The Wily Filipino

At Random.

Some links:

1. I think I want this T-shirt:

2. This is just... wrong. (Make sure you check out the stupefyingly brilliant interactive demo.)

3. This is wrong too, but on an entirely different level. It's cool to see so many Asians on this season's Survivor, but I didn't expect CBS to do this, illustrating that race is indeed, the new porn. But their idea of replicating the Hawaiian plantation system (yes, I know, it's in a different part of the world) is simply bizarre. But I don't own a TV, so I'm sitting this one out.

4. Raul Gonzales engages in some wishful thinking. Thanks to Gitz for the link.

5. The coolest band in America (Dengue Fever of course) will be at 12 Galaxies. Of course I'll be there.

6. About Bebot: A Collective Review.

Hostel.

I'm clearly warped. I didn't expect to enjoy Eli Roth's Hostel; part of my refusal to see it when it first came out was the fact that international debates on torture were going on at the time, and to derive entertainment from what is essentially snuff-porn seemed politically reprehensible, and still does. But I did like Roth's previous film, Cabin Fever, and so, still coming down from my Descent / horror-movie fix, I thought I'd check it out.

You probably already know what it's about: Three louts, boozing and whoring throughout Europe, fall prey to an urban legend come true, all set in an Eastern Europe veering close to parody (bad disco, rows of drab cars, a bombed-out urban landscape, cops with comb-overs and leather-jacketed heavies straight from central casting). The film itself is an homage to the stylized sadism of '70s and '80s giallo, and the nastiness of recent Japanese gore cinema (notably the work of Takashi Miike, who graces Hostel with a cameo, but also Toshiharu Ikeda's Evil Dead Trap).

It's horror, all right, but there's a way in which you can read the film as a comedy. (Like Miike's Audition, the film starts out as a different movie altogether -- in this case, Eurotrip, which I never saw, but can only imagine what it's like -- and then detours shockingly into genuine, unblinking violence.) A triphoppy version of "Willow's Song" playing while the protagonists are having sex? Funny! The running gag about the street kids who kick ass and chew bubblegum? Even funnier! The two best scenes -- the ones where I'm embarrassed to say I laughed out loud -- are delivered with perfect comic timing, complete with a pause and an even funnier follow-up. You can think of the infamous eyeball scene as formally similar to, say, the moment before Rob Schneider is forced to do something nasty, which is pretty much every movie he stars in.

Perhaps Hostel works best not as a horror film, or a suspense thriller, but as a gratuitously vile, extremely dark comedy about -- I'm totally serious here -- the nature of extralegal commodities and the circulation of global capital. The lads, clearly firm believers in the myth of the free market, liberally and unthinkingly invest their American dollars in increasingly illicit activities, and are promptly pimpslapped hard by the invisible hand. The joke, of course, is that in real life, torture is already outsourced, and that's no laughing matter.

The Descent.

So is Neil Marshall's The Descent the best horror film (I've seen) since Sadako crawled out of a TV in 1998? It may very well be. Wonderfully simple in its setup (and narrative: six women in a cave, and they're not alone), The Descent is a masterpiece of unrelieved tension and claustrophobia. (The fact that the viewer is plunged in almost total darkness during three-quarters of the film helps.)

To people who don't usually watch horror films -- and unfortunately, I have a number of friends who simply bypass the genre altogether -- it's hard to push other people to view it. The other night I was having dinner with friends and I was babbling on and on about how great a film it was and that I had seen it twice and wanted to see it again, and that I highly recommend it, etc., etc.:

Gladys: I don't like horror movies. Is there something else I would get out of it?

me [too quickly]: Not really.

Gladys: Oh.

me [scrambling]: Well... there's a subtext of feminist empowerment in the film.

At this point Oscar jumps in with "You're working this table!" and the spell, if it was woven at all, was broken. (Oscar and I were the only guys.) But as fatuous as that may sound, the sight of strong women kicking ass -- with the unofficial leader, a Pinay, at that -- looked pretty good on screen.

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If I were pressed to pick, these would be my top five favorite "horror" films in chronological order (how odd that three of them came out the same year):

- Robert Wise's The Haunting (1963)
- William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973)
- Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now (1973)
- Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man (1973)
- Hideo Nakata's The Ring (1998)

(Runners-up, in no order: E. Elias Merhige's Begotten, George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, Georges Franju's Eyes without a Face, Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls, Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead, Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock, Tod Browning's Freaks, and Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby.)

Open Letter on Bebot.

To Apl.de.Ap, Patricio Ginelsa/KidHeroes, and Xylophone Films:

We, the undersigned, would like to register our deep disappointment at the portrayal of Filipinas and other women in the new music videos for the Black Eyed Peas song, "Bebot." We want to make it clear that we appreciate your efforts to bring Filipina/o Americans into the mainstream and applaud your support of the Little Manila of Stockton. However, as Filipina/o and Filipina/o American artists, academics, and community activists, we are utterly dismayed by the portrayal of hypersexualized Filipina "hoochie-mama" dancers, specifically in the Generation 2 version, the type of representation of women so unfortunately prevalent in today's hip-hop and rap music videos. The depiction of the 1930s "dime dancers" was also cast in an unproblematized light, as these women seem to exist solely for the sexual pleasure of the manongs.

In general, we value Apl.de.Ap's willingness to be so openly and richly Filipino, especially when there are other Filipina/o Americans in positions of visibility who do not do the same, and we appreciate the work that he has done with the folks at Xylophone Films; we like their previous video for "The Apl Song," and we even like the fact that the Generation 1 version of Bebot attempts to provide a "history lesson" about some Filipino men in the 1930s. However, the Generation 2 version truly misses the mark on accurate Filipina/o representation, for the following reasons:

1. The video uses three very limited stereotypes of Filipina women: the virgin, the whore, and the shrill mother. We find a double standard in the depiction of the virgin and whore figures, both of which are highly sexualized. Amidst the crowd of midriff-baring, skinny, light-skinned, peroxided Pinays -- some practically falling out of their halter tops -- there is the little sister played by Jasmine Trias, from whom big brother Apl is constantly fending off Pinoy "playas." The overprotectiveness is strange considering his idealization of the bebot or "hot chick." The mother character was also particularly troublesome, but for very different reasons. She seems to play a dehumanized figure, the perpetual foreigner with her exaggerated accent, but on top of that, she is robbed of her femininity in her embarrassingly indelicate treatment of her son and his friends. She is not like a tough or strong mother, but almost like a coarse asexual mother, and it is telling that she is the only female character in the video with a full figure.

2. We feel that these problematic female representations might have to do with the use of the word "Bebot." We are of course not advocating that Apl change the title of his song, yet we are confused about why a song that has to do with pride in his ethnic/national identity would be titled "Bebot," a word that suggests male ownership of the sexualized woman -- the "hot chick." What does Filipino pride have to do with bebots? The song seems to be about immigrant experience yet the chorus says "ikaw ang aking bebot" (you are my hot chick). It is actually very disturbing that ones ethnic/national identity is determined by ones ownership of women. This system not only turns women into mere symbols but it also excludes women from feeling the same kind of ethnic/national identity. It does not bring down just Filipinas; it brings down all women.

3. Given the unfortunate connection made in this video between Filipino pride and the sexualized female body both lyrically and visually, we cant help but conclude that the video was created strictly for a heterosexual mans pleasure. This straight, masculinist perspective is the link that we find between the Generation 1 and Generation 2 videos. The fact that the Pinoy men are surrounded by "hot chicks" both then and now makes this link plain. Yet such a portrayal not only obscures the "real" message about the Little Manila Foundation; it also reduces Pinoy mens hopes, dreams, and motivations to a single-minded pursuit of sex.

We do understand that Filipino America faces a persistent problem of invisibility in this country. Moreover, as the song is all in Tagalog (a fact that we love, by the way), you face an uphill battle in getting the song and music video(s) into mainstream circulation. However, remedying the invisibility of Filipina/os inthe United States should not come at the cost of the dignity and self-respect of at least half the population of Filipino America. Before deciding to write this letter, we felt an incredible amount of ambivalence about speaking out on this issue because, on the one hand, we recognized that this song and video are a milestone for Filipina/os in mainstream media and American pop culture, but on the other hand, we were deeply disturbed by the images of women the video propagates.

In the end we decided that we could not remain silent while seeing image after image of Pinays portrayed as hypersexual beings or as shrill, dehumanized, asexual mother-figures who embarrass their children with their overblown accents and coarseness. The Filipino American community is made up of women with Filipino pride as well, yet there is little room in these videos for us to share this voice and this commitment; instead, the message we get is that we are expected to stand aside and allow ourselves to be exploited for our sexuality while the men go about making their nationalist statements.

While this may sound quite harsh, we believe it is necessary to point out that such depictions make it seem as if you are selling out Filipina women for the sake of gaining mainstream popularity within the United States. Given the already horrific representations of Filipinas all over the world as willing prostitutes, exotic dancers, or domestic servants who are available for sex with their employers, the representation of Pinays in these particular videos can only feed into such stereotypes. We also find it puzzling, given your apparent commitment to preserving the history and dignity of Filipina/os in the United States, because we assume that you also consider such stereotypes offensive toFilipino men as well as women.

Again, we want to reiterate our appreciation for the positive aspects of these videos -- the history lesson of the 1936 version, the commitment to community, and the effort to foster a larger awareness of Filipino America in the mainstream -- but we ask for your honest attempt to offer more full-spectrum representations of both Filipino men and Filipina women, now and in the future. We would not be writing this letter to you if we did not believe you could make it happen.

Respectfully,

Lucy Burns
Assistant Professor
Asian American Studies / World Arts and Cultures, UCLA

Fritzie De Mata
Independent scholar

Diana Halog
Undergraduate
UC Berkeley

Luisa A. Igloria
Associate Professor
Creative Writing Program & Department of English
Old Dominion University

Veronica Montes
Writer

Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Assistant Professor, English
State University of New York--Fredonia

Gladys Nubla
Doctoral student
English, UC Berkeley

Barbara Jane Reyes
Poet and author

Joanne L. Rondilla
Doctoral candidate
Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley

Rolando B. Tolentino
Visiting Fellow, National University of Singapore
Associate Professor, University of the Philippines Film Institute

Benito Vergara
Assistant Professor
Asian American Studies / Anthropology
San Francisco State University

Links.

1. bebot bebot bebot bebot bebot.

2. Jean Vengua. Chapbook. Enough said.

3. Dan Coffey in MiPOesias.

4. David Tibet, in his latest mailout, writes: "This is the news I like to read." So do I.

5. Plus two new tracks on the radio.blog to the right, from two big contenders for album of the year: Up Dharma Down's "We Give In Sometimes," from Fragmented (previously written up here) and Easy Star All-Stars' "Paranoid Android," from Radiodread -- where the fellows responsible for Dub Side of the Moon (written up here too) do OK Computer. (Sorry for the poor quality of the files, as I was trying to save bandwidth.)

SoaP.

Your flight crew would like to make the following ten helpful suggestions and observations for your maximum enjoyment of Snakes on a Plane:

1. Take the rowdiest crowd -- one who would line up at least 100-people deep an hour before the film begins -- and fill the theater with it.

2. Bring rubber snakes. Toss them into the air whenever someone dies a grisly death or does something heroic. (It was literally raining snakes at the Metreon earlier this evening.)

3. Have the crowd be drunk.

4. Consuming two or three pints yourself doesn't hurt either.

5. Cheer and hoot whenever Samuel L. Jackson says something vaguely tough / funny / menacing. (Actually, cheer when the previews begin, cheer when the movie itself begins, cheer when you see the first shot of Honolulu International Airport, and cheer when you see the plane take off. That'll get you all excited.)

6. A closeup of pus oozing from a snakebite wound provokes much cringing and laughing.

7. So does a snake crawling up a woman's skirt.

8. And a guy having his penis bitten by a snake.

9. Hiss loudly whenever it's quiet or one of the characters on screen goes somewhere they shouldn't.

10. Yell "Snakes!" whenever it's semantically appropriate.

I don't think I've ever emerged from a movie hoarse before. Two words, folks: see it.