The Wily Filipino

The Kiko and Sunny Wrestling Tag Team!

Seriously though -- any readers in the area are all invited (I can personally vouch for the brilliance of Kiko's paper):

Filipino Department
Ateneo de Manila University

invites you

to the lectures of
Dr. Benito Vergara, Jr. and Dr. Francisco Benitez

June 14, Thursday
430 pm
Faura Audio Visual Room

Filipinos can imitate any sound:
Improvisation. Karaoke, and the Labor of Filipino Overseas Musicians

Benito M. Vergara, Jr. , Ph.D
San Francisco State University

In 2003, over 58,000 Filipinos were scattered worldwide in nightclubs and hotel lounges; however, the majority of people who migrate as Overseas Performing Artists (OPA) travel to work in Japan. OPA is, in this instance, a euphemistic, bureaucratic category that denotes the sex trade, and comprises the crucial distinction between Filipinos working in Japan and those elsewhere working as more professional musicians.

Vergara argues that the practices of performance and improvisation, both as musical activities and as metaphors of everyday migrant life link both kinds of OPAs. OPA returnees constantly spoke of a spontaneous and natural Filipino ability to imitate, especially through karaoke. This imitative performance, however, did not allow for musical improvisation; they were limited to learning and mimicking particular idioms from a globally shared musical repertoire. Such practices parallel the relationship between the state and individual. One can see performance and improvisation as strategies utilized to compete with restrictive migration policies , to evade state surveillance, or, more ordinarily, to resist drunken customers. As an economic strategy, migration also exemplifies a kind of adaptability, despite exploitative government policies of migrant labor.

Transnational Desire
in Star Cinema's Kailangan Kita and Milan

Francisco Benitez, Ph.D.
University of Washington

By looking at 2 specific films, this paper attempts an initial exploration into how commercial cinema in the Philippines mediates the affective and emotional labor required to maintain the flows of migration from the Philippines. This exploration suggests that these commercial films imagine a neoliberal mobile subject where the individual is not just the enterprise but the entrepreneur of him or herself, and does so in a manner that sutures desires for social mobility to transnational labor markets.

Francisco Kiko Benitez is assistant professor in Comparative Literature at the University of Washington where he teaches courses on colonial and postcolonial literature and theory, Asian American and diasporic literature, and Southeast Asian Film and Literature. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his BA from Cornell University where he graduated with top honors.

Benito M. Vergara, Jr. is an assistant professor in Asian American Studies/Anthropology at San Francisco State University. He obtained his MA and PhD in Anthropology and MA in Asian Studies at Cornell University. He is the author of Displaying Filipinos, published by University of the Philippines Press.

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General Programme

Welcome Address
Benilda S. Santos, Ph.D.
Dean, School of Humanities

Introduction
Rolando B. Tolentino, Ph.D.
Filipino Department

Filipinos can imitate any sound:
Improvisation. Karaoke, and the Labor of Filipino Overseas Musicians
Benito Vergara, Jr., Ph.D.

Transnational Desire in Star Cinema's Kailangan Kita and Milan
Francisco Benitez, Ph.D.

Open Forum

Closing Remarks
Christine Bellen
Acting Chair, Filipino Department

Posted by the wily filipino at June 11, 2007 04:22 PM