Confession as a Narrative Mode in Gay Indie Films

• Main Author: Devilles, Gary C
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2011
• Subjects: contrition; politics of viewing; pornography; recall; Film and Media Studies; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/filipino-faculty-pubs/46; https://journals.ateneo.edu/ojs/index.php/kk/article/view/1440
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

This paper is interested in confession as a narrative mode of media, specifically gay independent films, and the specific codes and mechanisms inherent in a confession that enable one to generate pity over the viewing public. I would discuss four gay indie films, Ang Lalaki sa Parola, Daybreak, Sagwan, and Selda, and look specifically at how these films use confession in their narration, as a cinematic style to develop their characters, and ultimately as a form of politics of viewing by which gay films in general become a sort of “public confession” constituting their viewers as their preferred “confessors.” Such understanding of confession as a narrative mode therefore will have a bearing on the notion of “independence” in gay indie films—in particular, how these films advance the cause of being “independent” from mainstream films oftentimes characterized as commercial and lacking in artistic merits. My point is that confession as a narrative mode is still not enough and what is considered as a “gay indie” can ultimately be contained within the culture of homophobia caused by the uneven relations of power between these films and their target audience.