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Sex videos provided popular entertainment in the Betamax Age when
the bedroom calisthenics of a politician from the North and a rising
starlet circulated in Metro Manila, scandalized the pious and
entertained voyeurs.
At that time, sexually explicit movies called
“bombas” were a popular moviehouse fare. Divina Valencia and
Stella Suarez were the queens, pioneers who sired a new genre in
Filipino movies in a parody of the American original. The movies
mostly had a storyline but many were a patchwork of sex scenes. The
word “insertion” became popular before Filipino congressmen
appropriated the term for budgetary trickery.
Local soft porn was preceded by the
“fighting-fish” movies that were usually shown in private places
for young adults. Groups of teenagers who had paid with their
allowances usually packed garages to watch the short features that
began and ended with mindless sex.
Sex on film and videocassette has had a long
history in mass culture. It proliferated fast with piracy and mass
production, became an epidemic with the advent of the Internet and
the camera-equipped mobile phone. Private sex suddenly became public
domain. A young miss insanely in love with her boyfriend is stunned
to discover that their lovemaking had been taped either with a
cellphone or standard camera and exported in space.
Such is the case of the Halili-Kho scandal,
which began in a private bedroom but, according to Katrina, was
secretly documented by her former lover, probably as his
contribution to erotica. Hayden has apologized for the tape but we
haven’t heard the climax of this affair.
The Gross National Sex is doing well because the
law of supply and demand is actively at play. The demand among the
menfolk seems to be insatiable. Nubile young women become stars
overnight and vanish quickly in a succession of sex-themed movies.
There is no shortage of skin even in noon-time, family-oriented TV
shows. The media are determined to please the market.
A jolt to these musings is the news that the
former American porn star Marilyn Chambers has died at 66. She was a
promising actress and model when she began endorsing Ivory Snow
laundry soap in the 1970s. When she crossed over to porn movies, she
made history. Behind the Green Door was sexually explicit, but had
decent acting, a credible screenplay and good production values.
Critics considered it a classic, became a mainstream movie and drew
audiences that included married couples.
There were not many “classics” but several
made by Georgina Spelvin and Linda Lovelace were hailed at a time
when social mores were changing and the quality of porn was
improving. An irreverent sense of humor distinguished Lovelace’s
Deep Throat, a comedy about a nurse whose clitoris is located in her
throat.
The response in Congress to the Halili-Kho drama
is the introduction of bills that would strengthen censorship and
widen the definition of pornography. These bills must be studied and
debated conscientiously. Censorship is anathema in a democracy.
Pornography or obscenity is difficult to define. As things stand,
many of our movie reviewers/censors see things in black and white.
Any depiction of sex or of the human body is considered smut.
They do not appreciate that an explicit scene is
integral to the movie, that it must be considered in context. They
miss the nuances and subtleties of occasional candor. A scene
depicting “pumping,” the Movies and Television Review and
Classification Board’s (MTRCB) contribution to the national
vocabulary, automatically qualifies a movie for the cutting floor.
For this reason, the board banned The Bridges of Madison County and
Schindler’s List, among others.
In 1995, the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for
Social Communications, in celebration of the centennial of the
cinema, chose 45 films that it said had special merit. The
Council’s movies had characters who were “forced to confront
moral issues of one sort or another” and “religious people
demonstrating their faith through social action, rather than simple
personal piety.” The Vatican’s choices were not a list of the
best religious movies ever made, but included Derzu Uzala (Japan),
La Strada (Italy) and Schindler’s List (US), movies that were
rated morally objectionable by prudes and state censors.
Video-and-tell lovers deserve castration
Experts say—though Dr. Hayden Kho’s
high-priced lawyers will try to debunk this opinion—that under
several Philippine laws he and others like him who make films and
videos of their carnal doings with their lovers can be held
criminally liable.
Their crime merits the punishment of castration,
which does not exist in our supposedly civilized codes of law.
We urge the DOJ to throw the book at Dr. Kho and
other perverts.
We hope Ms. Halili and other victims of this
man’s hideous betrayals don’t stop until he is sentenced and
punished.
We wish to encourage GABRIELA to give Ms. Halili
a lot of moral, legal and logistical support.
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