing Reflections, had him condemning several examples of stereotyping in Hollywood, including “the leering Filipino houseboy.” 6. In fact a belated behind-the-scenes volume titled Troubles in a Golden Eye provided then-available background information on Zorro David’s participation in Reflections; the authors claim to have tracked David to his home in Florida but reported that the “poignant Filipino,” already reclusive, did not wish to talk about the movie (Russo and Merlin 137). The book was co-written by Jan Merlin, who had performed in several TV and B-film projects, including Eddie Romero’s Philippine-shot “blood island” entry The Twilight People,and who wrote a story titled “The Bakla’s Cross” [The Gay Man’s Cross], whose cover description enumerates its cast of characters as follows: “Angel Butol, ex-guerilla, ex- policeman, and former supplier of film extras and other delights, gets involved with an American treasure hunter, a retired Japanese Major, and a Filipina ‘bomba’ [soft-porn] star.” Jaime Sanchez, a Puerto Rican actor who had appeared as Chino in the original Broadway production of West Side Story, was initially cast as Anacleto; a Warner Bros. production memo to Huston’s assistants told them that “perhaps you can make him into a Filipino fag” (Russo and Merlin 70). Interestingly, the film version ofWest Side Story featured a Filipino, Jose de Vega, in the Puerto Rican role of Chino. The then-acceptable slur “fag” repeatedly comes up in reference to both the character and the performer, with even Huston himself, realizing that Sanchez would cost more than the budget could afford after Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando had negotiated their salaries, telling his production assistant to “Find us a Filipino fag”; indicative of Huston’s
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protectiveness toward his acting discovery Zorro David, he announced to an interviewer that “There’s more show business in some hair parlors than in a good many theaters” (Russo and Merlin 84, 136). Having migrated to the US in 1957 and finding success as a hairdresser first at Beverly Hills and then at Saks Fifth Avenue, Rosauro David was inspired to adopt as his name the title of a then- popular Disney TV series, Zorro. When one of his customers heard that Huston’s production was searching for an “Asiatic homosexual,” she enthusiastically recommended David; Ray Stark then informed him about the project and the director, whereupon David remarked, “I thought Mr. Stark said [Huston lived on] Fire Island, but it turned out to be Ireland” (84). 7. Most biographies of Carson McCullers acknowledge the author’s bisexuality, proceeding from a stormy marriage with a man (also bisexual, and a US Army officer, significantly) whom she divorced, then remarried, and who then subsequently committed suicide partly because of his inability to launch a parallel writing career – an event that traumatized her. Regarding her writing of Reflections, which she had feverishly drafted in two months in 1939 (the fastest writing she had ever done), she stated: I am so immersed in my characters that their motives are my own. When I write about a thief, I become one; when I write about Captain Penderton, I become a homosexual man. I become the characters I write about and I bless the Latin poet Terence who said “Nothing human is alien to me.” (Carr 91) By way of illustration, Figure 8 shows McCuller’s then-lover Annemarie Clarac- Schwarzenbach, the Swiss dedicatee of Reflections, whom McCullers met via Fig. 8: Annemarie Clarac-Schwarzenbach Thomas Mann (Carr 100); described as (1908-42), photo on dedication page of the the “little man” of her exiled family and, German edition of Reflections in a Golden like McCullers, constantly ill and trapped Eye. in an unhappy heterosexual marriage (103), Clarac-Schwarzenbach died one year after the book was published. 8. Huston’s extended account of the coloring process was as follows: The Italian Technicolor lab exerted every effort to come up with what I wanted. . . . Weeks and months of experimentation were involved, starting well before the commencement of the picture and continuing after the final shots. What we achieved was a golden effect—a diffuse amber color—that was quite beautiful and matched the mood of the picture. . . .Warner Brothers thought differently; they . . . ordered prints to be made in straight Technicolor. I fought this, and finally, using every threat, contract, and
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influence I could muster, I got the studio to agree to make fifty prints in the amber color. . . . So far as I’m concerned . . . the sales department of Warners was headed by a man whose taste in color had been shaped by early “B” pirate films: “The more color per square foot of screen the better the picture.” (332-33) 9. Although Sean Labrador y Manzano admits “Do I secretly wish McCullers left a note: ‘Anacleto is straight!’ Yes. Because that would establish again the complexity and fluidity of Pinoy, of Pilipino culture, of Asian culture, and how American culture is fixated on inexplicable boundaries,” a closer inspection of the character’s social figurations reveals “its” capacity to encompass an entire range of sexual possibilities: from asexual (no lover in the narrative), to queer (in “open” contrast with Weldon), to straight (as desired by Alison, to the point of excluding her own husband), to polymorphously perverse (as a colonized subject who had succeeded in surviving in the colonizer’s army). 10. Further evidence of what we might provisionally term Morris’s Anacleto obsession plays out in two scenes: the first, occurring in the novel but not in the film, is when Susie, Alison’s black maid, offers to replace Anacleto with her own brotherto which Morris responds coldly; this might be at least partly owing to a question of ownership (Susie, unlike Anacleto, does not belong to him), but in both novel and film, Morris enacts a more “out” (to use queer-activist terminology) expression of his desire when he relates to his lover Alison about how he could not endure Alison’s thirty-three hours of labor over Catherine, except for the fact that “The little Filipino was there, sweat pouring down his face. Doctor told her she wasn’t bearing down hard enough so he’dhe’d bear down right along with her, bendin’ his knees, screamin’ when she’d scream.” Morris sobs after this confession and says that he would now be good for only two thingskeeping himself fit and serving his country; when Alison teasingly responds “Only two things?” Morris picks up the suggestion and they initiate a lovemaking sessionwhich Morris eventually fails to consummate, thus effectively tripling Alison’s repertory of impotent performers (recognized or otherwise by her), in addition to the male-desiring Weldon and the fetishistic Pvt. Williams. 11. A reverse-racist (over-)reading of this passage would turn on the still-prevalent racial categories, premised on skin color, proposed by eighteenth-century taxonomists: just as the actual color of blacks is deep brown, and the yellow of the so-called Mongoloid race is white, the Caucasoid is arguably “white” in the sense of the absence of color (or actually of melanin) – occasionally resulting in a pinkish hue from blood coursing beneath the skin. Newborn mice, also known as pinkies, possess the same skin quality. The character’s strange, halting monologue may have been developed by Huston with his awareness of the actor’s quirky-though-moving command of English. The two-page letter Zorro David had sent to “Mrs. Carson McCuller” contained passages [printed as is] such as “I am an orphany with two sisters and two brothers. . . . I am a poor boy and struggle so hard for education. I learn the trade as a hairstylist when I was very young. . . . Fate brought me in some countries and make America my permanent
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recidence. . . . I would never know what acting would mean to me until I became ‘Anacleto.’ And because of him I was deeply touch and fall in love. I would not mine doing it over and over again. . . . I wishes you the best of everything but most of all, Love and Health” (Russo and Merlin 108-09).
Works Cited
Altman, Robert, dir. Nashville. Scriptwriter Joan Tewkesbury. Paramount Pictures, 1975. Film. Bazin, André. What Is Cinema? Trans. Hugh Gray. 2 vols. Berkeley: U of California P, 1968 and 1971. Print. Capino, Jose B. Dream Factories of a Former Colony: American Fantasies, Philippine Cinema. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2010. Print. Carr, Virginia Spencer. The Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers.Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975. Print. De Pedro, Ernie. “Overview of Philippine Cinema.” Filipino Film Review 1.4 (1983): 26-27. Print. David, Joel. “Primates in Paradise: Critical Possibilities of the Milieu Movie.” Kritika Kultura 17 (2011): 70-104. Web. 12 July 2012. Deocampo, Nick. Cine: Spanish Influences on Early Cinema in the Philippines. Vol. 1 of Reflections on One Hundred Years of Cinema in the Philippines series. Manila: National Commission for Culture and the Arts, 2003. Print. ---. Film: American Influences on Philippine Cinema. Vol. 2 of Reflections on One Hundred Years of Cinema in the Philippines series. Manila: Anvil, 2011. Print. Derrida, Jacques. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, & the New International. Trans. Peggy Kamuf. New York: Routledge, 1994. Print. The Dick Cavett Show. TV interview program. Episode featuring Marlon Brando.12 June 1973. Web. 15 Mar. 2013. Dinesen, Isak [Karen von Blixen-Finecke]. Out of Africa. 1937. Alexandria: Time-Life, 1980. Print. Dumindin, Arnaldo. “Balangiga Massacre, September 28, 1901.” Philippine-American War, 1899-1902. Web. 15 July 2013. Eliot, T. S. “Lines for an Old Man.” Collected Poems, 1909-1962. Orlando: Faber, 1963. 143. Print. Fadiman, Clifton. “Books.” Review of Carson McCullers’s Reflections in a Golden Eye. New Yorker (15 Feb. 1941): 66-68. Print. Higson, Andrew. “The Concept of National Cinema.”Screen 30.4 (1989): 36-46. Print. Huston, John, dir. African Queen. Scriptwriters James Agee and John Huston, from the novel by C. S. Forester. Horizon and Romulus, 1951. Film. ---, dir. Beat the Devil. Scriptwriters Truman Capote and John Huston, from the novel by James Helvick. Rizzoli-Haggiag, Romulus, and Santana, 1953. Film. ---, dir. The Dead. Scriptwriter Tony Huston, from the short story by James Joyce. Vestron, 1987. Film.
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---, dir. The Man Who Would Be King. Scriptwriters John Huston and Gladys Hill, from the novel by Rudyard Kipling. Columbia, Devon/Persky-Bright, and Allied Artists, 1975. Film. ---. An Open Book. New York: Knopf, 1980. Print. ---, dir. Reflections in a Golden Eye. Scriptwriters Chapman Mortimer and Gladys Hill, from the novel by Carson McCullers. Warner Bros., 1967. Film. ---, dir. and scriptwriter. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. From the novel by B. Traven. Warner Bros., 1948. Film. ---, dir. Under the Volcano. Scriptwriter Guy Gallo, from the novel by Malcolm Lowry. Conacite Uno and Ithaca, 1984. Film. Is X Dead? Web. URL
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Negri, Antonio. “The Specter’s Smile.”Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx. Ed. Michael Sprinker. London: Verso, 2008. 5-16. Print. Nichols, Mike, dir. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Scriptwriter Ernest Lehman, from the play by Edward Albee. Warner Bros., 1966. Film. Penn, Arthur, dir. Bonnie and Clyde. Scriptwriters David Newman and Robert Benton. Warner Bros. and Tatira-Hiller, 1967. Film. Porter, Darwin. Brando Unzipped. [New York]: Blood Moon Productions, 2006. Print. Romero, Eddie, dir. The Twilight People. Scriptwriters Eddie Romero and Jerome Small. Four Associates, 1972. Film. Russo, William, and Jan Merlin. Troubles in a Golden Eye: Starring Taylor and Brando with John Huston. [Philadelphia]: Xlibris, 2005. Print. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1978. Print. San Andres, Igal Jada. “Nick Deocampo: The Accidental Archivist.”VERA Files. 18 Feb. 2013. Web. 27 Dec. 2012. San Juan, E., Jr. “Singaw [Mala-birong imbensyon ni David Zorro, ‘houseboy’ sa Reflections in a Golden Eye ni Carson McCullers].” Sagud Algabre, Babaeng Mandirigma at Iba Pang Bagong Tula [Sagud Algabre, Woman Warrior and Other New Poems]. Posted at The Philippines Matrix Project. 3 May 2011. Web. 15 July 2013. Stoler, Ann Laura. Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule. Berkeley: U of California P, 2004. Print. Thompson, Howard. “M’Cullers Story Ends L.I. [Long Island] Filming; Golden Eye Going to Rome After Mitchel Field.” New York Times (17 Oct. 1966): 49. Print. Tolentino, Rolando B. “‘Subcontracting’ Imagination and Imageries of Bodies and Nations.” National/Transnational: Subject Formation and Media in and on the Philippines. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila UP, 2001. 147-72. Print. Young, Robert J. C. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race.London: Routledge, 1995. Print.
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About Suggested Features Non-titles listed here may be descriptions of articles or chapters, rather than their actual titles. Links will open with the formal title of the text, along with the text itself. • Annual Filipino Film Chart Sole-Authored Books • The National Pastime • Fields of Vision • Wages of Cinema • Millennial Traversals • Book Texts: A Pinoy Film Course Joel David [pen name] bio: Teacher, scholar, & gadfly of film, media, & culture. Ph.D. & M.A. in Cinema Studies at New York University (2002 & 1994 23rd FACINE Film Festival respectively), on Fulbright scholarship; undergraduate degrees in film (1986) • Gawad Lingap Sining Citation and journalism (1979), both cum laude, at the University of the Philippines • 2016 FACINE Lecture (UP), the country’s official national university. Professor of Cultural Studies, Inha University (lectured in 2006-07, full-time since 2008, tenured in 2013). Special Lists Previously Associate Professor, UP College of Mass Communication • Film auteurs, play directors, & book authors (employed since 1987) and founding Director of the UP Film Institute in 2003. • National Midweek articles Scholarly interests may be inferred from publications posted in the present • Journal publications blog, including film narrative, genders & sexualities, Orientalism, new media. Criticism Non-academic stints include: Director of Publications at Haver Analytics, New • A Second Golden Age York (to 2001; initially employed in 1994 as Research Assistant); Head of • The Trouble with Golden Ages Writers Section at Experimental Cinema of the Philippines (1982-86); Writer • More on the 2nd Golden Age at The Review (1980-82); Managing Editor at Philippine Collegian (1978-79). • Ten Best Films Survey (1990) Freelanced as writer of articles and scripts, production assistant and • An Awards Exercise occasional “atmosphere person” for film and TV projects, book publisher, • Pinoy Film Criticism radio host, and now first-time blogger. Winner of the Gawad Lingap Sining • Fallout over Criticizing Critics [Culture Nurturer Prize] of the Filipino Arts & Cinema International (FACINE), awarded for film scholarship and criticism, and bestowed during Interviews (of J. David) the 23rd Annual FACINE Festival’s opening ceremony at the City College of • Re Amauteurish! (P.D. 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