JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

I had a 10am meeting. Expecting the usual horrific traffic I requested a car at 9:15. To my surprise, I got a car on the first try. I went out to wait for the car and noted that traffic was abnormally light–I guess everyone was expecting the super-storm.

The driver took a wrong turn, which added five minutes to the trip, but I was early so I was willing to wait.

At which point the driver said he could not go back because of the single passenger rule on EDSA. Which has not been enforced, so he was hoping the passenger was an idiot.

When that didn’t work, he brought up the cultural baggage that is responsible for so much that is screwed up in our society: pakikisama.

Then he tried begging.
And laying a guilt trip.

Finally he brought up the class struggle, which was dutifully translated by the app. (I wish I had been born rich.) I was going to reply, “Naka-screenshot po lahat ng text ninyo,” but he had already cancelled.

And I thought I needed anger management therapy.

Here’s where you send in your horror stories.

Being a tennis fan, even a tennis fan who does not play (I don’t like sweating, which is probably the only thing I have in common with Roger Federer) is a grueling hobby. You get jet lag without leaving your house (12 hours’ time difference during the US Open, 6 during Wimbledon), and the emotional toll is high (You can be glum for days after the player you root for loses a big match. I submit that this vicarious form of tennis is more painful than losing a match yourself because it is totally beyond your control, jeez, you’re not even holding a racquet).

I’ve been a Federer fan since 2001 (Like many who watched the Sampras passing-the-torch match at Wimbledon, I feel like I discovered him), and around his 18th grand slam I figured my emotional investment had already paid off and I stopped watching tennis altogether. Periodically I would emerge to gloat, but I was largely over it. Post-Federer (a period that is still continuing because the old man still has a few slams in him, assuming you let him rest for six months) I didn’t take up a new fandom (Never liked the way Nadal plays—see sweat and visible effort, yeah it’s too late to pretend not to be an elitist; admire Djokovic’s ugly-beautiful style but not enough to root for him). Touch, the quality I like watching, has largely disappeared from the current power game.

Having retired from watching tennis, I’d never even heard of Naomi Osaka until Raul mentioned her at lunch last Saturday. Well.

She was ready, and she knew it. You could see it in the steely look she gave Williams when they met at the net before the match began. And Williams knew it, too, or learned it quickly. Osaka’s service returns were coming back at Williams’s feet, not giving her time to recover, nor letting her exploit an angle. Williams started to press. She had been making nearly eighty per cent of her first serves in this U.S. Open; against Osaka, she made a little more than half of them. She started double-faulting. Osaka’s own serve, meanwhile, was humming. And, as has been true all throughout the tournament, her serve was perhaps most dangerous in the toughest situations. She saved four of five break points, while winning five of six break points on Williams’s serve. Off the ground, too, she was outplaying Williams, moving better while matching her for pace, angles, and depth. In almost every statistical category, Osaka had the edge. Osaka took the first set, 6-2. Coming into the match, she was 31-0 when winning the first set this year. Still, no one doubted that Williams had the capacity to turn things around.

Read Louisa Thomas’s thrilling article about the US Open final.

And this prescient NYT article, Naomi Osaka’s Breakthrough Game.

Of course we had to see Signal Rock. It is the latest collaboration of director Chito Roño and writer Rody Vera, the same team that brought us Badil, a film that should be required viewing on every election year. Signal Rock is about a remote island community where nearly all the women have left to find jobs in Manila, Olongapo, Europe, anywhere they can work and send money home. The men left behind spend their days drinking and making plans that never come to fruition, waiting for their remittances.

(I love the title, it makes me think of an album by The Clash. Also it’s a movie about the costs of world domination.)

The OFW diaspora has been the subject of many films and TV programs, initially a lot of melodramas about mothers separated from their children, fathers blowing their remittances on drink and women, children becoming wild and rebellious, etc. Signal Rock takes an aspect (the reversal of traditional roles) of a well-worn topic (OFWs) and addresses its complications and consequences with nuance and unfailing intelligence. Everything about it is excellent, beginning with Roño’s nimble direction, Vera’s insightful script, and the wonderful performance of Christian Bables and the entire cast. Signal Rock bears repeated viewing because so much is packed into its two-hour running time. It is the opposite of poverty porn: these people are not defined by their poverty, but by their unflinching humanity in less than ideal circumstances.

From the arresting opening images of Intoy on the only spot in the island that has a cellphone signal (Leche talaga yang mga telco, said the voice in my head), holding up his crappy old phone with a fork attached in hopes of getting better reception, Signal Rock demands and earns your undivided attention. I saw it yesterday at UP Film Center (There are screenings today at 230, 5, and 7pm, Run) with my friend, who seldom goes to the movies. She was so moved by Signal Rock that she emailed me this morning with her thoughts. If you have seen Signal Rock, please join our discussion in Comments.

J,

Until our next film,
N

N,

Signal Rock made the expedition to QC across the sea of traffic worth it.

The situation in the film—women leaving the island to support their families—is true all over the Philippines. It used to be the men who left to become laborers in Saudi Arabia or Manila, but now it’s the women. This is very interesting when you consider that Filipino culture is supposed to be macho, so macho that it’s spilled over to toxic masculinity. Do the men feel emasculated now that women are fulfilling what is traditionally believed to be their role? And do their feelings of helplessness, aggravated by drink and trash talk, cause them to try to reassert their masculinity by doing violence to women?

Given that women are the breadwinners of this country, why do they not get more respect? Why are women still treated like breeders who must obey their fathers and husbands without question? Could we say that leaving the islands and finding foreign husbands is actually a good thing for women?

J

A different perspective from my friend, E.

J,

I found your article about Signal Rock very interesting, particularly about our culture being macho and the apparent reversal of roles.

My hometown, which I visit regularly, is a trading center supporting a rice farming community. The rich are mostly the landlords and the traders. Most of the people who are actually working are the women—vendors in the market, teachers, traders, restaurant operators, and so on. My own aunt goes to the bukid daily to convey the instructions of my uncle and monitor their proper implementation. At crucial times like planting and harvesting, he will deign to visit the farm, but it is not necessary for him to visit the farm daily.

While there is a macho culture, lots of drinking, gambling, sabong, and related activities, these are all supported by the women. On any given day, the women are working while most of the men are moving around on their motorcycles and owner jeeps, actively pursuing manly activities, but never actually working. True, many men are engaged in the backbreaking work of actually farming, but the women are engaged in that, too.

I’ve never seen my cousins participating in the drudgery of the family business, and this is true of many of the male offspring. In the meantime, they are free to pursue their manly pursuits, cycling, driving, accessorizing cars, various sports, womanizing, secure in the thought that they can approach their parents—really, their mother—for any material needs.

I’m suggesting that perhaps our culture is not one of macho men, but rather one of spoiled mama’s boys, and their motherly enablers. The present situation of women going off to work and making the sacrifices while the men sit back and simply wait for their remittances to arrive is not a reversal, but simply more of the same.

E

And from my classmate D, whom I hadn’t seen in many years and ran into at the screening.

J,

I found the movie fresh and engaging. Christian Bables is a natural; he made me believe in the goodness of Intoy. I was rooting for Intoy! I take my hat off to this hardworking young actor.

On another note, I found it curious that many of the women who lived on the island have more money smarts than the men did. For example, the former Japayuki won a settlement big enough to have a nice house built. The woman who owns the grocery is prosperous. Even the mandarasal earns from her prayers.

In contrast, the men folk relied mainly on manual labor and barely eke out a living: Intoy’s father is a carpenter, while his brother and Damian ride motorcycles for hire.

From another point of view, I found it sneaky that a brand of rum got a product placement in the movie. In at least two scenes, the company’s logo was clearly displayed on the bottles. Damian was even shown tossing down a few shots of this rum—and in the kitchen of the house where the priest lives at that! (I’ve seen many a welcome poster in different towns prominently displaying this particular drink’s logo, and I hate it that it’s the first thing that greets visitors to these places. Grrrk!)

Incidentally, what is the relationship of the priest to Damian? And did Intoy’s father in fact rape his mother? I wish the loops of these unfinished side stories were closed. Otherwise, I think they are distracting loose ends that do little to advance Intoy’s story.

Some minor points: I thought two scenes—the scene in which the priest was turning off the lights while talking to Intoy; and the scene in which Intoy and his father were drinking and eating together in his father’s hut—were underlit. I also found Intoy’s brown makeup distracting. (If only I didn’t know how fair he is from watching Die Beautiful.)

Overall, though, I strongly recommend Signal Rock to people who seek a breather from the world’s seemingly endless stream of woes. Despite its minor flaws, this heartening and entertaining story that takes place in a pristine setting delivers the goods.

D.

Your thoughts?

L-R: Jonathan, Kurt, Deo, Osang, Roni, our host Dawn, Edrie, Joel, Lord, Lee, Allan, Bubbles, Evan, Jessica.

We had so much fun at our Reading Group Discussion at Tin-Aw Art Gallery last Saturday, we’re going to do it again.

Those of us who had read not just Dune but also the sequels by Frank Herbert pointed out that Chapterhouse: Dune has sex scenes so badly-written, they may turn the reader off sex forever. This led to the general agreement that the next book we discuss should have well-written sex scenes.

Our nominees were:

A Sport and A Pastime by James Salter. It’s about a couple driving and boinking across France, and the prose is beautiful.

The Decameron by Boccaccio. Naughty, naughty stories from the Renaissance.

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. Explicit stream of consciousness sex among starving writers in Paris.

Naomi by Junichiro Tanizaki. Salaryman grooms a Western-looking girl to be the modern woman; she turns him into her bitch.

First Love, Last Rites by Ian McEwan. Nasty, perverse, brilliant short stories.

The choice: Ian McEwan’s first book. It’s short, but each of the eight stories administers a different kind of shock. It might still turn the reader off sex altogether, but the writing is awesome (as in How did he do that?). And if it’s too short and you want more, you can move on to McEwan’s first novel, The Cement Garden, his second story collection, In Between The Sheets, and his second novel, The Comfort of Strangers. They’re all nasty and perverse. (The books that follow are brilliant, but benign.)

Ian McEwan wrote these stories in his early 20s.

I was meeting many new friends, falling in love, keenly reading contemporary American fiction, hiking the North Norfolk coast, had taken a hallucinogenic drug in the countryside and been amazed – and yet whenever I returned to my notebook or typewriter, a savage, dark impulse took hold of me. Sibling incest, cross-dressing, a rat that torments young lovers, actors making love mid-rehearsal, children roasting a cat, child abuse and murder, a man who keeps a penis in a jar and uses esoteric geometry to obliterate his wife – however dark the stories were, I also thought elements in them were hilarious.

The next Bibliophibians Reading Group Discussion will be held on Saturday, 29 September, 4-6pm at Tin-Aw Art Gallery. Everyone is welcome, as long as you’ve read the book.