Celebration: An Anthology to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop Sands and Coral, 2011-2013
Silliman University, 2013
BBC Culture polled 253 film critics from 52 countries to determine the funniest films ever made. Below are the films that made the Top 100 cut [listed from No. 100 to No. 1]. These are the ones I've seen thus far: 101 out of 101. It took a few days to finish them all, but I'm done!
☑ The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese, 1982) [tie]
☑ The Ladies Man (Jerry Lewis, 1961) [tie]
☑ The Jerk (Carl Reiner, 1979)
☑ The Hangover (Todd Phillips, 2009)
☑ The Music Box (James Parrott, 1932)
☑ Born Yesterday (George Cukor, 1950)
☑ Ghostbusters (Ivan Reitman, 1984)
☑ Rushmore (Wes Anderson, 1998)
☑ South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (Trey Parker, 1999)
☑ The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, 1962)
☑ What's Up, Doc? (Peter Bogdanovich, 1972)
☑ A New Leaf (Elaine May, 1971)
☑ Daisies (Vera Chytilová, 1966)
☑ Zoolander (Ben Stiller, 2001)
☑ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks, 1953)
☑ Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949)
☑ Amarcord (Federico Fellini, 1973)
☑ Waiting for Guffman (Christopher Guest, 1996)
☑ Safety Last! (Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor, 1923)
☑ Top Secret! (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker, 1984)
☑ There's Something About Mary (Bobby and Peter Farrelly, 1998)
☑ Office Space (Mike Judge, 1999)
☑ The Dinner Game (Francis Veber, 1998)
☑ The Princess Bride (Rob Reiner, 1987)
☑ Divorce, Italian Style (Pietro Germi, 1961)
☑ Design for Living (Ernst Lubitsch, 1933)
☑ The Palm Beach Story (Preston Sturges, 1942)
☑ Trading Places (John Landis, 1983)
☑ The Nutty Professor (Jerry Lewis, 1963)
☑ The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (David Zucker, 1988)
☑ The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson, 2001)
☑ In the Loop (Armando Iannucci, 2009)
☑ Love and Death (Woody Allen, 1975)
☑ Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939)
☑ Sons of the Desert (William A. Seiter, 1933)
☑ Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright, 2007)
☑ Caddyshack (Harold Ramis, 1980)
☑ Step Brothers (Adam McKay, 2008)
☑ Arsenic and Old Lace (Frank Capra, 1944)
☑ What We Do in the Shadows (Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, 2014)
☑ Team America: World Police (Trey Parker, 2004)
☑ Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright, 2004)
☑ Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade, 2016)
☑ Zelig (Woody Allen, 1983)
☑ Mean Girls (Mark Waters, 2004)
☑ Broadcast News (James L. Brooks, 1987)
☑ Best in Show (Christopher Guest, 2000)
☑ Harold and Maude (Hal Ashby, 1971)
☑ The Blues Brothers (John Landis, 1980)
☑ My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava, 1936)
☑ Seven Chances (Buster Keaton, 1925)
☑ Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar, 1988)
☑ The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Luis Buñuel, 1972)
☑ Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932)
☑ Animal House (John Landis, 1978)
☑ Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
☑ Big Deal on Madonna Street (Mario Monicelli, 1958)
☑ Bridesmaids (Paul Feig, 2011)
☑ M*A*S*H (Robert Altman, 1970)
☑ The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey, 1937)
☑ Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (Larry Charles, 2006)
☑ The Producers (Mel Brooks, 1967)
☑ A Night at the Opera (Sam Wood and Edmund Goulding, 1935)
☑ The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)
☑ Sullivan’s Travels (Preston Sturges, 1941)
☑ A Fish Called Wanda (Charles Crichton and John Cleese, 1988)
☑ Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1952)
☑ Clueless (Amy Heckerling, 1995)
☑ Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (Adam McKay, 2004)
☑ Raising Arizona (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1987)
☑ Tootsie (Sydney Pollack, 1982)
☑ Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (Jacques Tati, 1953)
☑ When Harry Met Sally... (Rob Reiner, 1989)
☑ It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934)
☑ The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)
☑ Mon Oncle (Jacques Tati, 1958)
☑ The Gold Rush (Charlie Chaplin, 1925)
☑ Withnail and I (Bruce Robinson, 1987)
☑ The Party (Blake Edwards, 1968)
☑ Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks, 1974)
☑ City Lights (Charlie Chaplin, 1931)
☑ Blazing Saddles (Mel Brooks, 1974)
☑ The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941)
☑ Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)
☑ Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938)
☑ The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin, 1940)
☑ Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, 1975)
☑ His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940)
☑ To Be or Not To Be (Ernst Lubitsch, 1942)
☑ Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin, 1936)
☑ The Big Lebowski (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1998)
☑ The General (Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton, 1926)
☑ This Is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1984)
☑ Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967)
☑ Airplane! (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker, 1980)
☑ Life of Brian (Terry Jones, 1979)
☑ Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933)
☑ Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993)
☑ Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)
☑ Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
☑ Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959)
I had no idea the Pamahaw Sillimaniana would be one crazy, noisy breakfast party. This is only my second Pamahaw in my history of doing Founders Week. The first one I attended was years ago, and it was held in the intimacy of the University House. Karon, gi-dagsa jud ug alumni.
8:30 AM
When I have important events and to-do's scheduled early in the morning, I turn into a cocktail of anxiety the night before, worrying that I might not wake up in time, worrying that I wouldn't hear the alarm ring. (I've been known to sleep soundly through the shrillest of alarm clocks.) So I often just don't go to sleep, slogging my way through the night until it's time to go and meet my appointment. What else to do? Today, I had a book launch at 7 AM. It's over now, and thanks to everyone who came! It's 8:30 AM, and so now I go to sleep. See you in the afternoon, Dumaguete.
This book started out as Marion Montebon-Dans' final project for my Philippine literature class about ten years ago. I told her, "Mar, why don't you collect your Lolo Joe's short stories?" Her eyes turned wide, and she replied: "My lolo was a writer?" Oh yes he was. People know him as a lawyer and politician, but once upon a time, in the 1950s and 1960s, he was an award-winning writer. That school project became this book, Cupful of Anger, Bottle Full of Smoke: The Stories of Jose V. Montebon Jr., which we launched today. It took a while, but here it is: a book of literary archaeology, saving from obscurity one Dumaguete writer. [And yes, Marion got a 4.0.]
"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so..."
~ Peter O'Toole as Anton Ego in Brad Bird and Jan Pinkava's Ratatouille (2007)
Of course 100 Tula Para Kay Stella easily reminds one of (500) Days of Summer, from which it borrows many conceits -- although to detail them now could entail spoilage, so never mind that. But whereas Marc Webb's film was a romantic fantasy that limned lightness, Jason Paul Laxamana takes his film down surprising darker paths, finally subverting in crucial ways the romantic comedy mold it purports to embody. It's not a perfect film but I like it very much: every aesthetic choice Laxamana makes here seems inspired, from the spot-on casting [JC Santos and Bella Padilla bring charm and groundedness to their roles as stuttering poet and lost soul rocker] to happily imploding the cinematic myth of the manic pixie dream girl, from precise cinematographic and editing choices to giving a dexterous story that encompasses years and yet never losing the narrative line in the complicated unfolding. The poems are a little too Lang Leav for me, but that's a minor thing. We've seen Jason do wonders before in Babagwa and Mercury is Mine, but it is in this film where he comes to his full powers as director.
It is Fame for law students, minus the sophomore and junior years, and it is excisions like this, among others, which make Kip Oebanda's Bar Boys a failure in structure. Contrary to how it is marketed, for example, there are only three "bar boys" instead of four, Kean Cipriano's character quickly being relegated to the wayside as the barkada who couldn't make the cut in the law school entrance exam. [Not a spoiler.] In a story that purports to be an examination of friendship braving the wild storms of law school, keeping him in the mix would have been vital to the storyline. Instead it makes other narrative choices that constantly fall flat while embracing the hoary subplots of bad teleseryes. Too bad, because the premise of following the lives of law students actually sounds interesting -- but the film only demonstrates a sophomoric effort that does try its best, but fails the cinematic bar nonetheless. That heart attack scene is contrived, overlong, and cruel. And that final scene in the Supreme Court? An embarrassment.
I was just asked why I fling myself into passion projects that often consume all of me. [The old Survey of Philippine Literature website, the Handulantaw book, the Celebrations anthology, the staging of In My Father's House, the current Buglas Writers Project archive, the current heritage work for the city...] Honestly, at the back of my head, the practical part of me constantly admonishes me: "Don't do it, Ian. You have no idea what you are jumping right into." Many times I don't listen to it. It's foolish, I know, AND exhausting, but oh well. I remember Oro Plata Mata director Peque Gallaga once attesting that his 1982 film was the work of fools who didn’t know any better: "Had we known what we were in for when we started, we probably wouldn’t have bothered at all, let alone see it through." Thank God, they were foolish. Oro Plata Mata remains 35 years later gutsy filmmaking of the highest order.
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Fast wifi indeed calms the nerves. Honestly, there was one Saturday not too long ago where I spent the better part of five hours going from one place to the next to find good wifi, and only managed to do one -- ONE -- serviceable piece of work in that time. What I know would normally take me 10 seconds to accomplish I could only do so in 15 excruciating minutes. The whole thing just got to my nerves, and I had to pause and wonder: "The things I could do with a PROPER office and GOOD wifi." Today, I was able to send several work files over FB Messenger in one go. I used to do that file by file, in the span of an hour. Moral: if you want good productivity, invest in your people and their work place.
10:26 PM |
Hesus May Be Dead, But the Film is Very Much Alive!
Quick post-screening recommendation for Victor Kaiba Villanueva's Patay Na Si Hesus: Watch it like your life depends on it.
It is uproariously funny, but its drama also cuts deep. It will affirm your love for Filipino film, and it will make you believe Bisaya filmmaking has become a formidable force. The audience I saw it with tonight hooted and laughed -- and by God, there's nothing like the nuances of Cebuano to really relish every line-reading. Spread the word when the film opens for a regular run in Rob on August 16 for the Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino!
You will thank the cinema gods you caught this gem of a film.
Going around town doing chores and to-do's today, mostly small things I couldn't exactly fit into my daily schedule and have to make space for. What amazed me is the surging joy I felt having found and purchased exactly the right kind of coin purse I've been looking for. A coin purse. As source of happiness. Amazing. You know what's also amazing? Finding out that you did something for a friend that gave him a jolt of joy he badly needed. "Thank you," he texted me. "I'm in a cab and in tears." Awwww.
What is the end of a long day? A catch in your voice that betrays the long hours already survived, and knowing it is a cycle. A sigh of relief when 7 o'clock comes, and the evening is suddenly spread before you like a buffet of possibilities -- and a sigh of dejection when you realize the night is in fact short. A wonderment bubbling in your head that asks, "Where did my youth go? My spontaneity?" The end of a long day is a dream of drinking red wine without the repercussions. The end of a long day is to dream of Friday night. The end of a long day is to spy your notebook of to-do's and dream of exorcism. The end of a long day is thanking the universe for survival, and hoping in the end all these is worth something.
Word has it that Mike de Leon's Batch '81 (1982) -- his searing look into the world of fascism and fraternities -- has been restored by Italy's L’Immagine Ritrovata and Singapore's Asian Film Archive, and is currently scheduled for screening as part of the Venice Classics section of the coming 74th Venice International Film Festival. It will be presented in an lineup that includes Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900 (1976), Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert (1964), Milos Forman’s Black Peter (1963), Claude Chabrol’s The Third Lover (1962), Jean-Luc Godard’s Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967), and Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).
I'm quite happy that a significant number of our film classics are being restored. It's quite a boon to be able to teach/show these restored films in classes and screenings without straining people's imaginations to make them somehow "see" what made them great in the first place. You don't have to explain too much anymore these days: they see the full glory of the restored images and sound, and they respond with enthusiasm. Talk about finding new audiences!
Finally, the poster and the trailer for the film adaptation of one of my favorite books has dropped. (Must temper expectations, but it's so hard...). But here's a look Call Me By Your Name, the film adaptation of André Aciman's novel, directed by Luca Guadagnino, written by James Ivory, cinematography by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, edited by Walter Fasano, and starring Armie Hammer, Timothée Chalamet, and Michael Stuhlbarg, with music by Sufjan Stevens.
Both look delicious and promising, but must temper expectations!
This blog has been in existence since 2002, and throughout most of its existence, it has always used Photobucket as repository for its images. Last June, Photobucket changed its policy and has forbidden third party hosting -- consequently breaking up millions of images in the Internet, particularly those in blogs and message boards, including mine. I’ve decided to shift to Imgur, but I really don’t have the time anymore to fix all the broken images in this blog going back almost 20 years. [Thanks for nothing, Photobucket.] I’ve decided they shall remain broken, to remind me nothing is permanent in the digital world, contrary to its initial promises to be the best kind of archive.
We shifted the schedule of Film class at the College of Mass Communication from the second semester to the first, and today I had my first session with this newest batch.
As is my tradition for beginning the term, while people in the university are still making sense of the new schedules and curriculum, I show the class Albert Lamorisse's The Red Balloon (1956) and Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso (1980), to simulate a traditional film program (short + feature), to lay the groundwork for film appreciation which Lamorisse's short film does in spades, and to remind my students why they're in my class, and that is a love for the movies, and Tornatore's film is the perfect valentine to cinema.
For some reason though, today, I paid closer attention to this nth screening of Cinema Paradiso. Of course I teared up on cue -- but I found extra fascinating Alfredo's entreaty to the teenage Toto, right before we get to the third act. After briefly returning home to their Sicilian village during a break in military training in Rome, Toto takes his mentor on a walk, and Alfredo tells him: "We, each of us, have a star to follow. Get out of here, this land is cursed. Living here day by day, you think it’s the center of the world. You think nothing will ever change. Then you leave. A year, two years. When you come back, everything’s changed. The thread’s broken. What you came to find isn’t there. What was yours is gone. You have to go away for a long time, many years, before you can come back and find your people, the land where you were born. But now, no, it’s impossible."
When Toto eventually decides to leave for good, the scene shifts to him bidding farewell to his family and Alfredo at the train station, where the old man fiercely reminds him: "Don’t come back. Don’t think about us. Don’t look back. Don’t write. Don’t give in to nostalgia. Forget us all."
But the film wouldn't have had its emotional resonance if there had been no eventual coming back, and if it didn't dip into nostalgia. And it treats forgetfulness -- symbolized by the demolition of their small theater -- as a great human tragedy. How do we tread the fine balance between holding on to the past and surging forward to the future?
12:08 AM |
The Manila Metropolitan Theater in Resurrection
Here's a bit about the Manila Metropolitan Theater by Two Fold Media. The Met is an architectural masterpiece by architect Juan Arellano with sculptures by Italian sculptor Francesco Ricardo Monti, and it used to be a premiere venue for showcasing zarzuelas, operas, musicals, and films. The theater, abandoned after its heyday, was restored during the Marcos years, but again soon sank into neglect, and finally closed its doors to the public in 1996, under the specter of demolition. Clamor from heritage activists finally led to its current and ongoing restoration, and is expected to re-open in two to three years.
“Across the world today, our actions testify to our belief that we can go on like this forever, burning oil, poisoning the seas, killing off other species, pumping carbon into the air, ignoring the ominous silence of our coal mine canaries in favor of the unending robotic tweets of our new digital imaginarium.”
~ Roy Scranton, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization
“Westjacking is when you displace me from my narrative. It’s when you homogenize my struggle with yours. It’s when I look myself in the mirror and you insist on being part of the frame. It’s when I examine my own complicated relationship with my culture, and you tell me my grandmother’s name is a ‘slave name.’ It’s when you add salt and all sorts of things in my halo-halo and make it a huge viral sensation among Instagram foodies. It’s when you insist that we weren’t colonized, and invalidate that history in one swoop. It’s when you tell me to turn over the entire box while I’m unpacking my life. It’s when you somehow deny me the discomfort of closely and critically examining my life because you already have a framework and a template for it; all I have to do is cram things in, and discard what does not belong. It is to deny me the quiet of reflecting and atoning and finding a solution to my crises because your voice is louder than mine. It’s when you would rather talk over my story than to listen to it, and call it a gift.”
Yesterday, The Atlantic published the late Alex Tizon's long-form essay about Lola, the domestic help his family kept for decades. It was a compelling, controversial essay bannered by the title, "My Family's Slave." It provoked a fiery response, first a wave of heartbreak and admiration, and second a wave of recrimination, such as this. I gathered together my own response and that of my friends' from our Facebook posts, to provide some of the many facets of the unfolding arguments...
I actually do have an issue about making "art" out of the misery of other people. But I also know it's not as simple as that. Years and years ago, a well-meaning Korean photographer put up an exhibit of his works in Dumaguete. His subject was the people of the city's slums: photos and photos of people mired in such miserable circumstances, but in scenes made so beautiful through the photographic devices of angling, composing, contrasting. It didn't sit well with me, and I had to tell him, "You can't just snap scenes of poor people's lives and make them the unwitting participant for your art!" He didn't know what to say to me. And I didn't exactly know what troubled me about his works. Did he do something wrong? If not, why did I find his beautiful photos distasteful?
Years later, my discomfort finally found some form of expression when I discovered the musical Rent. In a scene where Mark films a couple of homeless people in New York for his documentary, one of them turns to him with such anger, and barks:
Who the f*ck do you think you are?
I don't need any goddamn help
From some bleeding heart cameraman
My life's not for you to
Make a name for yourself on!
"My life's not for you to make a name for yourself on." Was this the root of my discomfort? But I knew it was also not as simple as that. Do artists have to surrender the privilege -- and it is a privilege -- of depicting the pain of others in their works? But what is socially relevant artistry except being a vessel to express this very pain? Can artists speak for those who are silenced, and are without voice? But as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak famously asked in a pathbreaking essay, "Can the subaltern speak?" And the answer is no. So does volunteering to be their voice a service to them, or a disservice? If it's a service, can it truly be authentic? And if it's a disservice, should their being mute become something we have to learn to accept?
Can Alex Tizon write about Lola?
Kate Osias:
I think he never tried to frame it as Lola's story. Rather, he framed it as his family's story, with the victim/protagonist being Lola. In your previous experience, the Korean photographer had nothing to do with the people in the slums, except take their picture. In Rent, the same. But Alex Tizon was writing about his experience -- his guilt, his shame, his love, his not so subtle begging for forgiveness -- and the readers all become, to some extent, his priest. Like a last confession, the story has monstrous elements, but with Alex's craft, he was able to make the monstrous beautiful as well. While people can disagree whether he was a compassionate / good character himself, I'm glad that this story got told. And I think, in the end, the world will be better for reading it, if only because it shows a complex issue, which then forces us to see the world in shades of gray.
Dean Francis Alfar:
And so the conversations triggered by Alex Tizon's article continue, and one of the interesting ones asks the question: Can Alex write about Lola?
The question exists because there is an angle that he has exploited Lola, valorizing his situation (a redemption arc spanning the course of powerless-to-affect-change-vs-mom to taking Lola in/attempting to empower her), taking over her narrative, and thus painting himself in a heroic light.
To me, yes he can write about her. Because he's actually writing about himself. A memoirist looks back and engages in self-reflection, as the memoir by nature is selfish, self-observing, and limited in perspective. It is flawed, and ultimately colored by memory, introspection, and personal analysis of people met, things that happened, and how the memoirist felt/feels or was/is affected -- personal truths. Life with Lola -- growing up with her, how her plight affected him, changed him, made him guilty and ashamed, how he loved her -- was Alex's story as well. And he can write it.
How we receive his text is another thing.
Louie Jon A. Sánchez:
Prose is pristine, but I really don't know. The subject of the Alex Tizon article is not something to be celebrated at all. God bless the souls of Mr. Tizon and Lola, but the essay is a great misuse of art. It's being considered perfect Maalaala Mo Kaya material is nothing but reification of migrant suffering and domestic abuse. It also reified everything totally wrong about this culture of domestic help. Its self-orientalizing gaze was whitewashed by its compelling confessio n-- but what for? I read from the FB page of Mr. Tizon's daughter that the author thought he was born to write this story. My God, bless his soul! And bless the soul of the nanny who is still being abused after her death by way of this narrative being peddled as a familial and cultural laundry drying. It was painful to read, and so were the praises. As a student of Teleseryes, I wanted to puke.
James Neish:
It's the job of artists to reflect and discuss the world around them and the world inside of themselves. It is also the job of artists to deal with reactions to their work. Not all artists are equally skilled at either. If the work is moving and provokes thought, conversation, and action, then it's already successful. Tizon did good work. Lola's work on Tizon's family was even better. Lola wasn't mute. She spoke through Tizon. She set the tone of Tizon's work. In part, Alex Tizon was one of her creations, a man she raised and influenced to become her voice. There is no disservice here, just a beautiful flow of creative energy, now manifesting even more ripples of inspiration.
Vicente Rafael:
It helps to get some historical perspective on the debate. For starters, "slavery" is not the same everywhere at all times. A lot of the comments tend to conflate Alex Tizon's family with white slave masters, Lola with black slaves, and their household with the antebellum slave plantation. Once you've made these alignments, it's easy to condemn Alex as insufficiently repentant, and the narrative as obscene and self-serving.
But that's not the case. Servants may be enslaved but are not slaves in the way it meant prior to the Civil War in the US. And while there is a history of slavery in the Philippines, it was flexible and contingent, whereby the slave was never merely chattel, but could become part of the family, albeit a lowly and exploited member. Power relations between masters and slaves were mediated not just by the imperatives of the market place and by ideologies of race. In Alex's narrative (and in everyday experience of Filipinos who grew up with servants), they are also materialized in affective ties of pity (awa), reciprocal indebtedness (utang na loob), shame (hiya) that hold together as much as they pull apart the master to and from the servant. (Thus the kinship term, "Lola", grandmother, used to refer to Eudocia. Not a "slave name" as others have said, but a term of endearment even as she was often humiliated and abused).
These affective ties in turn provide the servant a kind of moral leverage that she can use to hold the master accountable or account for her own status and acquiescence. And Catholicism, which has its own discourse about the universal enslavement of humans to God, provides a kind of ideological referent for reproducing and sustaining relations of inequality -- but also calling those on top to account for their treatment of those below.
It is this moral economy that pervades Alex's account and sometimes can come across as condescending, or politically naive. But it also opens up spaces for Lola to act and speak, however attenuated and elliptical. While her story may not be as fully fleshed out as, for example Americans may be used to reading in slave narratives -- hers' is not the narrative of Mary Prince or Harriet Jacobs, after all -- she is not entirely silent. Indeed, she speaks throughout the narrative not only through the author's voice but beyond and around it, even exceeding it.
Here, then, is part of what is so compelling, at least for me, about this story: that despite the history of her oppressive domestication, Lola remains, in the end, undomesticated. There is always something about her that is held back in reserve, unavailable for exploitation much less comprehension on the author's part (and the readers', too). He probes into her past, for example, and she retreats, her reticence a kind of resistance to his aggressive curiosity. She is not merely disempowered, but radiates a certain power that makes the family dependent upon her. Her labor is exploited, but not exhausted. She remains singular, even in death. Especially in death, as the author is taken aback by the grief that her return elicits among her relatives. That collective grief exposes his own limits, the lie underneath his philanthropy, the impossibility of reparation. His guilt, if that's how you want to think about it, does little to shore up his authority as the author of this text, or as the benevolent master who did right by his slave.
Ken Ishikawa:
Honestly, keeping a maid is abominable if you have no intentions of weaning them off poverty and making sure their work is progressively rewarded as your own household's achievements track upwards. That is only fair since you are able to achieve the things you achieve because they free you of the mundanities of housework. You must let them study if they want to and learn new skills so they can find the kind of work that fulfills their potentials. People should also think about it in our own paradigm.
How much jobs do we generate in these islands? What kind of jobs would our housekeepers have if we don't provide them employment? I heard that even Karl Marx had maids. What is totally wrong is if you don't use your lot in life to emancipate another person. We are all economic slaves, one way or the other. Even if you're in an upper rung, the system expects you to produce efficiently just like everyone else.
Clinton Palanca:
There are some seamier, nastier sides to our society, apart from the obvious — the proclivity to ride around at night and blow the brains out of anyone remotely connected with drug use — that need to be moved out of the shadows and into the light; that we need to talk about; that we need to do something about.
Alex Tizon wrote a moving and beautiful and finely wrought piece not just about bondage and servitude, but about migration and his relationship with this woman, which was ultimately a story of love. We barely had a chance to let the searing beauty of the prose linger into the air before the fingers of moral rectitude came wagging their way in.
They said in literature class: the author is dead. In this case, the author is literally dead. Let him be. Let the family be. The literary form of the personal confessional is in a headlong collision with the Age of Ignorance and the internet, and the story and its truths are being buried under the self-righteousness and battle-cries and taking of sides.
This memoir only scratches the surface of that which we don't talk about in the Philippines. These are things that are horrific beyond comprehension while being at the same time tempered by love, compassion, fortitude, sacrifice, redemption. The snarling, brutal reaction to Mr Tizon's revelations will only push these deeper into the shadows.
Other Links:
Roger Moran at Scout: "Non-Filipinos need to chill out a bit over Alex Tizon’s essay."
Therene Reyes at Quartz: "Filipinos are defending Alex Tizon from Western backlash to his story 'My Family’s Slave'"
8:53 PM |
I'm Going to Work on This Dream Starting Today. No More Pipe Dreams.
