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Bebot videos: feminist critiques (3 of 5)
Open letter signer, Joanne Rondilla, thought that the positive roles for women in the video were non-existent. “The women are just so absent. You can’t have women in the video, but not play substantial roles there. Women can’t be decorations. And that’s what we were trying to point out. As we go towards the road to trying to get more coverage or more exposure in making culture, it has to be men and women coming into this together. It can’t just be men and then women fall behind.” She expressed the dominant narrative of Pilipino male labor in PilAm history showed itself in the “Generation One” video. Even though there were historical facts proving Pilipina women’s existence, that they too were present as asparagus farm workers in Stockton (which had an imbalanced gender ratio between few Pilipina women with the bachelor society of Pilipino men), women were not highlighted in the “Generation One” video. Males opened and ended the videos. Rondilla was more concerned about the “Generation Two” video. Rondilla said, “I thought that what was missing, especially from a lot of the women, were these touches that let me know that Pilipinas are substantial and that they play bigger roles than just kind of dancing next to Apl, dancing next to the Jeepney. I understand commercial concerns and the way sex sells. But they didn’t have these touches that would tell me ‘oh women are part of this story’ and women were a part of your vision too.” She also thought that more Pilipino men were able to relate to the video because of the wide range of types of Pilipino men in the videos and that there should be broader representation of Pilipina women in the videos.
Rondilla said, “I
don’t think it’s such a huge demand for having different skin
tones on Pilipinos or different body types…Generation Two video is
you see a lot of like--it’s almost like your watching import models.
That’s one very specific type of beauty or one type of aesthetic.
I don’t think what we were asking for was completely unreasonable.
In trying to get into mainstream media, I don’t think it’s
wrong to be who we are. I don’t think it’s wrong to ask that
we represent ourselves in the multitude of skin colors or in the multitude
of body types we come in. I think…a lot of men, especially in “Generation
Two,” defend the video, largely because they see themselves in the
video, they see people that they relate to because there’s so many
different men in the video. So when you look at the woman, there’s
only one specific, a very specific kind of woman in the video, so asking
for full spectrum representation I don’t think that request is unreasonable.
I think that’s something we have to agree on. I think it’s
something we have to demand of ourselves.”
