The Philippine Online Chronicles

I seriously feel like praying a litany right now, which could start like this:

Lord, have mercy.

Christ, have mercy.

Christ, hear us.

Christ, graciously hear us.

Or maybe it should be revamped like this instead:

Octo-Apt, have mercy.

Viva-Regal, have mercy.

Bernal, hear us.

Brocka, graciously hear us.

It’s hard to start this new year on a positive note if what we see in the movies are heaps and heaps of misogyny and homophobia served to us cinematically in the yearly feast we call the Metro Manila Film Festival or popularly known as MMFF. Our generation and the generations before us, Pinoy moviegoers who have grown watching this yearly serving of filmic treats, get more and more disappointed these recent years with what the mainstream movie studios have been cooking and dishing out lately, especially this most recent one. If I thought last year was a bit off-kilter, I was in for a surprise this year.

The MMFF has been a yearly yuletide ritual for Filipinos during the end of each year, where the government mandates theaters to show exclusively Filipino movies to promote the local filmmaking industry. Personally, I believe this has always been a great move by the government to address the almost year-long Hollywood monopoly that unjustly tips the entertainment scale against local industries (also felt elsewhere in the world). Yes, people have been so supportive of this local effort but as a queer feminist advocate, sometimes it’s hard to enjoy these movies when storylines and subplots malign people for cheap laughs and unwitty stories, especially when the subjects of such negativity are women and LGBTQs. To some, this may appear so serious a comment but it’s hard to “relax and go see a movie” when what they present to us are unnerving and outdated stories, regardless of genres.

There are seven entries this year, but I chose to see only five: the fantasy-comedy mash-up Enteng Ng Ina Mo, the domestic comedy My Househusband directed by Joey Reyes, the ensemble melodrama Yesterday Today Tomorrow directed by Jun Lana, the continuation of the horror trilogy franchise Shake Rattle and Roll 13 and the action noir-ish Manila Kingpin: The Asiong Salonga Story mostly directed by Tikoy Aguiluz (controversy abounds). Those I skipped are the fantasy adventure film sequel Ang Panday 2 and the psychological thriller Segunda Mano.

I was intrigued with how filmmakers would produce a newer narrative in intersecting two previous movies led by two formidable comedy actors, namely the Enteng Kabisote fantasy franchise with Vic Sotto and the Tanging Ina family comedy with Ai-Ai Delas Alas so this is what I saw first. Plus the two films prominently figure two LGBTQ-identified characters in their stories—Enteng’s lesbian daughter (one of the non-magical siblings in this family) played by openly out lesbian singer-actress Aiza Seguerra and Ina’s gay son played by Alwin Uytingco—so I wanted to see how their subplots would figure in the combined narrative. Well, intertwine is more like an understatement since what happened to their storyline was more of a warped intersection. Towards the end, they somewhat had a tryst and the lesbian ended up getting knocked up by the gay guy. And I’m sorry but it wasn’t even executed in a funny way.

Their subplot started when the magical siblings took their lesbian sister to witness their dad’s alleged infidelity as he spent time with the comedic family. The swishy gay son and the invisible lesbian daughter kept on bumping into each other for a few laughs. Then they finally meet in person and start getting yucky vibes for each other (since they kept on accidentally bumping each other and, finding out that the other has a body/identity they don’t like, start avoiding each other in an exaggerated comedic manner). But towards the end, in the middle of the happy ending revelry, the lesbian suddenly felt nauseous and threw up – a lazy but cinematically tested device of implying that someone is pregnant. When they asked her who the male culprit was, she pointed to the swishy gay guy (who, in a previous installment of their movie, already accidentally bore a child one drunken night with his girl best friend). Everybody looks at them in bewilderment. Roll credits.

If it’s not blatantly weird, then it’s usually just plain homophobic. In the action film Manila Kingpin, no amount of artistic execution could cover up the homophobic retorts of toughies and thugs who challenge each other to no end. Fine, granted that they are thugs and they speak dirty, it’s also the filmmakers’ prerogative to lessen this homophobia if they so choose it. There is one scene there where one ousted toughie challenged his former friends and referred to them as gays, using the term in a derogatory way (“Eh mga bakla pala itong mga ito, eh!” or something like that).

In a similar vein, the same kind of rhetoric was used in Yesterday Today Tomorrow where a girl’s ex-boyfriend challenged one of the male lead characters for thinking that the guy stole his girl. To avoid a fight, the lead just let them insult him and even punch him once. But when the ex-boyfriend compared him to a gay guy, saying something like gays are better because they’re tougher than him, that was when the lead lost it, and fought back. So apparently, in order to defend one’s integrity, he has to be compared to a gay guy in order to fight back and show the world that he’s not like gays, that he’s brave and able. Tsk. Roll credits.

My Househusband and the three Shake Rattle and Roll stories didn’t contain any homophobic incident but the stories would make feminists cringe nonetheless. It’s even a mystery as to why the former won the gender award when it clearly shows very outdated views on matrimonial relationships and husband-wife powerplay interactions. It’s the same with the horror film; female leads are either portrayed as villainous or they are merely subservient to males. Very patriarchal indeed.

Some ask why even bother watching these films when we know what to expect already. The thing is, if we don’t voice our concerns and views to the filmmakers and producers, then we won’t see cinematic changes, ever. Moreover, we should always be vigilant in checking what media sells to us, for it might never stop selling us behavior that would be hard to undo, especially homophobia and sexism.

Libay Linsangan Cantor is a Manila-based writer, film school professor and queer advocate. You can email her at leaflens@gmail.com. She blogs at leaflenspopmedia.wordpress.com.