Women Empowerment on sexual discourse seen in Philippine Sex Melodrama

This post is based on ““Woman’s Body Power” in Philippine Sex Melodramas”  of Jamal Ashley Abbas

                          The article stated that sex melodrama should be an official genre in Philippine Cinema. It defined the genre, a dramatic story which has sex as its theme. It also touched Mulvey’s Male gaze theory, the scopophillic characteristic of the spectator in viewing the actress as a sexual object in the film. And the article is also based on Weber’s three dimensions of difference. The class, status and power. And Wilhelm Reich thoughts on sexuality and also Michae Foucalt’s “technologies of the self”

                              

                         It describes the Philippines sex melodrama as an Film genre in the Philippines which shows woman empowerment. Like for example 

 

                     Vilma Santo’s Burlesque queen it showed how the character of Vilma uses her body as her source of life and also she uses this to manipulate the man that has been with her. This clearly showed that the woman is the one controlling the flow of the film. And not just a mere sexual object that is used in a film for erotic spectacle. 

Apparatus Theory: Cinema as an Institutional State Apparatus

According to Apparatus theory “Cinema is by nature ideological because it’s mechanics of representation are ideological. The central position of the spectator within the perspective of the composition is also ideological”

According to Karl Marx in order to obtain a classes society capitalism should be stopped. We all know that in Capitalism, All businesses are privately owned by the people. Meaning, all the rich people will stay rich while the poor continues to be enslaved by the rich. Like how the students nowadays attend an expensive university just to be able to work for those rich people who own big business in our country.

According to the Apparatus theory the cinema is being used as an apparatus, by the people controlling the cinema with their money, to let the people think that what’s happening is just a normal thing. Meaning cinema is being used as an Institutional State Apparatus (ISA). That them being enslaved by the rich is what’s right. Because according to Lacan people watching cinema thinks that the big screen is a mirror, that they are put in a situation that they see themselves in the shoes of the protagonist.  Just like what the Screen Theory says “It is the spectacle that creates the spectator and not the other way around”. Spectators are being fooled by the movies that they are watching they are being lured into a world of enslavery. 

Cinematic Desire

According to Mr. Slavoj Zizek "Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn't give you what you desire, it tells you how to desire"

Which I agree when you go to a certain movie house to watch a film you don't actually go there expecting to watch something you desire. if you watch a movie the possibility is that you put yourselves in the shoes of a certain character and after watching the film you would also desire the things that happen to that character.

Even if sometimes what the movie is showing is something that is not fair you naturally accept it knowing that it is natural because that is what you've witnessed.

Like for example the matrix in the film you we're shown that there is two other world the dream world and the reality what if there really is the dream world are we truly being blinded by the materialistic things around us. What if we really are being slaves of the richest people in the world. You all should have the desire to wake up from the dream and be in reality.