Woman as myth: A feminist film criticism of Chito Ronos's Feng Shui and Sukob

• Main Author: Joyas, John Justin T.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2008
• Subjects: Film and Media Studies
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/2557
• Institution: De La Salle University

The recent emergence of the New Asian Horror has Asian Film makers crafting horror films that serve to counter the phallocentric view of Hollywood by centering the woman within the filmic narrative, presenting her as monster and focusing on her status as mythological object. Filipino director Chito Rono's take on the New Asian Horror is two top-grossing films: Feng Shui (2004) and Sukob (2006). Both talk about the plight of the woman in contemporary Philippine society through the mass-oriented medium of the cinema. Study on these films explains how horror films represent the woman to the spectators and how the spectators respond in relation to the visuals on the screen. This study focuses on the sign(ifications) of the woman in relation to other characters and in relation to the spectator. Film critic Teresa de Lauretis's ideas are used to discuss the woman within the plot-text, the woman within the filmic narrative and the woman as understood by the spectator. The result of this study shows that some woman characters are subject to the male Order within the narrative through their lack of the phallus. And those woman characters that attain the phallus become monsters needed to be punished. With this sign generating process, the spectator sees a mirror that reflects back a Self un-gendered by sexual difference until the spectator eventually affirms the presence of sexual difference through the male and female characters. As a result, they foreground the myths of woman and reaffirm the paradigm of the male Order. These films become woman's quest for her own narrative among a filed of male-oriented narratives. They contribute to the on-going pursuit for woman's identity outside the phallocentric construct. In this aspect, films from of the New Asian Horror are distinctly serving the woman to help her tell her side of the story.