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! 
First Blush
Unang Tikim [First Taste]
Directed by Roman Perez Jr.
Written by Mariane Maddawat
Launched during the start of the current decade, the Vivamax arm of Viva Films swiftly dominated the subscription streaming services of Philippine cinema and never let up since. The answer will be obvious to anyone who checks out Netflix and several other so-called over-the-top (meaning bypassing middle agencies) services: specialized products, less costliness for the consumer, absence of censorship. It also doesn’t take a lot of figuring out to determine what material the service focuses on, which is what the majority of homesick overseas kabayans demand – sex, as much as the average film presentation can contain without devolving into gonzo pornography, softcore style.
11011Philippine-based recognition mechanisms still have to give Vivamax its due,[1] but an American film festival, the FACINE International, already gave its grand prize last year to Lawrence Fajardo’s Erotica Manila: Foursome, a concatenation of TV-style shorts. Its gold winner for short film was a hard-hitting satire titled “How to Make an Effective Campaign Ad,” directed by Roman Perez Jr., who also took charge of the first theatrically released Vivamax project, titled Unang Tikim (literally First Taste, officially translated as First Time).
The first couple, Yuna and Becca. [Unang Tikim, Pelikula Indiopendent & Viva Films; screen cap by author]
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11011So far the film has attained the stature of moderate box-office performer, running into its second week in selected venues – certainly a far more preferable fate than the usual theatrical flop that characterizes even major releases nowadays. More surprising is the type of theme tackled by Unang Tikim: sex, as expected of a Vivamax production, but with the primary relationship transpiring between two women. To be sure, positively depicted lesbian narratives are not new to Philippine cinema, although they occur with far less frequency than gay-male stories. Marilou Diaz-Abaya, the first woman-filmmaker National Artist, arguably started the trend in 1986 with Sensual, also a “bold” (or sex-themed) venture like Unang Tikim.
11011The primary points to make regarding other early attempts at recuperating same-sex love stories between women is that first, they were mostly featured as subplots in straight-centered narratives; and second, they had to contend with the usual homophobic demonization of gay women in local releases. (I can only remember one other premillennial release, Mel Chionglo’s I Want to Live from 1990, as another woman-positive presentation; an earlier “event” movie, Danny L. Zialcita’s T-bird at Ako [Lesbian and Me] from 1982, resorted to visiting violence on its lesbian character, although it nevertheless features a sharply observed turn from another National Artist, Nora Aunor.)
The rival couple, Yuna and Nicco. [Unang Tikim, Pelikula Indiopendent & Viva Films; screen cap by author]
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11011The digitalization of film production during the millennial era brought with it a number of well-realized women’s love stories, most of it from independent producers, with Sigrid Andrea Bernardo’s 2013 Ang Huling Cha-Cha ni Anita (Anita’s Last Cha-Cha) standing out for being a coming-of-age tale, the distaff counterpart of Aureus Solito’s Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros) from 2005. In a remarkable category all its own is Joel Lamangan’s Sabel, a 2004 film based on the seemingly incredible though real life-based odyssey of a woman who started out as an easy-going teenager, entered the nunnery after giving birth, married the prisoner who raped her, then emerged after a long disappearance as a rebel warrior committed to a female spouse. (Sabel and I Want to Live were both scripted by yet another recent National Artist, Ricky Lee.)
11011Unang Tikim constitutes a throwback to the earlier sexualized treatments of lesbian film narratives, with one character’s bisexuality providing the crisis in the plot. It also desists from dealing primarily with “developments” in which one or the other character suffers physical homophobic retaliation – possibly a lack when we inspect actual lesbian stories, but strangely affecting in this case because of the respite it provides from the usual judgmental approach. The fact that Perez, in less than a decade of practice, has overseen well over a dozen film projects, alongside Vivamax’s determination to mount a widescreen-worthy attraction, has resulted in a work of ineffable sensuality and beauty.
Held by Nicco, Yuna finds support from Becca. [Unang Tikim, Pelikula Indiopendent & Viva Films; screen cap by author]
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11011What must have added to non-Vivamax viewers’ fascination is the fact that an impressive stable of talents has been residing in the studio – most of them necessarily excluded from mainstream TV-centered programs because of their readiness to bare flesh and engage in activities that may be considered less-than-wholesome, to put it mildly. The film embraces the central female couple’s class difference and even occasional bouts of rage alongside their expressions of passion, but always with a tenderness in its approach to their pain; when such respect for the humanity of Others is extended to the male interloper in their story, that kind of treatment makes total sense in the course of the unfolding of their difficulties.
11011The only complaint one might raise about Unang Tikim is how the measure of its throwback is too far off in the past,[2] so that the complications provided by more recent lesbian film romances seem to be way in advance of the characters’ fates. As if to dig in further, it provides a closure that nearly elevates its realistic material to the realm of the fantastic. But in terms of a narrative tradition that cannot boast of having enough happy endings, what the film purveys deserves to be regarded as an intervention worth maintaining.
Notes
First published August 23, 2024, as “A Lesbian-Positive Film” in The FilAm.
[1] On August 18, 2024, after I had drafted and submitted this review to The FilAm for publication, the Young Critics Circle announced that they were nominating Lawrence Fajardo’s Erotica Manila: Foursome, the same aforementioned FACINE gold prizewinner, for their Film Desk’s annual competition in all their available categories except first film. One of the few instances where I was glad to be proved wrong by my homegrown colleagues.
[2] Upon the filmmaker’s recommendation, I watched a previous film he made, titled Sol Searching (2018), and was appalled at the critical negligence it suffered, despite its clear superiority to nearly all the other titles released during the same period. In a social-network post, I speculated that this may also have been due to the work’s throwback properties, reminiscent of unpolished celluloid material as well as the “developmentalist” media policies of the early martial-law period during the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos Sr.
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