*to Juni, who lent me dvds of gayness, after he talked about his clothing designs and love affairs, the first time I met him one evening in Quezon Ave.
Issues of gender are difficult to evade because along with social class, education, religion, nationality (among others), gender is part of one’s subject position-or the totality of a person that defines human relations in a society.
Even in the simple pastime of watching films, it is doubly difficult to ignore the most complicated questions on gender especially if those movies have pronounced claims on homo/heterosexuality.
I
n My Life, for instance,problematizes power relations among Filipino gay couples. Now that both phallus are together, who will man the ship? All gays are not created equal.
In this film, John Lloyd’s character is stereotypically feminine. He talks a lot, cries a lot, feels a lot, while Luis Manzano has I can’t talk to you right now because I have work to do kind of character.
Gender theorists may not like the perpetuation of the binaries male-female, weak-strong, rational-emotional, but this only goes to show that many relationships are founded exactly on these oppressive dichotomies. And they like it that way. (Just like in Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet which is also set in America and which also touches on issues of getting a green card, on “coming out” to parents whose expectations are as high the Empire Building).
That the film’s setting is in New York is a telling sign that there is a desire to flee the poor country full ofstraight values (which they carried abroad as evident in their “kissing scene” which has no kissing at all), to head to the Big Apple known for its cultural diversity. Or is it another macho symbol?
Isn’t America the proudest phallic symbol of the world?
Compare this to the celebrated 90s American gay film set in New York: Trick is a happy story about two gays meeting in a subway, they fall for each other quickly (New York time!) and went to look for a place for the night, but every corner they go, disturbance. But it ends happily.
Back in the Philippines, many gays are repressed and oppressed, and this might explain why our gay films rarely have a happy ending.
When I watched Lihim ni Antonio I was horrified.
And that’s not because it’s a gay film.
There were scenes honest enough to zoom in to a close up and extreme close up of boys’ masturbation and coming of age identity crisis, of m2m sex from behind and the sick consequences of Filipino diaspora.
In “Lihim” Marikina’s river, old houses, parks, and computer shops serve as the setting for the development of a plot that peacefully starts with Tom (antonio) realizing that he’s gay.
The everyday life (la vie quotidienne in cultural studies) powerfully exposes gender ideologies: coming to the city is a move of Tom’s uncle to so-called progress (while the mother tearfully returns to the province); a side glance of a boy to a man and vice versa in a dining table with the entire family is suggestive of crushing social norms and redefining gender roles; female masturbation is freaky, male–spectacular.
Tom’s secrets started to spill when he finally had the guts to touch his uncle who shares bed with him. Like a redundant phrase, his macho-shit Tito Johnbert had a well sculpted bod as his capital for hooking up with men in dingy bars (another secret in the film).After being teased into the world of sexual fantasy in a room lit by Christmas lights, Tom rides his bike mile after extra mile with his buddy Mike to explore the nature of homosexuality in a most innocent, yet heart-to-heart, guy talk.
Then came revelations. Lying and self-deception, lust and lost love, and a most heart-wrenching betrayal of trust all clashed into a single rape scene of a 15-year-old homo.
I was holding my other friend’s hand while Tom screams to death “Tito John! Wag po! Masaket! Masakit dyan! Tito Jooohn!” up to the scenes when Tom’s depressed mother enters and stabs the rapist multiple times.
We left the cinema with a heavy heart. Unlike when I watched Love of Siam.
This is a Thai love story between two teenagers, childhood friends Mew and Tong, who struggle against loneliness in their fragmented families and homophobic society.
While Mew lost his grandmother (his only family) who makes up for the absence of his parents, Tong lost his ate who is very much close to him to his family’s pathetic despair.
Separation is one subject of the film, and its theme is somewhere around the thought that in the face of death (of people, of romantic relationships, of family values) one finds herself alone in a universe of lonely people who can only get the strongest affirmation from the self. 
but hey, this is a positive note on the freedom of the self to go against the current of socially repressive values
Such joys of solitude of finding peace in spite of surrounding chaos can be felt in Mew’s music whenever he composes songs for his highschool group, the August Band. 
This is the time when viewers, gay or straight, fall in love. It reminds you for instance of your crushes and first loves, of cute infatuation and kilig im-gonna-see-him-again moments, of me-against-the-world romance and we-against-ourselves goodbye.
Love of Siam draws its emotionality from fragmentation. When Tong reveals his disturbed thoughts on his confused identity, he cries. He believes people around him are disturbed as well. 
Characters, when shattered into pieces by inevitable evils in the society, get lost. 
And in the process of hurting, they bleed.
But music heals the soul.
Later on, the characters, one by one, collect the pieces of their broken selves.
But not all coming out happens when the gay is young. Some take a while. A long while.
No comments:
Post a Comment