Miyerkules, Oktubre 24, 2012

HORROR FROM THE MARGINS



SHAKE RATTLE AND ROLL 13 (2011)




Tamawo
Directed by Richard Somes
Written by Richard Somes, Aloy Adlawan, Jules Katanyag
Starring Maricar Reyes, Bugoy Carino, Zanjoe Marudo, Celia Rodriguez

Parola
Directed by Jerrold Tarog
Written by Jerrold Tarog, Aloy Adlawan, Maribel Ilag, Roselle Monteverde
Starring Kathryn Bernardo, Louise delos Reyes, Sam Concepcion, Ina Reymundo, Ara Mina, Lloyd Samartino

Rain Rain Go Away
Directed by Chris Martinez
Written by Marlon N. Rivera, Chris Martinez
Starring Eugene Domingo, Jay Manalo, Edgar Allan Guzman, Boots Anson-Roa, Perla Bautista



It is often argued that the spotlight of local mainstream cinema at the moment is no longer at the marginalized groups of society (the poor, indigenous people, militant groups, etc.) but at the privilege of the ruling class. It’s a saddening case then that the cries of real oppression are muted in favor of success stories via commercial achievements (the middle-class ideal for accomplishment) and the sugary narratives of boy-meets-girl. But for the genre known to make oppressive forces pay, local horror never neglected the marginalized. In fact, modern issues still have a special place in the heart of the grotesque. Such is the case here in SHAKE RATTLE AND ROLL 13, Regal’s annual horror treat for the Metro Manila Film Festival. (Still) chopped up to three narratives, this time it’s about a family who retreat to the idyll province (“Tamawo”), a revival of a dead friendship (“Parola”) and the horrors done by the 2009 storm Ondoy to rich factory owners (“Rain, Rain Go Away”). The film is no departure in terms of form. I’ve always thought that the cleancut digital quality of Regal’s visuals is anticlimactic compared to the earlier films’ mood and atmosphere. In fact, the content is quite familiar too. Since the MMFF is seen as an event offered for family bonding, the supposedly last installment of the horror franchise is all about families. But it’s not without its twisted reflections of contemporary social ills.

All episodes focus on the ideal family model: father and mother with their children try to cope with changes in their new situations. The family in “Tamawo” traveled from Manila to the stateside because the father finds the city chaotic, while the couple in “Rain, Rain Go Away” tries to cope up from the horrors of the nightmarish storm by building a new factory and retrying their chances at having a child. The bond of two families in the middle episode “Parola” would be disrupted by a secret affair. It is the disruption of the family’s peace that would let the horrors push through, but unlike “Parola”, the bookend episodes are haunted by the unrecognized marginalized groups of people. The tamawos are supernatural forces that stood in for indigenous people in the provinces. Years ago, their crystal has been stolen by a mortal who buried the treasure under a nipa hut. In the contemporary period, the tamawos threatens a family to bring out the treasure which the father actually discovered and hid. Only when the son offered himself as a sacrifice that the remaining members of the family achieve peace.

The third episode is direct in handling a much more recent issue regarding Metro Manila – floods. In “Rain, Rain Go Away”, a couple is haunted by ghosts of child laborers who drowned by Ondoy floods when they were locked-up in the old plastic ware factory owned by the rich couple. Thinking the horror has past, the rich couple found a new home and built a new factory (in a manner reminiscent of Imelda Marcos after the incident at the Manila Film Center). But the ghosts of the workers haunted the family and even took the lives of their relatives.

If this really is the last installment of the franchise then it managed to update audiences of recent circumstances occurring both in rural and urban sectors. A line from “Tamawo” has addressed the woes of indigenous people regarding the proceedings in mining (especially around Palawan). “Halos lahat ng bagay sa mundo ay nasa inyo na! ‘Eto na lang ang amin, papakialaman niyo pa!” said one of the tamawos in their conversation with the father. It is pitiful of course because what we thought of as a crystal was actually an egg that is carrying a premature embryo – the last member of the tamawos. The film has industrialization and modern society to blame for all the troubles done to the tribe. The relationship between the upper and the lower classes would be much more direct in the third episode. Child laborers were selfishly locked by the couple so they wouldn’t escape the job as makers of plastic containers. Plastic of course is known as the ultimate culprit to the flooding of the cities. That’s why plastic bans have started in different cities in the metro, though not all. The overproduction done by the capitalist couple in the film is the reason why the deaths and the eventual haunting occurred.

By putting our sympathies at the losses of the bourgeois family, it is easy to overlook the situation of the abject monsters/ghosts. These families sit pretty in their houses and when unfavorable incidents arouse (such as natural calamities), they selfishly save themselves and let the others die. But like the Ondoy victims in the third episode, the margins have their own way of returning. The film has bourgeois families (or people who can afford to watch Php150-200 worth of movie tickets) as target audiences and these audiences relate to the problems of the families they watch. But listen closely to the line said by the maid in the final episode “Makakalimutan natin ang lahat pero ang mga patay… hindi sila nakakalimot!”. We may stay at our comfort zones for long, but the ones from the margins will continue to haunt us until their voices are heard.

THE REVENGE OF THE FORGOTTEN




Kimmy Dora and the Temple of Kiyeme


Alas, the new Eugene Domingo film was another crowd-pleasing success. It is expectedly so since Eugene, after numerous accolades and a string of noteworthy comedic performances, has established herself as the new It-girl of local cinema, a megastar. Kimmy Dora and the Temple of Kiyeme for the second time around was carried by her very theatrical performances (she played three roles). But this one’s pretty inferior. The laughs weren’t louder than the first and despite having a more adventurous plot and gag-filled mishaps, the script felt more predictable. The production was at least an improvement, letting Eugene enjoy the costumes and the audiences enjoy the beauty of Korean culture. Gags aside, the very departure of the film is its inclusion of a horror element. Employing this for additional spice, the film also introduces a relevant feat of repression. So the plot goes like this: the Goh Dong Hae family experiences the haunting of a deceased family friend who happens to be the patriarch’s (played by Ariel Ureta) Korean ex-girlfriend. The spirit goes on to take the souls of the men in Kimmy and Dora’s lives and the twins must let her soul rest in peace in order to retrieve the souls of their father and boyfriends (Zanjoe Marudo and Dingdong Dantes). 


It can be argued that the horror element of vengeful ghost is only an excuse for conflict in an otherwise predictable comedy. This aside, the film extinguishes the eruptions that could’ve given the film a little more action. Consider Kimmy’s frustrations of taking responsibility for almost all the family’s mishaps. This has been the issue of her character since the first film. Towards the end of the sequel, she is still the only one who seems to be providing solutions for the film’s major problems. Kimmy is an independent working woman who represents a new high regard for the working Filipina in the corporate ladder. Domingo portrays her with frosty bitchiness a la Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestley with emotional troubles and desire for only money and success. It’s also interesting how the anguished female ghost takes back hilariously at the men. Her needs were taken for granted as the story left her side for the horror one. The horror story conflict is resolved and we are left once again with escapist bourgeois comedy. Since the film isn’t really interested in feminism, well what other issues could this film raise?


Let’s return to the ghost itself. The reason for its horrific rage was because Mr. Go Dong Hae left her as an adolescent and married a Filipina when he chose to study in the Philippines. This Korean girl Sang Kang Kang (cosplayer Alodia Gosiengfiao) locked herself up in her room to die. The choice of the Korean man isn’t much of a surprise for the contemporary Filipino setting where a “Korean invasion” has been occurring in the past decade. Sun Star Cebu (2011) reports “in 2010, Koreans overtook Americans as the biggest group of foreigners to visit the Philippines. More than 740,000 Koreans visited the Philippines last year, accounting for 21 percent of all foreign tourist arrivals, according to the Department of Tourism.” Koreans enjoy life here in the Philippines because they can absolutely afford it. And with their continuous travels to the country, a cultural shift may take place. Kimmy and Dora themselves are what Sun.Star Cebu calls the “Kopinos”, the Korean-Filipino children born from the previous generations of the two countries’ budding relationship. They are even bound to continue the two countries’ relationship by forcefully marrying a Korean tycoon’s son, which was comically lifted because the groom-to-be is a gluttonous damulag.


But then also, what could this imply on Filipinos? You dare not ask for the obvious: we are enjoying a great deal of Korean culture. From pop music (KPop), “Koreanovelas” to Korean restaurants and shops, well it is indeed a subtle invasion. It only piles up to our own colonial mentality, especially the teenage group. 


Sang Kang Kang’s vengefulness is a Korean response to this Kopino phenomenon. An interesting fact about her is that she is a part of the ethnic groups of their country. One could imagine how disappointed the uncolonized Koreans are to the ones who left for newer lifestyles elsewhere. Of course, the film ends on a positive note. The ghost was cast away and they failed to please their father’s insistence of a continuation of Korean-Filipino relationship (coz after all, it was only all about money). If only the horror element of a vengeful forgotten culture has been taken seriously, we would have seen a modern horror film that challenges the negative outcome of Korean-Filipino ties.


References:


Sun.Star Cebu. (2011). Help on the way for Kopinos in Cebu. Retrieved August 20, 2012 from http://www.sunstar.com.ph/cebu/local-news/2011/03/13/help-way-kopinos-cebu-144575

AFTERTHOUGHTS ON “Women and Gays in a Zombie-infested Paradise (review of ZOMBADINGS)”

The dynamism of film is forever a mystery to the avid viewer of cinema. What was once a well-beloved classic has been proven to be a mediocre and cheesy film from a period that is gravely important to document in the books. Such is my impression with Jade Castro’s ZOMBADINGS, a film that at first seems like a total hands-down moment for the local LGBT community made in a time when views on gender and sexuality have been shifting – until it proved to be not.



It all started when I heard from Jade Castro himself in a screening of the film. According to him, he was inspired by the film AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (by John Landis, 1981) where a “man is being transformed into something he’s not”. Remington is indeed a young man “cursed” into homosexuality (from a mental illness, now a curse!) and only the power of a straight father who has not bed a single twink can save him. I get the picture, but when you realize he’s likening a live human being (a label gay activists have been fighting for decades to be treated as) to a monster is something else. Well I get it - monsters and gays are both considered “other” in a clean-cut patriarchal society. FRANKENSTEIN, Ricky Lee’s AMAPOLA... it’s all over popular culture. But do we really have to repeat that notion and translate it into a film that is very unsubtle yet also problematic about the whole gay issue?



Enter the case of camp. As he said so in interviews, Castro intended ZOMBADINGS to be camp. There was Roland Tolentino’s review of the film that questioned this. He says here

Hindi pwedeng magsimula ang isang proyekto na maging camp. Kailangan itong maging resulta o in hindsight na persepsyon. Hindi ako lalabas ng bahay bilang stereotipong parloristang bading dahil hindi ito magreresulta sa “dobleng camp.” Mananamit ako, at dahil labis ang pabalat na ukay-ukay o high fashion, halimbawa, maari akong maging camp.
Ang Zombadings ay mulat na camp, ito ay campy pero hindi camp. Ang nangyari sa pagpapatingkad ng proyektong maging camp ay negation ng camp. Walang irony o disjuncture sa dalawang pinagtatapat na mundo dahil naglapat ang pagpapatawa (intensyonalidad at resultang primaryo sa box-office) sa object ng pagpapatawa (ang kabadingan). (2011)

He ends the review by stating that ZOMBADINGS only reinforced stereotypes. Remington was a mere reinforcement of the “screaming faggot” stereotype that must be abolished in the straight man’s way. “Nag-kwento lang, at nag-reaffirm ng kwento”. It has pandered to a serious issue for some beef and ended up laughing at it.


From what I know, the best camp films didn’t initially intend themselves to be camp, because the label’s supposed to be what a film is avoiding – to become a joke. Yet the praise the previous camp films had influenced the Aughts in a way. It made a new generation of filmmakers go for the lessons of the past and imitate a trend, try to recreate an effect that would score an audience. Yes of course, it had its moments of pure gay eye and ear candy. Yet upon having all these bloated ideas exploding, the advocacy turned out to be lip service. You can ask the film itself – are you or aren’t you?


ZOMBADINGS is at times celebratory yet at times still brutally homophobic, and it ends up where it started – gays are still sissies looked at as a joke. It’s very problematic and unaware of what it stands for. The kid in the last scene says it all. He sees a golden gay walking on the street. The kid stops and points at him, telling his mom “Bakla, oh”. Just when you thought a negative remark would be blurted out, he immediately praises him with a face utterly forced to say “Ang gandaaa”. Would that be a sign of change? As Tolentino said, it is indeed still a big box of a film entrapping homosexuals into traits and keeping them there. The makers of ZOMBADINGS only made it taste so sweet. - Gio Potes, September 2012




Reference:

Tolentino, R. (2011). Mulat na camp at kawalan ng irony. Retrieved July 11, 2012 from http://pinoyweekly.org/new/2011/10/mulat-na-camp-at-kawalan-ng-irony/

MYTH OF JAPANESE HEROISM



THE DAWN OF FREEDOM (1944)


Contemporary audiences are used to the stories of lolos and lolas about their encounters with Japanese soldiers. They easily dismiss the WWII as a grueling period caused by Jap soldiers who are destructive and atrocious. Even history tells us so because it is in the consensus of all these stories that the 3-4 years of Japanese occupation was a devastating moment in our history. As people living seven decades after the Occupation, we rely on these accounts and consider them as facts. But it is of course, a matter of perspective. The Americans who “saved” us from the Japanese are in for their condemnation because they were also bombed by the superpower, plus they have a colonizing agenda. But what if you ask what the Japanese thought about it? Enter THE DAWN OF FREEDOM (1944).


The film starts with a devastating introduction – the declaration of Manila as an “Open City”. From there, we proceed to two narratives woven together: one is the war encounters of Andres Gomez; the other is about his kid brother Tony’s friendship with a kind Jap soldier. Andres who was once faithful to the American flag found his way to the Japanese army after a brief encounter and belittlement from his leaders. When he left his home in Manila, his brother Tony was crippled by an automobile driven by an American officer but a Japanese soldier he befriends him and sends him to a doctor to ease his condition. It all ends with smiles as the Japanese lead the Filipinos to their progress as a people.  Well DAWN OF FREEDOM is, above its dragging war genre excess, a typical melodrama with a touching bromance between a kid and a father-like soldier, a working Filipino and the Japanese army, colonizer and colonized. It’s not an easy watch of course – available copies are now rough and inaudible with only Japanese subtitles functioning as a guide (it’s quite obvious who the target audience is, too). But the work on its music is quite masterful especially in the scene where Tony stands up from his wheelchair to reveal the miracle his Japanese friend has blessed him. It is undoubtedly a sappy textbook example of an MMK episode. Perhaps a macho AFFAIR TO REMEMBER, too?


So now the issue is this: what did the Japanese want to do? Despite a prominent Filipino director (Gerardo de Leon), it was very apparent that the Japanese were all over this puppet show. According to Video 48 (2011):
 It was the Japanese policy to push the goals of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. According to Rico Jose in his article, “The Dawn of Freedom and Japanese Wartime Propaganda”, the Japanese had three aims: to unmask the Americans as the real enemies and to eradicate their influences; to emphasize Japan’s role as the leader of Asia; and especially with regard to Filipinos, to recover the native character lost due to years of Occidental colonization. Because it was highly popular, film was used as an instrument of propaganda.


It was Japan’s aim to mask their colonizing agenda by antagonizing the Americans (something the latter has done a lot more subtly). From the American automobile that crippled Tony to the brutalities done by white soldiers to the Filipinos, it’s a powerful early anti-American statement. The Japanese have successfully made it appear that they’re indeed heroic towards Filipinos they “freed”, at least in cinematic terms. Then again freedom doesn’t mean independence. We may seem free from Americans but we still depended on an imperialist. And as a whole big scheme of media control and control via media, the Japanese saw the rising Philippine cinema’s potential (it has been argued that the 1930s saw an early golden age for Philippine films, if only the prints survived the war) and they used it as a tool for propaganda and colonization. A contradiction so obvious it was bound to fail.


While these plans shone through DAWN OF FREEDOM, it shouldn’t be denied that the Japanese also did rather good things for the Filipinos by sharing and teaching their values (to the children especially) and educating the people in their own ways. What really caught my attention was the beautiful friendship between Tony and the Japanese soldier Ikejima. They had this certain chemistry, a bond so heartwarming I didn’t want them to part. I said before that Tony’s miraculous scene was overtly melodramatic, but once a shot of Ikejima smiling back was shown, it is suggested through that very sequence that the war should be pushed aside for the bright side of Japanese occupation: a brief but beautiful friendship. It was this simple friendship that’s the real driving force behind the false heroism of DAWN OF FREEDOM. That may be the smallest glimpse of appreciation, in a whole big book of complaints and horrific stories.


References:
Video 48. (2011). The war years (1942-45): Part two/ propaganda movies. Retrieved September 1, 2012 from http://video48.blogspot.com/2011/03/war-years-1942-45-part-two-propaganda.html

Pinoy Kollektor. (2011). Dawn of freedom – Philippine wwii movie.  Retrieved September 1, 2012 from http://pinoykollektor.blogspot.com/2011/10/48-dawn-of-freedom-philippine-wwii.html

Torre, N. (2011). Philippine cinema’s ‘golden ages’ debated anew. Retrieved September 1, 2012 from http://agimat.net/film/n110322.php