THE IMAGES OF WOMEN IN THE PHILIPPINE SOCIETY AS REFLECTED THROUGH THE 8 SELECTED FILIPINO FILMS
(Tunay Na Ina, Ibong Adarna, Dawn of Freedom, Anak Dalita, Nunal sa Tubig, Insiang, Kisapmata, and Scorpio Nights)
Women in the Philippine society have come a long way since the pre-colonial times. Before the Spanish conquistadores came, it has been noted that women had some degree of power and status, if we are to base it on anthropological evidences. According to historian Rosalinda Pineda-Ofreneo, these evidences are expressed and preserved in oral literature and tradition among ethnic communities. They held respectable positions such as the local priestess called babaylan, or the spiritual leader and healer of the community. They also preserve the history of the community through oral traditions, a “holder of wisdom” at that, as Marjorie Pineda puts it in her paper “The Writer and Her Roots.” Furthermore, if we are to believe the legend of Princess Urduja, the warrior princess from the kingdom of Tawalisi (the now Pangasinan province), women, at one point, also became rulers of kingdoms in the region, and we just cannot ignore their historical significance. In addition, anthropological facts marked that the “workplace” was then shared by both sexes. Women, thus, have experienced a sense of respect and equality during that period. But then again as life flourished, a system of private ownership took place and became the “advent of slavery and debt peonage” and at the same time led to the “historical downfall” of women (Ofreneo, 1992).
When the Spaniards came, they created “a new social structure dominated by the frailocracy and buttressed by a corresponding culture.” The religious influence became overpowering, fostering unqualified obedience to all forms of authority: colonial government, Church, landlord, and father (Ofreneo, 1992). Hence, the “Patriarchal” structure was established and the phallic Cross and Sword from the West were introduced, which eye-bleedingly desecrated the image of women as the “community’s spiritual healer and the holder of the knowledge,” consequently, according to Andrea Dworkin, creating a system of power that is “male-supremacist.” This means that the society is organized in the assumption that men are superior to women and that women are inferior to men. Patriarchy, moreover, has worked hard to prevent the eruption of the mythically feared return of the matriarchy which may allow to stand in place of the Law of the Father (Kaplan, 1983), therefore, producing the “silent and subservient Filipina hovering between kitchen, church and cradle” during Spanish times.
In a span of 300 years, the Spaniards have successfully injected an alien culture in the Filipino bloodstreams, which brought in changes and innovations in the political, economic and cultural field. They brought in the country the, then, world craze—the Cinema, which played a big role in changing the landscape of women and expanding the patriarchal anarchy. One major factor for this is the “male gaze” concept. Feminist film theorists working through textual analysis have explored such issues as gendered spectatorship, and that the male gender, more often than not, consciously or unconsciously adopts a “masculine subject position” on the subject plot, camera work, editing and even on the female object of desire. Elayne Rapping supported the idea, that film medium traditionally assumes a “male gaze,” and that the implied audience is the male moviegoer who is assumed to identify with the male hero and to view the female protagonist as object, not subject, meaning women viewers have been placed in a compromising position. They are seduced into identifying with the male point of view, the male protagonist. Thus creating in the latter years, the two sides of the coin– two extreme, stereotypical negative portrayals of Filipino women: “the martyr” and “the whore” (Agbayani, 1991), the women of passiveness (who are rewarded) and women of transgressiveness (who are punished) (Walker and Goldner, 1995) and the “polarization of women’s images”, where the extremes are embodied in the ever-virtuous bida (protagonist), who is self-sacrificing, pure and innocent, and the slutty and sex-crazed contrabida (antagonist), who inflicts endless suffering on the hapless heroine (Jimenez-David, 2005). Consequently, women by being constantly portrayed as passive, limiter in their capacities come to accept a “discounted image of themselves” (Agbayani, 1991), living on a belief that women are “omen.” which render them vulnerable to manipulation, indeed to exploitation, making the Cinema, a “powerful tool” because it holds up “a mirror to nature”, hence our dependence on it for the reflection of events would petrify us when we encounter them in real life (Tiongson, 1986).
In 1898, Spain went to a “mock” war against the United States after forging a $20 million deal of ownership of the Philippines as stated in the Treaty of Paris. After an exhausting several years of waging in a war of pacification against the Filipino nationalists, the country officially became a U.S. colony in 1899. And after almost 50 years of rule, the imperialist Japanese came in, took over the country and created a puppet government. As they say, the rest is history. But it has been obvious that (his)tory took its toll on women’s position in the society, as depicted in the Filipino films because women are constructed through the effects of language and representation (Alice Doesn’t, 1982). And that, Pareja noted, the pelikula was their cathartic experience.
The early films in the Philippines rooted to the influences brought by the conquistadores, such as the moro-moro and zarzuela. Men played the superior being, the ruler, or any term that will justify “his greatness.” Women, on the other hand, played the (m)other, or the partner. The first noted Filipino actress, Chananay Balbino, started the plight of the stereotyped women in Philippine cinema when she portrayed Teodora Alonzo, the domesticated mother of the national hero in the 1912 film “The Life and Death of Dr. Jose Rizal.” Also in the same year, Titay Molina, the wife of Edward Meyer Gross, owner of the Rizalina Film Manufacturing Company, appeared in the film “Dr. Jose Rizal,” as Josephine Bracken, the faithful lover of Dr. Jose Rizal. Women were portrayed, since then, as the weaker sex, the power behind the throne, the passive mother, the servant of man, the convent-bred, and the martyr.
According to Larry Gross, mass media stereotypes selectively feature and reinforce some of the available roles and images for women. It has been found out that there are certain patterns of stereotyping the Filipina in the society through the Filipino films. Pennie Azarcon-dela Cruz, in her paper on the images of women in Philippine cinema, enumerated the following impressions about women which emerged from her study of ten selected Tagalog movies:
1. Women are dependent on men for protection from danger; men are their ubiquitous saviors in any entanglement.
2. A woman’s happiness and fulfillment are found only in a man, and only when she is faithful to him.
3. A woman needs to be chaste to be worthy of a man’s love.
4. “Good women” are kind and forgiving, docile and submissive, totally devoted and self-sacrificing to their families.
5. Women are not capable of transforming themselves for the better.
6. Women are often the downfall of men.
7. Women are materialistic and ambitious.
8. Women are sex objects, whose role is to satisfy a man’s sexual needs and to respond to his come-ons.
9. Women are totally preoccupied with winning and keeping their men
10. Women are gullible and stupid.
The image that comes across the screen is that, “women are weak-willed, passionate and emotional, easily swayed by unbridled sexuality and by lovers” (Azarcon-dela Cruz, 1998). The bad news is that in the nearly century-old history of Philippine films, women have found their real-life choices and aspirations imprisoned in these extremes of image. There is very little room, even in present-day Philippine society, for women to express both sentimentality and sexuality, to have the freedom to express sexual choices and preferences without inviting social opprobrium and moral condemnation (Jimenez-David, 2005).
ONE SIDE OF THE COIN: WOMAN AS THE MARTYR
Pareja stated that the suffering of women was equated by “virtuousness” in the early Filipino films to project the desired image of Filipino womanhood on the screen; being “passive” should be rewarded in exchange of having become necessary to beset her with every conceivable emotional, physical and spiritual dilemma which transformed the heroine into a veritable martyr. In Octavio Silos’ 1939 film Tunay na Ina, of which is set in a backdrop of the dichotomy of classes of the rich and the poor (an element of the traditional drama which the cinema inherited), the suffering woman is an unwed mother, Magdalena (of which name was patterned to the biblical character with the image of a fallen but repentant woman). We can see from here how the hierarchy worked when her father took away her baby because the society cannot accept somebody like her, and that it would likely tarnish his reputation. She cannot do anything but to give in to her father’s “desire” because it has always been the “standard,” and to go against it is like destroying the pillar of the society’s moral code. In addition, she also gave in to the villainous Antonio’s (the one who violated her) threat and extortion because she cannot afford to lose her husband (who eventually found out about her past and left her) –an image of a woman that dictates her that she has to be “chaste” to deserve love from a man. At the end of the film, Roberto, Magdalena’s husband approaches her and offers a plea for reconciliation after Magdalena has fallen to her lowest point. Unfortunately, the suffering woman, a victim of a thoughtless villain, needs the forgiveness of an understanding hero to cleanse her past (Del Mundo, 1998). There is also a similar case in Mike De Leon’s 90-min. Kisapmata (1982) wherein Charito Solis role as the submissive wife is silenced by the domineering Vic Silayan. The film is also set on a backdrop of “disturbing dichotomy between technical wealth and thematic poverty. (David, 1990)” Nollaig O’Reilly Byrne and Imelda Colgan McCarthy stated in their essay, that the isolating and silencing of women and children is intrinsically connected to the prevailing political and economic system of patriarchy. We can see that archetypal symbol in Kisapmata wherein the family is positioned in the dining area in a “triangular manner (imitating the Holy Trinity),” having Vic Silayan on top of the “triangle” implying a political and economic power as the father, patterned after the biblical belief. Moreover, the two films mentioned above, are similar in a way that the role of the mother and her relationship to her daughter was challenged. In Tunay na Ina, it became a challenge for Magdalena to gain her daughter’s love and respect after years of separation. In Kisapmata, on the other hand, Charito Solis was challenged that she cannot afford to lose her daughter, Charo Santos, because her husband will harm her, but was, also, in competition with her daughter for the love of his husband, which reflects the growing incidence of incest in the country. The mother and daughter are represented through a play on the “opposition of the erotic and domestic (Nead, 1992).”
In Abe Yutaka and Gerardo de Leon’s propaganda film, Dawn of Freedom, (1944) a mother is so grateful to a Japanese soldier after saving her son Tony that she appealed to her other son, Lt. Garcia to lay down their arms and return to their homes. In a certain perspective, it’s a weak point at that because it justified the stereotyped image of women being dependent on men for protection from danger, and that men are their ubiquitous saviors in any entanglement. Another fact that the stereotyped woman has to face is that in order to be considered as a “good woman,” she has to be kind and forgiving, docile and submissive, totally devoted and self-sacrificing to their families. Women live in a society ruled by the father, in which the place of the mother is repressed. “Motherhood and how to live it or not to live it, lies at the root of the dilemma (Kaplan, 1983).” Moreover, Annie Lau presses on her statement that nowhere in traditional families is the gender divide more pronounced in terms of access to power than in the area of physical and sexual abuse. It is often the marginal family, unconnected to supportive family networks, that presents with major difficulties in these areas.
OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN: WOMAN AS THE WHORE / SEX OBJECT
Marilou Diaz-Abaya cited that the traditional Filipino heroine of yesteryears’ movies look and dresses like Mother Mary and talks like Maria Clara but has come a long way since then. In the same note, Jose Nepomuceno contrasted the young woman of his own generation during the Spanish times- shy, demure, soft-spoken and fragile within the emerging “Americanized” women of the bodabil era. He added that from convent-bred to university coed was a big leap for the Filipina who had become educated in the raps of Western world (Pareja, 1998). It is a fact that it started in the American colonization when women became liberated and open-minded and continue to “learn” until the present time. But the biological determinists still believe precisely what the theologians believe: that woman exist to be sexually used by men, to reproduce and to keep the cave clean, and to obey (Dworkin, 1995), an “object” in other word. Women in Vicente Salumbides and Manuel Conde’s Ibong Adarna (1941) were one of the earliest examples of women being treated as objects or commodities trapped in the patriarchal structure of monarchy. The princesses have to be beautiful, should aim for perfection, to earn a place in the heart of the princes. Prinsesa Leonora, for example, cannot do anything but to release Prinsipe Juan from his vow when she realizes the he is in love with Prinsesa Maria. She opted to go with the villainous Prinsipe Pedro because he has chosen her to be with him—a justified image of a woman like a “doll,” being passed around and that she cannot have an opinion because she is only a “doll (perceived only to give “pleasure” to her owner).”
Furthermore, in Lamberto Avellana’s 1956 Anak Dalita, Rosa Rosal portrayed the role of a prostitute, justifying the image of the woman as a “whore” through her physical appearance. She gets caught up with a man who is in involved in smuggling activities. If we are to follow the rule of the narrative structure of the melodrama genre, the society and the class structure will have to judge her because her work “stereotypes” her as immoral and groups her to the lower class, and that she have to be punished (her younger brother was killed by the leader of the gangster) for her to learn her lessons. The narrative structure of a (patriarchal) film (as a medium) is set on a convention that someone who acts against the moral fiber of the society has to be punished, until then she can be redeemed. Elsa Jones supported the fact that we are dealing the problem of how the culture constructs and instructs these gendered identities.
Ishmael Bernal’s Nunal sa Tubig (1976), Lino Brocka’s Insiang (1976) and Peque Gallaga’s Scorpio Nights (1985), share the same claustrophobic backdrop of poverty. Women, thus, in these films are caught within the structure of power: of who are capable to kill (Scorpio Nights), who have the resources (Nunal sa Tubig) and who have the strength (Insiang). The male-driven power suffocates them, and takes advantage of their body. The female nude within patriarchy thus signifies that the women have come under the government of male style (Nead, 1992).
In Scorpio Nights, it can be derived that there was an overemphasis on the image of the Filipina as a sex object. A woman was caught in between the two over-sexed alpha males, who clashed over her attention, which resulted to double murder and a suicide. Even at the death of the woman (Ann Marie Gutierrez), she was still used by his insane husband (Orestes Ojeda) to gratify his own sexual hunger, a very graphic image of woman as a sex object. In male-supremacist terms, Dworkin defined sex as phallic sex, which is often called possession or conquest or taking. A woman’s body is taken or conquered on possessed or-to use another supposedly sexy synonym- violated and the means of the taking or possessing or violating is penile penetration.
On the other hand, Insiang depicted 2 women (Mona Lisa and Hilda Koronel), a mother-daughter relationship, in a tension-filled love triangle with a slum goon Dado. In his big frame, he can physically and emotionally control the 2 women. He was not satisfied having a relationship with the mother, and so shifted his attention to the daughter and raped her. Because of what happened, Hilda Koronel tried to get out of the slum area but his boyfriend Rex Cortez does not want to. So she had no choice but to go back to her own “prison” and devised a plan to get even to Dado. She has built an image of the “femme fatale” or the woman of seductive charm who leads men into compromising or dangerous situations. She involves herself in a relationship to infuriate her mother, who eventually killed the macho. Mario Hernando explained that Insiang is a powerful film for its portrayal of ghetto life in Manila and how it has corrupted and changed a young woman. From being depicted as merely submissive, the way Filipino women was sold and packaged to conform to the demands of a captive audience, the woman she has finally become- one who fights back for her principles and the causes that she believes are right and just, even as she asserts her own values and independence (Pareja, 1998).
Bernal’s Nunal sa Tubig depicts a poor island, claustrophobic at that, which is slowly being polluted by the growth of the industry in the town on the bigger neighboring island. Lumbera noted that the film is “a weave of an existentialist metaphor” about the absurdity of life and how the simplicity of the village folk allows them to endure personal, natural and social calamities without a whimper. What’s interesting to look at is how the love triangle of the characters developed as the film rolls and how the contrast of the two women evolved in the film. The 2 women differ in image yet stereotypical of a typical Filipina. Jamin is a sailor who wants to get away the island. Chedeng, a trained midwife served as the “whore/ sex object” as she fulfills Jamin’s sexual needs and attention. Maria, Chedeng’s friend, served, on the other hand, as “the martyr”, as she looks at Jamin as an anchor that would make her existence meaningful as housewife. Jamin marries her out of guilt, when she delivered a still born which challenged her sanity.
It is revealing that in all these films, women are the “underdog, the poverty-stricken” character (Azarcon-dela Cruz, 1998) giving the lead males, who are often cast as well-to-do benefactor, a chance to do good. Female representation in the Philippine Cinema through the years has been trapped in certain stereotypes that usually do not empower women gender. Film historian Nick Deocampo explained that the women’s lives are condemned to the stifling routine of everyday work. Any chance to escape into another reality where their troubles are resolved through wish fulfillment is welcome. He added that, these practices are so deeply entrenched that despite the evolving status women have slowly forged in contemporary society, it is hard to find any major change in their representation in the movies.” Furthermore, it has been noted that the limited range of lifestyles available to Filipino women in local films likewise gives credence to the observation that the treatment of women in film is more than just a question of art and entertainment. Woman in patriarchal culture is generally represented as the negative of man, the normal, and the mutilated other. But that does not make women castrated; nor does it ensure that women see themselves only in those terms (Moscovici, 1996), after all, women today deserve the respect and equality that their previous ancestors enjoy.
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