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Review of Dogeaters.
I am posting this separately only because it's the article which, hands down, made me pull on my hair the most number of times. Which is not to say that I just defecate all the rest (or tinatae lang, sa Filipino), but this was just a fucking torture. Postmodernist and postcolonial theory = not fun.

Speaking of which, welcome exsanguinatrix sa pinaka-astig na seksyon ng Kule. Rock. Haha.

The Doghouse Crumbles
Glenn L. Diaz
Philippine Collegian, Vol. 85, No. 18

Dogeaters, Atlantis Productions
Director: Bobby Garcia
Based on a novel by Jessica Hagedorn

“You know where the term dogeater came from? The Americans, of course. Oh they were quite crude and creative with us.”
- Perlita Alacran, Dogeaters

Dogeaters, Filipinos were christened. No excuse, therefore, to recoil in disgust at the thought of one’s favorite pet swimming in caldereta soup, tenderized to chewy softness, in between slices of bell pepper and potatoes and garbanzos. Or perhaps its skin burned to a crisp first, then chopped, cooked in vinegar and ginger for a delectable serving of kilawin, with rounds of beer. Or else just put everything together, dog meat, onions, soy sauce and vinegar, a dash of pepper, a bay leaf or two, and you get the ubiquitous, ‘national dish’ adobo.

Similarly, by calling her debut novel Dogeaters, Jessica Hagedorn exposes her intention of representing a people, the term harsh and pejorative but seemingly proud and unapologetic at the same time. And true enough, (Western) critics raved about it being the ‘best novel available about the vibrant, bewildering Philippines,’ an almost encyclopedic reference guide to the former US colony during the chaotic Marcos years.

First staged in Broadway, Atlantis Productions brings the play adaptation of this bestselling novel to Philippine soil with a powerhouse cast, with the likes of Michael de Mesa, Joel Torre, and Gina Alajar playing multiple roles. True to its book version, the play is a dazzling spectacle of characters, from a Filipino-American hustler from Tondo to Imelda Marcos herself, and a cacophony of sceneries, from posh Makati golf courses to NPA-infested Kalinga mountains.

Full (dog)house
The play was able to demonstrate the novel’s trademark pastiche type of narrative, making use of a wide variety of forms and style available, in a kaleidoscopic world of disjointed storyline. Just as there are chapters from the novel wholly lifted from radio shows, TV commercials, love letters, and even entries direct from reference books, Dogeaters the play assaults the senses with dance numbers by drag queens, Filipino kundiman songs, and breath-taking lighting.

In one memorable sequence, five scenes were at once taking place on stage: the honeyoon of a working class couple, a bomba queen giving a military general oral sex, a half-American hustler making out with a gay German film director, a recalcitrant daughter in somber confession in church, and the said general’s wife loudly mouting exotic incantations, kneeling and arms outstretched. While highly dramatic, however, this scene alone reveals a major flaw of the production: It tried to do too much.

Subscribing to a postmodernist bent, the play ‘lends itself easily to consumer capitalism’s drive to sublimate everything into self-gratifying spectacles’ – feminism, the communist movement, social stratification, these highly complicated concepts reduced to items in exhibit, their ideological and political loads conveniently lifted. In one scene, the NPA, a highly demonized element of Philippine society, are portrayed as a rough, radical group waging a revolution (that speaks perfect English).This postmodernist trait reduces everything to mindless, disparate spectacles devoid of history.

Both the novel and the play were guilty of succumbing to the allure of postmodernist tag, which consequently diminished its bite. Such non-linearity and formlessness of story-telling, moreover, belie the historical project of the works. The play, which features the iconic assassination of a critical opposition senator and his supposed gunman, claims a truthful account of the waning years of Martial Law. While postmodernism rejects structure, history is essentially a continuous and rigid province. Here lies the contradiction. This attempt to adopt a postmodern account of the events leading to the end of Martial Law poses problems because of this dichotomous difference. Martial Law became just another spectacle.

Dogs and dogeaters
By calling the novel Dogeaters, moreover, Hagedorn aimed to exoticize Filipinos. A move that proved successful since the novel became an instant bestseller, the first Filipino novel, in fact, to be nominated for the American National Book Award. It had since been identified with Filipino mysticism. This is rooted on postcolonial theorist Edward Said’s theory of orientalism, which banks on a long tradition of false and romanticized image of Asia as outlandish and even bizzare from the West’s point of view. Dogeaters, with its mutli-racial and multi-cultural cast, continues to fascinate the West. At the expense of the spectacles – ourselves.

This exoticism is also grounded on the cosmopolitan temperament of New York, which prides and distinguishes itself as the ultimate smorgasbord, a melting pot of cultures and nationalities. Interestingly, Dogeaters was first staged in Broadway. Similarly, Hagedorn migrated to New York when she was 13 and has lived there since. Out of this melting pot of cultures and races emerges the issue of representation. While so-called ethnic writers are competing for recognition and even inclusion to the elitist canon, skewed power relations between the colonizer and colonized continue to govern and, in turn, subjugate these seemingly disparate elements.

Sleeping dogs
In between its all-changing sights and sounds, however, lie gaps and silences often ignored.

Since Dogeaters tackles too much material, it is more productive, therefore, to examine the points it chooses to exclude. It is this disjointed and many-sided quality of the pastiche narrative, this attempt to bombard the senses with a barrage of forms and style, which renders it susceptible to loopholes in content.

For instance, its journalistic project selectively ignores some well-known historical givens. It does not say that Marcos was largely US-backed despite declaring Martial Law, until losing mass support up to the 1986 revolution. In the same vein, it pokes fun at the stonewalling logic of Imelda, specifically when asked about widespread poverty. The Iron Butterfly rambles and asks, ‘These people have nothing to begin with. How can I steal from those who have nothing? Nothing can be gained from nothing, di ba?’ It pokes fun at such travesty, as if all blame should be directed to the Marcoses, but does not take into account that the US controls them with an iron hand.

Furthermore, it amusingly depicts and derides Filipino colonial-mindedness yet ignores the fact that it was and is US’s imperial conquest that ‘exacerbates feudal iniquity in the Philippines, bringing about the diffusion of international labor that transformed the US as metropolis of modernity and the Philippines as a source of cheap manual and mental labor. Literary critic Epifanio San Juan describes this common trend in Filipino cultural production in the US as containment via ‘tactical omission.’

All these portrayals acquit the US in its pivotal and deliberate role in the situation of writers in exile, such as Hagedorn. In the play, it is depicted as nothing more than a sanctuary, an option for the disgruntled, and a glorified dream for many, innocent and blameless, while its influence is palpable all throughout.

The play is loud and vibrant, yet tellingly silent on the things that matter more.