While I wrote the blog entry not as an academic text but as a casual playing around of ideas after watching a film (and I am not a rabid consumer of film or TV and such), I will nevertheless try to answer some points raised by John who I believe were intended as “scatterings” from his upcoming career as a film critic.

John says that British and Philippine cinema cannot be compared because their traditions are not the same. However, in his succeeding explanations he shows that different traditions can be compared, indeed where there are differences (just as where there are similarities), comparisons can be made insofar as the abstractions are kept at an even level.

If John can answer the question I asked above then I suppose he would have an idea of how I see “art” vis-a-vis his Godardesque statement about art-politics. While in India, I met two artists from Afghanishtan who expressed how irritated they were at people who insisted that their art was political. In the universe of Afghanistan, there are people who want to make that distinction even if Godard (or god knows who else in the pantheon of western culture) says otherwise.

John says “To see a character only wrapped about in himself and not in participation to the world around him is extremely limited, if not unimaginative.” I may have to disagree with his notion of imagination. Part of the ritual of art is its ability for detachment and simulation.

And this is where the difference between symbol and ritual lies, and where art has the power to discern where symbols and representations deceives us, the power to discern and survive in a world driven into confusion. What symbols and representations enable you to work your best for what you call a glorious US army which Iran now intends to declare as a terrorist organization together with the CIA? isn’t the US army a terrorist organization terrorizing the Philippines, especially Mindanao? How do you survive internally, emotionally, intellectually, towards the balancing of these conflicts?

So if you will look more carefully at the film “Maynila” - with a more discerning mind rather than an accepting eye to promotionals such as “possibly one of the greatest films ever made” (or such things as “the critiques that Visconti in “Bellisima” and Pasolini in “Mamma Roma” gave of the movement” as you mention), then you will begin to imagine for yourself the relationship (and the conflicts) between Lino Brocka and Edgardo M. Reyes, and the Marcos regime.

Like I said in the latter part of my blog entry, could the film (and others like it of the period) have contemplated a Philippine contribution to real social transformation SANS continuity?

- True that British cinema and literature adhere to humanism in the truest sense. But a comparison cannot be made between that and Filipino cinema because the traditions are not the same. If comparison is to be made, it should be between Philippine cinema and Brazilian, Cuban, Mexican, Hong Kong, Senegalese, Indian, and Egyptian cinemas, where the same use of stereotypes occurs. The art isn’t in merely utilizing stereotypes, but in applying stereotypes to contemporary contexts and making contemporary issues resonate historically through the invocation of tradition and habits that give shape to stereotypes. You might be able to meet more new people in British cinema, but the politics of Third World/Third Cinema aesthetics allow for that group of people to have a collective identity. If art does indeed mirror real life, Filipinos must still be in the process of restructuring identity after 400 years of colonialism, while British people are wallowing in the contradiction of creating individuals and also making them “universal.”

- global community may be for a symptom of mental lethargy, but that could only be so if one takes symbols and their meanings at face value. Again, the proper way of engaging symbols is in their active deconstruction and application by/to contemporary life. A stereotypical character could only be “weak” if s/he also stays within her/his stereotypical context. Besides, one could also say that sketching a “complex” character devoid of any connection to a context (social, political, cultural) is in itself also a symptom of mental lethargy. To see a character only wrapped about in himself and not in participation to the world around him is extremely limited, if not unimaginative.

- To call Filipino cinema one motivated by opposition and Italian neorealism one motivated by art is not only delusional but ignorant. Saying Italian neorealism “is all about art” threatens to undermine the critiques that Visconti in “Bellisima” and Pasolini in “Mamma Roma” gave of the movement. Mainly, that Italian neorealism serves not merely to make art, but to give the Italian people an image of themselves that they would conceivable buy and consume. It was about art, but it was also about making movies that would sell. (And in fact, a tear-jerker like “Bicycle Thieves,” good as it is, was a blockbuster because it was a tear-jerker that fed the Italians what they wanted to think of themselves.) Also, that statement also puts an imaginary and false distinction between politics and art. Art is determined by politics and vice versa. (What did Godard say: It’s not about making political films, but making films politically.) Yes Italian neorealism was concerned with art, but it was also motivated by the Italian urge to define a national identity after the ravages of fascism and war. “Roma Open City” didn’t just present a new way of making movies, but most importantly a coherent image of an Italian nation.

- your panday-babaylan-datu analogy is too limited by this idea of change as a transformation from reaction to inaction, from direct opposition to official/universal/metaphysical transformation. It’s a little too Third World bourgeois: get the lower ranks to do the action and the upper ranks to do the thinking. That kind of thinking without fail always devolves into normalization and codification through misinterpretation by the top, misinterpretation simply because the top is almost always disconnected with the bottom. Especially in a society where “evolution” necessarily means the rejection by the bourgeois/principalia/datu/babaylan of the reactionary/panday—not just of her reactive works, but also of her very being—why would the bottom ever want to “evolve”? Simply put, “evolution” in a neocolonial society simply means adoption and valorization of Western culture. In the process of making a “stable society,” the Third World intellectual simply destroys it.

It’s a good thing you are able to take Trevor to see our Tagalog films. Ishmael Bernal’s and Lino Brocka’s movies are really institutions already, and one should not go through life not seeing it. There are many very good Tagalog movies now, some of which are already subtitled, geared for international release and have actually won awards here and there. Have you seen “Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros” and “Kubrador?” I haven’t seen the latter, but the “Ang Pagdadalaga…” was very well-made. Very depictive of the ordinary Filipino’s lifestyle, bakla man o kubrador ng [anak ng] huweteng.

I hope Trevor and you get to see those two, at least, and as many such tastefully done Filipino films as you possibly can.

Kudos for the well-organized and heavily populated blog site! Hope to see you and Trevor again soon!

- becky