Father figurines

The story of Abraham is all too familiar. At 99, God paid Abraham a visit and told him that he would be the father of a great multitude, the grand patriarch of nations. His wife Sarah then bore him a son, Isaac, whom God asked to be offered as a sacrifice. An angel later revealed that God was just kidding and asked Abraham not to slay his own son. Isaac got off scot-free and Abraham was rewarded with many more descendants on earth.

My hope is that my own father won’t sacrifice me in the same barbaric manner. I’m still alive, thank God, and so are my seven siblings – not too bad (except for my mother’s ovaries), but nowhere near Abraham’s track record. It’s a Filipino father’s trait, this capacity to sire many children, often belonging to just one mother. My dad loves to joke about such male prowess. At PTA meetings, parties and wakes, he often says that our population boom was due to the lack of electricity and leisurely diversion in his youth. Sex became a regular pastime, a bit like a burden. But even now with the overwhelming surge of malls, karaoke joints and basketball courts, there seems to be no end in sight to a father’s libido. Is this mere physiology or a more serious pathology? Maybe it’s just ’dem loving ’dem ladies?

I played Niño Muhlach to Dolphy’s queen tatay, but unlike the boy wonder, I was never that doting towards my own father (in my dreams, however, I constantly sing to him Cat Stevens’ Father and Sons and his favorite Frank Sinatra tunes, My Way and Impossible Dream), but people do remember me as being very cute and chubby once. And unlike the king of comedy, my dad doesn’t do drag (what exciting conversations and shopping for clothes we would have had).

"Slay the father": That’s what my mentor and friend Kidlat Tahimik used to tell our class in experimental cinema. And, "Listen to your inner duwende." He didn’t mean for kids to do their own version of chop-chop daddy. His message was metaphorical – for us to be our own men and to crush the evil seeds that patriarchy often sows, such as misogyny, totalitarianism, violence, and incest. Patriarchy is not fatherhood; the former is institutionalized, militaristic. The latter is more personal and spiritual. "Love" rather than "rule" being the operative gesture. I see a father in Jorge Lerma Banal, not a patriarch. He is a father figure to so many people, my other brothers and sisters figuratively running to the hundreds. Being a father to him might start with his own family, but it extends to other people as well, including friends and colleagues, and to strangers and acquaintances, as godfather. Father figures play an important role in our lives because they provide us comradeship and mentorship without that tricky matter called bloodline.

Here are 13 Filipino father figures falling in line: Agustin Sotto; Tony Mabesa; Jimmy Abad; Bien Lumbrera; Anton Juan; Bobby Chabet; Lino Brocka; Steve Villaruz; Santi Bose; Dr. Joven Cuanang; Tony Perez; Ernest Santiago; and Joey Smith.

James Earl Jones is a common and more successful staple in daddy movies, most famously as Mustafa’s voice-over in The Lion King. Suffice it to say that Jones once stated in an interview that his own relationship with his father is far from rosy: "My father and I can be friends, we still talk, but to be father and son, it’s too late. It’s hard for him to acknowledge that. He wants to reap the benefits of being the patriarch. I say, ‘No, it’s too late. You didn’t pay anything in. You can’t take anything out of the bank.’ He hates it. He says, ‘How dare you? You can’t talk to me that way.’"

God would’ve burned Abraham down to the ground if the father of all nations had said this to Him.