If Chekhov once said that a gun must inevitably be fired before the story ends, you can bet that that bottle would break on someone's head before the sequence is over. Beer bottles in Philippine cinema signify the onset of violence, especially in action movies. It is interesting to note, in fact, that the only unchanging item throughout the decades is the image of the San Miguel Pale Pilsen. The same Pale Pilsen bottle in FPJ films is the same you'll see in virtually all Filipino movies. It is also both sad and chilling that the jeepney has remained relatively unchanged throughout the decades–a metaphor for the pointlessly stubborn and misguided notion of the Filipino resilience and genius for improvisation. Okay, maybe some airbrush-spray painting flamboyance and more powerful speaker systems here and there, but for the most part... it's still not exactly the model of efficiency.
Old movies also serve to justify the timeless appeal of certain fashion items. The Adidas sneaker, for one, is immortally stylish. You see them worn by goons in the late '70s with tight jeans and leather jackets then you think, "Damn, don't those bastards look good." On the other hand, there's the mid- to late '80s, the Dark Ages, it seems, for hairstyling (the bangs! The tease!) and tailoring (Shoulder pads! Acid-washed denim! Mullets! What drugs were you people snorting?). From old movies we can also glean our ever-evolving standards of sex and beauty. We remember a time when we found nothing wrong with thick, bushy eyebrows and quasi-moustaches on women. In the pre-Belo era, men lusted over sexy stars who were either flat-chested or who obviously did not have gym memberships. Neither did we snicker when Tony Ferrer peeled off his shirt to proudly reveal an unsculpted midsection that revealed an unapologetic appetite for rice and beer. This brings to mind my friend Norman Wilwayco's profoundly insightful declaration: "Ang tunay na lalake, walang abs."
And there are moments when it hits close to home–painfully. Just the other week, I was watching a melodrama involving a love triangle: Christopher de Leon, Rio Locsin, and Kuh Ledesma. I failed to catch the title. The scene was Christmas time, and there was a montage of all things Yuletide. Lo and behold, they showed the Christmas presentation at C.O.D. Deparment Store in Cubao, an annual tradition tragically discontinued in the mid-'90s. Only three things can make me cry: the sight of an abused dog, four songs from the Elvis Costello-Burt Bacharach album, and the memory of C.O.D. All of a sudden I was surrounded by imaginary smells of grilled dried squid, cheap popcorn, and Hi-C in tetra pak. Fleetingly, I was six years old again, blissfully innocent, happily perched on my father's shoulders. In my throat I felt a lump. Sometimes memory can be a real bitch.
Artwork by Warren Espejo.
