My first trip to Korea, as an exchange professor from the national university, was strictly transactional: I had a number of student and personal loans to repay from nearly a decade of graduate studies in the US, and a state institution would be incapable of assisting me no matter how hard I worked. Engaging in corruption, petty or otherwise, was out of the question for me, regardless of how many instances I saw people openly practicing it, using the rationale that “we never get paid enough” as essentially government personnel.
11011My personal quirk as a traveler was that I abhor touring. I prefer to remain for as long as I could tolerate a place, so I could learn what makes it tick for its native population. As an academic, I could not avoid the usual swift passage for the purpose of participating in some scholarly event or other, but whenever I had a program to complete, I always attempted to maximize my stay without bothering with the usual tourist spots. I only visited the World Trade Center in the Financial District of Manhattan when some foreign visitors insisted on sipping coffee at the Windows of the World (I told friends then that for me, the towers diminished the impact of the Manhattan skyline).
11011This was how I reached the conclusion that the first item to check out in a new place is the people. I arrived in Korea a few years before one of the Presidents was honest enough to remark that the country had the worst appearance among the OECD members: rows of buildings that looked like yellow shoeboxes stood end-to-end, with red crucifixes atop many of them at night like distant hilltop cemeteries. The same President said that the country should aspire to attain the title of world design center, just as he later said that the country’s recovery during the last global financial crisis should take less than a year. The fact that these and other declarations of national purpose happened, sometimes ahead of schedule, clued me in to the culture’s ability to focus attention on whatever was the common-good goal of the moment.
11011This made my teaching and advising difficult in ways I did not anticipate, since the premise of Western-sourced instruction is always individual growth and excellence. I quickly realized that encouraging outstanding candidates to consider higher studies was always a matter of helping them negotiate with their entire social circle of family, classmates, and friends – and often, their decision was always hindered by their hesitation to leave everyone else behind. The usual counter-argument that worked elsewhere, that the person advising them might be wrong, was never sufficient, and sometimes even unacceptable when the advice came from familial authority figures. Yet when news of a serious global pandemic began spreading during the winter break of 2019, I knew that my best hope of survival was by advancing my return trip to Korea. Friends thought I was deliberately endangering myself, since the first area to be hit by the Covid-19 infection outside of China was Daegu, courtesy of a proselytizing superspreader.
11011I’d been in Korea long enough by then to know that the population’s unusual abiltiy to coalesce during crisis periods was going to be the key to its now-renowned response to the pandemic. The very same quality that I wished I didn’t have to contend with as an educator was what kept me safe through the seemingly interminable period when the virus dominated human affairs everywhere. The pandemic also preempted a painstakingly finalized move to another teaching post in China, near the origin of the breakout, as it turned out. I accepted the inevitable and waited out the last few years until I retired, which happened at the end of February 2024.
11011Aside from the several adjustments in teaching methods plus the arrival of so many foreign students that Koreans numbered less than half of my total students, I also had to contend with the many rituals and voluminous exit reports that were typical of major transitions in East Asian culture. My experience as a migrant worker from the Philippines may not be typical in the sense that I didn’t work in a factory or on a farm, but I still regard teaching as labor-intensive as any of the jobs I used to hold down. Providing classroom instruction requires intensive performances to convey knowledge effectively (in a less-than-familiar language) to a heterogeneous mix of listeners, while the research and publication projects I had to complete outside of teaching required tracking down sources and experts, presenting findings at conferences, and constant drafting and revision.
11011Was Korea worth expending the peak and culmination of an extensive academic career? I cannot provide a definitive answer, but in relative terms: it was a better site than any of the other countries I’d known, sadly including my own. Are there lessons for people who find themselves in a similar migratory situation? My conceit is that my journey has been so idiosyncratic that it probably will be impossible to replicate. But the real motive underlying that assertion is that I had proceeded from too many failed instances of risk-taking, which is why I tend to have definitive words of advice for people that I mentor. I still believe that errors bear useful lessons for intellectuals – more than triumphs would, in fact – but I’d prefer that people be fully aware of the price they’re paying before they fully commit themselves to an unconventional option.
11011The overriding context here is that contemporary life changes faster than any set of lessons can assure for success. What had worked for me (and, more important, what had failed) during the time and place I attempted an analysis of the world and my place in it will not always guarantee success for anyone who repeats anything I attempted then in the here and now. So any lesson I impart will necessarily have to be conceptual at best, and probably overfamiliar to many people: determine the area where you’ll be sure to excel, with alternate routes in case of setbacks, and devote your existence in pursuit of that ideal. The only reward I can promise is that the prospect of permanent rest that you’ll be able to perceive toward the end will not seem so weary.
[Published in Dáyo / 이민자: Stories of Migration, ed. Erlinda Mae T. Young, Seoul: Philippine Embassy in Seoul, Korea, 2024.]
ORCID ID 
Ámauteurish! 
Counteractive
Kontrabida [Villain]
Directed by Adolfo Borinaga Alix Jr.
Written by Jerry B. Gracio
After completing work on Kontrabida, Nora Aunor was finally declared National Artist, minus the execrable intrusion of any political leader or showbiz rival (essential disclosure: in June 2014, The FilAm was the first publication to criticize the ill-advised decision by President Benigno Aquino III to drop her name from the list of submissions). What should have been happy news, however, turned out distressing for her followers: she endured a severe medical emergency, declared dead at one point but revived through the intervention of an understandably panicked health team.
Anita as a haughty society matron, in her opening dream sequence. [Screen cap from Kontrabida, courtesy of Magsine Tayo!]
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11011Kontrabida might therefore be the last opportunity to watch a consummate Aunor film, although the hesitation of casual viewers would be understandable. Its director’s track record has been spotty, and the Metro Manila Film Festival’s consistent rejection of its participation is reminiscent of its judgment on her own auteur project, Greatest Performance, in 1989. Yet what traces remain of GP suggest an ambitious and exemplarily performed work, one of the MMFF’s gravest missteps in a long list of embarrassments. Kontrabida’s an even more egregious instance of insider politicking and institutional negligence.
11011Any initial viewing will instantly distinguish the film as reminiscent of Aunor’s case history during her peak premillennial years, when filmmakers would be able to realize significant achievements by simply having her on board; her skills in streamlining, clarifying, and amplifying character attributes was (and remains) second to none, ascribable to her intensive experience in creative processes and immersion in her compatriots’ sociological concerns. Kontrabida has also turned out to be her first millennial project that references her stature as queer icon, resisting the typical indie practitioner’s tendency to recognize her considerable store of gifts by unnecessarily pedestalizing her.
Jaclyn Jose as Dolly, a devoted fan of Anita. [Screen cap from Kontrabida courtesy of Magsine Tayo!]
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11011The best way of extracting the film’s potential would be by focusing on the persona that she proffers, inasmuch as Aunor appears in every scene. Early in the plot, her Anita Rosales prepares to dispose of the bric-a-brac she accumulated as a movie supporting player, including her only acting trophy. Any devoted Philippine cinema observer would readily recognize that the object happens to be Anita Linda’s only Maria Clara award, the first institutional prize ever handed out for local film achievement. A fan of hers shows up to purchase it, and it turns out to be played by the recently departed Jaclyn Jose – who professes so much devotion that she decides to return the item to its owner.[1]
11011The parallelisms with film history are profound and moving, yet unobtrusive enough to remain hidden for those who prefer to ignore them. Aunor was the actor who set out to challenge Linda’s First Golden Age stature as the country’s greatest performer and succeeded due to her marshaling of her own privileges as the most successful star in Pinas cinema as well as the upgrade in resources and sensibility of the Second Golden Age; Jose meanwhile carved out her own niche in depicting characters ravaged beyond redemption by poverty and managed to snag the much-coveted Cannes Film Festival best actress prize in the process.
Anita comforts her intellectually challenged neighbor Jai after his father went berserk during his mother and her new partner’s wedding. [Screen cap from Kontrabida courtesy of Magsine Tayo!]
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11011Linda had been gone by the time Kontrabida was made (her final starring role was also in an Alix film), but neither Aunor nor Jose, just like Linda before them and unlike a long list of their contemporaneous performers, make an effort to recapture their appearance during their Golden Age glory years. The weight they put on, the wrinkles, lumps, and veins on their faces, their slower movements and weaker physical capacities – all affirm their lifetime aspiration to enable their audiences to identify with them. In this instance, they constitute a redefinition of glamour for those who care to ponder on these matters: that it might mean conforming to a near-unattainable youthful ideal for the vast majority, but it could also mean the fulfillment of long-cultivated potential offered for widespread and long-term public consumption: talent, to paraphrase Pauline Kael, will always be a surer guarantee of glamour.
11011Alix of course had collaborated long enough with Aunor to be able to provide unintrusive details that function like humor devices, and then some: Anita begins by slapping someone in her high-camp dream where she plays a society matron, but gets slapped symbolically by her working-class existence in a crisis-ridden administration; she may have retained ownership of her acting trophy, but we eventually get to see how Aunor herself regards these empty symbols of triumph;[2] she lives in a world where those who recognize her adulate her for her past attainments, but she pays the closest attention to people taken for granted by everyone else.
After helping her rehearse for her comeback role, Ramon asks Anita to dance with him. [Screen cap from Kontrabida courtesy of Magsine Tayo!]
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11011Toward a later part of the film, Alix introduces Bembol Roco, one of her few male contemporaries who has perfectly understood that one must complement Aunor in order to survive a scene with her, in the role of her infirm ex-husband Ramon. The exchanges of scripted lines between them play on their characters’ real-life circumstances and display the warmth and collegiality that their long-time immersion in Philippine film culture has enabled. Anita then forms a pistol with her fingers and aims it at Ramon, then reflexively remarks “bad acting” about herself. The gesture’s payoff is earth-shattering but doesn’t have to be spoiled in a review. Kontrabida nonetheless deserves to be watched for all the tremendous pleasure and pain that the full life of a genuine film artist has brought to the project.
Notes
First published November 18, 2024, as “Nora Returns Minus the Glamour of the Glory Years,” in The FilAm.
[1] Dolly claims that Anita turned her life around by inspiring her to avenge herself on her wrongdoers. In her real-life career, Jaclyn Jose became a much sought-after camp presence in TV drama by specializing in comically snobbish aristocrats, similar to the characters that Anita dreams that she portrays, but directly opposed to Nora Aunor’s actual movie persona.
11011Her first significant interview was titled “Walang Bold sa Langit [Bold Not Allowed in Heaven]” (1986), conducted by Ricky Lee, retitled “May Bold Ba sa Langit? [Is Bold Allowed in Heaven?]” and reprinted in his 2009 anthology Si Tatang at Mga Himala ng Ating Panahon: Koleksyon ng mga Akda or Old Man and the Miracles of Our Time: Collection of Writings, pp. 70-74). In it, Jose mentioned watching Ishmael Bernal’s Himala [Miracle] (1982) for her lesson in acting excellence and described how she wished she could perform on the same level that Nora Aunor had demonstrated, attaining maximal impact via the smallest of gestures. A final Noranian intertext occurs in Emmanuel Dela Cruz’s 2005 film Sarong Banggi [One Night], where Jose’s character, also named Jaclyn, professes fanaticism toward Aunor, her fellow Bicol-born native. (Thanks to Deo Antazo for this vital recollection.)
Nora Aunor on the set of Kontrabida, with Anita Linda’s memento. [Photo by Adolfo Borinaga Alix Jr.]
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