[lbo-talk] Perfumed Nightmare Re: how's it feel?

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Wed Apr 16 15:08:20 PDT 2003


At 10:34 PM -0400 4/15/03, SergioL652 at aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 4/15/2003 8:32:37 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
>farmelantj at juno.com writes:
>>Sergio,
>>
>>Whatever made you think that, especially given the fact that Puerto
>>Rico is an American colony?
>
>Puerto Rico was a Spanish Colony for close to 400 years before the
>US came. Is very conservative in many aspects and the propaganda
>from the US at the time made it sound as if it was very liberal. I
>was young and I bought it, what can I say.

Japanese liberals have promulgated the same type of propaganda in Japan also. There's a good film about the marketing of the American Dream and resistance to it in the Philippines:

***** Journal of Religion and Film Vol. 6 No. 1 April 2002 Perfumed Nightmare and Negative Experiences of Contrast: Third Cinema as Filmic Interpretation of Schillebeeckx By Antonio Sison

...The film _Perfumed Nightmare_ opens with the image of a jeepney, that famous Philippine taxi originally recycled from the wreckage of an American military jeep, moving back and forth across a crude concrete bridge. The voice of Kidlat, the film's protagonist, narrates how the bridge serves as the crucial link between his quaint Philippine barrio and the rest of the world, "our bridge of life."

Kidlat is president of the Werner von Braun Club of Balian, a parodic organization honoring the developer of the first space rocket to the moon. The club's members are a motley crew of giddy village children. Kidlat's idolization of Von Braun is an example of his many idolizations of Western culture, including the radio program 'Voice of America,' the Statue of Liberty, bubble gum machines, and the Miss Universe beauty pageant. All are symbols of the progress and wealth that make up the "American Dream."

Kaya, Kidlat's friend, inspires him to draw strength from the subversive memory of his late father, a local war hero who fought in the revolution against the Spaniards and who was later killed by the soldiers of yet another colonizing power, the Unites States. He describes how Kidlat's father literally blows away fifteen American soldiers before he was finally killed. He concludes with a pithy reminder -- "the sleeping typhoon must learn to blow again."

Kidlat takes on a job with an American who owns a chewing gum business. The foreigner takes him to Paris and also takes along a Philippine jeepney. The French capital would be for Kidlat a springboard to his dream destination, the United States, site of Cape Canaveral. Recalling Charlie Chaplin's bewildered encounter with industrialization in Modern Times (1936), the provincial lad is stunned by the high-tech Charles de Gaulle airport and the countless bridges he sees while being driven through the city. In Paris, Kidlat drives the conspicuous jeepney as he happily goes about his task of refilling gum machines at various points in the city. One day, he meets a market vendor whose small-scale business is threatened by the impending opening of a gigantic supermarket complex. Coupled with news from back home of his mother's hut being displaced by the construction of a highway for tourists, Kidlat undergoes a crisis of belief. Indignation and protest over the inhumanity of First World style development awakens in Kidlat for the first time. In a startling series of sequences presented as magic realism, Kidlat literally blows away symbolic images of western socio-cultural domination during a mock farewell party organized by his boss. He is then seen converting a huge metal chimney from the Supermarket construction into a space ship, propelling it into the sky with the power of his breathe. Kidlat's actions evokes the implausible exploits of his father during the Philippine-American war -- the sleeping typhoon awakens and blows again. Kidlat disappears from the film after this scene, as _Perfumed Nightmare_ closes with a silent, open-ended scene of Kidlat's mother slowly closing the window of her hut in the Philippines as a young girl passes by.

The quest for identity and justice, indeed, for human liberation, is presented in the richly symbolic, Chaplinesque images of _Perfumed Nightmare_. This film emerged from the context of the apex of the infamous Marcos dictatorship and its dependency on U.S. hegemonic presence in the Philippines, _Perfumed Nightmare_ has been noted for its veiled satirical barbs against the oppressive dictatorial regime and the fragrantly masked American cultural dominance it perpetuated. The film won the coveted Critic's prize at the 1976 Berlin Film Festival and was received enthusiastically in the European film festival circuit. Ironically, _Perfumed Nightmare_ never found its way to mass audiences in the Philippines due to its non-affiliation with any mainstream production studio. Yet it continues to generate cult following in international art house circles. Kidlat Tahimik (whose name translates as "Silent Lightning") is both the director and lead character of the semi-autobiographical film. He has always been noted for his commitment to working in the fringes of filmmaking and subverting commercial Hollywood conventions that so heavily influence mainstream Philippine films....

<http://www.unomaha.edu/~wwwjrf/perfumenght.htm> ***** -- Yoshie

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