American Adobo is a film that highlights the lives of transplanted Filipinos in the United States. Adobo is a Filipino dish cooked with meat, soy sauce, garlic and vinegar. And just as the term American adobo suggests that this Filipino dish has been Americanized, so does the main characters of this film. They are Filipino, but their actions and way of life are clearly influenced by where they currently reside.
Mike is a busy newspaper editor working with the Filipino Times. Like numerous Americans, Mike deals with long hours of work and often gets home late. At the same time he has the unfortunate luck of having a wife with constant needs to play mahjong. With both parents away from home, it’s their children who suffers. Their food is often reheated from the previous meal. The daughter is a typical American teen who feels she’s not getting enough freedom in who she wants to spend her time with. She often rebels and does antics her parents will abhor, such as making out with her boyfriend in her room while her parents are having a party downstairs.
Marissa works in a bank and has a live-in relationship with her Caucasian musician boyfriend. She indulges in the finer points in life, believing that it’s her right to do whatever she wants. Her materialistic personality can be seen in her taste for brand name clothing and her attention to her looks, sometimes criticizing her friend Tere for not being like her. Although her boyfriend constantly cheats on her, she still forgives him as long as he says the right words. It’s as if she’s scared of being single.
Gerry is a homosexual who hides his sexual preferences from his friends. Although he is liberal enough to live wit his boyfriend, his Filipino background stops him from letting people know that. He’s ashamed of what other people may think about him and even goes to great lengths to conceal his sexuality, especially to his mother. This can be seen when he accidentally sent naked photos of himself and his boyfriend to his mother when it was meant to be for his partner. Gerry quickly books a plane ride home to the Philippines to intercept the package before it reaches her. This fear of what others think of one’s self is a trait common to numerous Filipinos.
Raul is a typical playboy. He sleeps around and is not new to having one night stands. He often participate in unprotected sex, and his heightened sexual activeness can be seen clearly in the movie. Raul’s attitude and mannerisms suggest that he grew up in the United States for the most part of his life. Unlike the rest of his friends he does not have deep roots in Filipino culture, and perhaps his only link to it besides being born Filipino is his love of eating.
Tere is an unmarried virgin who seems to have the most native Filipino characteristic value of them all. She is very religious and has statues of the Virgin Mary on her altar. She believes that having sex is an important decision of a woman’s life and she should only sleep with a person she truly loves, a belief that she gets arguments about with her friend Marissa. Tere is shy when it comes to love, sometimes falling into predicaments which is not her fault at all.
These people are all Filipinos. They are also American. As such it is expected that they behave as a fusion of these two cultures. Their morals and values might be centered around the way Filipinos behave, but their social lives are that of American influence. This can clearly be seen in how they practice their rights. Mike’s daughter is pursuing her right to be with whoever she wants to be and go wherever she wants to go. Raul’s right to his sexual activeness is clear. He’ll sleep with whoever he wants to, sometimes taking off right after. Whether this is morally right or wrong depends on one’s point of view. According to “Rights” by Velasquez, Andre, Shanks, and Meyer, it is “morally wrong to interfere with (a) right even if large numbers of people will benefit from such interference”. So as long as Raul feels that he is exercising his right when he “uses” these women, it is “morally wrong” for us to interfere with that. However Velasquez also said that each person has a dignity and that it “makes it wrong for others to abuse us to use us against our will”. So even if Raul has a right to do the things he does, it doesn’t mean he is dignifying these women. He is both right and wrong, depending which side of the coin your facing.
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