JOSE JAVIER REYES' TORO

The controversy surrounding the film Toro or Live Show, by the chairman of the Directors' Guild of the Philippines Jose Javier Reyes, is the first cultural and artistic conflict that occurred since the ouster of the former President Joseph Ejercito Estrada and the ascent into power of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The film is actually a collection of a number of life-narratives of nobodies struggling to make sense out of their senseless existence in the seedy side and rotting slums of Manila, bound together by the life-narrative of its male lead character who is equally a nobody engaged in the same Sisyphian struggle. Through poverty and societal inequalities these people, who are not necessarily evil-hearted and immoral, were driven to the margins of flesh trade. Along the dark sidewalks of Manila, in nondescript and crumbling makeshift establishments, and in cheap and dingy hotel rooms, these individuals were forced to hawk their bodies, and consequently their dignities and hopes. Reyes, in a speech delivered at the 50^th Berlin International Film Festival, where the film was internationally premiered, stressed that it is "the ultimate act of human degradation" which is the metaphor of his film, and it is his statement about "human beings trapped by circumstance not of their own making and powers not of their choice."

The banning of this internationally billed film on 21 March 2001 upon direct orders of the President, and the subsequent resignation of a nationally renowned cultural scholar Dr. Nicanor Tiongson as Chairman of the Movies and Television Review and Classification Board, created a divided uproar among those who favored the showing of the film and those who see it as sheer pornography.

NICANOR TIONGSON'S EVALUATION

I personally encountered Dr. Nicanor Tiongson only once, and that was on a seminar in one of my doctoral courses at UP Diliman in the early 90's. But I can still vividly recall his testimonial about himself as a young lung-patient at the Quezon Institute incidentally coming across some of the writings of Karl Marx. That accordingly converted him 'like Saul struck by a lighting at a road to Damascus' to the commitment of radically critiquing society and culture. Presently, his refusal to graciously favor the request of the President for him to pull out the controversial film from the theatres with a rather blunt answer that doing so would be against everything that he had stood for in his life, only affirmed and renewed the steadfastness of his Pauline conversion to the agenda of Marxist critical theory. I respect Dr. Tiongson, not because of his eight-inches thick doctoral dissertation at UP, and not because of his illuminating essays on Philippine culture, and not because of his monumental CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art, but because of his dedicated and convincing way of inviting our attention to the pristine and glimmering aspects of our culture, that is equaled only by the harshness of his condemnations of the whatever is culturally rotten and pathological. For me Dr. Tiongson is a present day icon of an uncompromising cultural theorist incarnated on Philippine soil.

I am a philosophy professor, and at the same time I am a doctoral student focusing on the analysis of Philippine mass media and popular culture, and I side with Dr. Tiongson's evaluation of Reyes' film. Toro or Live Show is the first locally made one that I have seen that deftly critiqued the blight of urban poverty, our collective insane and pervert valorization of the flesh, our delusions about fabulous Arabian and Japanese wealth, and even our irrational faith on a future that would always be brighter no matter what. Philippines has a society and culture that is riddled with contradictions and structural evil and needs an incisive and thorough re-examination. Though there are a number of theorists from the Frankfurt School, a European enclave dedicated to Marxist critical theory, who decried the hopeless entanglement of popular culture to the dominant ideology, the philosopher Herbert Marcuse banks his last hope for ideological redemption on aesthetics. Marcuse sees art as relatively autonomous from the overarching capitalist ideology and can therefore be capable of keeping alive the utopian hope of freedom and power for self-determination, and also of critiquing society's inherent contradictions and structural evil. The Philippine cinema, considered by some of our film critics as our national pastime, because of its being deeply entrenched in capitalist system of production and consumption, has a good tendency to validate the fears of the Frankfurt theorists. Philippine cinema tends to affirm and reinforce the status quo including its attendant contradictions and structural evil. But every now and then conscienticized film makers may come up with films that are seemingly mainstream but are in fact promising vehicles of Marcuse's critical aesthetics. Reyes' Toro or Live Show is one of these rare films.

PORNOGRAPHY AND THE FLESH

Reviewing the debate that emerged at the wake of the banning of this film, I pinpointed two argumentative themes favoring the censure: one concerning pornography with the good cardinal as its main exponent, and the other concerning artlessness expounded lately by the President herself. Let us examine first the anti-pornographic argument. There is a prevalent opinion that pornography is the unbridled exposure of flesh. But taking a reflective look, the exposure of too much flesh does not automatically spell out pornography. Rather, it is the distorted and valorized manner of exposing the flesh that spawns pornography. We simply have to recall the very early images of the crucified lord depicting a starkly naked Christ (that is, without the belatedly added loin cloth), that revealed all of the holy flesh, and realize that no sane prelate or layman ever cried 'pornography' in front of such a venerable icon. Reyes' film did not distort nor valorize sexuality. The American cinema had already established the exaggerated ecstatic facial expression as an archetypal shot of valorized sexuality. This archetype never appeared in the film, on the contrary anguished faces lined with pain and cynicism are the expressions of the characters engaged in paid sex. The flesh here is used as a speculum to probe into our collectively mangled imagination of the flesh. In the bottom-line, Reye's film and the anti-pornography exponents are saying the same thing about the distorted and valorized representation of the flesh. The difference is Reyes was able to dig deep into the societal and structural roots of such a distortion, while the latter only tried to perform a gagging operation which ironically resulted to the sensationalization of the issue.

THE COMPETING PARADIGMS OF ART

About the alleged artlessness of the film, we have to bear in mind that art lends itself to a number of often conflicting definitions. When the President said she is for the full blossoming of art, and the film is devoid of artistry, what she probably had in mind is the kind of art she learned in the convent school, where art is primarily concerned about the good and the beautiful. Dr. Tiongson's definition of art, and this is the more prevalent one in as far as the humanist and sociological theorists of the University of the Philippines are concerned, does not simply jibe with the presidential idea of what art is. Narrowing our concerns about the good and the beautiful is great in as far as this can invite the people to pursue these ideals. But this kind of art has a tendency to deceive us to see the bad as good, and the ugly as beautiful, and even numb our senses to accept the world as it is together with all its contradictions and inequalities. I believe Dr. Tiongson's art, also considers the good and the beautiful, but first and foremost it is interested with the true, to the point of radically unmasking the pretensions of the world. Art in the end is not the disinterested pursuit of the good and the beautiful, but an interested quest for the truth, a truth that can hopefully purify everything in its trajectory. If I were a bourgeois I will go home from the show filled with remorse over my structural role in the perpetration of social injustices. If I were I proletarian I will go home from the show not duped by an empty promise that everything in the end will be okay. Live Show's narrative did not foolishly end in a fancy resolution of social conflict. The symbolism of murky and fetid flowing river attests to the continuance of the present social order and the powerlessness of the oppressed.

I watched the film on its first day of showing here in Manila. I saw flesh, but I did not see pornography. I did not see the good and the beautiful, but I saw truth. How I wish all Filipinos can have a chance of seeing this film in its entirety.