criticism

In the 21st Century, the Philippines will have attained the status of a Newly Industrialized Country (NIC), or so hope Government’s economic planners. Such status entails certain costs, for it fast-tracks economic development to win membership in the elite club of capitalist economies for our country, which to date remains enshrouded in the cultural heritage of semi-feudalism and semi-colonialism. There is danger, however, that in the rush to NIChood, the country might be shedding its cultural identity, perceiving this as disposable cultural baggage to be exchanged for material prosperity. In a country that has suffered all kinds of setback in its quest for economic self-sufficiency since the 1960s, the temptation to barter soul for bread is very real.

The urgency of identifying sources of tradition for contemporary Filipino artists must, therefore, be addressed by government before the new century dawns upon the Republic. The task of identifying sources of tradition ought to begin with confronting the problem of the Filipino artist’s alienation from the indigenous soil in which his art should sink roots. The alienation was the consequence of two successive colonial regimes that forced the artist into a historical framework that allowed him to grow away from the traditional culture of his forbears. It might be asserted that the concept of “art” that Filipinos assimilated through formal education was introduced during the Spanish colonial period, and this was elaborated upon by the educational system under American colonial rule. The language in which the rudiments of art and its evaluation were conveyed to young Filipinos was, of course, the language of colonial masters. It is significant to note the medium of instruction because the culture behind the language carried assumptions and valuations of Europeans and Americans, instilling in the minds of young Filipinos who were in time going to be creative artists producing their own art works, norms established by the practice, within their respective cultures, of Western artists.

There was art-making in the Philippines when Western colonial art came. This much we can glean from the accounts on the life-ways of the people by early missionary chroniclers. It was art-making bound up with the life of the community, in songs sung while rowing out to sea to fish, in pots in which food and drink were kept where cooking and eating in the house took place, in poetry that accompanied religious rituals and commemorations. The people did not see these items as art, and neither could the colonial masters whose concept of art did not extend to such forms of expression by a populace considered to be uncivilized. Art was understood by the Europeans who made the Philippines a colony of Spain in 1565 as the expression of a mercantilist society where, in the words of Arnold Hauser, the “beautiful” was seen as “the logical conformity of the individual parts to a whole, the arithmetically definable harmony of the relationships and the calculable rhythm of a composition, the exclusion of discords in the relation of the figures to the space they occupy and in the mutual relationships of the various parts of the space itself.”

The rationality of the art of Renaissance Europe attests to the sophisticated socio-political development of the society from which the Legazpi expedition came. Thus in addition to superior arms, the Spanish colonizers could wield the culture of an advanced society to effect the subjugation of a people still in the communal stage of economic development. Late in the 16th century, with the policy of resettling natives in towns established by the missionaries, the process of colonial acculturation of the early Filipinos began in earnest. Farmers and fisherfolk living in widely scattered communities were persuaded and coerced into living near and around the church so that, ostensibly, the priests could watch over the spiritual life of their converts. Christianization meant colonization, with the natives who converted to Christianity moving into towns where consequently they lived as subjects of the King of Spain, or as the documents of the colonial administration were in the habit of putting it, in “the service of both majesties” (the majesty of the king and the majesty of God). It might be said that the Filipinos’ internalization of the artistic norms of the colonizing power began at this historical juncture when relocation from the isolation of rural communities initiated the urbanization/colonization/hispanization of the brutos salvajes.

In a society that, close to the beginning of the 21st century, has yet to eradicate the remaining vestiges of its feudal and colonial past, the necessary task of formulating aesthetic norms markedly “Filipino” has to consider factors other than artistic if it is to achieve its objective. When we speak of “Filipino” norms, we are talking about criteria that will allow audiences in the Philippines to appreciate and validate all artistic expression even as these are now marginalized by Western standards. In view of the 400 years of Spanish colonialism, 40 years of U.S. domination and 50 years as a U.S. neo-colony controlled through the IMF and the World Bank, undoing the distortions and perversions visited by foreign rule on the culture of the Filipinos is not an easy task.

The student of the arts has to look beyond plain artistic production. It is imperative that one investigate the society in which artistic production takes place, noting how social, political and economic forces contend for hegemony within that society. The student ought to take into account the multifarious factors that influence the production of any art work, because he needs an all-around understanding of what the Filipino artist wants when he undertakes creative work and what the Filipino audiences expect from a given work of art. Admittedly, the project of discovering the motivations that attend the creation and the reception of art will require assistance from other experts. Fortunately, in the Philippine academe, interdisciplinary research and teaching have begun to make things easier for the student engaged in the search for “Filipino” norms.

With every passing year, the problem of norms becomes doubly problematic. The flood of media products coming from the West foretells a time when art-making by Filipinos will have been subsumed by the internationalized popular culture made available daily by video and cable television. By then, art and culture distinctively Filipino will have ceased to be a concern. Future artists and critics will have become a generation that never knew a past when national cultural parameters mattered. Those parameters represented values and institutions giving the art of a people an identity, and identity which made art part of their day-to-day existence. When the art and culture of a people have gone global not by choice but by default, “national identity” can only be regarded as so much baggage better discarded so that society may be propelled forward to industrialized status.

The temptation to give up the search for indigenous norms is abetted by the impulse toward NIChood, which is supposed to happen once the country is able to accelerate economic growth. In a newly industrialized country, the vulnerable artist might find it advantageous to simply succumb to the expediency of blindly conforming to established norms, “international standards” as purveyed by global media from the West. The temptation to surrender ought to be resisted. Globalization itself is the very reason for any country aspiring to industrialize to find a native soil in which to root.

Globalization; it seems to me, rests on the premise that competition operates on many levels among a given grouping of countries. “Going global” means sharpening a country’s competitive edge in dealing with other countries. Art and culture is a critical area in which a small country like the Philippines can chalk up points vis-à-vis a powerful economy, endowing it with dignity in its relations with other countries.

Film and the Search for Norms

It was film that first gave Filipino artists access to an international mass audience. Manuel Conde (1915-1985) attracted some attention in the 1952 Venice Film Festival with Genghis Khan (1950). United Artists, an international distributing company, took note of the commercial potential of the “international subject matter of the film and bought it for worldwide distribution. Other film artists in subsequent years would also find recognition outside the Philippines: feature film directors Gerardo de Leon (1913-1981), Eddie Romero (1924- ), Lino Brocka (1939-1991), Ishmael Bernal (1938-1996) and Mike de Leon (1947- ); and short film directors Kidlat Tahimik (1924- ), Nick Deocampo (1959- ), and Raymond Red (1965- ).

As an art form, film can cross cultures with very little of its meaning and implications being lost. It is mainly a visual medium, and problems with the language of the production could be easily solved with the technology of dubbing or subtitling. Film, then, is the characteristic art form of the globalizing community of nations today. Studying it in relation to our search for “Filipino” norms could prove to be instructive.

But film is also a commercial product requiring the use of expensive technology. And this has been the problem of artists who have had to join the film industry in order to be able to practice their craft. The investors in film products want their capital to generate profits, and filmmakers therefore have had to respond to market forces, and in the process compelled to step outside of their culture so that their films would be better able to compete, on Philippine soil at that, with foreign imports.

Is it necessary for films to wear the label “Filipino?” Shouldn’t they be exempt from “nationalist” measurements? After all, they are artistic products that would be better able to compete in the global market when they are not culture-bound.

I would like to note, however, that in 1975, director Eddie Romero, after an absence of almost two decades from the industry during which he was producing and directing American “B” pictures in Hollywood, decided to return to the Philippine film industry. Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon? (This Was How We Lived in Our Time, How Do You Live Now?), 1975, took its subject matter from Philippine history, aggressively asserting the native tradition that gave the film its narrative about a young man who was witness to the emergence of the Filipino nation during the 1896 Revolution and the Filipino-American War at the turn of the century. This film won Romero critical acclaim and immediately placed him in the forefront of filmmaking in the Philippines. His example would seem to demonstrate that a film artist needs to connect with his people’s culture so that he would feel psychologically and emotionally compensated for the exercise of skill in his chosen craft. It is for this reason that a film like Ganito Kami Noon would require to be evaluated not only according to universal standards of filmmaking, but above all also according to its relevance to the culture from which it drew its material.

In recent years, the Filipino film industry has been feeling threatened by the improving box-office performance of Hollywood movies in Philippine theaters. Where before, local films invariably outgrossed foreign films at the box-office, the products of the native industry have now begun to suffer from competition with the glossy, big-budget American action films. For Filipino films, with their comparatively minuscule budgets, to compete with imported productions like Jurrasic Park or Mission: Impossible is definitely out of the question. What is increasingly becoming clear is that Filipino filmmakers will have to capitalize on resources that mega-budgeted Hollywood productions cannot offer. This could be the cultural traditions that the international audience, or a specific, limited segment of that audience, might be enticed to ponder and be enriched thereby.

What the Filipinos have is a culture that is both familiar and strange to Westerners. The Filipino has a Western face colonizers had given him, but he also has his Asian face that identifies with him a history and geography that the Westerners are not quite familiar with. The identity of the Filipino lies precisely in his integration of those two faces and this makes his culture a complex of elements whose riches the filmmaker can mine for maximum international appeal. When the earnest and the honest filmmaker undertakes to render his culture comprehensible to foreign audiences without, or with a minimum of, showbiz exploitativeness, he will be creating works of art that are distinctively personal and Filipino as well.

Sources of Traditions

An overview of the cultural history of the Filipino people would take into consideration characteristics that have more or less consistently manifested themselves in the totality of the artistic production of Filipinos since the 16th century. In this regard, it is irrelevant whether the source noted has been documented as of foreign derivation. What matters is that the source points to resources that have enriched artistic work not only in one particular historical period but in other periods as well. Such a phenomenon may be interpreted to mean that the source has been indigenized over time by historical action and by the practice of generations of creative artists.

There are four sources of tradition which we can identify: (1) the ethnic culture of tribal Filipinos, to establish the Asian base upon which two colonial cultures built institutions and traditions; (2) the history of the people, specifically their struggle to assert their traditions and project their identity vis-à-vis the culture of the colonizers; (3) the Christian religious culture that has grown out of the Roman Catholic faith as this has been instilled in early Filipino converts and innovated upon by subsequent generations of the faithful; and (4) international, Western popular culture reaching Filipinos through electronic media and commercial products promoted by Western capitalism.

1. By the term “ethnic,” one designates that contemporary culture among non-Christian Filipinos found in Mindanao in the South and in isolated upland communities in the various island that compose the Philippine archipelago. Anthropologists and ethnographers have described this culture as bearing traces of precolonial belief-systems and institutions of the peoples the first Europeans encountered in 1521 and in subsequent years. That culture, as diverse as the distinct communities that lived by it, was able to survive colonial impositions among Filipinos who moved to the hinterlands to be able to escape the tradition-wrecking intrusions of colonizers and to preserve the values and lifeways of their ancestors.

Needless to say, it is to ethnic societies that creative artists would turn when they want to imagine a “pure” people that could be portrayed to contrast with Westernized Filipinos who have been “corrupted” by materialist greed and commercializing urbanization. The major Filipino filmmakers have all tried their hand at molding ethnic culture into a vehicle for the examination of contemporary Philippine society. Manuel Conde, between 1947 and 1963, reworked the legend of the mischievous folk hero Juan Tamad (Lazy John) in a series of films by which he satirized contemporary political leaders and social institutions. Gerardo de Leon, in two major works, namely, Ifugao (1954) and Banawe (1975), set his narratives in the culture of two distinct mountain communities in Northern Philippines to arrive at filmic statements about the strengths and vulnerabilities of the Filipino as he interacts with outside cultures. Lamberto V. Avellana (1915-1991) made a film about the first Filipino who resisted foreign invaders (Lapu-lapu, 1955) and, about hostilities aroused by cultural differences (Badjao, 1957). He also drew up an allegory for present-day Filipinos and their aspirations for freedom using an imaginary ethnic community in precolonial times (Wayawaya, 1981).

Many times, ethnic culture has been used by exploitative producers who capitalized on the semi-nudity allowed by the costumes of ethnic people to appeal to the lurid among audiences. When used with respect for their culture, however, stories about ethnic Filipinos endow a film with an unmistakable “indigenous” identity. In such instances, “Filipino” content lifts a filmmaker’s work above the usual commercial movies based on the lives and usually Westernized concerns of lowland, Christian Filipinos.

2. Philippine history, particularly in the final years of the 19th century, has enjoyed the highest prestige as subject matter for films, the reason being that the 1896 Revolution marked the beginning of national consciousness among the colonized people in Spain’s Oriental possession. The formation of the revolutionary society Katipunan was attended by much drama and suspense. Even among filmmakers interested only in the spectacular possibilities of the clash of arms between the revolutionaries and the military forces of the colonial administration, the historical moment was attractive subject matter.

Some of the most prestigious Philippine films since the industry began were based on historical figures or events. The most popular hero insofar as filmmakers were concerned was Jose P. Rizal, the national hero who was killed by the Spanish colonial administration as the instigator of the Revolution (La Vida de Jose Rizal, 1912; Dimasalang, 1930; Buhay at Pag-ibig ni Dr. Jose Rizal, 1956). Other historical figures found their respective niches of fame in films with titles that carry the names of the personage being featured: Tandang Sora, 1947; Padre Burgos, 1949; Heneral Gregorio del Pilar, 1949; Diego Silang, 1951; and Dagohoy, 1953.

Other historical films use history as background for a narrative featuring fictional characters. The film versions of Rizal’s two novels Noli Me Tangere, 1961, and El Filibusterismo, 1962, are the best-known and best-loved examples. Characters in such historical films dramatize the aspirations for freedom of the Filipino people, remind audiences of acts of valor and sacrifice of individuals not enshrined as heroes by history books but contributing nevertheless to the effort to put an end to foreign oppression.

The socio-political dimension in a well-conceived filmic rendition of historical events and personalities gives a Filipino film substance and significance, in contrast to plain entertainment that the standard commercial products of the industry purveys. The industry, however, is specially dubious about film projects based on history, having seen many costly productions of historical films failing at the box-office in the previous decades. Perhaps, more recently Filipino audiences have stayed away from historical movies for fear of being bored, and have turned to action movies that answer their craving for quick gratification. Fortunately, a well-made and insightful film on Philippine history might be better able to find an audience in the international market where a segment corresponding to sophisticated film lovers could give it the patronage it cannot find at home. This is an irony that culture-based films always have to face up to: no matter how worthwhile an artistic work in film may be, the popular audience that spells success at the box-office clamors for entertainment every time. The challenge to filmmakers is to make history not only relevant to the popular audience but, above all, to make the past exciting and meaningful to the present.

3. The majority religion in the Philippines is Roman Catholicism, and by virtue of its history that stretches as far back as 1521, it has been perhaps the most influential social institution in the forging of what is now accepted as Filipino culture. The history of the arts in the Philippines—literature, visual arts, music, dance, theater and, of course, architecture—cannot be narrated with some degree of comprehensiveness and depth without in any way referring to the influence of the Church on the genres, themes and symbology employed by artists.

By “Christian religion” is meant the religion introduced by the Spanish missionaries in the 16th century, including the various versions of the faith in cults and movements that were to develop later outside of the institutional church. If one were to extract “philosophy” from the array of works that our history has so far bequeathed to the present, doubtless he/she will be working back to the teaching and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, its dogmas, traditions and rites, as these have changed throughout the centuries. The project then will unfold a canvas of themes and motifs that has been raided time and again by artists trying to find their roots in the culture of their people.

The pasyon or the printed text of the narrative poem chanted in practically all corners of the Philippines during the period of Lent, has provided, since the first version of the Passion story was rendered in verse by Gaspar Aquino de Belen in 1704, Philippine theater and literature with a cast of religious figures that have come to represent every manner of reaction to the religion the Spaniards introduced into this country. Christ has been seen as exemplar of self-sacrifice, savior, harbinger of colonial mentality, subversive and reformist. Mary, the mother of Jesus, has been interpreted as the perfect mother, the self-effacing mother of a crowd-drawing super-preacher, the unquestioning, obedient woman in a patriarchal society. Judas is the traitor, uncouth and coarse even at formal gatherings, the gleeful betrayer and the remorseful but despairing sinner. And Mary Magdalene is the sinner every sinning Filipino should imitate because repentance for her means reconciliation following forgiveness.

The character types that the pasyon introduced to believing Filipinos are the traditional figures most Filipino artists turn to when they have to construct a symbology that would express their way of looking at the world. It is immaterial whether the artist is consciously drawing from the pasyon or not, for the culture has so internalized the world outlook of Christianity as the pasyon has laid it down for Catholic Filipinos, that the artist can only think and act as the Christians around him think and act.

There was a time in the past when film producers prepared their production line-up according to the festival seasons in the Philippines. Maytime was for musicals and comedies, with grand productions usually described by publicity blurbs as “extravaganzas” for the Christmas season. Lent was for melodramas and “inspiring” religious films. Such production planning gave moviegoers films like Kalbaryo ni Hesus (The Calvary of Jesus), 1952; Ang Pagsilang ng Mesiyas (The Birth of the Messiah), 1952; Santa Rita de Cassia (Saint Rita of Cassia), 1958; and Santa Lucia (Saint Lucy), 1956. Obviously, these were religious films intended to cash in on the spirit of Lent which calls for prayer and sacrifice. In the same spirit were films that picked up sensational accounts of “miracles” and took advantage of the readiness of the faithful to believe in stories about characters whose predicaments are solved by a suspension of physical laws through the agency of a saint or the Mother of Jesus herself.

Occasionally, films not directly concerned with religion may find that the religious experience opens up issues and problems rich with dramatic possibilities. One example is Mike de Leon’s story about a magazine photographer who visits his hometown during the Holy Week. The young man meets a girl haunted by a dead sister and he is led to discover that his invalid father was responsible for the death of a young woman preparing to be a nun. The film is cryptically titled Itim (Black), 1976, and it is about darkness and blindness and sin in a small town steeped in feudal religious attitudes and practices. Himala (Miracle), 1982, is Ishmael Bernal’s deconstruction of a “miracle” story in a forsaken village in the countryside where a young woman claims to have seen the Blessed Virgin. The film takes a close look at the principal figures surrounding the “miracle” and uncovers a web of noble and ignoble motives of people within the village and outsiders who used the “miracle” girl for their own selfish ends.

The Christian religion so permeates the culture of Filipinos that any work of art that explores its ramifications in Philippine society cannot but touch on history and ethnic culture. The merger of the primitive, pagan cultural base and the contemporary mix of the feaudal and the colonial is a phenomenon that continues to be observed in Third World countries like the Philippines. Under the analytical gaze of a first-rate artist, it allows a sympathetic audience insights into a culture that is both familiar and strange. Lino Brocka does that to us in his depiction of the political use to which a religious cult was put by the military in its anti-insurgency campaign in the Philippine countryside when the Philippines was in transition from the dictatorship under Marcos to the regime of “democratic restoration” under Corazon Aquino. Orapronobis (Fight for Us), 1989, is about political change in the Philippines after 1986, but it is also about the use of religion to mobilize ignorant peasants against political activists who are perceived to be subversive of the new dispensation. “Orapronobis” refers to a religious cult whose beliefs about God and society are distorted by a leader’s fanatical faith and subservience to the fascist dictates of the military. Shown in the Cannes Film Festival, the film received praise from the foreign audience who saw it, but it was effectively kept out of Philippine theaters by a censors’ body that declared it too sensitive for Filipino viewers.

4. Why include “international, Western popular culture” in an exposition on the sources of tradition for contemporary Filipino artists? Because, like it or not, we have to recognize the unremitting impact of Western popular culture that, through video, television and film, regularly flood the consciousness of the present and future generations of young artists. Artistic creation in the Philippines is being shaped by the images that leap out of the screen and lodge in some corner of our consciousness until summoned by a related experience that needs expressing. Forms made specially for movie or TV screens offer themselves to young people who might have no use for them just now but would avail of them in some future time. Without their being aware of it at present, a tradition is taking shape, ready for use by artists who do not have to will their availment of the resources when the need arises. Such is the way the tradition of Western popular culture grows and works on the consciousness of its audience.

Rock, rap and MTV are the most pervasive forms that the electronic media offer. Potential artists in urban centers of the country are most exposed to the culture of our Westernized media, so it is not inconceivable that in the future these forms will appear in our arts in the Filipino re-inventions. Already, we have witnessed the appearance of rock music as vehicle for the protest against nuclear testing and stockpiling in the musicals Nukleyar I (1983) and Nukleyar II (1985) by Joey Ayala and Al Santos. Poetry reading by young poets from the University of Santo Tomas have featured rap renditions of original poems in Filipino. Young poet Carmelo V. M. Nadera arranges his images on the printed page as though they have been placed there at random and as though their patterning in the consciousness of the reader were dictated by the simultaneity of images in an MTV presentation. Although at present, the tradition represented by international Western popular culture and would seem to be demonstrating only forms that young artists can use, this is all very deceptive. Because of course, rock, rap and MTV are not value-free as forms. They represent urban culture of a highly industrialized society going through the convulsions of an acute economic dislocation, whose symptoms are the unleashing of repressed violence, the drug-induced jubilation of a momentarily liberated user, the joyless head-banging of youths lost amid ear-splitting sounds. The task of monitoring the impact of this tradition ought to assure us that the forms being made accessible to our artists will in time be indigenized and made to work for the enrichment and articulation of native aspirations and concerns.

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