On things between poverty and porn (like research and experience)

MANILA, Philippines - An interesting observation among local films recently is the heavy amount of research against the personality of experience.

Overlap happens naturally, but a quick look at them — especially those that win in festivals — reveals an overwhelming number of works that rely so much on research. Writers go out of their way to find subjects to interview. They seek the help of professionals, lean on their thoughts, and get inspired by them. Directors, on the other hand, borrow the style of films they love. They pay homage to them, proudly admit their influence, and lose themselves in the fantasy of wearing other people’s clothes.

Nothing wrong with that, of course, except that almost everybody is doing it.

In narrative films, research is integral to the film, but a good film-maker can tell a story effectively without showing off how much knowledge he knows, or how much effort it took him to deliver his statements onscreen. That talent to shape subtlety — not subtlety to be defended as art, but subtlety to command stronger turns of plot — defines authorship which makes films deserving of careful probe and analysis. For no trivial reason must research steal the show. Research will provide the meat, but it will not and should not take away the interest from the film. Furthermore, research can command a work only as much as the filmmaker will allow it, and when that happens — when the illusion becomes too indispensable to be confused with the factual — the personality of the filmmaker’s experience surfaces.

Personality takes over. And when it takes over, clichés are no longer trite; and instead they tell us something different, something rational.

A cliché, for instance, is that every national cinema needs its share of porn to draw viewer interest. However, between lurid/sensational and little/no artistic merit, there must be a proper use of the term “porn” because boxing the trend as such is not only risky — it’s prejudicial. The more frequently the term is used, the easier it should be defined; but unfortunately, definitions only come after the damage is done. Like poverty and porn as individual truisms, poverty porn becomes too definable to define that it is often taken for granted.

Two years ago, the term was used often to discuss Slumdog Millionaire. A string of heavy write-ups added to the film’s cultural significance, even more than its artistic merits, especially after critics were unanimous in honoring the film. Now, poverty porn becomes another cozy place in which to categorize the films of Brillante Mendoza, Jeffrey Jeturian, and several others who earn recognition abroad. In the dynamics of foreign festivals, it is the programmers who rule — they dictate which films to include in the fest, which films to represent the country. This way, foreign audiences are led to a common perception: a four-cornered description of life in the country, an interpretation of the filmmaker.

Take the case of Mendoza: his films, no matter how divisive they are, offer drastic shifts between research and experience, but they complement each other in different ways. The movie theater in Serbis is not only a movie theater that houses pimps and perverts; it also serves as a remembrance of things past, an allusion to ways that used to exist, like the family that used to live comfortably or the cinema that used to show decent films. Research is also very powerful in Kinatay, but Mendoza candies it with experiments in form, making it feel like a dissertation on the abstract rather than the tangible. But this dynamic is best illustrated by Jeturian’s Kubrador. Rarely does a local film invoke a sense of alarm that is driven by a perfectly written principal character, that the moment the elements walk freely between the real and the imagined, the marriage of poverty and porn becomes completely relevant.

Upon reflection, it is not incidental that the three films mentioned above were penned by Bing Lao.

Only those who concern themselves with the necessity of terms — and their ability to simplify — are bothered by poverty porn. You ask, why make films that depict/promote/exploit/argue poverty? Why, because we’re still poor. And films cannot do anything about that. The personal politics of cinema can only do as much as make us think. Action lies elsewhere.