It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas
by Bing Crosby
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Ev'rywhere you go;
Take a look in the five and ten glistening once again
With candy canes and silver lanes aglow.
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Toys in ev'ry store
But the prettiest sight to see is the holly that will be
On your own front door.
A pair of hopalong boots and a pistol that shoots
Is the wish of Barney and Ben;
Dolls that will talk and will go for a walk
Is the hope of Janice and Jen;
And Mom and Dad can hardly wait for school to start again.
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Ev'rywhere you go;
There's a tree in the Grand Hotel, one in the park as well,
The sturdy kind that doesn't mind the snow.
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas;
Soon the bells will start,
And the thing that will make them ring is the carol that you sing
Right within your heart
11.30.2008
Umberto Eco on Christmas
Alright--Christmas is just around the corner and everything's just becoming all Christmas-y.
Here's a little article Umberto Eco (my fave Italian novelist and theorist) wrote back in 2005 about the relevance of this cultural event:
God Isn't Big Enough for Some People
By Umberto Eco
We are now approaching the critical time of the year for shops and supermarkets: the month before Christmas is the four weeks when stores of all kinds sell their products fastest. Father Christmas means one thing to children: presents. He has no connection with the original St Nicholas, who performed a miracle in providing dowries for three poor sisters, thereby enabling them to marry and escape a life of prostitution.
Human beings are religious animals. It is psychologically very hard to go through life without the justification, and the hope, provided by religion. You can see this in the positivist scientists of the 19th century.
They insisted that they were describing the universe in rigorously materialistic terms - yet at night they attended seances and tried to summon up the spirits of the dead. Even today, I frequently meet scientists who, outside their own narrow discipline, are superstitious - to such an extent that it sometimes seems to me that to be a rigorous unbeliever today, you have to be a philosopher. Or perhaps a priest.
And we need to justify our lives to ourselves and to other people. Money is an instrument. It is not a value - but we need values as well as instruments, ends as well as means. The great problem faced by human beings is finding a way to accept the fact that each of us will die.
Money can do a lot of things - but it cannot help reconcile you to your own death. It can sometimes help you postpone your own death: a man who can spend a million pounds on personal physicians will usually live longer than someone who cannot. But he can't make himself live much longer than the average life-span of affluent people in the developed world.
And if you believe in money alone, then sooner or later, you discover money's great limitation: it is unable to justify the fact that you are a mortal animal. Indeed, the more you try escape that fact, the more you are forced to realise that your possessions can't make sense of your death.
It is the role of religion to provide that justification. Religions are systems of belief that enable human beings to justify their existence and which reconcile us to death. We in Europe have faced a fading of organised religion in recent years. Faith in the Christian churches has been declining.
The ideologies such as communism that promised to supplant religion have failed in spectacular and very public fashion. So we're all still looking for something that will reconcile each of us to the inevitability of our own death.
G K Chesterton is often credited with observing: "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything." Whoever said it - he was right. We are supposed to live in a sceptical age. In fact, we live in an age of outrageous credulity.
The "death of God", or at least the dying of the Christian God, has been accompanied by the birth of a plethora of new idols. They have multiplied like bacteria on the corpse of the Christian Church -- from strange pagan cults and sects to the silly, sub-Christian superstitions of The Da Vinci Code.
It is amazing how many people take that book literally, and think it is true. Admittedly, Dan Brown, its author, has created a legion of zealous followers who believe that Jesus wasn't crucified: he married Mary Magdalene, became the King of France, and started his own version of the order of Freemasons. Many of the people who now go to the Louvre are there only to look at the Mona Lisa, solely and simply because it is at the centre of Dan Brown's book.
The pianist Arthur Rubinstein was once asked if he believed in God. He said: "No. I don't believe in God. I believe in something greater." Our culture suffers from the same inflationary tendency. The existing religions just aren't big enough: we demand something more from God than the existing depictions in the Christian faith can provide. So we revert to the occult. The so-called occult sciences do not ever reveal any genuine secret: they only promise that there is something secret that explains and justifies everything. The great advantage of this is that it allows each person to fill up the empty secret "container" with his or her own fears and hopes.
As a child of the Enlightenment, and a believer in the Enlightenment values of truth, open inquiry, and freedom, I am depressed by that tendency. This is not just because of the association between the occult and fascism and Nazism - although that association was very strong. Himmler and many of Hitler's henchmen were devotees of the most infantile occult fantasies.
The same was true of some of the fascist gurus in Italy - Julius Evola is one example - who continue to fascinate the neo-fascists in my country. And today, if you browse the shelves of any bookshop specialising in the occult, you will find not only the usual tomes on the Templars, Rosicrucians, pseudo-Kabbalists, and of course The Da Vinci Code, but also anti-semitic tracts such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
I was raised as a Catholic, and although I have abandoned the Church, this December, as usual, I will be putting together a Christmas crib for my grandson. We'll construct it together - as my father did with me when I was a boy. I have profound respect for the Christian traditions - which, as rituals for coping with death, still make more sense than their purely commercial alternatives.
I think I agree with Joyce's lapsed Catholic hero in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: "What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?" The religious celebration of Christmas is at least a clear and coherent absurdity. The commercial celebration is not even that.
Here's a little article Umberto Eco (my fave Italian novelist and theorist) wrote back in 2005 about the relevance of this cultural event:
God Isn't Big Enough for Some People
By Umberto Eco
We are now approaching the critical time of the year for shops and supermarkets: the month before Christmas is the four weeks when stores of all kinds sell their products fastest. Father Christmas means one thing to children: presents. He has no connection with the original St Nicholas, who performed a miracle in providing dowries for three poor sisters, thereby enabling them to marry and escape a life of prostitution.
Human beings are religious animals. It is psychologically very hard to go through life without the justification, and the hope, provided by religion. You can see this in the positivist scientists of the 19th century.
They insisted that they were describing the universe in rigorously materialistic terms - yet at night they attended seances and tried to summon up the spirits of the dead. Even today, I frequently meet scientists who, outside their own narrow discipline, are superstitious - to such an extent that it sometimes seems to me that to be a rigorous unbeliever today, you have to be a philosopher. Or perhaps a priest.
And we need to justify our lives to ourselves and to other people. Money is an instrument. It is not a value - but we need values as well as instruments, ends as well as means. The great problem faced by human beings is finding a way to accept the fact that each of us will die.
Money can do a lot of things - but it cannot help reconcile you to your own death. It can sometimes help you postpone your own death: a man who can spend a million pounds on personal physicians will usually live longer than someone who cannot. But he can't make himself live much longer than the average life-span of affluent people in the developed world.
And if you believe in money alone, then sooner or later, you discover money's great limitation: it is unable to justify the fact that you are a mortal animal. Indeed, the more you try escape that fact, the more you are forced to realise that your possessions can't make sense of your death.
It is the role of religion to provide that justification. Religions are systems of belief that enable human beings to justify their existence and which reconcile us to death. We in Europe have faced a fading of organised religion in recent years. Faith in the Christian churches has been declining.
The ideologies such as communism that promised to supplant religion have failed in spectacular and very public fashion. So we're all still looking for something that will reconcile each of us to the inevitability of our own death.
G K Chesterton is often credited with observing: "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything." Whoever said it - he was right. We are supposed to live in a sceptical age. In fact, we live in an age of outrageous credulity.
The "death of God", or at least the dying of the Christian God, has been accompanied by the birth of a plethora of new idols. They have multiplied like bacteria on the corpse of the Christian Church -- from strange pagan cults and sects to the silly, sub-Christian superstitions of The Da Vinci Code.
It is amazing how many people take that book literally, and think it is true. Admittedly, Dan Brown, its author, has created a legion of zealous followers who believe that Jesus wasn't crucified: he married Mary Magdalene, became the King of France, and started his own version of the order of Freemasons. Many of the people who now go to the Louvre are there only to look at the Mona Lisa, solely and simply because it is at the centre of Dan Brown's book.
The pianist Arthur Rubinstein was once asked if he believed in God. He said: "No. I don't believe in God. I believe in something greater." Our culture suffers from the same inflationary tendency. The existing religions just aren't big enough: we demand something more from God than the existing depictions in the Christian faith can provide. So we revert to the occult. The so-called occult sciences do not ever reveal any genuine secret: they only promise that there is something secret that explains and justifies everything. The great advantage of this is that it allows each person to fill up the empty secret "container" with his or her own fears and hopes.
As a child of the Enlightenment, and a believer in the Enlightenment values of truth, open inquiry, and freedom, I am depressed by that tendency. This is not just because of the association between the occult and fascism and Nazism - although that association was very strong. Himmler and many of Hitler's henchmen were devotees of the most infantile occult fantasies.
The same was true of some of the fascist gurus in Italy - Julius Evola is one example - who continue to fascinate the neo-fascists in my country. And today, if you browse the shelves of any bookshop specialising in the occult, you will find not only the usual tomes on the Templars, Rosicrucians, pseudo-Kabbalists, and of course The Da Vinci Code, but also anti-semitic tracts such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
I was raised as a Catholic, and although I have abandoned the Church, this December, as usual, I will be putting together a Christmas crib for my grandson. We'll construct it together - as my father did with me when I was a boy. I have profound respect for the Christian traditions - which, as rituals for coping with death, still make more sense than their purely commercial alternatives.
I think I agree with Joyce's lapsed Catholic hero in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: "What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?" The religious celebration of Christmas is at least a clear and coherent absurdity. The commercial celebration is not even that.
11.13.2008
Now Playing
A Little Too Not Over You
David Archuleta
It never crossed my mind at all.
It's what I tell myself.
What we had has come and gone.
You're better off with someone else.
It's for the best, I know it is.
But I see you.
Sometimes I try to hide
What I feel inside,
And I turn around.
You're with him now.
I just can't figure it out.
Tell me why it's so hard to forget.
Don't remind me, I'm not over it.
Tell me why I can't seem to face the truth.
I'm just a little too not over you.
Not over you....
Memories, supposed to fade.
What's wrong with my heart?
Shake it off, let it go.
Didn't think it'd be this hard.
Should be strong, movin' on.
But I see you.
Sometimes I try to hide
What I feel inside.
And I turn around,
You're with him now.
I just can't figure it out.
Tell me why it's so hard to forget.
Don't remind me, I'm not over it.
Tell me why I can't seem to face the truth.
I'm just a little too not over you.
Maybe I regret everything I said,
No way to take it all back, yeah...
Now I'm on my own..
How I let you go, I'll never understand.
I'll never understand, yeah, oohh..
Oohhh, oohhh, oohhhh..
Oohhh, ooohhhh, oohhh.
Tell me why it's so hard to forget.
Don't remind me, I'm not over it.
Tell me why I can't seem to face the truth.
I'm just a little too not over you.
Tell me why it's so hard to forget.
Don't remind me, I'm not over it.
Tell me why I can't seem to face the truth.
And I really don't know what to do.
I'm just a little too not over you.
Not over you, oohhh..
David Archuleta
It never crossed my mind at all.
It's what I tell myself.
What we had has come and gone.
You're better off with someone else.
It's for the best, I know it is.
But I see you.
Sometimes I try to hide
What I feel inside,
And I turn around.
You're with him now.
I just can't figure it out.
Tell me why it's so hard to forget.
Don't remind me, I'm not over it.
Tell me why I can't seem to face the truth.
I'm just a little too not over you.
Not over you....
Memories, supposed to fade.
What's wrong with my heart?
Shake it off, let it go.
Didn't think it'd be this hard.
Should be strong, movin' on.
But I see you.
Sometimes I try to hide
What I feel inside.
And I turn around,
You're with him now.
I just can't figure it out.
Tell me why it's so hard to forget.
Don't remind me, I'm not over it.
Tell me why I can't seem to face the truth.
I'm just a little too not over you.
Maybe I regret everything I said,
No way to take it all back, yeah...
Now I'm on my own..
How I let you go, I'll never understand.
I'll never understand, yeah, oohh..
Oohhh, oohhh, oohhhh..
Oohhh, ooohhhh, oohhh.
Tell me why it's so hard to forget.
Don't remind me, I'm not over it.
Tell me why I can't seem to face the truth.
I'm just a little too not over you.
Tell me why it's so hard to forget.
Don't remind me, I'm not over it.
Tell me why I can't seem to face the truth.
And I really don't know what to do.
I'm just a little too not over you.
Not over you, oohhh..
11.09.2008
11/11: Archuleta (Album) Comes "OUT"
Okay. So I like David Archuleta. He is young, very talented and I'm waiting for his big coming OUT moment. I still think he's gay, although he still hasn't admitted it. At least his album is coming OUT this Tuesday. LOL. Here's behind the scenes of his photo shoot for the album:
11.08.2008
Now Playing
So Nice, So Smart
Kimya Dawson
i was quiet as a mouse
when i snuck into your house
and took roofies with your spouse
in a nit and out a louse
and lice are lousy all the time
they suck your blood drink your wine
say shut up and quit your crying
give it time and you'll be fine
you're so nice and you're so smart
you're such a good friend i hafta break your heart
tell you that i love you then i'll tear your world apart
just pretend i didn't tear your world apart
i like boys with strong convictions
and convicts with perfect diction
underdogs with good intentions
amputees with stamp collections
plywood skinboards ride the ocean
salty noses suntan lotion
always seriously joking
and rambunctiously soft-spoken
i like boys that like their mothers
and i have a thing for brothers
but they always wait til we're under the covers
to say i'm sure glad we're not lovers
you're so nice and you're so smart
you're such a good friend i hafta break your heart
tell you that i love you then i'll tear your world apart
just pretend i didn't tear your world apart
i like my new bunnysuit
i like my new bunnysuit
i like my new bunnysuit
when i wear it i feel cute
Kimya Dawson
i was quiet as a mouse
when i snuck into your house
and took roofies with your spouse
in a nit and out a louse
and lice are lousy all the time
they suck your blood drink your wine
say shut up and quit your crying
give it time and you'll be fine
you're so nice and you're so smart
you're such a good friend i hafta break your heart
tell you that i love you then i'll tear your world apart
just pretend i didn't tear your world apart
i like boys with strong convictions
and convicts with perfect diction
underdogs with good intentions
amputees with stamp collections
plywood skinboards ride the ocean
salty noses suntan lotion
always seriously joking
and rambunctiously soft-spoken
i like boys that like their mothers
and i have a thing for brothers
but they always wait til we're under the covers
to say i'm sure glad we're not lovers
you're so nice and you're so smart
you're such a good friend i hafta break your heart
tell you that i love you then i'll tear your world apart
just pretend i didn't tear your world apart
i like my new bunnysuit
i like my new bunnysuit
i like my new bunnysuit
when i wear it i feel cute
I'm Champ Bear!
 |
I really wanted to be Bedtime bear but I'll take it. LOL
11.03.2008
Oh the Planner!
Starbucks 2009 Planner--There will be three designs to choose from this year (Red, Blue and Black). Kinda sad to see no brown there but it's fine. I'm looking to get one for my mom, too. This thing starts tomorrow. =)
See this link.
See this link.
11.02.2008
Now Playing
Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk
Rufus Wainwright
cigarettes and chocolate milk
these are just a couple of my cravings
everything it seems i like's a little bit stronger
a little bit thicker
a little bit harmful for me
if i should buy jellybeans
have to eat them all in just one sitting
everything it seems i like's a little bit sweeter
a little bit fatter
a little bit harmful for me
and then there's those other things
which for several reasons we won't mention
everything about them is a little bit stranger
a little bit harder
a little bit deadly
it isn't very smart
tends to make one part so broken-hearted
sitting here remembering me
always been a shoe made for the city
go ahead, accuse me of just singing about places
with scrappy boys faces
have general run of the town
playing with prodigal songs
takes a lot of sentimental valiums
can't expect the world to be your raggedy andy
while running on empty
you little old doll with a frown
you got to keep in the game
maintaining mystique while facing forward
i suggest a reading of 'a lesson in tightropes'
or 'surfing your high hopes' or 'adios kansas'
it isn't very smart
tends to make one part so broken-hearted
still there's not a show on my back
holes or a friendly intervention
i'm just a little bit heiress, a little bit irish
a little bit tower of pisa whenever i see you
so please be kind if i'm a mess
cigarettes and chocolate milk
Rufus Wainwright
cigarettes and chocolate milk
these are just a couple of my cravings
everything it seems i like's a little bit stronger
a little bit thicker
a little bit harmful for me
if i should buy jellybeans
have to eat them all in just one sitting
everything it seems i like's a little bit sweeter
a little bit fatter
a little bit harmful for me
and then there's those other things
which for several reasons we won't mention
everything about them is a little bit stranger
a little bit harder
a little bit deadly
it isn't very smart
tends to make one part so broken-hearted
sitting here remembering me
always been a shoe made for the city
go ahead, accuse me of just singing about places
with scrappy boys faces
have general run of the town
playing with prodigal songs
takes a lot of sentimental valiums
can't expect the world to be your raggedy andy
while running on empty
you little old doll with a frown
you got to keep in the game
maintaining mystique while facing forward
i suggest a reading of 'a lesson in tightropes'
or 'surfing your high hopes' or 'adios kansas'
it isn't very smart
tends to make one part so broken-hearted
still there's not a show on my back
holes or a friendly intervention
i'm just a little bit heiress, a little bit irish
a little bit tower of pisa whenever i see you
so please be kind if i'm a mess
cigarettes and chocolate milk
10.29.2008
Blah blah
I'm hooked.
Just about the point you're convinced that perfection doesn't exist, a person comes along and makes you reconsider.
Just like the concept of perfection itself, it is never truly comprehensible. You approach it with logic but somewhere along the way, you lose all rationality and you engage in a dangerous pursuit of subjectivity and pick up a myriad of constructs while you're at it. When you're face to face with perfection, you really just have a couple of choices.
You can choose to explore it, enumerate the hundreds of ways it became (and retains the quality of being) perfect.. Looking it straight in the eye, you almost can touch understanding. You become an unstoppable set of interrogation looking for retort and it will be too late once you realize it's just futile. You have been consumed by the very concept you we're looking to recover.
Or you could always look from afar, a safe amount of distance from it and enjoy its beauty. Not demanding anything from it, you aestheticize on it's existence gingerly noting every structural component that warrants its incomparable, almost superhuman quality. The distance keeps you safe but the distance also keeps you detached.
Once in a while you encounter a person whose existence can be a good argument for perfection itself. Whether you find yourself consumed or detached, perfection is one concept you will never fully understand nor fully get over. I would just accept that.
Just about the point you're convinced that perfection doesn't exist, a person comes along and makes you reconsider.
Just like the concept of perfection itself, it is never truly comprehensible. You approach it with logic but somewhere along the way, you lose all rationality and you engage in a dangerous pursuit of subjectivity and pick up a myriad of constructs while you're at it. When you're face to face with perfection, you really just have a couple of choices.
You can choose to explore it, enumerate the hundreds of ways it became (and retains the quality of being) perfect.. Looking it straight in the eye, you almost can touch understanding. You become an unstoppable set of interrogation looking for retort and it will be too late once you realize it's just futile. You have been consumed by the very concept you we're looking to recover.
Or you could always look from afar, a safe amount of distance from it and enjoy its beauty. Not demanding anything from it, you aestheticize on it's existence gingerly noting every structural component that warrants its incomparable, almost superhuman quality. The distance keeps you safe but the distance also keeps you detached.
Once in a while you encounter a person whose existence can be a good argument for perfection itself. Whether you find yourself consumed or detached, perfection is one concept you will never fully understand nor fully get over. I would just accept that.
10.26.2008
(Un) Indie Film: Rethinking Independent Cinema
Independent Cinema is seeing a great deal of interest nowadays precisely for it’s name—independent. This claim sure has a lot of problems for it is not inherently clear as to what one means when referring to it. It should only mean that there is a profound interest in anything that goes beyond the ordinary. There is an obsession for anything that tries to break out of the system and this may be good or bad for Philippine cinema. We’ll attempt to crack into these possibilities.
The question of independence deserves a more elaborate theoretical framework—we’ll not attempt it here. The task at hand is to identify sites of contestation in the label independent and possibly see the reason for the need for such.
It is important to understand that independent filmmaking essentially started with Manuel Conde’s effort to break out of the studio system. While he did it successfully, it is unclear if he was aware he was being “independent” or if he’d even appreciate the label. It is possible that he didn’t even care. He just wanted to make films and found more freedom outside the studio system. In any case, the label is understandably a postmodern construction for the era is addicted to labels and is multifarious.
It’s also interesting to look into the dichotomy of art as art and art as catalyst for social change which I think should not be mutually exclusive at all. For the sake of discussion, this dichotomy has the very essence of why independent films exist. It is in defying the extremity of either pole that filmmakers wanted to break out of. But it is this dichotomy that positions the form in an awkward situation where the art is reduced to merely just being for art’s sake or for social change. Although potentially powerful, the dichotomy must be rethought.
Also within the postmodern take is the blurring of tasks. Because the technology of independent filmmaking is more fluid in terms of its production process, a one-man film (a definite impossible task of the past) is now possible. The obscure relations and forces of production in the independent film process is consistent with the postmodern discourse of democratization of art and how to effectively permeate cultural dimensions within the globalized world. Between these lines, we see a consistent pattern of present world cultural systems that rely on exchanges and assimmilation. It is, thus, important to look into film without the burden of the label and with a watchful eye.
The critic is then interrogated. How do you valuate a film based on such relations of production? If there is a blurring of tasks, if there is democratization of art, how does one set the standards? The role of the critic in valuation is to identify consistencies and relevance in such works. No art is independent from the subject and the subjectivities that translate through the artwork should be examined apart from the formal production and exclusivity. The aestheticization should be born out of the experience and not the system of production although the latter would definitely play a part in the judgment.
The star system cannot be neglected by any attempt to breakout of the mainstream. The cultural potential is just too powerful. This is why independent films still subscribe to it (although indirectly) to fuel interest and be recognized. It is crucial for any attempt at divergence to recognize the potentially useful in the current system and integrate this to the newer form. It is this rationale that may explain why independent films’ popularity is still dependent on big names and big names dependent on independent films. This relationship is symbiotic and is essential.
It seems to me that an unspoken importance in independent filmmaking is the need to exploit the gay discourse. The need is logical. It is controversial (to stir interest), it is “empowering (for justification),” and it is “relatively accepted (to sell).” If anything in independent cinema is pretentious, this would definitely be it. The obsession to record a person kissing (or more) of the same sex in a film that formally claims its deviance to the mainstream does not empower the homosexual but associates the gay discourse to secondary status. What it does is further isolate the gay argument to a state of irrevocable immorality and unacceptability while overshadowing this with the label “independent.” The homosexual is then reduced to a mere marketing tool and entertainment with his “unusual ways.”
In more ways than one, the concept of independent cinema in the Philippines (or any country for that matter) is a contestable one. It is not merely technology determining the relations of production but more of intersubjectivities being reduced to a monolithic one. The art form must be relieved of this label if film in the Philippines is to be truly independent.
The question of independence deserves a more elaborate theoretical framework—we’ll not attempt it here. The task at hand is to identify sites of contestation in the label independent and possibly see the reason for the need for such.
It is important to understand that independent filmmaking essentially started with Manuel Conde’s effort to break out of the studio system. While he did it successfully, it is unclear if he was aware he was being “independent” or if he’d even appreciate the label. It is possible that he didn’t even care. He just wanted to make films and found more freedom outside the studio system. In any case, the label is understandably a postmodern construction for the era is addicted to labels and is multifarious.
It’s also interesting to look into the dichotomy of art as art and art as catalyst for social change which I think should not be mutually exclusive at all. For the sake of discussion, this dichotomy has the very essence of why independent films exist. It is in defying the extremity of either pole that filmmakers wanted to break out of. But it is this dichotomy that positions the form in an awkward situation where the art is reduced to merely just being for art’s sake or for social change. Although potentially powerful, the dichotomy must be rethought.
Also within the postmodern take is the blurring of tasks. Because the technology of independent filmmaking is more fluid in terms of its production process, a one-man film (a definite impossible task of the past) is now possible. The obscure relations and forces of production in the independent film process is consistent with the postmodern discourse of democratization of art and how to effectively permeate cultural dimensions within the globalized world. Between these lines, we see a consistent pattern of present world cultural systems that rely on exchanges and assimmilation. It is, thus, important to look into film without the burden of the label and with a watchful eye.
The critic is then interrogated. How do you valuate a film based on such relations of production? If there is a blurring of tasks, if there is democratization of art, how does one set the standards? The role of the critic in valuation is to identify consistencies and relevance in such works. No art is independent from the subject and the subjectivities that translate through the artwork should be examined apart from the formal production and exclusivity. The aestheticization should be born out of the experience and not the system of production although the latter would definitely play a part in the judgment.
The star system cannot be neglected by any attempt to breakout of the mainstream. The cultural potential is just too powerful. This is why independent films still subscribe to it (although indirectly) to fuel interest and be recognized. It is crucial for any attempt at divergence to recognize the potentially useful in the current system and integrate this to the newer form. It is this rationale that may explain why independent films’ popularity is still dependent on big names and big names dependent on independent films. This relationship is symbiotic and is essential.
It seems to me that an unspoken importance in independent filmmaking is the need to exploit the gay discourse. The need is logical. It is controversial (to stir interest), it is “empowering (for justification),” and it is “relatively accepted (to sell).” If anything in independent cinema is pretentious, this would definitely be it. The obsession to record a person kissing (or more) of the same sex in a film that formally claims its deviance to the mainstream does not empower the homosexual but associates the gay discourse to secondary status. What it does is further isolate the gay argument to a state of irrevocable immorality and unacceptability while overshadowing this with the label “independent.” The homosexual is then reduced to a mere marketing tool and entertainment with his “unusual ways.”
In more ways than one, the concept of independent cinema in the Philippines (or any country for that matter) is a contestable one. It is not merely technology determining the relations of production but more of intersubjectivities being reduced to a monolithic one. The art form must be relieved of this label if film in the Philippines is to be truly independent.
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