Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Stroking my Spherical Valentine


In my attempt to overcome my nausea from YCC's recent shaming of a fellow film critic, I decided to explore a bit more of the writings on their blog to really see what they contribute to the ongoing discussion on Filipino cinema.

But I didn't--couldn't--get far.

Here is a tidbit from a review of Nora Aunor's recent Ang Kwento ni Mabuti:

The sanction of this ethic is suffered with an elegiac pace by the syntax of the sympathy, Nora Aunor. Her understanding of the pastoral is accurate, and almost exact in calibrating a sense of biome whose radii are aware of catastrophe and attentive to the fulfillment of the shamanic mandate.

Wait...I'm sorry, what exactly does that mean?   Are we talking about the same Nora? Pip's Guy...Uod at Rosas...Palengke Queen..."walang himala!"  Is there really any need to disassociate our popular imagination of the actress and pretend as if somehow she made her mark in some parallel universe dominated by Filipino Tarkovsky-s? Her power as a celebrity and as a recognizable actress came from the meanings and aspirations that the country attached to her image.  Waving that away with a wand of biomes and radii for the sake of critical convenience does nothing but obscure and delay the genuine critical effort of getting to the heart of Nora's enigma.

I'd take a Noranian's love letter over this hot intellectual mess any day.

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