Catalan, Katrina Isabelle G.

BA Film / 2015-09896
Film 178 HWX
5 October 2017

Comparative Essay on Ang Tatay Kong Nanay and Oliver

In Philippine gay culture, the most dominant and visible sexual identity throughout the

history of our cinema is arguably the bakla character representation that largely conforms to the

stereotypical, comic, and effeminate model of the male Filipino homosexual. The bakla character

in most films has been a vessel for the bakla identity, which has catered to our longstanding

cultural tolerance and allowance as a society for male-to-female transvetism and effeminacy. In

other words, it is a character formed by the very liminal space in between homosexuality and

transgenderism that – despite being resistant of strict Western definitions of queer identities –

imposes very specific codes on how gay Filipino men should “behave” in both the physical and

symbolic spheres, all the while restricting public sympathy and acceptance with these queer

identities. This popular construction has significantly perpetuated many variants in Philippine

cinema because of these particular material conditions (combined with the historical), with all

providing a very gendered and sexual point of view on this operating marginalization due to the

derogatory feminization of the bakla, rooted from the dominant macho, heteronormative, and

patriarchal culture that has been fortified by centuries of colonialism and imperialism in the

country. Added with the emergence of neoliberalism during the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos,

the bakla character has adapted to the concrete conditions in which capital and economic power,

possibly, trumps over the established heterosexist and patriarchal system – this has conversely

birthed to the queer macho dancer character. Considering all these factors, the scholar J. Neil C.

Garcia then articulates Philippine gay culture and splits it into three fragments: cultural

incongruity, gender oppression, and class struggle.

 The Marcos regime (1965-86) had particularly witnessed the rise of the different

representations of the gay Filipino man, largely evident in Lino Brocka’s Ang Tatay Kong Nanay

(1978) and Nick Deocampo’s Oliver (1983). The profound documentary Oliver bore testament to

the macho dancer figure – who is subjected under homoeroticization and sexual commodification

but is ambiguous with his own genuine sexual desires due to poverty – while one of the

renowned commercial endeavors of Brocka, Ang Tatay Kong Nanay, upheld the specificities of

the working-class parloristang bakla character but also simultaneously showed a wholesome

imaginary of gay or transvestite parenting in the Philippines. Ultimately, the two films dared to

question – or rather, challenge – what masculinity or pagkalalaki really is in the face of a

homosexual context. It can be said that both works are shaped by Marcosian textualities and

sensibilities, which generally pertain to the repression of all seemingly progressive discourses

during the Martial Law era and that which has also ironically created a temporal space where

‘Philippine gay culture’ was able to flourish. In the end, however, all these male homosexual

identities both in cinema and reality are still under the scrutiny of the governing oppressive

systems of imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism. Together with the dominant

bourgeois and macho culture, as long as the reign of semi-feudal and semi-colonial capitalist

structures continues, the physical and symbolic oppression of queer male Filipinos will forever

be of guarantee, thus proving that our study of issues on gender and sexuality must never be

devoid of critical class analysis.