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Jay
Year of Release: 2008
Director & Screenwriter: Francis Xavier Pasion
Producers: Cinemalaya, National Commission for Culture and the Arts, & Pasion Para Pelicula Productions
Cast: Baron Geisler, Coco Martin, Flor Salanga, Angelica Rivera, Rjay Payawal, JC Santos, Jericho Espiritu, Carlo Mendoza, Karla Pambid, Peewee O’Hara, Willy Cunanan, Ernie Enrique, Joven Gabuyo, Ejie Nario, Maris Dimayuga, Francis X. Pasion
TV producer Jay Santiago goes to Pampanga to feature the family of a slain high-school teacher who shares his given name. But as he develops his story, he brazenly changes various details to heighten its overall impact, and conscripts the victim’s family into his schemes. As he forms relationships with the teacher’s family and former lover, he shows how far media can be capable of manipulating the truth for the sake of higher ratings.
How far has Philippine culture progressed as a proponent of queer lifestyles? One way of figuring out an answer is by observing the manner in which male homosexuality suffuses the narrative of Jay yet refuses to be upheld as a yardstick of social morality. One of the title characters is an apparent victim of homophobic violence, while another utilizes his namesake’s tragic outcome to promote not so much his sexual preference as his media career. The manner in which the members of the victim’s family take their cues from the media practitioner’s exploitative conduct and yield to their own baser motives demonstrates the film’s affirmation of a post-queer situation, where a villain can happen to be gay yet not be judged as flawed on the basis of his sexual preference. Jay demonstrates how such a level of cultural development enables a presentation that is at once reflexive—representing a vision of itself, the same way that the still-living Jay calls to mind the similarly named dead character—yet self-critical, casually intermingling comedic, dramatic, even horrific elements.
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