I went to go see the Bakal Boys at SIFF. This movie was about a group of boys who would get money for their family by collecting scraps of metal from boats and from the ocean. One day, they were searching for an anchor and one of the boys did not return home. They spent days looking for him, but could never find him.
During this movie, I could not help but notice the way in which the boys’ class was portrayed throughout the film. They showed that the boys were low class in many ways. One way that stuck out in the very beginning of the movie was that the boys would wear the same clothing every day. One of the boys ripped a rather large hole in his pants, but still wore them the next day. This portrayed that they were too poor to own more than one pair of pants. Another way in which they showed their class was through their house. Their house was ultimately outdoors, with the sand that they walked on outside as the floor. They used drapes, sheets, and woven twine and bamboo as their walls. This was very sad, considering that they did not have appropriate housing, especially since their family was pretty large.
The movie did not show very many issues about gender, except for that all of the children were boys, and I never say one little girl throughout the film. Also, that this movie did not pass the bechdel test. Another issue on gender was that the boy who went missing only had a grandma, whop they never showed going to look for him, but showed other people telling her that they would look for him for her. They only showed her mourning the lost of her grandson.
This movie may have shown a little bit of some race issues since all of the people in the movie were Phillipino, a minority in the U.S., and that they were living in poverty.
Overall, this movie would not be one that I would recommend to go see. I thought that it could use more female characters, more diversity in class (since the lower class was all that they showed in the film), and maybe have some other races involved in different aspects of the movie (To show maybe some more privileged Phillipinos so that there is not a stereotype that all phillipinos are poor).
Wow, when I read in your blog that there were no girls referenced I hadn't noticed it until now. During the movie I never really thought about it, but now that I read that it really made me think back to the movie and the only female roles I can remember were Bungals Grandmother and Utoys mother. That's a really interesting point, good job noticing that.
ReplyDeleteYea, I didn;t even notice that either until I thought about the different issues from the class. I also noticed that Utoy's mom acted really weird when she found out that Bungal was missing, and kind of got mad at the boys for going swimming instead of trying to go look for him. It kind of makes me wonder if she felt like it wasn't her role in society there to go look for Bungal or something.
ReplyDeleteThis movie definitely has an interesting protray of class according to your blog :) I was thinking when I see you said that the grandma of the lost boy never went to for her grandson, instead she relied on having other people tell her about the situation. I thought this could be a form of showing how female are less capable than men. Even the little boys have the ability to look for their lost buddy, why not the grandma? Maybe I am interpretating this wrong >< but I think it would be an interesting topic to discuss about!
ReplyDeleteLauren,
ReplyDeleteNice blog! You make some really good points about class and show that there is some real meaning that other people have from different cultures. I would, however, strongly recommend you edit your public blog to correctly spell FILIPINO, as many people can easily become offended by misspelling their ethnicity.
Again, nice job!
-Reyes
I agree, great job. You address issues of gender, race and class. I especially like your point about class - if a movie only shows poor people of one ethnicity, it reinforces the stereotype that all people of that ethnicity are poor. However, since this movie was made in the Philippines, I think the way it is encoded might be different (since Filipinos will not have that stereotype). This is a good example of how encoding and decoding can be different, especially across cultures.
ReplyDelete