Module 3 - P. Standefer - “American Adobo”

Sorry for the late posts.

In “American Adobo”, the viewer is presented with a central theme of discontent with life among a group of Filipino friends living in the U.S. which is broken down into sub-themes which follow the individual friends’ stories as they weave in and out of each others’ lives. Another point of interest is that it is a low-budget film with rough, unrefined acting. The actors are either not professionals or are aspiring actors at the very beginning of their careers so most of the dialogue and emotion in the film comes across as very wooden and contrived. This most likely stems from the small pool of Filipino actors available in the U.S., the small target audience of Filipinos and Americans interested in the Philippines, and the small budget that independent, non-Hollywood studios can raise. I mention this simply because the story and characters are not engaging which changes the viewer’s perspective and the emotions arising from that perspective. The viewer is reminded throughout the film that they are watching something that a person made rather than a story that occurred naturally and is only being documented.

The filmmaker’s goal for the movie is connected to and in a way centered on the idea of “Adobo”. This dish only appears a few times during the movie such as when they are eating it or when the character Tere teaches Marissa how to make it, but it is in fact a symbol of the Filipino community with which this movie is saturated. The Adobo draws the friends together where they share with each other about the hardships they go through. Although they do not solve each others problems, they provide a support system by which the individuals can solve their own problems. Also, underlying this community support system is tension that individuals place on each other. The tension seems to be strong enough for the characters that the group is not just meeting, but rupturing and rebuilding itself continually throughout the movie.

To return to the idea of the common good, this movie attempts to question the dominance of the “family good” with Mike. Mike is unhappy with his marriage, his daughter is disobedient, and he is not respected in his house. I thought the Filipino thing to do in this situation would have been to have a mistress so that the time spent at home would be tolerable, but Mike chooses the individual path and leaves his wife and children to return to the Philippines. He witnesses EDSA II, a sort of national rebirth or redemption, and meets his former maid who is the ideal mate for Mike, made obvious by the awkward maneuver between the two at the “picnic at Mike’s house” scene. The movie ends with Mike returning to present his new wife, baby, and happiness to the Adobo-based friends. This part of the story moves along in a straightforward, linear fashion (the case is made against the family and for the maid while the movie is low-budget enough to make the maid a plausible character for Mike to meet) and it is easy to overlook one key aspect of Mike’s family that does not match up with his final choice to leave his family: the son. The son is the innocent bystander who is caught in the crossfire of a protective dad, a good-for-nothing wife, and a disobedient daughter. In essence, the son is abandoned to his mother and sister who are completely uninterested in him. The film does not address this problem or its consequences.

In contrast to previous documentary style films, “American Adobo” is a feature film with less emphasis placed on “educating” the viewers than on highlighting aspects of Filipino life in America and causing the viewer to reflect on those ideas. Consequently, this film does not deal with heavier issues of violence and human rights and presents me with the problem of determining why this video is included in this module. The only solution is that we understand social pressure destroying the ability of an individual to act in accord with their “authentic self” as a violation of human rights. The prime example of this is Gerry who is caged in his mother’s concept of a heterosexual son who will produce multiple grandchildren to increase the mother’s prestige among friends and relatives in the Philippines. In some ways this is as domineering as Ferdinand Marcos’ clamping down on dissent in that one individual (mother) is imposing her will on another (Gerry) which forces him to either live a lie (as a closet homosexual) or “waste his life” (as a heterosexual) from the view of his personal values. On the other hand, if this was a violation of human rights, almost every human being on the face of the planet could be called oppressed because social pressure causes everyone to act in some ways against their private motivations. Therefore, I cannot accept this as a loss of rights in the same sense as being oppressed by violent political organizations like that of the former Philippine president, Marcos.