The Porn Identity

MANILA, Philippines - Like a starlet about to shed new skin for a career move, this year’s Cinemalaya 9 outed itself as a sexier venue for movies as if to say, “Ibang Cinemalaya po ang makikita niyo dito.” The festival’s head of monitoring committee, director Mel Chionglo, bandied the fact that several of the films were “all about sex, sex and sex,” an admission not too far from the dibidi hawker luring you to his stash of pornography.

This year, we have films like Ces Evangelista’s Amor Y Muerte, a foray into 16th-century Filipino sensuality that featured several pumping scenes involving indios (Althea Vega and Adrian Sebastian), and a mestizo (Markki Stroem, and his peek-a-ball). Jason Paul Laxamana’s Babagwa, the New Breed category’s best-selling feature, had Alex Medina and his onscreen jowa thrusting away their problems in and out of bed, Joseph Israel Laban’s Nuwebe spared audiences the rape scene of a nine-year old girl but had two scenes of Jake Cuenca doin’ it solo, and Nadine Samonte giving someone a blowjob by the river. And of course, there’s Adolf Alix’s Porno, which played to sold-out screenings at the CCP, drawing more people in when it was left out of the Ayala cinema’s run of the festival). And if you want a really “indie” production, there’s the Chito Miranda sex tape, shot and produced outside big studios or the hold of a micro-industry.

The public uproar about the rock star’s sex tape conflates attitudes regarding sex. Just like Porno’s opening scene, which could easily play out like a celebrity sex tape — two actors going at it while the passive gaze of a motel’s hidden camera records their activity. Then, a few scenes later, two characters are having a conversation while a porn video is loudly playing from a television set in their motel room, the porn star’s moaning and begging almost drowning out the dialogue. Porno confronts us with how we react to pornography, yet we still sit comfortably, knowing we are only orbiting the boundaries of cinema — but the film pushes this even further. And as it ends, we get out of our seats, and we hear about another celebrity sex tape leaking over the Internet.

There’s a different kind of curiosity that pulls people in when these sex tapes or nude photos (hello, Josh Hutcherson) go viral. The juxtaposition of sexy films and celebrity sex tapes, the former legitimately viewed and the latter a taboo, provides for an interesting discussion that would normally be consigned to private spaces. Porno allows us to think about how the sight of someone masturbating, with a full view of an actor’s genitalia, makes us squirm while sharing the image with other people in the same room. But of course, there are those who balk at toeing the line too far — hence Porno playing only at the CCP where its merits are deemed too bold for wider access.

“It would’ve been a better litmus test if Porno were shown in Ayala Malls,” film critic Dodo Dayao says. “Just to gauge. Unlike (other sexy films such as) Palitan, Rigodon, X-Deal, Amor Y Muerte which had second or third tier actresses in the lead, Porno has Angel Aquino. I think the curiosity gets significantly upped when a better-known actress or actor is in the lead.”

Moral compasses

Some people love to pontificate about sex, especially when recordings of very public lives are under scrutiny. Politicians, self-appointed moral compasses, and crusaders thrive in the thick of a scandal. The public, on the other hand, consumes it rapidly and, with the fire of the social media playground, pins down prejudices, stereotypes and bottled perceptions. Some feel bad about what happened, some feel apologetic, but disturbingly, as director Jade Castro notes, some people feel it’s an opportunity for public shaming.

“By saying things like ‘Ang lalandi n’yo kasi,’ they seem to be passing judgment, or asserting that the celebs are now finally exposed as the inferior creatures they are,” he says. “Maybe some people find some satisfaction in knowing they’re ‘cleaner’ than these famous people.”

Even Chito Miranda supporters who say “I’m still a fan” seem to imply that the rock star has been brought down a peg or two by the sex leak. It’s interesting to note, too, that the impact may be different across genders. Maybe there’s simply an inherent stigma to recorded sex, even if it is between two consenting adults, a hang-up I hope we soon learn to get over. Sex incidents affect our attitudes towards celebrities. Personally I don’t think it should matter — except in those cases when the guy videotapes the girl without her knowing it. That’s an a**hole thing to do.

Perhaps it’s the blurring of the lines between porn (homemade or otherwise) and porn that people relish when another sex tape or nude photo leaks on the Internet. But the way we engage with it, like the way our history has shaped the evolution of bold films to low-budget gay “indie” films, is more likely a reflection of the times that we live in. With all the innovations that surround us, it’s easy to think that we’re more open to things that have been kept hidden from us for the past years: from the veiling of genitalia, to pumping scenes, and actual exposures on screen. The decline of bold films after the ‘00s was due to a conflation of factors, from politics to economics, but as cheap videos, bold films and porn become increasingly more accessible to the public, the response to it will always be indicative of attitudes towards issues that gravitate us towards these things in the first place.

The attempt to wash it all out will be there, perhaps as a byproduct of being a Catholic nation that cares so much about image and integrity — two things that are supposedly toppled when your private parts surface online. But the need to talk about sex will always remain because it’s inherent in all of us and it’s these videos and films that egg us on, taking our perceptions on images and representations of sex and desire.