Reconstructing the Filipino homosexual: landscapes of resistance, identity and the global in Filipino cinema: Bathhouse and Ang Lalake sa Parola

Author： Catalan Cristobal

Publisher： IP Publishing Ltd

ISSN： 0967-828X

Source： South East Asia Research, Vol.18, Iss.1, 2010-03, pp. : 67-104

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Abstract

Since the 1970s, Filipino cinema has presented internationally distinguished narratives on same-sex sexuality. Contemporary films from the Philippines dealing with issues of sexuality demonstrate an increasing interest in Filipino men who identify themselves as gay. Looking closely at two such films, Ang Lalake sa Parola (Man in the Lighthouse, dir Joselito Altarejo, 2007) and Bathhouse (dir Crisaldo Pablo, 2005), this paper examines how Filipino men engage with (or disengage from) the global gay construct. Drawing on ethnographic research, queer theory and post-colonial discourse, this article analyses how these filmic texts reflect the changing diversities of incumbent homosexual and global gay subjectivities. Using notions of cultural imperialism and protest as a conceptual backdrop, the paper considers the relevance of dichotomies – global/local or metropolitan/rural – in understanding appropriations of the gay identity by characters tied to globalized spaces. Its contention is that these texts illustrate how same-sex screen identities are recontextualized, visually and diegetically, through self-peripheralization of the body and of the self. The author argues that the reshaping and redistribution of homosexual identities is synonymous with a reconstituted (national) resistance to non-Filipino global gay identities.