Suchergebnisse

The paper looks into the most successful horror franchise in Philippine history. Shake, Rattle and Roll has had a successful 14-film run since its introduction in 1984, and is composed of a three-part segment, each tackling a horrific experience: ghosts and folk creatures in provincial and city settings. My paper maps out the narratives, and the social and political contexts of the series. Specif ically, the period beginning 1984 marks a series of national transition: the political crisis of the Marcoses, People Power 1, the rise of Corazon Aquino, the economic crises in 1997 and 2007, the ousting of Joseph Estrada, the rise of neoliberalism, the coming of Noynoy Aquino, and the incarceration of Gloria Arroyo. How might these films also be read as analog of the anxieties of the nation? Keywords: Philippine cinema, horror, cultural politics

This essay explores the trope of the vaginal economy that is proliferated in the political economy and nature of Philippine migration. The vaginal economy is both receptacle and symptom of Philippine development. It represents the discourse through cinema, and historicizes the primal debate in the Marcos and Brocka contestation for image-building of the nation. Primarily through the sex-oriented (bomba) films and their permutations in the various political life of the contemporary nation, the vaginal economy is historicized even in the after-life of the post-Marcos and post-Brocka era.

The masses in Estrada's film are massified, i.e., individuals forced by circumstance to bond together and to search for a liberator. In politics, such a representation remains sublimely real. Estrada coached the masses to posit him as their ally and salvation. And the masses, which comprised the huge voting population, gave him the ultimate chance to serve them. In this essay, I am interested in assessing how Estrada's films and politics have mobilized the masses. This is a cultural analysis of the discursive construction and use of the masses. How do individuals bond together for a political purpose without having to realize their class interest? How do the masses remain a massified entity inside and outside Erap's filmic and political machine? How are the masses extolled in entertainment industries and yet marginalized in actual social politics? How are the Filipino masses metropolitanized in recent imperialist globalization?