MESSING WITH HISTORY 2: RIZAL IN DRAG

Rizal sa Dapitan: The movie in VHS

MATTER OF FACT

Jose F. Lacaba           

Manila Times, December 31, 1996

Messing with history 2: Rizal in drag

FILMMAKERS have been getting a bad rep lately for messing with history, but it isn’t just filmmakers who are guilty. Historians themselves mess with history all the time.

There’s a difference, of course. Filmmakers, following in the illustrious footsteps of playwrights like Shakespeare, often play fast and loose with the facts for dramatic purposes. Historians, on the other hand, normally stick to the facts (or at least the facts available to them at a given time), but may extract varying, even conflicting, interpretations from those facts.

It has been argued, for instance, that Andres Bonifacio was not plebeian but bourgeois because, in the only existing photograph taken of him, he’s dressed to the nines—coat, cravat, slicked-down hair, the works. On the other hand, the very fact that there is only one existing photograph of him, a studio shot, could be cited as proof that he was too poor to have his photograph taken as often as did Jose Rizal and the Filipino exiles in Madrid.

When you can only afford one shot for posterity, you want to be seen in your Sunday best. That’s why in Philippine barrios in the Sixties, when instamatic cameras were not as common and as inexpensive as they are now, the poorest hovels often had these framed and colorized photos of husband and wife in barong Tagalog and terno. More often than not, those costumes were provided by the studio photographer.

Also cited as evidence of Bonifacio’s alleged middle-class status is his work as a traveling salesman for a multinational company. That’s like saying that those door-to-door promo girls selling soap and shampoo shouldn’t be classified as urban poor because they hawk multinational products instead of puto’t kutsinta.

Yesterday being the centenary of Rizal’s assassination, the national hero has been coming in for his share of iconoclastic scrutiny. A question often raised these days is: Was Rizal gay?

It’s a truism that each age reevaluates the past from the vantage point of the present. Especially in the present century, historians are fond of breaking up the icons of the past and scraping off the myths that attach themselves like barnacles to historical personages and events.

Back in the Fifties, Rizal was described as a Filipino Hamlet because of his wishy-washy attitude toward armed revolution. After the First Quarter Storm, student activists denounced Rizal for his decisively reactionary repudiation of the armed revolution.

Filipino machos used to take pride in the fact that the national hero was a great womanizer. Today, with women’s liberation and gay liberation in the ascendant, it is not surprising that a new view of Rizal is coming into focus.

Womanizing is no longer the glamorous activity it was before Henry Miller got the shaft from Kate Millet. It isn’t just immoral; it’s politically incorrect.

Today you have pop psychologists claiming Casanova, whose name used to be synonymous with libertine, was gay. His many amorous affairs with women are in fact cited as proof of his gayness, because it supposedly implies an inability to sustain a long-standing relationship with any woman. In the old days, he would have been seen as just a guy who liked effing around.

In Rizal’s case, the F word may simply have stood for flirt. Since he was not the kiss-and-tell type, we’ll never know if he really scored with the women he came to be acquainted with at every port.

Among the circumstantial evidence cited of Rizal’s alleged gayness is a photo taken in Madrid showing Rizal and other Propagandists in drag. I have yet to see the photo myself. But I have seen Wesley Snipes and Patrick Swayze, not to mention Dolphy and Eddie Garcia, in drag. And I have seen priests and abbots in skirts. I don’t know if that makes them, or the other Propagandists in the photo with Rizal, gay.

Another supposed case in point is Rizal’s ambiguous relationship with Nelly Boustead, allegedly “a liberated Frenchwoman who, like many European women of the time, didn’t have qualms about sleeping with men before marriage.”

Actually, although resident in France, Nelly wasn’t French. Her father was the bastard product of a liaison between an Englishman and a Filipina. According to historian Austin Coates, Nelly considered herself a Filipina, “though for the present I am an English subject.”

Far from being liberated, she was a devout Protestant. My own suspicion, based on nothing more substantial than the fact that she liked engaging Rizal in disputation, is that she belonged to that disputatious variety of Protestantism now known as fundamentalist or born-again.

It was Nelly herself, and not her family, who laid down the condition that Rizal, the lapsed Catholic and active Freemason, would have to convert to Protestantism—in her own words: “embrace Christianity as I understand it”—before she would marry him.

Nelly seemed to have been something of a George Sand, the French woman novelist who liked dressing in men’s clothes and smoking cigars. Coates says Nelly had “a boy’s face,” enjoyed men’s sports, and “thought nothing of fencing with Rizal.”

George Sand had a long-running affair with Chopin in which she took on the aggressive and he the passive role. Does that mean their relationship was one between butch and closet queen? Or did they simply ignore social and moral conventions that today would be labeled as gender stereotyping?

And what of Rizal and Nelly Boustead—was their relationship of a similar nature?

How would I know? I’m no historian. But I’ve just worked on a script about Rizal’s exile in Dapitan, so I’ve done a little rereading of the Rizalist canon lately. I’ll have more speculation and extrapolation in my next column, about the scandalous live-in relationship between the 35-year-old Rizal and the 18-year-old Josephine Bracken.

MESSING WITH HISTORY

Today being the 153rd birthday of Jose Protacio Rizal, I’ve dug up a series of columns I wrote nearly two decades ago, at about the time I was writing the script of a film with the working title Dapitan. The title became Rizal sa Dapitan when the film was shown. The film, directed by Tikoy Aguiluz, starred Albert Martinez as Rizal and Amanda Page as Josephine Bracken.

Here’s the first column, which is really more about film adaptations of historical material.

MATTER OF FACT

Jose F. Lacaba

Manila Times, December 28, 1996

Messing with history

“ARE filmmakers,” a recent Associated Press feature asks, “beholden to historical accuracy?”

The question has cropped up in connection with a new film, The English Patient, touted by critics as among the best of 1996. It’s a question that has always bothered me, having written or co-written a number of screenplays based on true-life stories about real people.

The English Patient  is based on a novel by Michael Ondaatje—in other words, on a work of fiction, a work of the imagination, not a history. But the principal character, Count Laszlo de Almasy, a Hungarian in wartime North Africa, happens to be a historical figure.

As played by Ralph Fiennes, Almasy is, in the words of the AP report, “a brooding, handsome dreamer—a haunted desert explorer who pursues the woman he loves obsessively and collaborates with Nazis in a last attempt to save her life.”

That creates a problem. The real Almasy, according to the daughter of a Hungarian diplomat in wartime Egypt, was a willing collaborator who gave the Nazis lists of people to be arrested.

Elizabeth Pathy Salett, the diplomat’s daughter, describes the film as “amoral and ahistorical” and contends that “movies like this should be more faithful to what actually happened.”

The problem, as I have discovered in my other incarnation as a screenwriter, is that it is devilishly difficult to be faithful to what actually happened when you’re writing drama. You have to bend reality a bit because your producers and your audience expect heightened action and raging passion where historical records show only uneventfulness and anticlimax.

In Operation: Get Victor Corpus, the Rebel Soldier, for which I did the first draft of the script (but don’t blame me for the kilometric title), history was a little skirmish between an army unit and a small band of New People’s Army guerrillas, according to my informant, Victor Corpus himself. Cinema was a slew of helicopters dropping bombs, deafening explosions, and stuntmen somersaulting all over the jungle.

In Eskapo, for which (again) I did the first draft of the script, history was two escaped political prisoners hiding in the trunk of a car that succeeded in leaving a prison camp without incident, according to my informants, Geny Lopez and Serge Osmeña themselves. Cinema was guards learning of the escape at the exact moment when the car goes past the prison-camp gate, then firing at the wildly fleeing car.

In Dapitan, a film-in-progress for which I did the third and fourth drafts of the script, history was two politico-military commandants named Ricardo Carnicero and Juan Sitges with contrasting attitudes toward their prisoner, Jose Rizal. The fourth-draft script has an unnamed composite character identified as Komandante.

A hyper-realistic script on Rizal’s four years of exile in Dapitan would have to be written in many languages—the Spanish of Rizal’s “jailers” and Jesuit mentors; the Hongkong English of Josephine Bracken; the Laguna Tagalog of Rizal’s sisters; the Cebuano Visayan native to Dapitan; plus German, French, Italian, Latin, even a smattering of Hebrew, the languages that the polyglot Rizal used in his correspondence with Ferdinand Blumentritt and other European scientists.

Not being a polyglot, I made do with dialogue that is mostly Spanish-flavored Tagalog—no ngunits, subalits, and marahils—but shifts to English when Josephine comes into Rizal’s life.

In my own defense, I can only say that the explosions in Victor Corpus and the gunfire in Eskapo were not in my script drafts, but even if they were, I wouldn’t have been the first to mess with history for cinematic purposes.

The real Bonnie and Clyde were small-time hoods, not the tragic, romantic lovers portrayed by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway.

The real Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were nondescript gunslingers, not the glamorous outlaws played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

The real Pocahontas was not—according to Everything You Know Is Wrong by Paul Kirchner—a sexy Disney cartoon with “Barbie-like figure and attire,” but a girl of only 11 or 12 years old at the time in question, who “would have gone around almost naked.”

In the journal that screenwriter-director Neil Jordan kept while filming Michael Collins, he speaks of creating a composite character, the double agent played by Stephen Rea, who dies violently midway in the film. But this character was given the name of an actual double agent who lived on to a ripe old age, outliving Michael Collins himself, whose death ends the film.

Filmmakers aren’t the only ones who have shown little respect for historical accuracy. Shakespeare himself was never bothered by the question raised by Associated Press. The real King Macbeth of Scotland, for instance, was not the murderous whoreson depicted in the play, and he didn’t die when Birnam wood came to Dunsinane, according to the Reader’s Digest Book of Facts.

“Far from being an ambitious usurper, as Shakespeare describes him, Macbeth had a claim to the Scottish throne which was at least as good as that of his rival, Duncan. Furthermore, Duncan was killed in open battle in 1040 and not murdered by Macbeth as Shakespeare’s play claims. In fact Duncan was a young, ineffectual king—not Shakespeare’s venerable and gracious sovereign. And after Macbeth seized the throne by force, he went on to reign for 17 prosperous years, from 1040 to 1057, when he was killed by Duncan’s son Malcolm III.”

KOLUM: Romansa Militar

Isang taon na palang hindi ako nakakapag-post dito sa aking blog. Subukan kong buhayin uli ito. Eto ang una kong posting ngayong 2014, na minabuti kong angkop ngayong batas na ang "Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act of 2013" na magbibigay daw ng pabuya sa mga naging biktima ng batas militar. Ang piyesang ito ay mula sa dati kong kolum na "Sa Madaling Salita," na lumabas sa yumao nang pahayagang Diario Uno.


SA MADALING SALITA

Jose F. Lacaba

Diario Uno, 1998 Setyembre 22

Romansa militar

MADALING-ARAW ng Abril 1974, isa’t kalahating taon pagkaraang ideklara ang batas militar, nireyd ang bahay na inuupahan namin sa Kalookan.

Ang bahay na iyon, kalahati ng isang duplex, ay lihim na opisina ng aming “peryodiko,” isang babasahin na buwanan ang labas, may apat hanggang walong pahina, sa simula’y mimyograp pero sa kalaunan ay inimprenta. Naglalathala kami ng balitang hindi inilalabas ng mga regular na diyaryo, halimbawa’y ang mga ambus sa kanayunan, ang hunger strike ni Ninoy Aquino, at ang madugong pag-aalsa ng mga estudyante sa Thailand. Sa pamantayan ng diktadurang naghahari noon, ang ginagawa namin ay ilegal at subersibo.

Tatlo kaming nasa bahay noon. Natutulog ako sa banig sa sala nang gisingin ako ng paulit-ulit na sigaw: “Buksan ninyo ang pinto! Mga awtoridad kami!”

Pagsilip sa bintana, nakita kong napapaligiran kami ng mga armadong lalaking nakasibilyan, nagkakanlong sa likod ng mga dyip at kotseng bukas ang headlights. Mga 20 sila. Napag-alaman ko sa kalaunan na mga miyembro sila ng 5th Constabulary Security Unit, isa sa pinakamabagsik na tagapagpatupad ng batas militar.

Lumabas sa kuwarto ang isa kong kasambahay, at pagkaraan ng ilang minutong bulungan, ipinasiya naming buksan ang pinto. Wala kaming armas kundi makinilya’t bolpen. Baka paulanan kami ng putok kung hindi kami susunod.

Pagbukas na pagbukas ko ng pinto, sumaksak sa tiyan ko ang dulo ng isang riple. May kamay na humawak sa balikat ko, pinaikot ako’t itinulak sa sahig. Sa pagkakadapa ko, tinuntungan ako, sinipa sa tadyang, kinulata sa likod at batok.

Matapos mahalughog ang buong bahay, ipinasok ako, nakaposas, sa loob ng banyo. Ang humila sa akin doon ay isang tenyente na kalaunan ay naging koronel, gobernador, at kongresista. Tinanong niya kung may tunnel sa ilalim ng kubeta.

Nabobohan yata ako sa tanong. Hindi ko napigilan ang matawa—saglit lang, halos walang tunog. Biglang tumama ang kamao niya sa dibdib ko. Maskulado ang tenyete, tipong Incredible Hulk, at ako naman noon ay may timbang lamang na 111 libra, tipong Palito. Bumalandra ako sa dingding ng banyo.

Mataas na ang araw nang dalhin kami sa Kampo Crame, sa himpilan ng 5th CSU. Pagkaraan ng kaunting paperwork, dinala ako sa likod ng opisina, sa lugar na tinutulugan ng mga konstable. Doon, ginawa akong punching bag ng mga opisyal at sundalo.

Sa dibdib at tiyan nila ako pinagsusuntok, hindi sa mukha, para walang ebidensiya ng tortyur. Nakaupo ako sa gilid ng isang tarima. Bumibira ang mga interogador tuwing magtatanong, at bumibira kung hindi gusto ang sagot ko. May ilang konstableng napadaan lang, papunta sa locker, at nakikiambos sa gulpihan, binabatukan ako o kinakarate.

Nang magsawa na sila sa kasusuntok, pinaiskuwat ako, nakaderetso ang dalawang kamay sa harapan. Habang nasa ganito akong posisyon, ang mga lulod ko ay pinapalo ng hawakan ng walis-tambo. Mahina lang ang palo, parang walang puwersa, pero sa katagalan ay namaga ang mga lulod ko.

Naranasan ko rin ang tinatawag nilang San Juanico Bridge o higa sa hangin. Nakapatong ang ulo ko sa gilid ng isang tarima, ang mga paa ko sa gilid ng isang pang tarima. Deretso ang mga kamay ko sa aking tagiliran, at deretso ang katawan kong nakabitin sa pagitan ng dalawang tarima.

Mahirap manatili sa ganyang posisyon. Tiyak na hihilahin kang pababa ng gravity at ng bigat ng sariling katawan. Pero bago lumundo at kusang bumagsak ang katawan ko, sinikaran na ako sa tiyan.

Dalawang beses akong pinahiga sa hangin. Sa pangatlong beses, hindi na ako bumangon mula sa sementong sahig. “Patayin n’yo na lang ako,” sabi ko. Noon natigil ang tortyur sa araw na iyon.

Sa maniwala kayo’t sa hindi, nagkaroon pa kami ng lunch break. Hindi ko na maalala kung ano ang inihaing ulam na lumalangoy sa sabaw—baka sinibak na talong. Kahit walang kalasa-lasa, naubos ko. Nakakagutom ang tortyur.

Nagbabaka-sakali ako, nang magpatuloy ang gulpi, na ang lahat ng kinain ko’y isusuka ko sa mukha ng mga tomotortyur sa akin. Sa kasamaang-palad, hindi iyon nangyari.

Ang ikinuwento ko rito’y pahirap sa unang araw lamang. Bahagi ito ng aking salaysay na iniharap sa class suit sa Hawaii—isa sa halos 10,000 testimonya mula sa mga naging biktima ng paglabag sa mga karapatang-tao noong panahon ng rehimeng militar.

Wala akong intensiyon na sagutin ang ipinadalang form para sa mga hinihimok na sumali sa class suit. Pero ilang araw bago dumating ang deadline na itinakda ng korte sa Hawaii, kinausap ako nang masinsinan ni Thelma Arceo—ina ng isang Atenistang pinatay ng militar sa Panay. Hindi pera ang habol natin, sabi niya. Ang importante’y mapatunayan sa hukom na may 10,000 nga ang nabiktima ng rehimeng Marcos.

Ngayon, may bali-balitang baka bago magpasko ay tumanggap ang bawat biktima ng danyos na hindi bababa sa kalahating milyong piso. Hindi ako umaasa diyan, pero kung nariyan na ay hindi ko tatanggihan. Marami akong utang na binabayaran.

Gayunman, hindi komo’t handa akong tanggapin ang pabuya ay inaabsuwelto ko na ang nasirang diktador na naging dahilan para ko matikman ang karinyo brutal ng romansa militar. Ano siya, sinusuwerte?

Kakuwanan 8: ESKUWELAHANG BASTOS

Sinulat ko ang sumusunod para sa kolum ko sa magasing MAXIMO. Pangwalong “Kakuwanan” kolum dapat ito, at malamang ay para sa June 2003 issue. Pero hindi na ito nalathala dahil nagsara ang magasin pagkaraan ng April 2003 issue.


KAKUWANAN
Ni Jose F. Lacaba

Eskuwelahang Bastos

NGAYONG pasukan na, baka maungkat na naman ang kontrobersiyal na Basic Education Curriculum—lalong kilala sa bansag na Makabayan Curriculum—na kasalukuyang ipinapatupad ng Department of Education.

Sa bagong kurikulum na ito, nahahati sa limang learning area ang mga dapat pag-aralan nina Totoy at Nene—Filipino, English, Science, Mathematics, at Makabayan. Saklaw ng Makabayan ang araling panlipunan, kasaysayan, teknolohiya, kabutihang-asal, musika, sining, edukasyong pantahanan at pangkabuhayan, edukasyong pangkatawan at pangkalusugan, at iba pang makabagbag-utak na sabjek.

Ewan ko lang kung ano ang ibig sabihin ng “edukasyong pangkatawan.” Katawang panromansa kaya ang tinutukoy dito? Dito kaya itinuturo ang tungkol sa maseselang bahagi ng katawan na kilala rin natin sa mga katawagang talong at tahong, manoy at monay?

Baka hindi, dahil hindi naman umaalma ang mga manang at monsinyor. Kung may pagtutol man sa Makabayan Curriculum, ito’y sa dahilang nabawasan daw ang oras na nakalaan para sa siyensiya.

Ako naman, ang kuwestiyon ko ay ito: kung sa grade school at high school ay kailangan ang Araling Makabayan, sa pagtuntong ng kolehiyo ay kailangan din kaya ang Araling Makamundo?

Sa ibang bansa, sa maniwala kayo’t sa hindi, may ganitong mga paksang seryosong itinuturo at pinag-aaralan.

Sa siyudad ng Amsterdam, sa Netherlands, may bagong-tatag na paaralang ang pangalan ay Hanky Panky School. Ang misyon nito: bigyan ang mga pokpok ng “exclusive sales training” para lumago ang kanilang negosyo.

Sa Netherlands, legal ang prostitusyon. (Legal din ang marijuana, pero ibang usapan iyan.) Nagbabayad ng buwis ang mga pokpok. Higit sa lahat, itinuturing na isang tourist attraction ang red-light district.

Ayon kay Elene Vis, na kilala sa bansag na Five-Star Madam at siyang nagtayo ng Hanky Panky School, kabilang sa kurikulum ng kanyang eskuwelahan ang sumusunod: komunikasyon, presentasyon, paraan ng pananamit, at ang iba’t ibang posisyong ipinapakita sa librong Kama Sutra.

“Puwede nating tawaging sales techniques ang mga ito,” ani Mama-San Elene. “Kailangan mong ibenta ang iyong sarili, at hindi importante kung ang ibinebenta mo’y katawan mo o vacuum cleaner. Pareho lang ang pamamaraan.”

Ang tuwisyon para sa kakaibang kurso ni Elene ay $450—halos P25,000. Pero pagkagradweyt mo, posibleng kumabig ka ng halagang karaniwang kinikita ng mga babae’t lalaking nagtatrabaho sa escort agency na pag-aari rin ni Elene—$6,000 o mahigit sa P300,000 sa isang buwan, para sa 40 oras ng trabaho.

Ilang taon mong bubunuin iyan kung tindera ka lang ng tilapya sa talipapa?

Sa Vietnam naman, sa mala-Boracay na China Beach, balik-eskuwela daw ang ilang pokpok. Ang pinag-aaralan nila? Ingles!—ang napakahalagang paksa na kasalukuyang binibigyan ng karagdagang importansiya sa ating mga paaaralan! Tulad sa Amsterdam, ang layunin ng mga pokpok sa pag-aaral ng Ingles ay para tumaas ang kita.

Sabi ng isang putatsing: “Madalas, mayroon kaming mga kliyenteng dayuhan, pero napapahiya kami dahil hindi namin alam kung ano ang sasabihin para maakit sila.”

Ngayon, ayon sa ulat, nagbabayad sila ng $52 sa isang buwan—halos P3,000—sa titser na nagtuturo sa kanila kung paano sasabihin sa Ingles ang ganitong mga pangungusap: “Isang daang dolyar,” “Akina ang relo mo,” at “Gusto kong maging asawa mo.”

Di tulad sa Netherlands, ilegal ang prostitusyon sa Vietnam. Sa kabila nito, tinatantiyang may 37,000 jokard sa bansang iyon.

Samantala, sa Taiwan, iba namang klaseng sex school ang itinayo kamakailan. Ito ang Graduate Institute of Sexology, na nakabase sa Shu Te University. Pero ang mga estudyante rito ay hindi mga pokpok kundi mga mag-asawa.

“Kung hindi mabibigyan ng kaunting anghang ang sex life ng mag-asawa, maiipon ang mga kasiphayuan [frustrations] at sa kalaunan ay mawawasak ang pagsasama ng mag-asawa,” paliwanag ni Dr. Lin Yen-chin, ang namumuno sa paaralan.

Layunin ng instituto na magturo ng “quality sex” para mailigtas ang mga maligalig na matrimonyo at mabawasan ang diborsiyo. Ang Taiwan daw kasi ang may pinakamataas na antas ng diborsiyo sa buong Asya.

Bagamat walang Kolehiyo ng Kamunduhan dito sa ating bayang malibog, hindi tayo pahuhuli sa Netherlands, Vietnam, at Taiwan pagdating sa seks.

Wala man tayong Hanky Panky School, mayroon naman tayong mga programang pantelebisyon na ang galing-galing magturo ng giling-giling, at marami tayong pelikulang bold na nagpapakita ng iba’t ibang paikot-ikot sa Kamang Sutla, habang nagtuturo ng mahahalagang aral na tulad ng: “Kapag ang kikiam naging kikay, may humalukay.”

Pagdating sa spokening-dollar, talong-talo ng ating mga kalapating mababa ang lipad ang kanilang mga kalahi sa Vietnam. Isang sigaw lang ng “Hey, Joe! Wanna pakpak, Joe?” at tiyak na dapa agad ang kliyenteng dayuhan.

At hindi rin tayo binabagabag ng problema ng Taiwan. Ang antas ng diborsiyo dito sa atin ay hindi lang mababa—zero pa nga. Kasi, ayaw pumayag ng Simbahan na magkaroon ng diborsiyo dito. Kung may problema ang pagsasamahan ng mag-asawa, magdadala  na lang si Misis ng macho dancer sa VIP room, at makikipaglambutsingan si Mister sa kalaguyo.

“KAKUWANAN” 8

Hindi nalathala, dahil nagsara na ang

MAXIMO: Ang Magasin ng Makabagong Macho