Film, Representation & National Treasures

My feminist friends have lamented that not enough mileage in media have been accorded the passing of beauty queen turned activist Maita Gomez, who recently died at the age of 65. Maita was a 1967 Miss Philippines beauty queen & top couturier Pitoy Moreno model with shows in America & Europe. Amidst these glitz & glamour, Maita chose to go underground with the National People’s Army (NPA). When she emerged from the underground movement, she went back to school to get a master’s degree at the University of the Philippines. Maita Gomez is very well known by my generation & by the activists & in politics, too, as Maita ran in elections. Maita, who founded the political party KAIBA, ran for Senator in 1987 under the Partido ng Bayan but lost. Maita ran again for Congress in 1995 in Manila’s 5th district but lost. She was active in the NGO movement and as well devoted her time teaching Economics & was co-chair of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, a political coalition.

   I so recall the time in the 70s, that I, as one of her fans, would ogle at Maita Gomez in micro mini skirt in magazines then in later decades, found myself sitting beside her in a women’s human rights meeting. The “metamorphosis of a paradox” that is Maita Gomez happens once in every while. The challenge is how to replicate and make more Maitas. The challenge is for academia & for our big society to promote social consciousness among our bratty beautiful children. Not that we are promoting that our children go underground, (even as I have great respect for those who do) but that most of us agree that the ills of our society are caused by the greed of the guardians of our institutions. 

DOLPHY 

In the same breath as national treasures, let me say a few words about the late Dolphy, our actor in comedy films & television & his art. Professor Nick Tiongson’s remarks about Dolphy’s portrayal of gay roles in cinema in connection with the National Artist award process by the National Commission of the Culture & the Arts ( NCCA) & the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) have been published even as Tiongson thinks that these were part of confidential proceedings. Professor Tiongson, who has said that he is just one member of the award process body, reportedly remarked, & I quote, “I believed that the two icons he created for film & TV – the screaming gay & the happy - go – lucky poor man – have, in the majority of his movies, equated gayness with abnormality and mindless frivolity on the one hand, and romanticized or deodorized poverty on the other.” 

 Also, revealing is the rejoinder of film maker Peque Gallaga on what he calls, among others, as about the Pinoy zeitgeist as written by Angela Santiago, & I quote, “Dolphy was playing an elaborate game of mirrors. Most of his audiences were aware that he had one of the biggest dicks in the industry & that he was a 100 % “tunay na lalake” in the kanto scale of machoness – so his doing gays (that were usually quite understanding & quite truthful, meaning they didn’t resort to huge stereotypical mugging) was in a way the more subversive road towards acceptance by Pinoy society at large, without preaching, sermonizing, or the expected Brocka political agenda movie.”  

My own take is that television sitcoms or film is at once about the real & representation. Cinema is a site for play, escapism, fantasy, flight & imagination. The danger of representation is that any text, any portrayal, any film can be trivialized or oversimplified. And most of all, political correctness is learned and yes, promoted. Many years ago, for instance, feminism did not have a name. Today, feminists are serious about how women are represented in films. While the film maker or the actors are the authors, films are also interactively interpreted & authored by many spectators, including me. In this way, all of us have a space in art. My kind of art or portrayal of popular culture is at once mind liberating & entertaining. So, as to the national artist award, let us not hurry but trust the process & that the outcome will hopefully be validated by popular sentiments for how we are now as ancestors of tomorrow.