Philippine Cinema After Martial Law

Films in the Philippines after martial law took on a new turn as the country searched for its identity in light of its new-found “freedom.” To understand film during this period, we look into the 1989 Lino Brocka work Orapronobis (Pray for Us). The intention is to situate this film within the post-Marcos dictatorship discourse and relate the film’s content to the present political situation.
It is imperative for us to look into the political arena, especially in this period, for the films after Marcos’ dictatorship can reveal much about the relations of production and consumption of the form as they are (the films) direct products of the lifting of PD 1081 and the consequent curtailment of freedom that the artists experienced during that time. In essence, this period promised a widening of parameters as to what films may contain. How the filmmakers responded to it and explored these parameters would sure be interesting to identify.

Orapronobis

Lino Brocka was commissioned by foreign producers to make Orapronobis (1989) for the Cannes Film Festival. This, of course, gave international stature for Brocka as a director and is a clear indication of the international thrust that the film industry was geared towards during this period (and up to today). This attempt is situated inside the globalization discourse of borderlessness. This may be (I’m not too sure) the first time that Filipino filmmakers went out to actively search for support and recognition from international community. The film industry, much like any other industry in the Philippines, is too dependent of foreign funding and recognition. This becomes a problem when a cultural product as potent as film depends its production and judgment in the hands of the west. As it is situated in those terms, so shall the product be in those terms.

However, Brocka’s Orapronobis is a cutting-edge take on a Filipino experience. It exposes the human rights issues of the post-Marcos era in an ironic turn of events as the country is supposed to have been “liberated” from oppression. The main importance of this film is the recognition that the EDSA revolution of 1986 was a shift not from a bad political situation to a good one, but a turn of leadership from one representative of the ruling class to another.

The film is also characterized by the intelligent use of appeal to emotions that lends a hand to the demonization of the anti-communist discourse. The attempt at realism and details is superb and helps in the appreciation of the underground movement’s importance in the resolution of human rights issues and how the military can play the vicious villain.

The universality of the human rights issues discussed by the film may be intentional as the film is geared towards a global eye. It is strategic, in this sense, for the film’s local take on a historical perspective and the ambivalent global appeal pins down the film’s acceptance and celebration.

To Question the Canon: The First Golden Age of Philippine Cinema

Cinema in the Philippines the years directly after the war, as some references account, is the first golden age of Philippine Cinema:

“…The 1950s was the so-called first golden age of Philippine cinema, mainly because at this time, the Big Four studios (LVN Pictures, Sampaguita Pictures, Premiere Productions and Lebran International) were at the height of their powers in filmmaking, having employed master directors like Gerardo de Leon, Eddie Romero and Cesar Gallardo and housing the biggest stars of the industry that day…

…In addition, the stars of these productions also won international awards …

…During this era, the first award-giving bodies were also established (wikipedia)...

…Critics now clarify that the 50s may be considered one “Golden Age” for the Filipino film not because film content had improved but because cinematic techniques achieved an artistic breakthrough in that decade… (http://www.aenet.org/family/filmhistory.htm) ”

These accounts mention several reasons why the 50’s was a great period for Philippine cinema. The studios, the directors, international awards, establishment of award-giving bodies, and artistic breakthroughs all point to this period as an important one. This labeling of periods in film history as golden raises a flag to anyone who wants to understand what merits artistic excellence to pass for such taxonomy. What does it mean for the artist (director, etc.)? What does it mean for the artwork (film)? What does it demand of the film industry?

To answer these questions, we look into two films made during the “first golden age of Philippine cinema”—the 50’s. Anak Dalita (1956) by Lamberto Avellana is an exposition on poverty and hard-edged realism on the life of a Korean War veteran who returns home to the Philippines and gets involved in a smuggling conflict. Biyaya ng Lupa (1959) by Manuel Silos, on the other hand, is a film which explores the intricacies of rural life as tied to land. It starts out with a hopeful young couple getting married, having kids, eventually experiencing bankruptcy, their daughter getting raped, and being haunted by a village goon. The film ends positively when the goon is killed and with a bountiful harvest.

The intention is to look into these films and attempt to discover how the establishment of these films as “great” influences the audience by means of representation as well as position the critic in viewing such.

The Measure for Greatness

Any artist peddling an artwork in the art market is judged by how he/she measures up to the standards set by the canon. A film canon is the limited group of movies that serve as the measuring stick for the highest quality in the genre of film. It is the prime interest of this article to scrutinize the canon and rationalize its existence.

Why is there a need for greatness through the canon? Practically, more often than not, when one watches a film, the aesthetic reflex is to associate the experience to a previous one stripping the current experience off of autonomy thus basing satisfaction through what one had before. This practice of “comparing” in the part of the person experiencing the film is dangerous if we consider how exactly the canon is established.

Institutions (effectively the state) are the backbone of the canon. The groups of people legitimized by the state to endow an object the name “art” set the criteria by which artists must commit to. This commitment by the artist is driven by the need to sell and the institutions provide this to the artist by giving him/her labels, awards, grants, and the most basic – a good review. The credibility of the canon is fueled by these and the institution’s very existence relies on the canon. This give-and-take relationship between the institutions and the canon shapes aesthetic practice and judgment leaving the audience without a critical take and such dissociated (mis)representations normalized.

Anak Dalita and Biyaya ng Lupa

Anak Dalita is set in post-war Manila. It capitalizes on the effect of war to the city as a backdrop for a story of poverty and illegal mishaps. The context in which the film was set is the rebuilding of Manila after the Pacific War. The film discussed poverty and illegal activity recognizing its presence in society and also critiquing it by exposing injustice associated with it. Technically the story was well written, the actors played their parts well and the director obviously explored the cinematic
potential enough.

The point of highlight in Anak Dalita is the representation of poverty. Its aestheticization in the film demanded a certain amount of responsibility in the part of the artist (director, etc.) in making identification with reality possible at the same time catering to the whims (and standards) of the canon. This indebtedness to the canon creates a certain density in the treatment of the film. Such representation, as outlined by the moral code of the existing order, is permeated throughout the film and is translated into normalcy which gives the artist an irrevocable prediction of the viewer’s world conception and order.

Biyaya ng Lupa represents rural life and the false hope that comes with it. Although the film actually leaves a positive mark to the audience, the film is grounded on an urban-centric premise. The contradiction between (and against) city life and life in the countryside is always a discourse on which is preferable and by representing the latter, the film takes a position in the binary and in effect bestows a certain amount of justification to prefer either. The discourse of duality in perceiving happiness as belonging to either is weak for it reduces happiness to just a matter of location when in fact there are a variety of factors that contribute to subjectivities.

These representations comprise the canon. It shaped (and continues to shape) Filipino films using the same binaries and discourses that comprise Filipino subjectivities as well. It is, therefore, dangerous to put an artwork (in this case, film) in an ivory tower when the relations of art production and consumption lie in the hands of a specific few. Subjectivities are created through art and the canon makes sure this is sustained. It is important to interrogate the canon and locate the specific sites of contention where it reduces the human to inessentiality, if not forget about it altogether and look at art as is and finally stop demanding anything from it.

Sources:

"Cinema of the Philippines." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 16 Oct 2008, 15:18 UTC. 19 Oct 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cinema_of_the_Philippines&oldid=245680443>.
“History of Philippine Cinema.” Onlineessays.com. 16 Oct 2008, 15:18 UTC. 19 Oct 2008
"Film canon." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 10 Oct 2008, 22:25 UTC. 19 Oct 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Film_canon&oldid=244459850>.

The Lesser of Two Evils: On Philippine Cinema During the Japanese Period

Film as cultural product in the years 1941 to 1946 in the Philippine setting can be best scrutinized through the lens of the Japanese occupation inside the theme of the Pacific War between Japan and the US. The concept of war and its relation to any cultural product is always interesting as we try to understand the implications of imperialist conflicts to the local culturality of “art” events.

When the Pacific War broke out with the offensives of Japan to the US (Pearl Harbor), it was necessary for Japan to integrate the Philippines within its plans through any means necessary in its attempt to secure hegemony. It saw enculturation vital to the promotion of the myth of “Asians for Asians.”

Imperialist Wars

The concept of war as integral in the development of societies (and the state) in the era of monopoly capitalism is important in looking at art in a manner suitable for any analysis that tends to go beyond the exclusive visuality of film for if we dare go the latter direction, we leave a big chunk of the more definitive query. It, therefore, necessitates a seamless linking of war in the imperialist sense and the cultural product as it is experienced by its consumer. It is also a point of interest to expose the reality that the Japanese propaganda, through the film Dawn of Freedom, intended to create in its intent to realize its imperialist mission.

While Japan had a seemingly noble (not to mention self-initiated) task of liberating the Asian region of the North American-European domination, this task can only be seen as fraudulent and preposterous when viewed from the scheme of the political and the economic implications that the war was all about. Vladimir Lenin in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism* explains: “on the part of both sides; it was a war for the division of the world, for the partition and repartition of colonies and spheres of influence of finance capital (9).” It is in this context that Philippine cinema is poised to highlight the more overt intentions of propaganda than anything else.

Dawn of Freedom

The film Dawn of Freedom by Abe Yutaka and Gerardo de Leon (1944) is born out of these imperialist wars. The context in which it was formulated accounts for the intense use of attempts at identification with its audience although for whom this identification is intended for is unclear. To crack if the film was created for a Filipino or a Japanese audience is not in the interest of this piece. It is, however, a central interest to ascertain characteristics of the audience that this artwork negotiates with and what it persuades this audience to appreciate. To do that, we look into the themes (or the premise and contradictions of which) of the film.

The film contradicts itself in many levels. The film’s premise is the myth “Asians for Asians.” This regional reference was the guiding policy of the rhetoric used by Japan in translating justification for intra-regional colonization and in general, the war. Because of the previously mentioned, the context is not so much a regional matter of the west versus the east as it is a territorial and economic conflict between two imperialist countries. The film fashions an amicable image of a Japanese soldier which would be entirely outside the realm of reality if you ask any Filipino who was there (fighting or being harassed) during the war.

Bottomline: Preference

These inaccuracies in representation imposed a new type of reality to the audience that Japan intended to root the cultural potential of their quest into. The question of whether this reality was acceptable or even effective to the audience is a totally different story. It’s important to see, however, the overt utilization of film to create this reality and the imperialist attempt to culturally colonize the minds of the Filipinos.

The reality presented by the film themed “Japan is not the enemy” is also an attempt at conversion of preference from an American mindset to a Japanese (Asian) one. It is, essentially, a choice for the Filipinos between two imperialists—a position any Filipino should never want to take.

*Lenin, Vladimir. Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. Progress Publishers. Moscow. 1975

Art History Vs Art History: A Critical Essay on Patrick Flores’ "Painting History: Revisions in Philippine Colonial Art"

Complete Title: Painting History: Revisions in Philippine Colonial Art
Author: Patrick Flores
Publish Date: 1998
Format: PaperbackPublisher: Office of Research Coordination, University of the Philippines [and] National Commission for Culture and the Arts
Pages: 393 p.: ill.

“The task of Philippine colonial art history is to theorize on the various aspects of the construction of Philippine colonial art studies and evaluate its effects on multiple audience ethnographies which comprise the public of the canon. (105)”

Indebted to neo-marxist theory, British cultural materialism, semiotics, and structuralism, Patrick Flores’ book Painting History: Revisions in Philippine Colonial Art situates itself within the new art history which itself took root from the new history of the third generation of the Annales School since Jacques Le Goff and Pierre Nora coined the French term nouvelle histoire in the 1970’s among others (Burke, 2).

Flores’ discourse, in line with this tradition, asks “the question for art historians…not ‘what do pictures mean?’ but ‘what do pictures want’ (xv)” which reconsiders “covert intentions, functions and agenda within a synchronic history of competing social forces (ix)” as opposed to “what paintings as pictures overtly convey or communicate (ibid.)”.

The book is a critique of art historians within the milieu of “traditional” historiography (which merely gathers and measures) encouraging the recovery of fluctuating receptions and interdisciplinarity in art historical writing and criticism. Flores explored the viability of the concept of colonialism in the post-colonial text as ambivalent―both peaceful and violent. He discarded the dichotomy of form and content that has long governed traditional art studies, revealing the nature of painting as commodity in the process.

Shifting the ground of traditional art historiography further, Flores’ rhetoric persuades art history to deconstruct itself by interrogating its stock premises. One salient interrogation of this type is the dependence of art history to economy which he regarded as simplistic and overdeterministic. In turn, he endeavored to create a comprehensive colonial art history by doing an extensive research on the Academia exposing neglected facts in previous historiography. One such fact is the Mexican influence to colonialism since the Philippines was not directly under Spain but by the viceroyalty of Mexico of New Spain until 1815. Recognition of such complexities is to be the basis of a truer account of art history.

Form as Mode of Production

Central to Flores’ theoretical basis is the concept of form as a mode of production. Overtly a neo-marxist concept, he coins Eagleton and Berger to situate art within the political economy. He quotes Eagleton:

“Oil painting creates a certain density, lustre and solidity in what it depicts; it does to the world what capital does to social relations, reducing everything to the equality of objects. The painting itself becomes an object – a commodity to be bought and possessed; it is itself a piece of property, and represents the world in those terms (54)”

This establishes the nature of the visual rhetoric as not merely a reflection of material and style, but a reflection “of social relations between artist and audience with which that technique is bound up (ibid.)”. This visual knowledge, he argued, is manufactured by a semiotic technology and can be applied to view the baroque (and painting) as not merely style and form. This argument revives the perceived dominant style of colonial painting (baroque) from an overdetermined analysis and appreciation.

Flores materialized this concept of political economy within the site of Philippine experience by citing the attempt of the government to acquire colonial artifacts (including paintings) in the name of “heritage.” This attempt, he analyzed, is situated in a historical context that fastens art to the question of national identity proving that art is programmed in narrative settings. The book attempts to relieve art of this burden.

The author further explores the post-colonial ideological formation by citing Bordieu and Williams in his attempt to explain cultural reproduction as generative rather than replicative. This discussion is mainly intended to place colonial art within a specific sphere of ideology-producing mechanism using Bordieu’s concept of habitus and Williams’ constituting subjectivities. It provides for a rational understanding of how colonial art achieved its complexity by arguing that cultural ideological production is not replicated but generated leaving the latter ideology in art more complex than the one it was born out of.

Still within the attempt to understand cultural ideological formation in the post-colonial milieu, the author criticized Zeus Salazar’s Pantayong Pananaw as subjecting art to orientalization and other-ing through “fetishized and fetishizing constructions of institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, and doctrines accruing to the category ‘native’ (65)”.

In weaving these post-colonial theories, the author clarified the usage of the term post-colonial as non-diachronic but referring to repercussions of colonialism from the very first colonial contact to the present. This clarification is important in appreciating where the author is coming from and in understanding the amount of development that post-colonial theory has gone through in the light of achieving clearer perspective (read: sanity) for the reader.

The author handled the sites of transgression in colonial painting history by establishing that mimicry is not necessarily a form of silent subjugation but a form of resistance. He did this by rationalizing the relationship of the indigenous and the colonial. He argued that the representation of transgression in history (especially in religion) endows the indigenous an inferior character as that of the colonial and by subjecting colonial paintings to this kind of analogy, art history betrays the previous.

The specific nature of colonial exigencies was discussed by the author using the backdrop of a feudal society. He gave premium to social and organizational make-up to construct colonialism. The set-up of towns, forced labor in the name of the church, and urbanization gave function and effect to hispanization.

Institutions of Colonial Art

In discussing and constructing colonial art, the author recognized the assumptions and current ideological configuration of the audience he is writing for:

“When we lay claim to colonial art, we address a determinate field: a set of representations of colonial art regulated by structures and practices of colonial art history in the Philippines. We locate the museum system as one of the main sites of encounter.(106)”

It is this recognition that the author presented eight museums that house colonial artifacts: Intramuros Administration, Central Bank of the Philippines, San Agustin Museum, University of Santo Tomas Museum, Burgos Museum, National Museum, Vargas Museum, and Ayala Museum (ibid.). This listing is integral not only in establishing the sources of the corpus of the study but, more importantly, in tracing the sites of ideological construction that concerns colonial art

Damian Domingo and the Academia

Fundamental in the author’s discussion of ideological construction of art in the colonial period is his exposition of the Academia de Dibujo y Pintura that is long credited as the first art institution of the Philippines. Gathering extensive data, the author rendered the (re)history of the school that exposed the following findings and issues regarding history of education of art in the country:
The early schools run by friars taught art within the catholic subscription. These schools started canonization and the dichotomy between art and craft.

1. The Academia de Bellas Artes was the first institutionalization of painting discrediting Domingo's academia as the first
2. Recognition of the Chinese connection in artists and themes.
3. The concept of authorship started with printmaking as the printmakers signed their works.
4. Architectural and framed/panel painting (includes icon painting) are the forms of early colonial painting.
5. The current taxonomy of style endorses a colonial continuity ultimately serving the Academy.
6. The edict of Charles III on May, 1785 was the beginning of secularization which started portraiture.
7. 6 forms that flourished during the secularization: Miniatures, Miniaturismo, Letras y Figuras , Tipos del Pais, Historical Scenes, Scientific Plates
8. Damian Domingo’s works constituted miniature portraits, religious paintings, and albums of costume, idylls, and regional milieu.
9. The style of the Academia was miniaturismo.
10. Artists were divided into 2 groups: those in the Academia who gained access to European techniques and aesthetics and those ''homegrown." Domingo is both.
11. The Academia made the guild painters lose value because of institutionalization.
    

Politics of Research

“All historical narratives contain an irreducible and inexpungeable element of interpretation.

What is at issue here is not, What are the facts? But rather how are the facts to be described in order to sanction one mode of explaining them rather than another
- Hayden White (97)”

The author successfully communicated to the reader his subject position and the politics of his research. This exposition is key to the presentation of a methodology that is relatively new. He also made clear that a research cannot be fully objective since a study is based on a premise and the premise (whatever it maybe) is inherently indebted to its structural configuration which, in nature, is subjective.

Art History as Art Criticism

In dealing with the colonial, the author consciously reviewed his strategy in approaching the artworks. Oblivious to the institutionalization of certain conceptions of colonial tradition, the author formulated “an art history that unmasks the traditionality of colonial art and grasps it as a contemporary text whose inscriptions represent the various moments of its relations and realizations (307)”. The author relocates colonial art from the past recognizing its undeniable presence in the present

Flores’ critique on diachrony resists ahistoricity, or the condition to regard the conditions of colonial painting as belonging to the past. Rather, because they are indeed in the present, he deconstructs the construction of their coloniality by employing a synchronic study.
He also critiques critics that employ strictly formalist approach in criticism:

“The kind of descriptive analysis pervasive in the analysis of Philippine colonial painting gives inordinate attention to elements of the visual arts: line, color, texture, composition, perspective, brushwork, and so on. Nothing much emerges from this form of ‘looking’ at art objects, as it just reproduces the object of analysis in more or less in own terms. (312)”

It is also a concern that with formalism, critics have a strong tendency to endow hasty symbolism for certain details promoting empiricism and uninformed criticism. Another concern is the dependence of artistic success to “verisimilitude, a kind of realism or illusionism that strives to be faithful to the ‘natural’ (314)”.

Lastly, the author questions the attribution of value to source and influence. The term “reminiscent of” for example must be sustained with a competent analysis of influence rather than being an easy exit for a baseless judgment. In line with these problems in criticism, the author proposes a hermeneutic code to assist in valuation for the purposes of criticism such as figuration, iconography, and reception. These codes would then aid in the attempt of the critic to communicate aesthetic values to an audience. Arnold Isenberg, in a 1949 Philosophical Review article said: “it is a function of criticism to bring about communication at the level of the senses; that is, to induce a sameness in vision, of experienced content (Feagin, 369)”.

New Art History

Veering away from presenting history as necessarily involving heroes and battles, Flores’ take on art history is sorely obliged by the theories of the Annales School and the History of Mentalities School that redefined the scope of history to include everyday objects. Especially important is historian Fernand Braudel’s idea of everyday life things as historical which makes sturdy the position of art in the scheme of historical things.

This indebtedness bestows upon Philippine art historiography the important task of ensuring transdisciplinarity—enclosing art history in an interrogative field, trying to go out of the already-existing art historical discourses and institutions, ultimately attaining the perfect unity of theory and history.

Sources:
Burke, Peter. 'Overture: The New History, its Past and its Future', in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed. By
Peter Burke (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), pp. unknown
http://www.kowa.euv-frankfurt-o.de/iba_european_history/iba_european_history_text_p_burke_new_history.PDF
Feagin, Susan L. and Patrick Maynard (Editors). Oxford Readers: Aesthetics. New York: Oxford University Press.
1997
Flores, Patrick D. Painting History: Revisions in Philippine Colonial Art. Quezon City: University of the Philippines
Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Development, 1998.

Beijing Olympics 2008 Opening--A Must See!

Since I failed to watch the live TV feed of the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony last saturday night, I rummaged Youtube for recordings but to my disappointment. Seems like the folks at Youtube are taking the videos off for some reason I don't understand. So for you guys who want to see the opening, which was amazing, here are the vids recorded live by a german network (this is the best I could find). The visuals were astounding:

Thoughts on the Early Cinema and Filipinization of Movies in the Philippines: 1897-1941

This period of Philippine cinema invites a challenge to film historians due to a dearth in material and documentation. Viewing (Filipino) films from this time can only evoke excitement and enthusiasm as one charts out the story of a well-loved art form of today. Being a foreign medium, the film has found its way to the very core of Philippine popular culture which signals relevance and formal effectivity in promoting social cohesion to a certain degree and resistance against foreign dictates, ironically, on another. This nature of film as a medium creates for a valid theoretical foundation for any critic vying to locate the Filipino in Philippine Cinema. It is also a site of interest in dissecting the downcast colonial enculturation that transpired during this time.

This piece seeks to reconcile the problematics of colonial resistance and Philippine co-optation by means of indigenizing the film medium as local. The intention is to identify the setting at which Philippine cinema is crystallized as an art form having both the resistant and the co-optive qualities at the same time.

This attempt shall be limited to the short films of Thomas Edison and The American Mutoscope and Biograph Company (1899-1902), Octavio Silos’ Tunay na Ina (1939), and Manuel Conde’s Ibong Adarna (1941).

Colonial Representation (1899-1902)

The colonial pursuit of territory is the subject of the short films of both Thomas Edison and the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. Being a few of the first representations of the Philippines in film, these short films provide relevance in understanding the roots of Philippine cinema (as it is periodically in direct succession to the time when Auguste Lumiere et al. brought the mechanism to the Philippines) and the concept of nation in the Philippines.

The Thomas Edison films are re-enactments of what actually happened during the Filipino-American war. Burdened with colonial iconology, the films represent how Americans would like to write their history reinforcing the American image of strength under the concepts of salvation and rational subjugation.

The films used elements that invoke nationalism such as waving of the American flag ensuring loyalty and identification with its audience, obviously, the American public. This iconology of the flag displaces the evil character of war with that of national pride and allegiance. The representation of the American troops as the advancing force versus the Filipino troops as the retreating force assumes a backdrop of weakness of the Filipinos assuring the perceived superiority of the Americans over the Filipinos.

The Thomas Edison films, considering they are re-enacted, have more dramatics and symbols than that of the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company (AMBC). Bordering uninteresting, the AMBC films consist of nothing more than a pack of mule crossing the Agno River, a boat passing the Pasig River, and the passing of a troop of soldiers. This shows that Edison’s re-enacted films consciously wanted to achieve a specific type of representation whereas those shot on-location, probably because unavailable, had less to no success at the same level of depiction.

The colonial representation through these short films prefigures a situation in which the Philippines is a subject. The films are for an American audience by Americans seeking a gaze of the other. This othering, at an early start, endowed the Philippines a weak character in cinema. Though not directly influential to Philippine cinema (because the films were more military tactic than an artistic attempt) the films are significant in understanding how iconology played (and will) play a role in the years that followed.

Octavio Silos’ Tunay na Ina (1939)

Evidently borrowing from the theatrical and stage tradition, this film has a pleasantly muted feel that overcasts an intense plot of a child torn between two mothers, the one who gave birth to her and the one who raised her.

t is interesting how this film reveals so much of the film industry from way back and how the iconologies resound the cultural difference of the Philippines before and now. The film reflects a culture where a woman is worthless without a man. The start of the movie involves a dramatic confrontation between Magdalena, a woman who just gave birth to a fatherless child, and her father who takes away her baby and gives it away to another woman. This confrontation exposes the dominance of male over female in decision-making and other social norms of that time. This type of morality and social code is translated into film creating a dynamic relationship between art and society where these codes are represented by film and the film reinstates and modifies these codes.

Presenting normality for identification, the film does not shy from presenting new ideas as well. The image of Magdalena, in the biblical sense, is transformed into a relatively more positive representation of a woman when the main character overcomes the “tragedy” that befell her when Antonio left her. To a certain degree, the movie becomes a critique of established norms notwithstanding the dependence of a woman’s happiness to a man.

Political relations are also presented in a matter-of-fact way. As opposed to today’s trend of rags-to-riches plots, this film does not encourage romantic flings that cross economic status.
Technically, a viewer from today will notice the difference in acting. While today, actors go through a separate training for theater and film, actors in 1939 just had theater as background which shows how far movie-making has gone as far as the development of the skill of acting is concerned. Lighting-wise, the shadows of the characters are inconsistent making it difficult for a viewer to achieve suspension of disbelief. It’s like watching a theater production being caught on camera. The film also boasts of an impressive set of melodic songs that provide another dimension of interest.

This film was created during a time when studios were already in control of the art of movie-making. Compared to the short films of Edison and the AMBC, this film is conscious of artistry. However conscious, the film is still not independent of economic and political constraints as it is still a business run by capital and labor. It is a time when the industry has adapted the technology to suit the Philippine market and audience. Furthering this adaptation is the 1941 film Ibong Adarna by Manuel Conde.

Manuel Conde’s Ibong Adarna (1941)

Taking the story of the popular Komedya, Conde’s Ibong Adarna excites the senses by translating into film a familiar story through a lavish yet sensitive ensemble. The film takes the audience to a totally different but recognizable world through the use of magical elements borrowed from traditional folklore.

Like Silos’ Tunay na Ina, the film is an attempt at Filipinizing the medium by endowing it local elements and customary moral code. The universality of the concept of good and evil is explored by the film securing relevance to its audience while the concepts of love and heroism, doing the same, also humanize the story making it more palatable to the viewer. Although utilizing universal concepts, the film is localized by the fact that the story of the three brothers in search of a magical bird to heal their father is a deeply imbedded story in the Filipino tradition.

Technically, the film extravagantly tells the story using (during that time) modern visual effects, which was important in establishing the supernatural feel. The time and place are determined by the brilliant use of costumes adding another stratum of visual interest. Still within the theatrical acting tradition, the film evidently is still under the auspices of an industry hooked in the form.

Also created during the rise of the studios, Ibong Adarna is a film that indigenizes a foreign medium. This indigenization of the form contrasts the locality of the story (which ironically, to a certain degree, is also foreign) and this meaningful blending furnishes the film successful story telling. The significance of this film in the history of Philippine cinema is undeniable as it, among other films, attempted to bring the film medium closer to the hearts of the Filipinos.

Resistant and Adaptive

The films mentioned are pieces of a whole that depict the Filipinos resisting foreign dictates in both form and content while adapting the art form to the cultural specificities of the Philippines. Linked with Philippine history as a history of colonialism, the history of film in the Philippines suffers from the same dilemma as that of its culture where colonialism is inevitably present. By way of resisting this tendency, the film industry was able to succeed in its indigenization and in blossoming into an art form a step closer to being Filipino.

While the films of Edison and the AMBC subdued the Philippines as that of a subject, the medium found its way to the country by means of other foreigners (Lumiere et al.) seeking business to make money out of it. Like with any other cultural product, the Philippine culture was not immediately over-the-edge crazy about films but was economically inclined to take it. Because there was a market for the new technology, the producers-businessmen made films and because there was production there was consumption. The consumption of films were not instantly high but eventually, like any other business, it grew.

The colonial nature of film was stripped off the form (although not entirely) and made to suit the taste and moral standards of Filipinos. This is the site of crystallization where the foreign form, by way of resisting and adapting, is transformed into a local form that speaks about Filipinos even though its culture itself is burdened with colonial tendencies. Although the film industry has gone a long way from the time of Tunay na Ina where characters would sing in the middle of the film, the problematic of colonial resistance versus co-optation presents itself strongly today as the film industry (and other arts) looks back to the past hoping to find its identity.

What's In Your Name?

RAYMOND

Gender: Masculine Usage: English, French Pronounced: RAY-mənd (English), ray-MAWN (French)   [key]

From the Germanic name Reginmund, composed of the elements ragin "advice" and mund "protector". This name was introduced to England by the Normans in the form Reimund. It was borne by several medieval (mostly Spanish) saints, including Saint Raymond Nonnatus, the patron of midwives and expectant mothers, and Saint Raymond of Peñafort, the patron of canonists. To learn what's behind your name, click here.=)

Moymoy Palaboy is Funny!!!

So I just heard about them from friends and they are such a hit in Youtube that they got GMA 7 to sign them up. Really funny stuff! Kulit! =)

Google Reader is NICE!

This is one timesaver. Google reader is like a mailbox for feeds or new content of those webpages you're interested in. I'm using it right now and all the updates of all the pages I always check out are all in one page. Cool. Use it (if you're not already). =)

My Mojares Critical Essay

The Risk of Context: A Critical Essay on Resil Mojares’

Theater in Society, Society in Theater: A Social History of a Cebuano Village 1840-1940

Publish Date: January 1985

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Ateneo de Manila University Press

Pages: 200

 

Art historical discourse can take on different masks and subdued ideologies founded in a single system of meaning. It is an important role of art history to unmask these ideologies, recover the humanity in cultural products and invite inquiry and critical analogy in doing so.

This intention is evident in Resil Mojares’ 1985 book Theater in Society, Society in Theater: Social History of a Cebuano Village 1840-1940. This three-part exploration of the complex relationship of the Linambay, an indigenized form of Komedya in Cebu, and the agents that produced it is a gripping narrative that successfully blends the three methodologies of literary criticism, cultural anthropology, and history. The first part relates the processes of integration and dissolution in the structure of the barrio of Valladolid in Carcar, Southern Cebu, from 1500 to 1940. It then analyzes the dynamics of the Linambay tradition and eventually explores the social and economic conditions in the barrio in the early twentieth century revealing the intricacies of such a relationship.

 

Fiesta Complex

Grounding the Linambay form in the fiesta complex, the author impressed on the reader anthropological theories like that of Maurice Godilier’s. Mojares discussed fiestas as a system for redistribution of wealth and how it validated and cemented social relations. This, in turn, created the foundation for the thriving of this theater form. It is interesting how the author investigated on this and how successful he was in discovering the role of the social in an event such as the Linambay. He established social cohesion as integral in the existence of the art form and social diffusion as the reason for its disappearance. He made his point plausible by presenting important historical documents and verbal sources.

The fiesta complex is important in supporting the research’s motive. It is in this context that the author positioned the subject of Linambay as a mode of Valladolid’s to celebrate itself and in the process revealing its structure. He quoted Clifford Geertz saying, “societies, like lives, contain their own interpretations. One has only to learn how to gain access to them.” The author considered Linambay as one such point of access.

 

Peasant Community

Another salient point in his presentation of ideas is the nature of the barrio of Valladolid as a peasant community. One that is torn between two worlds: “on one hand, the larger world of market, state, and urban culture; and on the other, a vanishing tribal world of village autonomy and personalized intra-village relations. The former advances, the latter recedes, and somewhere in the middle ground of these movements, the peasant village exists” (p. 93). This duality in the nature of the peasant society in question creates the unique tension that is important in understanding the art form. The society is never truly in either side of the pole and neither can be said of the Linambay. Persisting in the middle of the polarity, the author recreated the complexity of the lost theater form in an imaginative approach to locate the relevance and meaning of it in the lives of those who lived during the time it persisted and those who lived and continues to live after it.

The patron-client relationship is given premium in the discussion using James Scott’s “vertical solidarity model” which identifies reciprocity between landlords and tenants in such a community. This approach demystifies the unknown type of social relation during that time and reinstates the roles of each player in this multipart spectrum of give-and-take. It solidifies the perspective of the people who created the Linambay as it anchors them between deference and submission. 

Economic Basis

The economic basis of the art form was also discussed in an elaborate manner. The author amply provided the readers of pertinent information in the trade and industry of the society that cradled the art form. In the first chapter of the book, he presented historical facts on land ownership, taxation, and even fluctuations in crop prices to serve as backdrop to the moral order that Valladolid had during the flourishing of the art form.

The author also exposed the social backdrop as economically dependent. He pursued a presentation of the prominent families that dominated the social landscape of the village by revealing just how much these families actually own by means of land and other forces of production like carabaos, mechanical equipments, and even tenants. This discussion is relevant in locating the Linambay tradition in the hands of the elite, and the submission of the tenants as the author recreated the social order of the village. He also revealed by means of kinship analysis how this social order was preserved via affinal and ritual links.

Although the economic was discussed vis-à-vis the art form, the integrity of the art form in the discussion did not entirely rely on it. The economic was considered important but the author found this to be just one of the factors that eventually caused the collapse of the Linambay tradition:

“What happened, in essence was that changes in the technical material or material order of society drained the symbolic force of the Linambay tradition.

There are two aspects in this loss of power. On one hand, the surrounding reality no longer infused meaning and power into the system of symbols that was the Linambay. The context has collapsed. On the other hand, the system itself lost its power to structure and pattern the moral life of the village. The causal connections here are not simple and unilinear. We need to consider that art is not an inert product of social processes but an agent of these processes (p. 126).”

 

 

 

Literary Criticism

 

Having a solid background in literary criticism surely added another layer of interest in the author’s discourse. The Linambay, an indigenized form of Komedya, is a lost theater form, which made just even getting a copy of a script difficult. However, the author was successful in obtaining several and in revealing the complexity of this form. He provided an intricate analysis of the texts and even the manner how these plays were performed. He masterfully dissected important semiotic representations in the texts uncovering that indeed theater is in society, and society in theater.

Another point of interest of the study centered on how the plays were performed. The author revealed that the presentation of these plays were very social events and diffused in nature such that one need not finish the play in one sitting because of the length of the plays itself (with some lasting up to nine days). Aside from this, the plays were more of a reminder to people than an introduction to new concepts. The people knew the plot of the play and what should happen. They were just reinstatements of the existing moral code, not a discovery of new ones.

Relating the social to the manner these plays were performed, it is remarkable how the author presented social stratification based on where the people actually viewed the plays. While the important families had the so-called palcos, a roofed platform extending out of the stage or a separate shed, the rest would diffuse squatting on the ground, eating, cooking a meal, sleeping and even gambling (p. 76).

 

On Methodology

Mojares’ research is a welcome contribution to Philippine cultural studies. Its approach, rather encompassing and outright, attempts to veer away from simplifying aesthetic discourse as purely social nor economic by endeavoring the integration of the fields of history, literary criticism, and cultural anthropology. This integration is effective in bringing out more aspects in the art form than one would have focusing on a single approach.

However effective, this integration of fields proposes the danger of leaving out some important readings and in effect reducing the art form to a certain degree reachable by the study (or the author) itself. The lack of perspective in sexuality and gender, for instance, takes away a vast amount of possibilities that would’ve created a more exact social history that he was aiming for, among others. Conversely, this would’ve thrown the perspective of the general concerns of the fields he was working with out of the way to accommodate the specific concerns of each field.

The problematics of the general versus the specific in historical writing is indeed a value-laiden query that any author must answer in the goal of exacting the effectivity and relevance of their research to the limit-experience of the readers that they are writing for. In the case of Mojares’ work, I can only assume the specific problems (or the ones that I was looking for) in the three fields he chose to work with were not yet that pronounced being it written in 1985. Considering this, it is the reader’s duty to contextualize a work and read within (and between) the lines of this limit as much as it is the author’s responsibility to posit the discourse to meet and create the challenges of its time.