When I asked my Filipino lit students* how many people had seen Gene Cajayon’s The Debut, I was surprised to see that almost everyone, except the third of the class that was non-Filipino, raised their hands. The Debut was a genuine Filipino American phenomenon: an enthusiastic grassroots campaign, entire families and classrooms lining up in front of the theaters, in support of a truly well-made film. (I bet that some of you can read between the lines and pounce on “well-made” as if I were writing a lukewarm letter of recommendation.)
And because of this campaign alone — the film’s official website spends a good deal of emphasis on how the film was made and marketed — the sometimes clunky dialogue could be forgiven (I was probably the loudest groaner during the boy-meets-girl scenes), and Dante Basco, who is otherwise an appealing actor, isn’t given terribly complex material.** “Charm” isn’t necessarily the kind of word filmmakers like to hear, but The Debut at least has a lot of that, and I mean that in a sincerely complimentary way.
The Debut works somewhat schematically, but it still works. The main character, Ben, moves almost like the Campbellian hero of myth through clearly demarcated domains: from “American” to “Filipino” to “Filipino American” and back and forth. The soundtrack, while performed by all Filipino American musicians, marks each passage nicely, if telegraphically: folk music here, hiphop there, guitar-driven rock for Ben’s passages into whiteness. (There’s a nice scene when Ben is listening to some Slipknotty-stuff on his headphones, working in his room, when his dad bursts in to confront him — and the door opens, letting the banduria music from the outside fill the room as well.)
The writer drops the ball, unfortunately, in terms of character development. (The obligatory testosterone scene does have to do with balls — a basketball, in this case — and guys all dressed in wifebeaters.) This is something of a letdown, since the film makes a point of dropping crucial hints here and there about him wearing clothespins on his nose and so on. His “search for identity” turns out to be disappointingly trite, and in the end assumes the same tired trajectory as, say, Jade Snow Wong in Fifth Chinese Daughter. (But in contrast, Jade Snow learns the lesson that white women are infinitely generous and emotionally open; Ben learns that white women vomit on you and call you ”chink.”)
When I asked the students the significance of the title, my student Tahnee wisely replied that it was also Ben’s “debut” as a Filipino American. Or so it would seem: it still isn’t clear that any such realization or resolution takes place, despite the narrative gestures toward this conclusion. (If anything developed at all, it’s the father’s grudging admiration for his son’s art at the end.)
This is one reason why Jessica Hagedorn’s extravagantly messy The Gangster of Love works on an engaging level: it refuses to anchor the heroine’s narrative to anything remotely resembling something paradigmatic. Cajayon deliberately (or, I suspect, carelessly) ends the film in ambiguity, as if he loses his resolve midway to further politicize Ben’s muddle regarding his identity.
In comparison, Hagedorn makes this an intensely personal and therefore random and arbitrary quest for her character Rocky. (The truncated conclusion when she visits her estranged father in the Philippines — which my student Ron characterized as somewhat tacked on — is at first reading a concession to the demands of the “immigrant narrative,” i.e., a return “home,” but it seems to be yet another purposely loose thread in the Original Gangsta’s meandering, another doomed opportunity to connect.)
*My original plan was to show the class Sana Maulit Muli, Olive Lamasan’s at-times hysterical film about Filipinos in the Bay Area that was clearly made for consumption in the Philippines — alas, no subtitled versions in English were available — and my second choice, Rod Pulido’s fascinating if terribly simplistic The Flip Side wasn’t even available commercially.
And in case you’re wondering why an anthropologist is teaching a lit class — well, I’m not sure either.
**Though Eddie Garcia’s walk-on role — and it’s practically only a cameo, since it’s all saved up for the big blow-up at the end — deserves applause; Garcia has the best voice in the business, and he can dish out contempt (or lasciviousness) so effortlessly even the audience would wither in their seats.
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