Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Brecht: KALAYAAN ANG KANIN NG BAYAN



Narito ang isa pang tula ni Bertolt Brecht na nabanggit ko sa huli kong post. Hinalaw ko ito, o in-adapt, sa halip na tuwirang isinalin. Ang salin nito sa Ingles ay tungkol sa hustisya sa halip na kalayaan, at may pamagat na “The Bread of the People” (“Das Brot des Volkes” sa orihinal na Aleman).

Bago siya nagretiro bilang Supreme Court chief justice, binanggit ni Hilario Davide ang tula ni Brecht sa isang talumpating binigkas sa isang international judicial conference. Sabi ni Davide: “Verily, good government depends upon a good judiciary…. Through networking in judicial reform, we shall make justice the strong foundation for national, regional, and even global progress, prosperity, and stability. We will make [justice] the bread of the people, in the words of Bertolt Brecht.”

For the full text of the Manila Bulletin news report on Davide’s speech, go to: <http://www.mb.com.ph/issues/2005/11/29/MAIN2005112950428.html>


Kalayaan ang kanin ng bayan

Halaw kay Bertolt Brecht


Kalayaan ang kanin ng bayan.
Kung minsan ito’y marami, kung minsan ay kulang;
kung minsan ay masarap, kung minsan ay walang lasa.
Kung kulang ang kanin, laganap ang gutom;
kung walang lasa, laganap ang ligalig.

Kung ang kanin ay isinaing
mula sa bigas na luma, bukbukin, mabato
at hindi inalisan ng palay,
hindi iyan dapat ihain sa tao.
Bagay lang diyan ay gawing kaning-baboy.

Sinaing, sinangag, sampurado,
lugaw, ampaw, pinipig, biko, aroskaldo--
kahit ano ang gawin mo sa bigas,
kung niluto nang walang pagmamahal sa kakain,
hindi mabubusog, hindi masisiyahan ang kakain.

Kung masarap ang kanin,
kahit walang ulam, kahit walang mapagdildilang asin,
puwede nang pagtiyagaan.

Kung kailangan ang kanin araw-araw,
kailangan din ang kalayaan
at hindi lamang tatlong beses sa isang araw.
Panahon man ng tagtuyot o panahong masagana,
kailangan ang kanin ng kalayaan.
At ang dapat magsaing
ay mismong ang bayang kakain.

Bigyan ang bayan ng kanin ng kalayaan
araw-araw,
masarap, marami, araw-araw.

--Halaw ni Jose F. Lacaba

Nalathala sa kalipunan kong Sa Panahon ng Ligalig: Tula, Awit, Halaw (Anvil Publishing, 1991). Out of print na rin ang librong ito.

Ang pinagbatayan ko ng aking halaw ay ang tekstong nasa librong Bertolt Brecht Poems 1913-1956, edited by John Willett and Ralph Manheim with the cooperation of Erich Fried. The book lists a group of translators on the contents page, but does not specify who translated which poem.

Narito ang unang stanza ng saling Ingles:

THE BREAD OF THE PEOPLE
By Bertolt Brecht

Justice is the bread of the people.
Sometimes it is plentiful, sometimes it is scarce.
Sometimes it tastes good, sometimes it tastes bad.
When the bread is scarce, there is hunger.
When the bread is bad, there is discontent.

The full text of the English translation can be read here: <http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~yeldane/brecht.htm>.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Brecht: SA MGA IPAPANGANAK SA HINAHARAP

The closing film of the recent Active Vista filmfest, as I mentioned in an earlier blog, was Signos, a 40-minute super-8 documentary made circa 1985 by the Concerned Artists of the Philippines. Although the filmfest flyers describe this as a film “by Mike de Leon,” the film itself, in its end credits, attributes authorship to a collective body: “Pelikula nina Mike de Leon, Jose F. Lacaba, Sylvia Mayuga, Ricardo Lee, Ding Achacoso, Joe Cuaresma, Lito Tiongson, Jovy Zarate.”

I got to see Signos again on DVD, just a few days before the Active Vista filmfest, and about 23 years after the documentary was made. I must confess I can no longer remember what exactly my contribution to the project was, but I guess, on the basis of the film itself, that it consisted primarily of my translation of a Bertolt Brecht poem, “Sa mga Ipapanganak sa Hinaharap,” which was used as a voice-over in lieu of a narration. The poem reader is not credited in the film, but I understand that the voice heard in various sequences belongs to Peping Almojuela, who, along with Mike de Leon, is credited as my co-writer on Sister Stella L.

Coincidentally, just a few days before the Active Vista screening of Signos, I had been asked to read my translation of this same poem at a small gathering sponsored by the Institute of Political Studies, a nongovernment organization. My reading of that translation—along with “Kalayaan ang Kanin ng Bayan,” my adaptation, or halaw, of another Brecht poem—served as the front act for a talk on Brecht given by David Adamson, a stage actor and Brecht specialist from Australia.

Here's the poem, originally titled
“An die Nachgeborenen” in German, and variously translated into English as “To Posterity” and “To Those Who Follow in Our Wake.”


Sa mga ipapanganak sa hinaharap

Ni Bertolt Brecht


Talagang madilim itong aking panahon.
Ang pagsasabi ng tapat ay katangahan. Ang makinis na noo
Ay tanda ng walang pakiramdam. Ang tumatawa
Ay hindi pa nakakarinig
Sa masamang balita.

Ano bang panahon ito, na
Ang mag-usap tungkol sa punongkahoy ay halos isang krimen
Pagkat ito’y pananahimik tungkol sa napakaraming kabuktutan!
Ang isang iyon na kampanteng tumatawid ng kalye
Ay hindi kaya nakalimot na sa kanyang mga kaibigang
Nagigipit?

Totoo: kumikita pa rin ako.
Pero maniwala kayo: aksidente lang ito. Wala
Akong ginawa na nagbibigay sa akin ng karapatang magpakabusog.
Nagkataon lang na hindi ako ginalaw. (Pag ubos na ang suwerte ko,
Lagot ako.)

Sabi nila: Kumain at uminom! Pasalamat at meron!
Pero paano ako makakakain at makakainom, kung
Ang pagkain ko’y inagaw sa nagugutom at
Ang tubig ko’y pag-aari ng namamatay sa uhaw?
Pero kumakain ako’t umiinom.

Gusto ko ring maging matalino.
Sa mga lumang libro mababasa kung ano ang katalinuhan:
Ang umiwas sa gulo ng mundo at mamuhay sa maikling panahon
Nang walang pangamba,
Huwag maging marahas,
Gantihan ng kabutihan ang kasamaan,
Maging manhid sa mga pagnanasa--
Iyan ay itinuturing na katalinuhan.
Lahat ng ito’y hindi ko magagawa:
Talagang madilim itong aking panahon.


II

Dumating ako sa lunsod sa panahon ng kaguluhan
Nang laganap ang gutom.
Naratnan ko ang mga tao sa panahon ng himagsikan
At naghimagsik akong kasama nila.
Sa gayon lumipas ang panahong
Kaloob sa akin sa daigdig.

Kumain ako sa pagitan ng mga labanan.
Natulog ako sa pagitan ng mga mamamatay-tao.
Ang pag-ibig ay binale-wala ko
At ang kalikasan ay hindi ko pinagtiyagaan.
Sa gayon lumipas ang panahong
Kaloob sa akin sa daigdig.

Mga kalye’y patungong kumunoy noong aking panahon.
Isinuplong ako sa berdugo ng aking pananalita.
Wala akong gaanong magawa. Pero kung wala ako,
Napapanatag ang mga naghahari: umasa ako diyan.
Sa gayon lumipas ang panahong
Kaloob sa akin sa daigdig.

Kulang ang lakas. Ang patutunguhan
Ay malayong-malayo,
Malinaw na natatanaw pero malamang
Na hindi ko mararating.
Sa gayon lumipas ang panahong
Kaloob sa akin sa daigdig.


III

Kayong lilitaw mula sa baha
Na lumunod sa amin,
Kung pag-uusapan ninyo ang aming mga kahinaan,
Isipin
Din ang madilim na panahon
Na inyong natakasan.

Pagkat kami, na mas madalas magpalit ng bayan kaysa sapatos,
Ay dumaan sa tunggalian ng mga uri, nanlulumo
Kung may pambubusabos lamang at walang paghihimagsik.

At alam na alam namin:
Pati ang galit sa kaapihan
Ay nakakasira ng mukha.
Pati ang ngitngit sa pambubusabos
Ay nagpapagaspang ng boses. Ay, kami
Na nagmithing magpunla ng pakikipagkaibigan
Ay hindi naging mapagkaibigan.

Pero kayo, pagdating sa wakas ng panahong
Ang tao ay matulungin sa kapwa-tao,
Sa paggunita sa amin
Ay maging mapagpasensiya.

--Salin sa Pilipino ni Jose F. Lacaba

Mula sa kalipunang Sa Daigdig ng Kontradiksiyon: Mga Salingwika (Anvil Publishing, Maynila, 1991).

Ang ginawa kong salin sa Pilipino ay batay sa ilang saling Ingles na hindi ko na maalala kung sino-sino ang gumawa, pero nakinabang din ako sa ilang mungkahi at impormasyon na ibinigay ni Mike de Leon. Nag-aral sa Germany si Mike, at noong panahon iyon (baka hanggang ngayon) ay matatas siya sa German.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

NOTES ON BAKYA

Having just dusted off an old article on movies, critics, and the bakya crowd, I decided to dust off an even older article on the phenomenon known as bakya. This somewhat dated article was obviously inspired by Susan Sontag’s essay “Notes on Camp,” as well as Dwight Macdonald’s essays on masscult and midcult.


Notes on Bakya
Being an Apologia of Sorts for Filipino Masscult.

by Jose F. Lacaba
(Philippines Free Press, January 31, 1970)

LET’S BEGIN with a little quiz. Identify the following:

a) “Mardy”
b) Orasyon na naman
c) Nora Cabaltera Villamayor
d) Pilyo, nguni’t clean fun
e) Ricky Na, Tirso Pa

If you don’t even get one answer right, you are, if not a foreigner, either a hopeless bourgeois or an incurable egghead. But if you guess that (a) “Mardy” is an Eddie Peregrina top tune and the title of one of his movies; (b) Orasyon na naman is the standard opening line of Johnny de Leon’s afternoon radio program, Lundagin Mo, Baby; (c) Nora Cabaltera Villamayor is the real name of Nora Aunor; (d) Pilyo, nguni’t clean fun is the slogan of Pogi; Ricky Na, Tirso Pa is the movie that brings together for the first time those real-life first cousins, Ricky Belmonte and Tirso Cruz III, congratulations: you are true connoisseur of bakya.

Bakya, in case you don’t know, literally means the wooden slippers worn in lieu of shoes by the poor in the barrios. The meaning of the word has so expanded that bakya is now also a description of a style and a sensibility--the style of popular culture, the sensibility of what Dwight Macdonald derisively labels “masscult.” Thus, bakya now means anything that is cheap, gauche, naive, provincial, and terribly popular; and in this sense it is used more as an adjective than as a noun.

The term bakya crowd came first. Director Lamberto V. Avellana is said to have coined the phrase in his rage against an audience that failed, or refused, to appreciate his award-winning movies. For a long time after that, bakya crowd was the shibboleth on the lips of every movie director who cranked out low-budget quickies for mass consumption. They were not to blame if their works could not be classified as art, the directors said; their audience was made up of morons indifferent, if not entirely hostile, to “prestige” or “quality” pictures. The bakya crowd became the favorite whipping boy of those critics who, while shying away from Tagalog movies as a rule, never ceased to bewail the absence of Tagalog movies that could compare with wholesome Hollywood hokum like Ten Commandments and Sound of Music.

That the so-called bakya crowd could recognize excellence if it was presented to them on their own terms, in movies without pretensions to “prestige,” became apparent with the popularity of the Joseph Estrada proletarian potboilers. The advent of bomba carried the bakya crowd even farther. The bomba phenomenon may be seen in two ways: as a symptom of decaying morals or, because it implies adult entertainment, as a sign of growing up. The very words are significant; from the bakya, symbol of the backward barrio, to the bomba, symbol of 20th-century power, was a long way to go, and the distance seemed to indicate that the bakya crowd was on the way out.

Then, toward the late ’60s, along came the word bakya, divorced now from “crowd” and no longer limited to movies. Its use probably began on the campus, particularly of exclusive schools, where naturally the inhabitants heaped additional layers of odium and ridicule on the word.

In its present meaning, bakya is whatever isn’t in with the In Crowd, whatever is non-mod or non-hip. Its antithesis is class, also used as an adjective, meaning classy, stylish, elegant, sophisticated, fashionable, expensive. Tagalog movies in general are bakya, and so are the moviehouses that show them; Hollywood movies are usually class, and suburban theaters like Rizal and New Frontier particularly so. Turo-turo restaurants are utterly bakya; the eating places of the big hotels like Hilton or Savoy are the height of class. The poor man’s idea of elegance in dress--something shiny or frilly or riddled with eyelets for a girl, a single-color scheme (otherwise known as ternong-terno kung magdamit: light-brown shirt, dark-brown pants, light-brown socks, dark-brown shoes) for a boy--is derided as bakya; dressing like an Amboy, or American boy, that is, Esquire-mod or plastic-hippie style, is class. The early Elvis hairdo, a high-rise fluff buttressed by pounds of greasy kid stuff, is bakya, and the way Tom Jones sideburns have been expropriated by the politicians they will probably end up being bakya, too; the 50-peso Iper haircut is definitely class. Pleats and cuffs on trousers if seen today are simply unbelievable, but very tight pants and colorful plaids should be bakya by now; what’s class is the bellbottom and the “straight cut.”

Top tunes are particularly susceptible to the charge of being bakya. In fact, the word is most often used in this context: “Bakyang-bakya naman yang kinakanta mo.” What’s bakya is usually the new syrupy ballad which sounds as if it had been written for Neil Sedaka or Joni James: “I Only Live To Love You,” “One Day Soon,” “It Hurts To Say Goodbye,” all Eddie Peregrina hits. There are some songs, however, that start out as the exclusive property of the In Crowd but become bakya by getting to be too popular; e.g., the Beatles’ “Obladi-Oblada” and Sinatra’s “My Way.” (The great performers are like Shakespeare; their appeal extends from the eggheads to the groundlings.) American folk songs, Bob Dylan, the Doors, by having a limited appeal, are indubitably class.

Bakya, then, suggests the class distinctions in Philippine society, and class here is used in its ordinary English sense. It’s usually what the urban and rural poor enjoy, embrace, support, and idolize which falls under the category of bakya. It is usually the upper classes who employ the epithet with a sneer, with condescension, with a tremendous feeling of superiority. The class distinctions are suggested in the joke: “Class nga, low class naman.”

This feeling of superiority manifests itself in the many jokes about a bakya idol, Ricky Belmonte. Practically all these Ricky Belmonte jokes--called belmontisms in certain quarters--involve malapropism or Filipino English; and probably 99 per cent of them are apocryphal, made up by the kind of people who use Tagalog only with the maids. Since many belmontisms have seen print without a word of protest from Belmonte, a few samples here would do no harm.

The supposed Ricky Belmonte on seeing the chandeliers at the Cultural Center: “Wow , what beautiful chamberlains!” To a fan: “Would you like my mimeograph?” To a waiter in a crowded, smoke-filled restaurant: “Please open the door. I’m getting sophisticated.” On being offered a glass of wine, after a companion has replied, I’m afraid not: “Me, I’m not afraid.” At the dinner table: “Please pass the salt. My hands cannot arrive.” On seeing a black cat pass by: “That’s a bad ointment.” After singing a song that has met with appreciative applause: “Thanks for the clap.”

Remember the joke about Ramon Magsaysay? Told that high prices were due to the law of supply and demand, he is supposed to have ordered: “Repeal that law!” And there is the story about Joseph Estrada when, as mayor of San Juan, he raided a monte joint. In warning the operators of the joint, he is said to have solemnly declared, meaning to say he meant business, “I mean monkey business.” Belmonte should find consolation in the thought that he is not the only bakya idol whose knowledge of English has been mocked. Indeed, his brand of English, which local linguists will recognize as a species of Filipino English, may be one reason his bakya fans take to him. They speak the same language; they understand him; they identify with him; they can see themselves in him. They are not bothered by belmontisms, just as they couldn’t care less if Eddie Peregrina commits tautology when he sings, in “Mardy”: “Though I can’t but I have to forget you.” Of course, they are also willing to accept a perfumed accent and reasonably correct grammar: Helen Gamboa and Jeanne Young are stars. The noteworthy thing here is that the bakya does not put such a high premium on perfect English--there are things that are important beyond all that fiddle.

This brings up another quality of bakya: the preference for things native. The imported is never bakya (though perhaps Italian westerns and Chinese swordsman epics are perilously close to it); the local often is. Colonial mentality is not necessarily involved here, since many items in the bakya canon are slavish imitations of foreign fads and heroes. There is no way of telling which is more colonially minded, the audience of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or the audience of Omar Cassidy and the Sandalyas Kid; the bakya crowd is more likely to go for Chiquito in Che-Charon than for Omar Sharif in Che, but that does not make the bakya crowd more nationalistic. Still, the fact is that the sensibility here called bakya tends to favor something which is one’s own, though it be ersatz, and to reject something entirely alien, though it be the original. Kapitan Kidlat may be just a little brown Captain Marvel and Darna nothing more than a xerox copy of Wonder Woman, but at least they speak a native tongue, they fly over nipa huts and bamboo groves. In this sense, it is not wrong to say that, however fantastic they may be, however remote from reality, Kapitan Kidlat, Darna, and other such bakya figures are closer to the Philippine experience than anything directly obtained from abroad. The image of the Filipino can still be, somehow, discerned in the distortions of our local cowboys, samurais, and secret agents.

Curiously enough, recognition abroad can change the status of bakya. The Reycard Duet was the quintessence of bakya when it was still appearing at the Clover, but after Rey and Carding returned from Las Vegas, complete with endorsements from Elvis Presley and Sammy Davis Jr., they became good enough for the Hilton, though they had not changed one bit in style or repertoire. On things local, the taste of the In Crowd lags behind that of the bakya crowd, which is quick to recognize and support native talent. The bakya crowd, however, might in the end not enjoy the fruits of what it has nourished. When the rich take up the heroes of the poor, they become too expensive for the poor to appreciate.

The class distinctions exposed by the word bakya point to another truth, and it’s this: bakya is a social condition--the condition of the majority of Filipinos. To be poor is to be bakya; what sociologists call cultural deprivation brings about the bad taste of masscult. It is the children of the proletariat and the peasantry who buy the postcard-size photographs of Vilma Santos and Edgar Mortiz from the improvised stands on the sidewalks of Quiapo; the children of the privileged, in the exercise of “good taste,” get their giant posters of David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave from bookshops or fancy boutiques where Charlie Brown T-shirts are also sold. And the difference between these two species of picture collectors is simply money, its abundance and its absence. To make fun of the devotees of bakya is therefore to make fun of poverty--the poverty that deprives a person of the financial and educational resources needed to free himself from the bondage of bad taste.

It may be argued that many who have acquired the necessary money--the noveau riche, the parvenu--do not cease to be purveyors of bad taste, remain bakya at heart. True enough. But even if at heart they are really bakya, in appearance they are not. A Mustang and a Pierre Cardin shirt and a speech-clinic accent have magical properties: they confer an aura of class and remove the stigma of bakya, and unless their possessors spout belmontisms like “No more rice, thank you--I’m fed up,” they can easily join the In Crowd in the society page-columns. Then they can afford to be snobbish and supercilious; they too can sneer with impunity at the culture of the bakya.

This alone should put us on our guard. For clearly it is not the true artists and intellectuals who mock bakya culture; they usually have great tolerance (and sometimes even genuine affection) for it. But the mockers are themselves strangers to true culture, and if they despise Ricky Na, Tirso Pa, it is not because they prefer movies by Godard; if they turn their backs on Tagalog komiks, it is not because they would rather read Finnegans Wake. As a matter of fact, they are hostile to true art as they are to bakya.

Leslie Fiedler, in a disquisition on comic books, makes a point that applies to our subject:

“The problem posed by popular culture is finally, then, a problem of class distinction in a democratic society. What is at stake is the refusal of cultural equality by a large part of the population. It is misleading to think of popular culture as the product of a conspiracy of profiteers against the rest of us. This venerable notion of an eternally oppressed and deprived but innocent people is precisely what the rise of mass culture challenges. Much of what upper-class egalitarians dreamed for him, the ordinary man does not want--especially literacy…

“The middlebrow reacts with equal fury to an art that baffles his understanding and to one which refuses to aspire to his level. The first reminds him that he has not yet, after all, arrived (and indeed, may never make it); the second suggests to him a condition to which he might easily relapse, one perhaps that might have made him happier with less effort (and here exacerbated puritanism is joined to baffled egalitarianism)--even suggests what his state may appear like to those a notch above. Since he cannot on his own terms explain to himself why anyone should choose any level but the highest (that is, his own), the failure of the vulgar seems to him the product of mere ignorance and laziness--a crime! And the rejection by the advanced artist of his canons strikes him as a finicking excess, a pointless and unforgivable snobbism. Both, that is, suggest the intolerable notion of a hierarchy of values, the possibility of cultural classes in a democratic state; and before this, puzzled and enraged, he can only call a cop. The fear of the vulgar is the obverse of the fear of excellence, and both are aspects of the fear of difference: symptoms of a drive for conformity on the level of the timid, sentimental, and mindless-bodiless genteel.”

The connoisseurs of bakya, if they are at all aware of their bakya-ness, need not be ashamed of their affections. One thing they can do if they would proclaim their difference, if they would take pride in being outsiders to the exclusivist culture of the In Crowd, is to use a term of reproach, bakya, as a badge of honor--the way their forebears used the word Indio.


Postscript, 2008: The Ricky Belmonte jokes of the late 1960s would later resurface as Alma Moreno jokes, Melanie Marquez jokes, and Erap jokes. Erap would use those jokes to his own advantage, even publishing an entire collection of them during his campaign for the presidency. I have no doubt at all that those jokes helped him become President Joseph Estrada.

MOVIES, CRITICS, AND THE BAKYA CROWD

Cover of the VHS of Orapronobis,
released in France as Les Insoumis

and in the U.S. as Fight for Us

The recent Active Vista film festival--at Robinsons Galleria IndieSine, from November 26 to December 2, 2008--had, as opening film, Lino Brocka’s Orapronobis (a.k.a. Les Insoumis, a.k.a. Fight for Us) and, as one of the closing films, Signos, a 40-minute documentary made by a Concerned Artists of the Philippines team led by Mike de Leon. As the screenwriter of Orapronobis, and as a member of the team that worked on Signos, I must confess that I was pretty flattered to have served as some kind of parenthesis for the filmfest.

After the Orapronobis screening, I got introduced to an Australian writer and occasional filmmaker named Andrew Leavold, who’s doing--believe it--a documentary called The Search for Weng Weng. Yup, it’s about the late Weng Weng, the diminutive actor who in the 1980s played a Pinoy James Bond code-named Agent 3 1/2, Agent 00, and Agent 007 1/2 in various movies. Check out Andrew’s fantastic blog: <http://andrewleavold.blogspot.com/>.

Newspaper ad of a 1981 Weng Weng movie,
from the Video 48 website:

http://video48.blogspot.com/search/label/WENG-WENG

Hearing Andrew talk about his unbelievable love affair with Pinoy B movies reminded me of an old article I had written back in the late 1970s, so I dug it up and dusted it off and sent him a copy. Here it is.


Movies, Critics, and the Bakya Crowd
by Jose F. Lacaba

(From AAP Liham, Vol. 3 No. 4, March 1979. AAP is the Art Association of the Philippines.)


The term bakya crowd was coined back in the Fifties by a prestigious director to describe the mass audience which, he felt, was incapable of appreciating the merits of his award-winning films. These days we can’t use the term with the same cavalier attitude that attended its coining. Largely as a result of current attacks on elitism, we can no longer contemptuously dismiss that large chunk of the population encompassed by the term bakya crowd; and the word bakya itself, like indio before it, is fast becoming a badge of honor in certain circles.

Still, the opprobrium once attached to the term has not been entirely eradicated. Traces of it may be detected, for instance, in a movie critic’s recent witticism: “There’s no such thing as a bakya crowd. There are only bakya producers.”

That the term bakya in its extended meaning has both pejorative and acceptable connotations indicates the ambivalence of our attitude toward the crowd called bakya. When you come right down to it, bakya crowd is synonymous with masa, and nowadays everybody pays lip service to the masses. We cannot afford to look down upon them as a social class or a political force. But the masses as patrons of culture? The idea seems preposterous.

We may profess to find some of the forms and aspects of mass culture charming, particularly if, as in the case of the moro-moro and the sinakulo, these are virtually extinct or are threatened with extinction. But confronted by forms of mass culture that are alive and current--radio soap operas, television variety shows, komiks, the general run of Tagalog movies--we are bewildered and appalled.

Our attitude toward Tagalog movies is instructive.

The local movie industry, where the term bakya crowd originated, classifies Tagalog movies into two major categories. In the lingo of the industry, they are either commercial (also known as bakya) or hindi commercial (also known as pang-FAMAS).

The commercial movie is anything aimed frankly at the box office. The producer’s intention here is primarily to make a profit, and though the intention does not always succeed, it dictates what type of movie is to be made, how it is to be made, who its stars will be, etc. For this reason, the commercial movie prefers tried-and-true formulas to innovation and experiment, sticks to genres or follows trends proven to have box-office pull, and generally provides escapist entertainment.

The noncommercial movie--sometimes referred to as prestige picture, quality picture, or art film--has aims more ambitious than mere profit and more serious than mere entertainment. Those who indulge intermittently in its production are either incurable romantics with noble intentions and boundless optimism, or thoughtful veterans who have made a lot of money on commercial flicks and feel it’s time to try for a FAMAS statuette or two.

A few films that fall under this category have turned out to be sleepers--that is, unexpected commercial successes. Lino Brocka’s Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang is a notable example. But such movies are rare, very rare, exceptions. As a rule the noncommercial movie is box-office poison, however much it may blow the minds of critics.


The Popular Nerve

There’s a joke in local movie circles that it’s a bad thing to be praised by the critics. A rave review is supposed to spell death at the box office. The joke smells of sour grapes, and the industry obviously does not take it seriously. The truth is that producers are dimly aware of both the potential and the actual power of critics, as indicated by the fact that they occasionally threaten to withdraw movie ads when reviews get too nasty, and liberally quote the critics in those same movie ads when the reviews happen to be favorable.

Still, there’s a bit of truth in the joke. Those of us who care about the “art of film” and are at the same time interested in Filipino movies do tend to favor the noncommercial variety. The movies made expressly for the mass audience usually leave us cold--or even arouse the killer instinct in us, so that we feel an urge to tear those movies to pieces and hold up to ridicule the people who have inflicted such banalities on us.

Our reaction is understandable. Though commercial Tagalog movies have been made that exhibit a modicum of sense and a measure of technical finesse, the bulk of this particular commodity is indeed so shoddy, so inept of craftsmanship and inane of content, that we are justified in our contempt.

But our reaction reveals as much about ourselves as it does about the movies we react against. It is, in part, a reflection of the extent of our alienation from the mass of Filipinos who make up the bakya crowd. We cannot appreciate mass culture, we cannot even view it with sympathy and understanding, because we have been conditioned--by our social origins, our educational background, our cultural orientation--to regard as inane and inept whatever does not measure up to our exalted notions of art and culture.

This is particularly true of the movies. As a result of ongoing re-evaluations in the field of drama, for instance, and also because of the influence of the tourist industry, we have learned to regard with equanimity the presence of Castilian knights and Roman centurions in folk theater. We can even accept the anachronism and unintended comedy of a sinakulo Christ wearing a wrist watch and rubber shoes on his way to Calvary. But Filipino cowboys and samurais on our movie screens! The very idea insults our intelligence.

Part of the reason for this may be that film is a 20th-century medium, and we expect more from it than from folk theater. But we tend to forget that the social and historical conditions that gave rise to Philippine folk theater still exist in the country in this seventh decade of the 20th century. This explains why the creators and patrons of folk theater are still very much around, dictating the shape and content not only of vanishing theatrical forms but also of the very much alive “art form of the 20th century.” Thus, the peasant mind, still befogged by feudal miasma, makes possible the anting-anting movies of Ramon Revilla.

The point here is that there is a bakya crowd--or rather, since the term can be both offensive and misleading, there is a mass audience out there whose tastes and cultural level are different from ours, whose very conception of culture does not coincide with ours.

In other words, the existence and proliferation of bakya movies is not solely the fault of bakya producers, although they certainly bear a great part of the blame. The bakya movie exists because there is an audience for it, because it is popular. And it is popular because it provides escapist entertainment, besides allowing moviegoers to forget the oppressiveness of daily living, besides helping to take their minds off inflation and poverty and the immediate problems that beset them, and also--paradoxical as this may seem--because it touches something vital in the popular nerve.


The Formalist Tradition

In his essay “An Approach to the Filipino Film,” literary and film critic Bienvenido Lumbera points out that a major concern of the film student in evaluating a Filipino movie should be “the centrality of content.”

Elaborating on this point, Lumbera writes: “What does the film say about man in a society in ferment? How does it view the problems that confront man in his struggle against nature and men who seek to exploit him? This is not to insist that every film make a philosophical statement or engage in social analysis. This is simply to remind the directors that filmmaking in an underdeveloped country should be primarily a way of saying, not making magic with picture machines.”

Those of us who are interested in Filipino films tend to forget the point raised by Lumbera. We have been nurtured in the formalist tradition of the New Criticism in literature, and we carry our biases into our study of the movies. Just as we are inclined to scrutinize a poem or novel textually, without reference to its social and historical context, so too we analyze a movie in terms of how it is constructed (“breathtaking photography,” “expert editing,” etc.) instead of what it is saying.

When we do pay attention to content, we labor under the misconception that only the good artistic movie has something to say--or at least something to say that deserves consideration. We think that the commercial movie, and especially the badly made commercial movie, has nothing to say, or that what it has to say is beneath contempt.

To the mass audience, the opposite is true. Serious films like Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag and Nunal sa Tubig, though made with intelligence and care, may make no sense to the bakya crowd. This is so not only because these movies deal with subject matter and use techniques that are new and unfamiliar in Tagalog movies, but also because the problems they tackle are of no interest to the mass of Filipinos living today. Alienation, dehumanization, existential despair, and the absurdity of the human condition may loom large in the minds of middle-class intellectuals, but these could well be of little concern to the uprooted provincianos or the coastal villagers who are ostensibly the subjects of these films.

On the other hand, out-and-out commercial movies may have something vital and basic to say to the mass audience--and in terms it can easily grasp. The standard Fernando Poe Jr. movie, for instance, deals with themes that appeal to the popular imagination and express certain popular aspirations. It is often set in some never-never land with no basis in history or present reality, a fact that turns off the critics; yet this setting, no more fantastic than the symbolic Albania of Florante at Laura, does not make the thesis of the typical Poe movie any less valid.

The Poe character is usually a patient, long-suffering individual who, when his patience has been stretched to the limit by the violence of his oppressors, is not averse to using fists and guns to defend or avenge himself. It is a character the Filipino peasant, likewise blessed with legendary patience, may find easier to identify with than the extremely simple-minded peasant anti-hero of Ganito Kami Noon... Paano Kayo Ngayon?

The war epics that used to be a Poe staple are likewise closer in spirit to the folk conception of wartime history than the critically acclaimed Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos. The guerrillas in the Poe epics were often too superheroic to be credible, but they did not depart from the popular image of the guerrilla as a freedom fighter resisting foreign invasion. In Tatlong Taon, the guerrillas are either horrifying grotesques or naive USAFFE types fighting America’s war in the Pacific, and the only Japanese we see is an officer who, though he rapes a village girl, still comes out looking as cute and lovable as Christopher de Leon. No doubt there were bad Filipino guerrillas and good Japanese officers during the war, but to tip the balance in favor of the latter, as Tatlong Taon unwittingly does, goes against the popular grain.


The Human Condition

One strong quality of the Poe character is that he is incapable of wallowing in despair. He may be assailed by doubts, but in the end he always gets over his doubts and goes into action. Unlike the Rafael Roco Jr. character in Lunes, Martes, Miyerkules, Huwebes, Biyernes, Sabado, Linggo, who ends up accepting things as they are, the Poe character believes in the necessity of struggle, operating on the assumption that the human condition presents much to protest against but nothing to despair about. Thus, the Poe movie always ends on a note of hope. Perhaps the hope is illusory, and then again, perhaps it could be a stimulant for the downtrodden.

This extended disquisition on the Poe movie is not meant to be a denigration of films like Ganito, Tatlong Taon, or Lunes. Nor is this an argument for swallowing--hook, line, and sinker--the phenomenon of mass culture as it exists today. We need not justify what is blatantly opportunistic and exploitative in commercial movies.

What we are driving at here is simply that commercial movies made for the bakya crowd, for the mass audience, are as deserving of serious study as the works of noncommercial film artists. They are as worthy of critical exploration as the films we hail as masterpieces.

As movie critic Pauline Kael notes in her essay “Trash, Art, and the Movies,” whether a movie is good or bad is sometimes of less interest than why so many people respond to it the way they do.

“Sometimes,” Kael writes, “bad movies are more important than good ones just because of those unresolved elements that make them such a mess. They may get something going on around us that the moviemakers felt or shared and expressed in a confused way. Rebel without a Cause was a pretty terrible movie but it reflected (and possibly caused) more cultural changes than many a good one. And conceivably it’s part of the function of a movie critic to know and indicate the difference between a bad movie that doesn’t much matter because it’s so much like other bad movies and a bad movie that matters (like The Chase or The Wild Ones) because it affects people strongly in new, different ways. And if it is said that this is sociology, not aesthetics, the answer is that an aesthetician who gave his time to criticism of current movies would have to be an awful fool. Movie criticism to be of any use whatever must go beyond formal analysis.”