Ideological as the Physiological in the Social-Realist Honor thy Father (Matti, 2015)
Its powerful take on big institutions, political frenzy, and critical acclaim are not the only aspects of Erik Matti’s Honor Thy Father (2015) that make it an interesting object for close scrutiny and analysis. It proves to be a text riddled with dominant ideology as its logic.
A ponzi scheme leaves Kaye (Meryll Santos) and Edgar’s (John Lloyd Cruz) family in financial ruin brought about by Kaye’s father as their co-parishioners demand their investments back. This could have been Kaye and Edgar’s big break, something they have been longing for quite some time, but instead turned out to be the very predicament that sustained the conflict in this crime film. In this tragedy, Edgar is forced to steal money from the Church of Yeshua as ransom for their only child, Angel (Krystal Brimner), and wife after being black mailed by big investors in the scheme, a couple played by Yayo Aguila and Boom Labrusca. He resorts to the less evil things-- he tries to rob a bank and borrow money from the church, but ultimately went back to his miner family in Bontoc to ask for help. Apparently, they don’t have Php 2 Million at their disposal, and so they plot to mine their way to the church during the day when parishioners from nearby areas all come together and donate sums of money. They were successful, but were met with rising waters in the tunnels on the way back due to a leak, which forced them to abandon the money for their lives. After all the tribulations and empty handed, Edgar comes up to meet his wife’s kidnappers in an ironically scenic and serene pine forest. In a gripping exchange of bullets, Edgar finally gets a hold of his beaten up wife after gunning down the couple who kidnapped her. The film ends with a grandiose moment of catharsis when Edgar drives the dying Kaye home, and realizes that she’s passed away, highly goaded by a tear jerker musical score.
It would be modest to say that the politics of the film has been colorful. It has made headline after headline following its controversial disqualification from its nomination as Best Picture in the 2015 edition of the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) just a day prior to the awarding. The MMFF committee justifies its actions by citing the failure of the producers to inform them beforehand of the film’s participation in the Hawaii International Film Festival and Cinema One Originals Festival. However, in an open letter, the producers clarified that they actually did so, even showing their letters to the committee. Dan Fernandez, a supporting actor in the film and Laguna representative, even pressed for a House probe regarding the issue, citing irregularities and lack of due process as reasons to effect some changes in the rules of the festival. The disqualification was said to be arbitrary and subjective, suggesting undisclosed motives on the part of the committee. Speculations on the issue naturally geared toward one of the very institutions that were portrayed in the film, organized religion.
Despite the disqualification frenzy, Honor Thy Father (2015) gained critical acclaim locally and internationally. For one, it won a total of five awards in the MMFF; including Best Director, Best Original Theme Song, Best Supporting Actor (Tirso Cruz III), and Best Child Performer (Krystal Brimner). Marayan (2016) was able to point out not only the actors’ stellar performances, but also the film’s capability to “rattle religious fanaticism” and portray the patriarchy in his 5/5 film review. It was depicted to be of great value by Dacanay (2015) when she said that the film’s strength lies in its diversion from the neat ending the throng of films in our industry today offer. Her descriptive and to some extent technical review venerates the performance of Cruz and Cruz III while also pointing out the lack of development on Edgar and his family background. “Anti-christmas” is how Zinampan (2015) puts it. He makes it clear how religion and family function in the narrative and how the film is “poetic” in its usage, providing us with a new and exciting brand of films in the MMFF. He said that it is Anti-christmas “not in that it hates the holiday, but because it cuts through the warm and good feelings and forces you to confront the darkness underneath the themes of family, relationships, and religion.” Meanwhile, IMDb users rate it a 7.7/10, with comments strewn on its page containing hopes of the users for more of such films in Philippine Cinema. Acclaim for the film extends to international audiences as award after award and nomination after nomination, Honor thy Father (2015) skillfully draws audiences into the deep and dark heist.
Although the politics, technicalities, and acting in this film are all needless to say worthy of our attention, in this paper we attempt to not give in to the seduction that is its aesthetic, and veer towards understanding this work of art as a physiological being, digging deeper into the social myths and ideologies that give birth to its manifestation as a logical assemblage. This paper aims to reveal the tensions and contradictions part and parcel dominant gender and class ideology that permits the film’s operation and logic. Its historical-sociological value will be determined with the lens of a member of the society that produced it, mindful of the social myths portrayed to be amplified by what French Marxist Louis Althusser classified to be an ideological state apparatus that elevates individuals of a capitalist society as “subjects” in a process he called interpellation. Here we ask, “When situated in the Philippine context, what makes this film logical and of historical-sociological value?”
Works by French marxist Louis Althusser extend Marx’s base-superstructure construct by arguing that although to some extent, economy does dictate culture, there are several dominant ideologies that dilute this effect. Also, it juxtaposes the phenomenon of the base-superstructure amidst other clashes-- of race, gender, age and class for example. In this paper we work on the premise that Althusser provides a more purposeful view on ideology and the people. This proves to be all the more convenient in his idea of interpellation, where people are “subjects” who are called by dominant ideology to somewhat participate and follow the rules it has set.
Honor thy Father (2015) is a straightforward story of a father caught in utter desperation to save his family from the impending doom of death. There is not much moral, except maybe that it is ultimately our families who we can trust and rely on in the end. This logic is quite simplistic, and yet we see that the film maintains a different logic that elevates it into a subject of interest. That is, this whole conundrum was actually brought about by the absent father figure in this film, Kaye’s con father who successfully reeked in money through his investment scheme.
Gender Ideology
It is quite obvious from the film’s title itself that male figures will drive the narrative and its message. True enough, Edgar, the vicious Bishop Tony, and Edgar’s brothers served pivotal functions in its development-- Edgar is the main character who goes through lengths to save his family, the ironically sinister Bishop Tony proves to be the biggest element that barrages Edgar and his family from emancipation, and Edgar’s brothers aid in his endeavor. And of course, it is his wife and daughter who fall prey to the resentful investors.
The assignment of roles is almost automatic: males are powerful or strong, those who pursue and maintain the integrity of their families and institutions (church for Bishop Tony), and females are vulnerable and weak, those who are protected from evil forces. The cultural stereotype of men being superior in terms of strength and capability to resolve problems may have had a long history in the Philippine society. Although many would argue that we are slowly becoming, if not already, a matriarchal society, at least in this film, the patriarchy is the very logic that restrains us from questioning this semi-automatic casting. For so long have we entrenched ourselves in action films with men being the center and perpetual source of power, very much evident in the plethora of 1980’s action films and icons such as Fernando Poe Jr.
The stark contradiction however in this logic is that although the women in this film are shown to merely fulfill the function as the to-be-saved, these very characters actually greased the machinery that is the film’s narrative into life and motility. It is quite valid to ask, “Would Edgar even mean a thing without Kaye and Angel?” In fact, it was Kaye’s side of the family that caused this trouble and forced Edgar to take refuge in his own. Also, Edgar’s mother gives light into the multi-dimensionality of Edgar himself-- his vulnerability, his motives, and most importantly his back story. Ultimately, it was the sequences with his mother that rendered him 3-dimensional, giving us a look of what is beyond the bleak and laid back husband and father.
Class Ideology
It is very much evident that Edgar and Kaye’s family is of the upper middle class ranks, with Angel enrolled in a private catholic school and their ownership of a car and a decent house. In one scene, the investors who want their money back, who were also parishioners, ransacked their house and stole much of their property. They share the common aspiration among the masses to attain a better life through achieving financial freedom, greatly amplified by the need to save up for Angel’s medical school education in the coming years. It is not much noticeable that they actually are quite well off compared to the greater fraction of the Philippine population largely due to the concentration on the need to bounce back after some financial backlash. Here we come to see that in emphasizing the need, there is an ideological tendency to forego the context and position the family is standing upon presently, that upward social mobility is acceptable regardless of the state or, in this text, class one is in.
What makes the issue of class struggle more relevant in this discussion is the thought that this very struggle could also be seen as the main reason for all of it to have happened in the first place. That is, ironically, the means of their acquiring wealth was the very means for their financial plummet: the hunger for upward social mobility placed them in a lower position.
Adding perplexity to this subject is Edgar’s retreat to the mountains of Bontoc in pursuit of money from his family. The film operates on the truth that it is in the high mountains sans concrete highways, skyscrapers, and urban life harbored in Baguio that Edgar sees opportunity and hope in his desperate state. This is clearly a profound reversal of Edgar’s departure from his hometown: It is in this place of simple lifestyle far away from “civilization” that wealth is found, that family is found.
Is the reel what’s real? Mirroring organized religion as ideological state apparatus
Now that we have cited the contradictions in the dominant ideologies that hold together the film’s logic and cohesion, we retire to another component of Althusserian ideology, ideological state apparatuses, to evaluate the film’s historical-sociological value.
The relationship between literature and society has been quite an interest among scholars. Albrecht (1954) offers an elaborate discussion on the Reflection Theory’s evolution and function. While some authors have deemed literature to be reflective of the “soul” of a society (Wolfenstein and Leites), Marx similarly viewed the superstructure as reflective to the economic base. However, as articulated by Althusser, this simplistic view ignores several other contexts that could dilute its influence, and thus its portrayal in film. Ideology for one may interfere in this transfusion into culture. In this discussion we subscribe to a signification of value in literature’s social-realism and partake in the task of evaluating how effectively the film is able to “reflect” the role of organized religion as an ideological state apparatus (ISA) in the Philippines.
Kaye is an active member of the Church of Yeshua. It is arguably a mockery to organized religion when the film brings to life the stark contrast between the faithful Kaye, firm in her “Si Yeshua ang bahala” mantra, and the obviously insincere Edgar, who relies on his own capabilities to solve the family crisis. There is even a scene where the parishioners uniformly raise their arms in praise of Yeshua, singing to and honoring their lord, and Edgar is just standing there, his face blank and eyes desolate. True to her faith and calling, Kaye remains hopeful that Yeshua will make a way to alleviate them from their suffering and turmoil. In a seemingly test of faith, she and Edgar proceed to borrowing money from the church, a sum of P 1 Million which her father donated. When Bishop Tony calls upon Yeshua to banish the evil spirits that operate on the couple and refuse to lend them the money, Edgar chokes the bishop in his anger and Kaye is left invalidated. From here on, it is in Edgar’s hands to emancipate them of the situation.
Althusser alludes that the church, as an ISA, has an impending doom when situated in contemporary society. He simply put, “The modern Church is no longer at home in our times, and the vast majority of the faithful are in the Church for reasons that are not really of the Church.” This relegation of the church as a sick old man who bears diminishing influence on people of contemporary society parallels Edgar’s lack of faith despite having a member as his wife, and in symbol, Kaye’s unmet request. Suddenly, Yeshua does not save; He does not emancipate and leaves Kaye and Edgar taking the job to their hands. This mirrors not only the growing majority of non-practicing “Christians” who appear to be Christians only in times of convenience such as in town festivals to venerate saints and Christmas to celebrate Jesus’ birth, but more importantly the loosening grip of the institution on the country’s idea of morality and ideology. For instance, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) greatly opposed, to put it modestly, the passing into law of Reproductive Health Act of 2012 and yet today, millions of Filipinos enjoy access to information and materials for reproductive health. More recently, the same institution constantly voiced out their concerns for the growing culture of impunity in the country, largely due to Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on drugs and emerging cases of extrajudicial killings. However, the strongman enjoys ‘excellent’ trust ratings poll after poll, and interestingly sustains this approval. Here let us make it clear that we do not concern ourselves about who is right or wrong, but about how the church is slowly losing its control, much like how Kaye’s church instantly lost its influence on the family’s decision making the moment they are denied of the money her father donated.
Ideological as the Physiological; Value in Reflection
In this discussion, we have identified the ideological as the physiological in that dominant class and gender ideologies are what allow the functioning and logic of the film’s narrative. Here one may liken the text as a living, breathing organism that requires a complex system to permit its functioning, growth, and reproduction. We point this out to be the dominant ideologies that have associated tensions and contradictions.
We also see that using the historical-sociological lens, the film as a reflection of organized religion as an ideological state apparatus is of value. Althusser’s prediction of the church’s state in contemporary times is seen to take place in both the film and society it mirrors. In fact, it does this skillfully in a gripping and dark assemblage that has gained acclaim.
Stripping Honor thy Father (2015) down to its underlying logic in contradicting dominant class and gender ideology and judging its social realism offer an elaborate discourse which may prove to be useful to readers who wish to implore further implications of this text or place other works in the same light. They challenge us to further this discourse and sharpen our consciousness of the dominant ideology’s intertwined relation with our texts.
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