A Review of Now Streaming, a Series of Pandemic Stories

 

We've all been affected by this pandemic in different ways, and the CignalPlay series Now Streaming tries to articulate that in audiovisual form, telling six stories from varying genres depicting pandemic life. The set of six stories can be divided into three pairs, based on theme or genre, but each gives us a distinct look at life during this unprecedented historical event,

Perhaps the most lighthearted of the six pandemic stories is Carlo Catu's From My Window, a love story about a man who distantly observes, and falls in love with, his next door neighbor. It speaks to a primal need for people to seek others, amplified by the isolation and loneliness imposed upon us by quarantine. There's a lot of stuff to unpack regarding the neighbor's condition, which can potentially lead into darker things depending on how cynical one is, but the episode focuses on the two protagonists' on again-off again relationship. 

Although seemingly conventional on the surface, the most alluring thing about Siege Ledesma's First of May is the way in which it presents its story: it first shows us Mon and Ida (Sid Lucero and Annika Dolonius, a reunion of sorts from Apocalypse Child), a couple talking via video call. It then engages in a clever bit of misdirection, with each layer, twist and wrinkle feeding us more character bits and unravelling a larger and more complicated story. In contrast to From My Window, which aimed to depict how the pandemic can keep people apart, this episode depicts how the pandemic can lock people in together, whether they want to or not.

In 1956, Donald Horton and Richard Wohl coined the term Parasocial Interaction to describe the way people interact with personas or celebrities. It's a phenomenon that perhaps gained more prominence during the rise of cinema, radio and television, though arguably it's been a phenomenon from the birth of 'celebrity' itself. In these interactions, people gain a false sense of intimacy or closeness with a public personality, even though this relationship is one-way. The next two episodes explore this concept, mutated and evolved thanks to the advent of streaming, social media, and how pandemic isolation has forced some of us to consume this continually.

Bradley Liew's Eater takes this concept to its extremes. It relates the parasocial relationships we have formed during the pandemic (elevated to dangerous levels) to the act of eating, in particular the activity of Mukbang. To me, there's always been something deeply disturbing about the activity of Mukbang, something that is intended as a communal activity, but something that reads as a disgusting expression of excess consumption. That sense of unease translates well here. But I digress. In a way, the creepy stalker antagonist of Eater has a possessiveness fueled by a twisted drive to connect with someone else. Driven to even further extremes, this episode could have ended with the antagonist wanting to consume or be consumed by his object of obsession, but the film shies away from that at the last minute. 

On the other hand, Rae Red's Year of the Rat approaches this concept in a different, metafictional way, by making us part of the audience on one end of the relationship. Andy (Thea Marabut) is an influencer, making the most of social media and the pandemic by creating inane, shallow content. In fact, stupidity is part of her brand as an influencer, often using the hashtag #tanganation (idiot nation) for the things she makes. The viewer's engagement (meaning, our engagement) may stem from ironic enjoyment, incredulousness, or the kind of fascination one has when seeing a car crash. This leads to a crazy fan using her as a means to gain subscribers of their own. It plays out as one might predict for most of its runtime, but then it throws the audience a marvelously constructed curveball out of nowhere, evoking the words of one Obi Wan Kenobi: who is more foolish, the fool or the fool that follows him?

While the previous two episodes dealt with the horror that we find in other people, the last two episodes deal with a pandemic horror that is less tangible - the impact of increasing isolation on our psyches.

In Dodo Dayao's Destroy Everything You Touch, the zoom conversations between six friends get stranger and more terrifying as their anxieties and neuroses begin to manifest themselves in the real world. The episode gives us a reason for these manifestations, but the effects resonate regardless. It perfectly encapsulates a sense of anxiety, fear and paranoia that lurks in hidden places, just out of sight.

And finally, in Kenneth Dagatan's As You Can See, our "communal isolation," so to say, makes some of us vulnerable to exploitation (in this case, the supernatural kind), especially in the absence of a proper emotional support system. The film's main character Patricia (Beauty Gonzales) is separated from both friends and family, and her boyfriend is a gaslighting creep that doesn't try to understand or care about his girlfriend's situation. She seeks solace in a mother figure (a popular trope in Dagatan's works) but it is part of something sinister and malignant, spreading like a virus in a crowded room.

Now Streaming is available for free until May 4, at Cignal Play.