Moving On To Better Things After Watching Chito Rono's "EMIR"

I showed up as the last guest during a small birthday celebration of another friend somewhere in Queens - where we had singing and dancing and where we decided we would like to end the evening watching Chito Rono's "Emir." Our friend (also named Chito, who is mentioned in another blog posting I made that highlighted his collection of religious statues and icons) actually started watching it before but didn't finish it so he brought his copy to the party for us to watch.

Note that this film's a very significant production because it's the latest musical churned out by the Philippine movie industry (where I remember seeing Philippine musical films shown in afternoon TV programs when I was small, and where we saw black and white films produced in the 1950s by LVN, if I recall it right) after so many decades. We noted that it's been co-produced by the Cultural Center of the Philippines, with the prodding made by the former Philippine President, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Honestly, I enjoyed watching the movie, although I'm not familiar with most of the stars who acted in the movie, except for Dulce.

This is actually a difficult movie to asses with its honesty in tackling its topic as it's very unconventional with its main subject matter: overseas Filipinos workers or OFWs. The common thread of stories that cover almost every OFW is depicted one way or another in this movie. It's the same story we hear about most OFWs who would rather not go against the grain as they know better from experience: they're going abroad to get better paying jobs for their families. In the process, they get abused and taken advantaged of by everybody. They sadly include heartless and overworked bureaucrats, the members of the economic elites who think and believe they are superior at least in class, even if these OFWs are practically the ones saving the Philippine economy for many decades now. Come to think of it, without the monthly remittances of OFWs, the Philippine economy would have gone pffft a long the time ago. These remittances, however, create unnecessary inflationary pressures that make most things very expensive to buy in the Philippines (as everything that has got a price is pegged on how the Philippine Peso translates to the US dollar or some other favorite foreign currency).

Something is, rather, ugly and displeasing about this movie, which I think can still be polished and solved. It's about how those who have been fortunate to have studied in school look at ordinary, un-schooled fellow Filipinos they meet on the road, especially OFWs. In this movie, those long scenes showing the OFWs (in their roles as household helpers) singing and dancing while they accompany their wealthy bosses in almost all other countries in the world during their travels (that conveniently excludes the Philippines!) simply have to be shortened to just 3 minutes or less!

The writer/s who thought it's cute to show, and perhaps must have been thinking that these OFWs would look at themselves as being timid and undeserving of being able to travel to famous places in the world just because they've got lowly jobs -- such a thought, no matter how baseless the idea was, is simply baseless! These writers probably must have been projecting their own thought patterns to what they see these OFWs are doing. All they need to do is just to have a sincere talk with OFWs and they will soon realize that these OFWs are far from engaging along those stereotyped / limiting type of thinking. OFWs are proud, wise, very politically-aware, happy, grateful of being able to travel all over the world given lowly jobs and all. It's not because of their lowly jobs that they are able to travel.

It is because they are very good with their jobs that they earn their well-deserved opportunities to travel the world over. This happens no matter what the OFWs' social classes have back in the Philippines where it seems practically everything is an ugly and tasteless discussion about the 'haves and haves-not.' To be able to exercise the right to travel, these OFWs would have to follow the difficult, convoluted route as not anybody is allowed to travel in the Philippines - you have to have more than enough money to be able to do so and the guts to face the rest of the world outside the Philippines given easily recognizable stereotyped notions of foreigners on Filipinos when they're abroad. Try getting a Philippine passport for the first time in the Philippines, and you'll soon realize that 'traveling' is simply reserved for members of the moneyed class (or at least those who can find the means to travel despite their lowly social backgrounds).

But with all its limitations (including what I highlighted earlier), take time to watch this movie. It's actually very much worth your time and money, although it was produced using very well-connected linkages in Philippine politics (which can be a source of suspicious thoughts from those who watch from a distance). This musical is very entertaining, which surprisingly shows what all Filipinos know all over the world: 'it's seldom you'll ever meet a Filipino who can not entertain you really well - and this is still even an understatement - if you want to be greatly entertained, make sure you have Filipino friends in your immediate network.'