Module 6 - P. Standefer - “Bata Bata”

This movie centers on a patchwork family, in particular the mother Lea. The character Lea has a legal husband, Raffy, who left her and their son to work in a different city as well as a boyfriend/informal husband, Ding, who stays with her during the majority of the film. There are three main themes that I identified in this movie, namely the position of mothers in the family, Filipina sexuality, and the idea of home in Filipino life.

The odd marital situation that Lea has provides plenty of foundation for intense dialogue on positions for mothers in the family. Along those lines, this movie seems to emphasize the importance of the mother while downplaying the role of the father. I find this to be an odd position that a movie from the Philippines would emphasize considering the widespread belief in the importance in everyday life of the mother. The director could have been trying to press the point that this idea is natural for the Philippines, and yet it takes a kind of subversive stance rather than a strong stance that a dominant ideology would normally take. The two main instances of the emphasis of the mother are at the funeral march where the grieving mother says that children can live without their father but not without their mother and then when Lea’s children choose to remain with Lea despite their strong and positive ties to their respective fathers.

Another related theme was the sexuality of Filipinas, which was shown in this movie in fairly explicit terms. On an individual level, Lea knows that she has sexual desires that can be fulfilled by her husband, boyfriend, porn, or even her co-worker, but at the same time she thinks about her situation and tries to establish boundaries of what would be socially acceptable forms of acting on her desires. There were several humorously awkward dialogues, such as those between Lea and her co-worker or the nun, where it was obvious that she had set private boundaries and now needed social affirmation by persuading others that the ideas that she had were in fact legitimate. The lack of subtlety regarding sex disoriented me because I did not have a solid base of Filipino culture and thus could not see the extent of the point that the movie wants to make.

The final theme was the idea of home in Filipino life. The question for Lea and her children was whether their home was the one that she made, the place where Ding was, or Raffy’s house where Raffy’s second “wife” lived. The problem was compounded by the fact that Ojie was Raffy’s son while Maya was Ding’s daughter. In the end, the children followed the first theme of this paper and stayed with Lea who had decided that the place that she had made for herself was her home. Establishing a “center of operations” was important because the children could categorize their lives in terms of their mother’s house as the center, and the fathers’ houses as possibly part of their world but on the periphery. Lastly, this theme is interesting because it works off the paradigm of a person only having one true home. Why did noone consider that Ojie or Maya could have two equal homes where they would be welcome? As a follow-up, one could ask whether anyone in the Philippines would work off the paradigm just listed.