Editorial: Hope along Weeping Rivers

I'm back. I guess.

I'm going to tell you all now a story that doesn't go the way it could, but kinda loops back into the way it should.

A couple weeks ago a bunch of people criticized Liza Soberano for starring in the fantasy TV show Bagani, because she doesn't look ethnic or something. I don't know enough about the show to make an opinion. I don't know if, within that context, this casting was justified, and to be honest it isn't the poor girl's fault; it's primarily a profit and artist-oriented decision made by a corporate entity. If anything came out of this it's that people should look at the crooked, outdated system that perpetuates decisions like this and change that first. Now this isn't an essay about representation, or at least representation in this particular case. Soberano responded to these criticisms with a meme-able tweet about her being Filipino, since she was raised by two Filipinos since childhood and she loves sinigang. She might have missed the point of the criticism, but I found something relateable in the way she defended herself.

Intentional or not, Filipinos (and people in general) have this mentality to "other" people who don't look, talk or act exactly like them. We as a people love to stereotype. In response, these people who are "othered" tend to have this feeling that they have to defend their Filipino-ness to others if they don't fit this mental picture of what a Filipino should be, and that's what I think Liza Soberano was thinking when she made that tweet. This stock Filipino self-image is pretty clear: both Filipino parents, relatively conservative, Roman Catholic or at least Christian. When one is half Filipino like Soberano, I don't think Filipinos look at their Filipino-ness. I am of the opinion, unfortunately, that other people (consciously or not) define her by her mixed-ness and not the fact that she's Filipino (and I think she is), because I've experienced this kind of thinking too.

When I was a child, I was the sole Muslim kid in a predominantly Christian/Catholic school. While for the most part, my classmates were accepting of me (they don't give a shit, they're kids), each year there would always be questions from curious teachers or parents about having four wives or praying five times a day or not eating pork. The sentiment was mostly benign, stemming perhaps from curiosity, but even as a child I knew I was different from everyone else in school. Instead of shutting myself away, I embraced being different. I was the weird kid in school that was kinda funny and good at math.

And I wouldn't blame people for thinking that way; it's perpetuated in this country's popular culture. Ask yourself; in mainstream media (TV, movies), how many people don't fit the "stock Filipino self-image?" How many Muslim main characters are there? Are they portrayed as terrorists, or to patronize us, are they portrayed as someone in the military or police, fighting against their own people? How many Chinese Filipinos are portrayed as rich businessmen with thick accents? How many comedy shows do you know make fun of half-black Filipinos because they're ugly, while glorifying their half Caucasian counterparts as paragons of beauty and style? How many assume that people are good at basketball just because they're half black? How many shows portray the probinsyano as a dimwitted person, usually part of the help, who doesn't know the odds and ends of city life?

Through local media, I have always experienced the life of someone else. I have always lived, through movies and TV, someone else's story. I have always lived someone else's idea of me. And I doubt I'm the only one who feels this way. 

What, then, should we do? How do we change this paradigm? Is there hope? The answer came to me from an unlikely source.

I get invites to movies from friends and classmates every so often, but this time it was different. The invitation came from my father. This in itself is an anomaly, as my father rarely goes to watch movies in the cinema, and his idea of a good movie is something like Glitter Man or Blood Sport. Even then, watching a movie at home generally serves as a way to put him to sleep. He told me he was going to watch a film with dialogue in Tausug. I asked for a title or synopsis; perhaps I had seen the movie before. He proudly showed me a text from his classmate inviting him to see the film: apparently, the film was 2016's Women of the Weeping River. As it turns out, Sharifah Pearlsia Ali-Dans, who plays Farida in that film, was his highschool classmate. He offered to treat me to join him, (also a rare event), so I agreed.

For the next two hours, my father and I watched the film, me for the second time. For a man invested in blockbusters and ADHD-appropriate action films, he was hooked; he did not sleep at all, and Women of the Weeping River isn't the most fast paced of movies. He was invested in the film, commenting on what was going on, translating dialogue to me despite the fact that subtitles were there, breathing meaning to words lost to me through atrophy and disuse. I often ask myself, what is the power of regional cinema? And here beside me was the answer: it's power is in making a man pay rapt attention to a film that would otherwise have turned him away, because this film is his story; it's the story of his people, a story that hasn't been told in mainstream avenues.

After the film, he gave me a CD. "It's from our highschool reunion," he told me. It was full of  school photos and pictures from Jolo, Sulu, before and after the Burning of Jolo. Some of those pictures are in this post. I still look at the CD from time to time.