Bato Bato sa Langit, ang Tamaan Bakla

Remington: pretty boy, or predatory gay?

Zombadings as a study of why, and how to promote gay killings
Michael David C. Tan
Outrage Magazine
2011

Zombadings 1: Patayin sa Shokot si Remington
Director: Jade Castro
Cast: Martin Escudero, Kerbie Zamora, Lauren Young, Roderick Paulate, Janice de Belen, John Regala
2011

What is most troublesome about Michael David C. Tan’s open letter is his claim that “LGBT advocates do not exist because we want to be tolerated – we actually already are.”  This is far from the truth.

Zombadings 1 reminds us that, as Tan rightly (and ironically) describes, we live in a world where homosexuals are killed for being gay, where homosexuals are pressured to act “straight” in order to gain employment, where trannies are ridiculed and barred from certain establishments, where reproductive health and divorce remain a highly contested topic, where same-sex union is still perceived as a lost cause even by the nation’s only gay political party.

Memories of Underdevelopment

Lovebirds Mario and Alexis with, you guessed it, a pair of real avian lovebirds.

Lovebirds
Director: Roni Bertubin
Cast: Joseph Izon, Andrés Alexis Fernandez, Boots Anson-Roa, Tommy Abuel
2008

On the surface, Roni Bertubin’s Lovebirds is a lighthearted romantic comedy, filled with trite-and-tested tidbits characteristic of the genre. Mario (Joseph Izon) is a closeted mama’s boy in the province. When his Spanish cyberfriend Alexis (Andrés Alexis Fernandez) flies to the Philippines to meet him, the forward-thinking foreigner’s presence challenges the backward community’s beliefs. His conservative mother Amelia (Boots Anson-Roa) freaks out at her son’s apparent homosexuality, and tries to nip the fledgling relationship in the bud. Mario and Alexis fight for their love, of course, and the story ends, like all rom-coms, with a wedding—or at least something resembling it, because obviously, the gay marriage battle is far from won.

In spite of the conventions, however, Lovebirds manages to paint a thoughtful picture of why homosexual relationships are so difficult for Filipinos like Mario. Indeed, more than just the topical boy-meets-girl (or in this case, boy) scenario, Lovebirds is a film about underdevelopment in both the private and public spheres.

Mum’s the Word

One artificial couple after another.

In My Life
Director: Olivia Lamasan
Cast: Vilma Santos, Luis Manzano, John Lloyd Cruz
2009

Shirley walks over to a group of four white sculptures. Her son Mark sheepishly stands beside her. “Father and son, mother and daughter,” she says, pointing to the two pairs of figures. She gestures at her and Mark, the third pair: “Mother and son.” Shirley smiles triumphantly at her seemingly clever parallelisms. “Family! Kaya nga gusto ko dito.” Mark’s lover Noel laughs and takes the photo.

The scene is short, almost forgettable, buried somewhere in a touristic sequence where Mark (Luis Manzano), with his boyfriend Noel (John Lloyd Cruz), shows his mother Shirley (Vilma Santos) around New York City. The white sculptures are George Segal’s Gay Liberation, a site-specific installation in Greenwich Village built in 1980 to commemorate the Stonewall riots which catalyzed the gay rights movement in the US. Shirley, however, is unaware of the monument’s nature, recognizing it only as innocent males and females in a “family.”

Even the Fantasy is Heartbreaking

A field of purple dreams.

Were the World Mine
Director: Tom Gustafson
Cast: Tanner Cohen, Wendy Robie, Judy McLane, Nathaniel David Becker
2008

In a queer world, the happiest spectacles can be the saddest things.

Tom Gustafson’s Were the World Mine is a creative adaptation of William Shakespeare’s classic play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The story is familiar, clichéd even. Timothy (Tanner Cohen) is a student in a small-town exclusive school, ostracized by his male peers because he is gay. He has a crush on a jock, Jonathon (Nathaniel David Becker). Beginnning as a largely passive character, Timothy keeps mum about his crush, even to his best friends. He puts up with the crap his chauvinist classmates throw at him. He is patient with his mother despite her qualms about his sexuality. Timothy lives with his queerness as best as he can, enduring each day, waiting for the time he will graduate and leave that backward backwater of a town. His life begins to change when his English teacher Mrs Tebbit (Wendy Robie) announces auditions for the senior school play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Timothy clinches the role of Puck, and Jonathon, Lysander.