Jelliclisms on a Jellicle Blog

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Now that I the house has wi-fi access 24 hours, I don't think I'll be spending more time talking and watching TV with mother. Things may be a lot more different: late dinners, lunches, work, studies, even DVD marathons. 

But I have to rethink my priorities now that I have access to the web in the house. It just got installed recently, so I'm blaming excitement for now. 

It's only me and mom now, and having her around is much better than the technology I never thought would be part of our family! 

Cheers!

Jellicle Cats come out tonight,

On the one hand, I can understand Jennie Yabroff's misinterpretation of Carlos Ruiz Zafon's THE SHADOW OF THE WIND. The utmost dramatization of tele-novelic detective story in post-war Barcelona can easily pass for a soap opera in ABS CBN; and if budget allows and creative producers develop the taste for periodic mini-series, could get a spot on CBS primetime. Zafon indeed, created a novel using age-old structures that continually hook less critical readers since Scheherazade's Three Apples in The Arabian Nights. Cryptic looking characters, the one you see in Japanese Animes like Lupin established the gothic motif; accentuated with medieval structures in post-war Spain. 

Considering a culinary process in writing, when Zafon added a mixture of gruesome murders and deaths, with a dash of unrequited love(s) and the small-world principle (typical to ALL the tele-novelas that we know), and finally wrap it up with a beautiful femme fatale and questionable dashing hero - he served a freshly baked contemporary horo-gothical mystery plot for a best-seller fan!

Yabroff's arguments presented a rather justifiable point to a less critical reader. The 3-act structure presented on the back cover alone sends off an unispiring pat to a potential book buyer. Literary scholars can easily brush off the idea of giving Zafon the opportunity to be heard, with the notion that even they themselves can create a story out of his back cover plot.

On the other hand, if given the opportunity to be seen, heard and read, SHADOW can give both a literary expert and a neophyte an experience only a few Spanish-American authors can provide. What marked this contemporary bestseller soar off the charts was not the love story nor its stylistic twists, but the form in which it was written - thus expressed. Judging not the literary devices, that may have been age-old, but magnifying the intensity of events can sew the readers eyeballs through the pages in a 12-hour night. As gothic as it may seem, Zafon created a world horrifying, scandalous, and violent enought to make each reader comprehend a world lost forever and take a dip in understanding the incomprehensible realms of the written word and of the heart that wrote it.

In post-war Barcelona, Daniel Sempere came across the single remaining copy of a novel written by a certain Julian Carax. Unknown to Daniel at that time, Carax' novels have been burned by a mysterious Barcelona-roaming character and that the former's new treasure will soon prove to be a bait for his life. Upon learning this and after reading the novel, Daniel immediate set off an almost histo-bigraphical search for understanding the history behind the book, involving not just Julian Carax, but also the different people that came across the author's life before his death in 1933.

Carlo Ruiz Zafon, magnified a more gothic representation of one of the world's oldest city. Setting the action in a city

known for its military injustice, religious fanaticism, and tolerated corruption, Zafon establishes a more mysterious and dark backdrop to a detective story comparable to Bill FInger and Bob Kane's Batman. He re-created Barcelona's lost culture and repainted each Calle Real to set the stage for Daniel's half-a-century journey. And like Gotham City, it always rains! For someone who was born and raised in Spain, notwithstanding his exposure to medieval Spanish and European literatures, he has creatively utilitzed an immediate locality to set his bloody plot rolling.

To add flavor, Zafon repackaged his dramatis personae by creating characters whose philosophies and back stories triggered each chapter to develop accordingly. Fermin Romero de Torres may pass as a potential comedic side-kick for the hero, but his academic background and philosophical trends guide Daniel (and the reader) to a genuine perspective to life and death. Fermin's obvious disbelief in God and the Church, was Zafon's voice in expressing his aesthetic ideas, however, rampant in other characters. In Fermin, we see a creative genius, a disguised beggar, storekeeper, consultant, detective and eventually a friend. Readers may find him as a character whose development they would not want to cease. I am convinced that Zafon used Fermin as his voice-device,as he continually darted his own philosophic masturbation in his form.

In Gustavo Barcelo, the author re-established his wise-old-man achetype. Though incomparable to Gandalf the Grey/White and Dumbledore, Barcelo paved clearer paths for Daniel in his search using his wit, influence and wealth. The femme fatale, undeniably redeems herself towards the book's end. Inspector Fumero, the ultimate bringer of  Justice from Jung's archetypes, established the foggy atmosphere of revenge, violence and mistrust as Victor Hugo's Javert.

Apart from the run-of-the-mill plot of average bestselling detective novels, what makes SHADOW an exemption is its creative approach. Zafon spins a web of deceit and balls them diacritically; so chaotic readers will miss the loopholes, thus eventually tie each end in one piece. In a novel so character driven, we see the hero mingling not just with illustrious affairs, but also with other areas of interest that will eventually lead us back to initial character goal.   

Zafon is great story writer. His metaphoric form in character discourse and narrative brings the reader back to a literary era when classics were starting to acquire their own definitions. Of course, his melodramatic plot and exaggerated themes is a contemporary giveaway to sell his own ideas to the reading audience. Mixing humor with the Franco dictatorship is quite a risk, considering the seriousness of the back plot, but Zafon was able to pull it through. Through this form, he was able to blow the shadow across the winding roads of Barcelona and put a spell on his characters through the web of mystery and deceit. I personally, got hooked in pursuing the killer, the author, the hero, the villain and the woman as they all searched for the answers only Zafon knew.  

 

“Just takes a few months to get to be a hundred. If you’re in the right place at the right time.”

I first saw Henri-Georges Clouzot’s masterpiece The Wages of Fear when the restored version was released in the U.S., in 1991. But my awareness of it began a bit earlier, when I was twelve and saw the unfortunate American remake, Sorcerer, which sent me investigating articles about the original and searching out what Clouzot films I could find: the grim, sublime Le corbeau (1943); the strangely touching police procedural Quai des Orfèvres (1947); the tingly, unforgettable Diabolique (1954). Throughout this process, The Wages of Fear was available on video only in truncated form, shorn of all political undertones that the U.S. distributor had deemed “anti-American” during the film’s original U.S. run, in 1955 (two years after the French premiere), so I held out for the unpillaged original.

Even so, nothing could have prepared me for the seismic assault of it. Here is a film that stands alone as the purest exercise in cinematic tension ever carved into celluloid, a work of art so viscerally nerve-racking that one fears a misplaced whisper from the audience could cause the screen to explode. As obsessively attentive as Clouzot is to the narrative spine of the story—four men drive two trucks of nitroglycerin three hundred miles across a hellish landscape of potholes, desiccated flora, rock-strewn passes, hairpin turns, and rickety bridges with crumbling beams to put out an oil fire raging on the other side of the mountain—he is just as savage in his commentary on corporate imperialism, American exploitation of foreign cultures, the rape of the land, and the ridiculous folly of man. Critics at the time charged that The Wages of Fear was virulently anti-American (Time magazine, in 1955, called it “a picture that is surely one of the most evil ever made”), but this is missing the ravaged forest for the blighted trees. As director Karel Reisz pointed out in a 1991 Film Comment article, the film is “anti-American,” but only insofar as it is “unselectively and impartially anti-everything.”

I agree with Reisz about this impartiality—Clouzot’s camera may as well be the eyeball of a lizard, for all the emotion it shows the humans who enter its field of vision—but the charge of “anti-everything,” while certainly valid on a surface level, fails to take into account one of the basic tenets of cinematic humanism as employed by Clouzot and John Huston and Stanley Kubrick, among others: that by removing all hint of subjectivity from the point of view, one thus removes any stain of sentimentality. This erasure of sentiment does not cancel out empathy. In fact, in that very void, we, the viewer, are forced to decide what our capacity for empathy is. What remains in Clouzot’s chilly remove from his main characters is a fascinatingly odd mixture of contempt and love, one akin to that of a father who has closed off all outward displays of emotion for his children because he fears the heartbreak that could destroy him should anything tragic befall them.

“If I’ve gotta be a corpse, I want to be presentable.”

If so many of today’s “bleak chic” auteurs seem to have fashioned their dire worldviews by skimming Cliffs Notes of Friedrich Nietzsche while listening to Trent Reznor in well-appointed suburban basements, it’s important to note that Clouzot didn’t come by his pessimism in a vacuum. Clouzot’s career in film was just beginning when Germany invaded France, and one can’t help but imagine the effect it had on him to toil at his craft in a suddenly subjugated homeland, while all around him stood the worst aspects of human nature—not only the genocidal bloodlust of the Third Reich but

also the soiled moral lassitude of the Vichy government and various everyday collaborationist Frenchmen.

It was in this atmosphere that Clouzot would make Le corbeau, a film that managed to outrage both the Nazis—under whose auspices it, like many other French films during the occupation, was made—and the French. The Nazis, apparently, were appalled by its bleakness and by its depiction of their behavior during the occupation. The French, similarly, found their representation (as provincial informers) offensive, and deemed the film collaborationist. After the war, it would be four years before the blacklisted Clouzot was allowed to direct again. With Le corbeau, however, he had managed to commit the artist’s most triumphant miscalculation: he had made a work so unsettling in its archetypal truths that it offended everyone. All sides assailed him and none would champion him. From that point on, Clouzot would consistently attack the hypocrisy built into every “decent” society, the moral bankruptcy disguised as moralism that is so often the grimy engine that chugs relentlessly underneath otherwise gleaming bodywork.

Plagued by shaky health that would force him off projects throughout his life, ostracized by some in French society who never forgave him for Le corbeau, and intimately associated with the identity crisis that plagued most of postwar Europe, Clouzot would bring to bear in all his subsequent films a uniquely ironic disappointment in man’s inability to fulfill his own potential. But it was never more extravagantly crystallized than in The Wages of Fear.

“It’s like prison here. Easy to get in. ‘Make yourself at home.’ But there’s no way out.”

When we enter the world of The Wages of Fear, we do so by way of an opening shot (later appropriated by Sam Peckinpah for the opening of The Wild Bunch) in which cockroaches are tied together and casually tortured by a half-naked child on an oily, muddy street in the oily, muddy village of Las Piedras. A flavored-ice vendor passes by, and the child abandons the cockroaches to covet treats he can’t afford. But still he has to look, to lust after the unattainable. Once the vendor passes, the child returns to the roaches, but a vulture has already taken his place. With a single stroke, Clouzot has set in motion his primary theme—that men are constantly searching the horizon to the

detriment of all else in their immediate world. Men are “goal oriented,” addicted to the “quest,” itching for the “heroic” opportunity. Or so we tell ourselves. Clouzot says no. Men are wanderers. Adrenaline junkies. Mortally terrified of home and hear

How else to explain how our four “heroes” ended up in a hellhole like Las Piedras? They weren’t born there, and no one would live in Las Piedras by choice. While we’ll never discover what has driven them there, we know it must have been sins of a particularly unforgivable nature, because no one opts to live in hell unless the alternative is demonstrably worse. But since nothing is worse, the men have long since found reason to rue their decision and pine for escape. The four men are Mario (Yves Montand), Jo (Charles Vanel), Luigi (Folco Lulli), and Bimba (Peter Van Eyck), and Clouzot presents them as if the poverty and hopelessness of Las Piedras have already stripped them of many of the attributes Homo sapiens like to believe separate them from their simian forebears.

“Even when they guillotine you, they dress you up first.”

The four men are hired by the Southern Oil Company, a ruthless, American-owned multinational that has already laid waste to Las Piedras and, by extension, Central and South America. The company is personified by O’Brien (William Tubbs, reminding one of a puffier Lee J. Cobb), who hires the men for the suicide mission and makes a blustery speech about how they should be paid a top wage, even as one suspects that he assumes only two, at best, will survive. To co-workers who argue against hiring “bums” to do the job, O’Brien counters: “Those bums don’t have any union or any families.” When informed that the Safety Commission is coming to investigate the fire, he replies, “Put all the blame on the victims. They’re done for.” And yet even as one perceives Clouzot’s icy rage at the callousness of Western corporations (“If there’s oil around, they’re not far behind,” one character quips about the Americans in town), one can also feel his seething despair at the men who would willingly hand over their lives for such a pointless mission.

Mario, in particular, is an extremely dislikable protagonist. He treats his lover, Linda (the “perfect woman” in an emotionally stunted man-child’s fantasy, and played with knee-knocking sensuality by Clouzot’s wife, Véra, in all her dark-eyed, languid uncoiling), as if she were a dog, literally petting her on the head as she crawls to him on all fours in their first scene. Linda, it must be said, is a willing accomplice. She is all sexual supplicant to Mario, no matter how repeatedly she’s debased for her efforts, and is last seen lying prostrate, her eyes closed, awaiting the return of her lover.

Mario’s treatment of her, however, speaks to a man consumed with self-loathing, so much so that he is incapable of seeing that the sole good thing in his life, maybe in the entire history of it, kneels before him, willing, as Linda says, to rob for him, kill for him. That Mario rejects this so flatly speaks, as others have noted, to his repressed homosexual bond with Jo, but even more so to Clouzot’s mortification at the treasures men leave behind in order to pursue goals of far more dubious value.

The other men are depicted just as unsentimentally. Jo, a strutting, petty tyrant, attracts or repels all around him with his casual cruelty yet will later be revealed as the weakest of them all. Bimba, looking like a poster child for Hitler’s Aryan ideal, is so tightly wound and fatalistic that he’s expecting death before he even gets behind the wheel. And

Luigi, ostensibly the warmest and most humane of the quartet, seems at best a holy fool, because even if he survives the trek, he’ll most likely die from diseased lungs, ravaged by exposure to cement during his tenure with the Southern Oil Company.

“You don’t know what fear is. But you’ll see. It’s catching. It’s catching like smallpox. And once you get it, it’s for life.”

The journey section of the film begins at the hour mark, and from that point on—for eighty-seven minutes of Homeric obstacles and knuckles so white you expect them to burst through the skin—it never relents. Each man who, as Jo puts it, rides with a “bomb on his tail” attempts to adapt to the never-ceasing thump of sheer terror as the trek begins with a full-out dash across the “washboard,” a road so ungainly, slick, and rutted that the only way to drive it without vibrations is at under six miles per hour or over forty; a turn so tight that to make it, they must back up onto what remains of a rotting bridge that hangs, as if by hope alone, over an abyss; and a gut-scouring set piece in which they must use some of the nitro to blow up a fifty-ton boulder in their path, and still make the fuse long enough to reach safety.

The entire journey, in fact, is a primer in what Clouzot and Alfred Hitch-cock understood above all others—and something I always felt that I, as a budding novelist, learned at their knees: that tension exists in the absence of shock, in the suggestion of dire possibility, as opposed to any presentation of calamity, which often ends up looking rather pedestrian. After the boulder, there is a pool of oil to drive through, in which Mario, determined not to get stuck, purposefully crushes the leg of Jo, who is guiding him . . . and still gets stuck. As each crisis is averted, the toll on the men’s nerves (particularly Jo’s) grows worse. It’s a refreshingly authentic concept—that exposure to terror does not make one less fearful, as most heroic films purport, but more so. You can’t conquer fear, only temporarily elude it. So each encounter represents merely another wink from Death. But the four men know all too well that Death, sooner or later, will open his eyes.

“Mario, my darling, why are you doing this?”

A film in which one character dies saying, “There’s nothing!” is bound to be attacked (as this one was and continues to be) for being both misanthropic and atheistic, but I’ve never felt that Clouzot was saying, “This is the world,” but rather, “This is the world we’ve made.” (A vision that condemns what man is, in despair over what man could be, is, perversely, a hopeful one.) It was we, after all, who helped make a world in which men risk all for the simple need to do so, are willing to lose all because it confirms their self-defeating interpretations of “fate,” destroy all because all is, well, destroyable. These men are, one can’t help feeling with a tragic sense of waste, children—torturing bugs to kill time while they wait for the vendor to come hawk delicacies they can never afford to purchase.

- nasa team mo ba si Pata?

- yes.

- hindi ko siya gusto. unang kita ko pa lang parang masama na kutob kong may tinatago.

- anghit?

- boba, ugali. baklang 'to ang slow.

- pansin ko nga, kahit mga tao n'ya may comment sa kanya. palasigaw daw saka power tripper.

- unang araw pa lang nyan dito kinausap ko na si Pops. sabi ko, "bakla, magingat ka dyan. hindi maganda timplada 

nyang si Pata." sabi ni Pops, "hindi naman, mabait naman siya." pero nung huling araw na ni Pops bago lumipat sa kabila, "naku, goodluck na lang sa mga ka teammates ko. ugali nyang baboy na yan todo sa lupa."

- parang inis ka...

- ay inis talaga. ano kaya, lapitan natin at awayin natin?

- hindi mo na naman ininom gamot mo ano?

- hindi bakla, goodtime lang. ano kayang pwede nating gawin?

- hindi ko alam kung pano simulan.

- ganito, puntahan natin sa area n'ya, gulatin natin sa kalbit. "hoy puta ka, masama ugali mo! bumalik ka na sa probinsya mong nagpapanggap maging CITY!"

- hahahahaha! pota shet! maloloka un!

- "sa sobrang taba mo, hindi mo makita yang p*k* mo. lalo pa kaya kung aabutin mo!"

- hahahaha! hindi ko kinakaya! "alam mo bang ang nanay mo, ginahasa ng halimaw...IKAW ang lumabas!"

- ganyan! kung sabihin nyang hindi halimaw ang tatay n'ya, "pwes, PARI ang tatay mo!"

- hahahahahaha! hindi ko na 'to kaya!

- "at nung bata ka, nahulog ka sa sahig kaya blue baby ka!"

- ate, un na ba ang ibig sabihin ng 'blue baby?'

- siya ganun. "ang p*k* mo, amoy pitakang basa! pati kulaba mo, pag pagod ka, pinagpapawisan!"

- "masama ugali."

- masama talaga.

Ang pasko daw para lang sa bagets. Kasi, ito ung season ng pagkain, laruan, pamasko, bagong damit, StarCity, Enchanted Kingdom, two-week vacation, at paputok. Pero pag matanda ka na, unti-unti mo ng narerealize na di na bagay sayo ang Pasko. Habang patanda ka na ng patanda, dahan-dahan ng nawawala ung kulay ng season ng kapaskuhan. Napapaltan na lang ng paunti-unting Kris Kingle dito, konting additional beso dun, at nakakain na lang walang humpay na "Merry Christmas!" na lang ang dating bonggang mapalamuting okasyon.

Sabi ng pari, huwag daw kalimutan si Kristo kapag pasko. Hello?! E simba lang ang katapat n'yan! Isang sermon lang ng pari at isang masigabong pagkampana, e nawawala na rin ang Christian Concept ng pasko pag balik natin sa bahay. Aminin natin yan! Ayoko ng self-righteous!

Pero inisip ko rin: ano na nga ba ang pasko para sa 'kin? Is it still as colorful as my early years? If not, how can this be so different?

May mga nagbago for sure,. Pero ung mga pagbabago bagay na sa katulad ko. Wala na ngang pamasko na tig-bebente pesos pero may 13th month naman! Wala na nga namang StarCity moments, pero may sarili na 'kong Christmas shopping - ung tipong nabibili ko kung ano ba talagang gusto ko. Hindi man ako ang namamasko ngayon, at least ako na ngayon ang nagreregalo sa sarili ko.

Inisa-isa ko ang mga nagawa at gagawin ko this Christmas na hindi ko nagawa nung bata pa 'ko. May keri, may bongga, may laloz:

 

- Nagagalit na ko sa tunog ng paputok. Masakit sa tenga, at nakakawala ng poise pag nagugulat ako.

- Naiimberna na rin ako sa traffic. Aksaya na sa gasolina, aksaya pa sa oras

- Bumili ako ng dalawang pares ng tsinelas, ung mamahalin. Katumbas ng isa, e isa ng pair ng white shoes sa Aldo. Ang problema naman, nanghihinayang akong apakan, kasi nga mahal!

- Niregaluhan ako ng mga taong hindi ko inaasahang magreregalo sa akin. Masama kasi ugali ko, alam ko hindi ako appreciated ng lahat.

- Kaya kong hindi kumain ng sobra, para ma-maintain ang 29 ko na bewang! Kasi nung bata ako, nun ang masarap ang pagkain, kaya kain ako ng kain!

- I'll have an out-of-town trip with bebe. Ung kaming dalawa lang. Problema nga lang, wala kaming photographer na kasama. Sayang ang mga photoshoot opportunities.

- Natanggap ko ang nakakalulang 13th month pay. Hindi lang kaluluwa ang pwedeng bilhin. Pati puso!

 

Nagbabago nga ang pasko. Un e para sa 'kin. It may not keep getting better, but it stays better nonetheless. Kaya 'merry' pa rin!

Maligayang Pasko!

Ang hindi ko maintindihan sa mga Katoliko eh madalas hindi sila consistent. Laging nagbabago. Laging ginagawa kung anung convinient. Buti na lang, hindi na ko Katoliko. Kasi, kung nagkataon, eh kung kelan matanda na ko, saka ako maghahagilap ng bagong faith.

Ng minsang dumaan ako sa Gb5 nung isang linggo, me misa sa Greenbelt church. Ang alam ko, kahit inayos na ng todo ng mga Ayalas ang Greenbelt strip, ang hindi nila nagawan ng ayos e ung church nilang kasing luma pa ni Marcos. Siguro concept kung concept - siguro ibig nilang sabihin: binabago ng panahon ang lahat pero ang pananampalataya hindi. Bongga sana, kasi un consistent ang tingin sa relihiyon, di nagbabago.

Pero nung araw na dumaan ako, parang di ata tama sa hulog ang konsepto. Naglakad kasi ako along Gb4, dun sa pathwalk na malapit sa mga windows ng Ferregamo na me katapat na lagoon. While walking, I heard the priest intructing a congregation to "nod" the sign of peace. "May misa pala!" Sabi ko. Tumingin ako sa loob ng church, and true enough, may gig nga si father.

Di ganong puno ang simbahan, siempre Thursday un, hapon pa, either nasa work ang tao o nagshoshopping for Christmas. May mga vacant seats saka malakas ang dating ng mga speakers. Ang hindi ko lang ma-comprehend, e kung bakit sa labas eh may mga tao rin na wari mo'y nagsisimba din. Hindi lang actually sa labas, malayo from the entrance, nakasandal halos dun sa mga windows ng Gb2. Nakatayo, nakaharap sa chapel saka super solemn ng dating.

I would understand if the chapel was at an SRO status. E hindi naman. Madaming pwedeng upuan, madaming chances na mas makita ang kulay ng Christmas displays sa loob, at higit sa lahat - mas OK ang view para silayan si father. Pero andun sila sa labas. Iba't ibang klase: may mag jowa (straight magjowas naman), may mukhang galing office, may naka-casual, may family, may baklang pa-mhin, may bata (naglalaro pa) at may Senior Citizens.

Duda ko kung naririnig pa nila ung instructions ni Father. Kung narinig man, duda pa rin ako kung magagawa nila effectvely ung "nodding" ng peace kasi magkakalayo sila dahil nga mas malawak sa labas. Hindi rin ako sure kung mas nafi-feel nila ung ambiance ng samba, kasi ang daming dumadaan, mas maingay, mas makalat.

Ang lalong hindi ko mainitindihan, e kung bakit nauso yung ganun.

Malakas ba signal ng Diyos?

Alam naman natin na para sa mga naniniwala nga may Diyos, e talagang talo pa ng Globe at Smart ang signal Niya. Kahit nasaan ka, sabi sa Good Book, nandun siya. So hindi lang signal ang pinag-uusapan, Presence. Kasi pag signal lang - connection ang drama. Alam mo na, kahit wala, andun pa rin. Pero kapag presence,andun talaga! As in talagang andun!

Pero ung nakita ko sa Greenbelt Chapel last week, hindi naman un ang isyu. Para sa akin, simba ang pinunta nila dun. Hindi naman Diyos. Dahil kung Diyos talaga, e di sana, kahit sa bahay na lang o kahit sa Baywalk, keri na. Kung Diyos naman ang pinunta nila, bakit nandun sila sa malayo sa altar? Kasi andun din ang Diyos? Kung sabagay, nandun nga rin Siya, pero mas nandun din ang Demonyo. Ung mga naglalakad, ung ingay, ung mga naglalaro, ung mga kalat. Kung nasa loob siguro, mas konti ang Kaaway. Mas konti ang Kaaway, kasi nandun ang ambiance.

To each is own 'ika nga. Pero parang unfair naman sa pinaniniwalaan mong Diyos kung sa panunuod mo ng Batman sa Gb3 e pinipili mo pa ung 'da best na upuan; un bang nasa gitnang row sa gitnang aisle. Ung iba nagpapareserve pa. Sa pagbili mo ng ticket ng concert ni Regine, gusto mo bongga ang upuan mo kahit mahal. Hindi ka naman kukuha ng ticket sa labas ng Araneta at makikinig nalang mula sa Farmer's diba?

Bakit un hindi magawa para sa Diyos? Un ang talagang di ko maintidihan. Hindi yan uso sa ibang sekta. Sa ibang sekta, unahan pa sila ng pagkuha ng upuan every Sunday morning. Mas malapit sa pulpit, the better! Ung mga Muslim, maayos ang arrangements bago sila maglulumuhod at a certain hour. Walang bakante, all kneeling areas taken. Pero ang Katoliko, laging kung anung convinient, kung anong mas komportable dun sila!

Dati, ang pagkain ng karne e bawal pag nagsimula nang pahiran ng abo ang noo ng mga gustong magsisi at magtikal. Ilang buwan din un. Gulay at isda lang ang pwedeng kariring lutuin ng mga nanay natin, tapos kung sakaling bigla kang makakain ng kahit isang kapiranggot na meat, e fly ka na agad kay father to confess. Pero nabago na naman un. Sa holy week na lang daw. Holy Monday to Black Saturday na lang bawal. Kung gusto mo raw talagang malinis ang mga kasalanan mo, e mag-fasting ka at karirin ung lumang tradisyon, kung di mo keri, keri pa rin naman kung gagawin mo ang penetensya sa holy week. Tapos, nabago na naman. Starting Holy Wednesday na lang daw. Mukhang nahirapan ung iba sa haba ng holy week. Mas malakas yata ang tawag ni Jollibee kesa kay Christ.

Ngayon, wala na. Di na siya cumpolsary. Kung feel mo na lang. Kung bet mong i-deprive ang sarili mo from burgers, adobong baboy, kaldereta, sisig at bopiz, keri na rin. Kung mag-oouting ka at balak mong mag-ihaw ng liempo sa beach, keri na. Di na naman cumpolsary eh. Kanya kanya na lang.

Dati, ang Simbang Gabi umaga...as in umagang umaga. Ung tipong di pa natilaok ang manok kasi masarap matulog sa ginaw, at di mo pa maidilat ang mata mo sa dami ng morning glory eh naka-sapatos na si father para sa early morning show niya. Siguro naman, natataandaan mo na dito nauuso ulit ang Bibingka at Puto Bumbong. May Christmas song pa nga 'to na Tagalog eh. Sabi ng song, ito raw ang "simula ng Pasko sa puso ng lahing Pilipino." Kasi tuwing madalaing araw, ang mga attendees daw ay "gumigising, sa tugtog ng kampanang walang tigil."

Penetence daw 'to. Sabi ng iba, pag nakumpleto mo raw ang siyam na misa e sa araw ng Christmas, eh pwede ka na raw mag-wish. Dito ko narealize, na sa Katoliko, di libre ang mangarap, kelangan, magpaka-puyat ka muna bago ka mag-ilusyon. Bongga no? Kayang kaya 'to ng mga call center agents!

Pero ngayon, iba na ang mga Simbang Gabi, 6 pm na. Gabi na talaga! Meron pa rin daw mga madaling araw na versions, pero pareho rin daw ang sermon ng nakaraang gabi. Nasaan na ung penance? Nasaan na ung tradisyon ng "lahing Pilipino?" May Puto Bumbong din ba kapag evening edition na? Pwede ka pa bang mag-wish kung ung 6pm ang nakumpleto mo?

Ang daming isyu, ang daming pwedeng pagusapan. Ganyan ang Katoliko, ganyan ang isip nila. Yun eh, sa pananaw ko lang. Nababago ang tradisyon kasi hindi na convinient sa kanila. Lumalawak ang maliliit na simbahan, habang nagiging extension ng chapel ang bakod at gate tuwing misa. Umiikli at nawawala ang times of penance kasi mahirap naman talagang gawin. Nababago ang oras ng nakasanayang tradiyson dahil impossibleng maka-attend ang mga taga-call center na graveyard ang shift.

Minsan, napapakamot na lang ako ng ulo. It's very hard to understand how some of these self-righteous people will bend rules just to adjust everything to their convinience. Hindi na Diyos ang mahalaga, ung oras nila at comfort. Un ang mas importante. Makakapaghintay naman siguro ung imaheng nakapako. Ung Diyos na naging tao at ginive up ung sarili n'yang convinience para maligtas tayo.

Un lang naman.

I

When you get to manage a party for beauty queens in a cruise ship, probably near the coastlines of Manila in the early 80s, you get the feel of an era long-lost gone. Amidst the exagerrated dance grooves, you will be reminded that fun is such an easy thing to achieve in a time when dictators rule the land.

But when the cruise catches fire in the middle of the bay (or should I say) somewhere in the South China Sea, amazing things happen all at once...First, it was as if no one died. Second, all the beauty queens manage to survive. Third, all of them coincidentally drift ashore to a lone desert island somewhere in the country (God knows where). And fourth, they still look stunningly beautiful!

Jessica Zafra's essay on Joey Gosengfiao's Temptation Island started the hullabaloo in the early 90s on this early 80s sexy-fantasy-comedy film. Though a box-office hit during the time when Marcos was on the verge of establishing a moralistic crusade againsts Bomba films, the movie was relatively disregarded if not ignored by critics of the time.

Understandably enough, Temptation was regarded as a qualified candidtate in a line-up of promising films at the start of the Philippine Cinema's second Golden Age. A roughly plotted story of four (4) beauty contestants who got stuck in an desert island, with a man for each of the three and a maid for one would have simply pulled it off. But as argued in a a Brocka-regime, the film's large element of artifice and exaggerated ironies pulled it out from the list of potential classics and study. As viewed during its time, this sexy, almost like the 90s' pito-pitos, was obviously another Monteverde revenue project that will assure her profit goals for 1980.

Since Zafra's article, many followers expressed their own thoughts right after. Noel Vera tags it as a third-world Pedro Almodovar "only funnier and stranger." Lawyer-Critic Francis Cruz describes it as "a bizarre and absurd sexual romp where genre elements merge into a hodgepodge that is surprisingly effective and hilarious." As the years pass, this cinematic trash has been proving its greatness in its subtle themes, motifs and craft.

With the many reviewes and immediate reactions from new-young viewers, what seems to be lacking is a technical standpoint that will defend the film and director's ingenuity. Though it is understandable that Camp as a genre, is only meant to be enoyed and not studied thouroughly, there is still a need for defense to comprehend its innocent depth and hilarious bliss.

Susan Sontag, in her 1964 essay Notes on "Camp" will be the main resource for this analysis. Sontag's views on has drafted a clearer definition of this 18th century-old genre. Her views on this artform has more complex syntheses, and by analyzing Gosengfiao's greatest work from a campy, yet theoretical perspective, will be more appropriate, as the film has been regarded as the best example of camp in the history of Philipine Cinema.

II

Temptation Island has a mixture of the needed elements of Camp in films. Its clear exhibition of basic Camp elements from sheer theatricalization, outrageous sensiblity, to exaggeration, - integrated with a subtle revolutionary idea has made it to a genre so hard to achieve, that even Joel Lamangan still finds it hard to make one.

Theatricalization:

Gosengfiao viewed acting as a mere tool to exhibit creative aspects of his actors. Even as early as Katorse, the too timid Dina Bonnavie was made to splurge and cry hysterically in the middle of the street, too dusty you see some particles moving from her hair to her face. Who can forget Alma Moreno's hand-on-waist-while-standing-on-an-irrigation-stream with mud all over her upper body asking: "bakit ako mahihiya?" These too campy theatrical movements are evident in almost all the scenes in Temptation. Who would not raise an eyebrow when you see Dina (Bonnavie) throwing sticcomitatic lines to Alfredo (Alfie Anido) during a rough confrontation after the former learned that the latter slept with Suzanne (Jennifer Cortez). Apparently these lines would have been appropriate in a scene delicately prepared for such romantic quarrel. But finding the players in the middle a god-forsaken desert, with no food and water (that most of them just decided to dance instead) makes the theatrical effect more out of placed and out of

context.

Sontag's description of too dramatic representations of reality in Camp has been cleared extensively enought to delegate appropriate utilization of such in the genre. These playful exhibition of an artform (in this respect - acting) has been clearly manifested in almost every possible opportunities in Temptation. Despite the too obvious inappropriate setting and time for such dramtizations, the characters continually put their best foot forward in confronational, fashionistic, climatic and denoumatic scences. I cannot say that the performances were dry. I think that's the magic of the genre. But the surrealistic undertones mixed with a fantastical mood leaves the viewer laughing with both disbelief and acceptance.

III

Outrageous Sensibilities

Another point to regard on the film's plot is its regard on sexuality, gender and self-discovery. As early as the first few scenes, we see the characters establish their subplot that will eventually contribute to their developments as the story progresses. We see characters viewing themselves as winners in a chosen field...Azineth (Azineth Tobias) as a triumphant crook able to win a beauty contest for the prize money; Dina, a self-neglected-only-daughter who will prove her brothers that -yes - she can buy a car of her own once she wins the contest; Bambi (Bambi Arambulo) as an ex-runner-up from previous pageant aiming to get the throne this time, and; Suzanne a socialite with a maid (Deborah Sun) who's only goal is to win the pageant to prove to everyone that she's the rightful owner of the throne!

In the argument of sensibility, Gosengfiao did not dare dismissed the concept of affection, betrayal, and sex through  a candid twist of transposing this basic instinct to another realm made each intial goal look funny and pathetic. Even in a setting that will force human beings to focus on self-preservation, Gosengfiao geared these basic human emotions and linked it to the latter. Who would have thought that love and sex are also part of self-preservation, and that these emotional coping mechanismns can be good as food in a place of drought and death?  

Indeed, the Campiest part in terms of sensibility lies in a revolutionary tone when Joshua (Jonas Sebastian), the lone gay character, died amidsts straight people who fornicated to compensate the lack of food and water. Maria, despite the want of a partner, simply danced the whole night to compensate her need, and yes, she survived.

This sensible point proves that in a society filled with prejudice will eventually kill, or if not, eradicate, the unwanted - the unloved if not properly filled.

 

IV 

Exaggeration

Camp style has been evident in other forms of the genre. From the too elaborate Tiffany lamps to Visconti's direction of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, one requirement for this post-modern approach is inevitable concept of drama-dramahan.

One thing that is noticable are the unintended exaggerations in Temptation. Most critics would argue that some of the scenes were a bit messy in terms of line-flow and blocking, but I think that's simply the point! Under-blocks like Azineth's jumpy dance groves while sitting down and talking to Alfredo about being

 a crook (a damn good crooook) was unintentionally made unstable and unrealistic. But think again, don't most beauty queens move this way? What about the scene when Alfie rolled over a hill after Dina pushed him away? We see that the hill wasn't so inclined and that the character can simply stand up and sit to resist the fall. But the fall was obviously choreographed, you just can't avoid raising an eyebrow.

What I consider most hilarious, in terms of blocking is Azineth's orgasmic position on the beach. This too exaggerated pose could pass for a White Castle photograph in the 70s, but think again, wasn't the lighting and angles just too perfect enough? This unrealistic positionings were amiably accepted and unquestioned. But then again, you get the POINT, you get THEIR point!

Oscar Wilde wrote: "The more we study about art, the less we care about Nature." I think this only goes to show that Gosengfiao's infatuation with the cinema and art direction was greatly exhibited in this masterpiece. Much as we want to believe that the director intentionally made these ridiculous dances and poses, our subcounsious tells us that this was created with a clean motive. It whispers that everything was done in good faith, without the intention of making it look as bad as it was for higher taste.

In the process we accept Azineth's vanity poses and Bambi's girlish moods. We smile when we see Dina and Alfredo run along the deserted shorlines, shot in landscape and played via slow motion. We laugh when we see Maria (Deborah Sun) requests for more panty hoses for more fish, and relate when Suzanne worries that she might get sunburned.

In this respect, Camp succeeds here.  

V

Subltle Revolution

Now comes the most challeging area in the genre - revolution. When Gosengfiao encased four beauty queens, three men, a homosexual and a maid in an island without help from the outside world, what formula can you think of that may pull off a socio-political idea, thinking that you're making a sexy film?

Amidsts the many flaws and imperfection, we feel the subtle undertones of a socio-political struggle in Temptation. Among the stem-pillared huts and screaming temperatures, we are presented with Marx's social triangle. Each main character represented a social class that interacts between and among the other classes. This political perspective presented an unintentional microcosm prevalent in the universal society. However, a natural twist managed turn this traingle upside down towards the middle of the film to its end.

We see the triangle with the two Marxist classes: The Bourgeoisie (Suzanne, Joshua and Dina) and The Proletariat (Azineth, Maria, Bambi Ricardo and Umberto).

 

The members of the upper classes are stylish, manipulative and idle. Despite the natural demands of the island, they continue to live out their class, even added artificial expectations from the others. Dina, on one hand, managed to conform with the members of the other class. Her character eventually shifted from a bourgeoisie perspective to a laborer after realizing the need for manual labor to survive. Suzanne, on the other hand, consistently lived her class. Tagging along her maid, Maria, anywhere she goes, scolding her for each petty mistake and making her tell lies for her own motives.

The characters in the lower class were also members of the same class even before they came to the island. Umberto, a waiter is the most useful character for the others. His survival skills were extremely utilized. Ricardo, a male-prostitute, made use of his strategic surviving skills - though some of his thoughts were a bit off and hilarious. Azineth the crook, gave the other girls the nerve to use common sense and style to survive each scorching-starve-filled day.

As the plot progresses, we notice the shift of focus from the upper class to the lower class. Joshua the socialite died and eventually got eaten by the group. Suzanne eventually gave up her bitchy tactics to manipulate others and eventually gave in to help the others to find food. Moreso, Maria's payoff scene where she went on top her lying and helpless Senorita demanding respect and equality is the final compensatory climax for this revoulutionary idea.

In the interim, the lower class eventually became the leaders in the island. This revolutionary concept gave way to

the film, in consideration of a post-modern genre, will have to take time to ripe and conform to the development of taste. Viewing it from the 21st century perspective, will allow the young new viewers to see new dimensions in the film that has been disregarded in the 80s. Further, as Camp is relatively hard to achieve, Gosengfiao, was able to create a timeless example of a film that can represent such.

 

 

 What shout do you hear on the streets of Malate on a late afternoon in December? What else? Diversity and Freedom!

This year's Pride March tagged Project Equality as their goal for next year. Aiming a higher level of acceptance from the society, the different social groups participating in this year's event joined together in shouting feats for love and diversity!

Though this year's event may not be as fun and organized as the previous marches in the past years, this was still a venue for a reunion of the many gay and lesbian groups who have been shouting in the street and fighting againsts discrimination and prejudice.

 

 

Let's start off with the juices, queens and queers! See the Raging Divas in the jeepney-carried float.

 

One Fairy Queen shwishing her hair in front of rallying Christian Fundamentalists shouting Bible passages to Pride participants.

 

 

 

The streets packed with duchesses in their own costumes and styles.

 

The upcoming divas with their men on a float. Too bad their masks covered most of their features!

 

Dancing queers on masks...

 

Rallying men and womyn crying equality this year! What a shout!

And most of all, two hearts shouting freedom, equal rights, acceptance and diversity!

 

Long live Pride!!!

Got a copy of Stephanie Meyer's 1st installment in her Twilight series. A continuing saga about a vampire and mortal in a more contemporary setting has been raved not just by some critics but by fans worldwide. I do not know if this is

worth the try but the movie version and the unbelievable out-of-stockings in Powerbooks and Fully Booked led me to develop the interest to give it a bite.

Let's see where this will lead me. I'll tell you more about it after the swallowing...