| Lino Brocka’s Macho Dancer (1989), banned in the Philippines, exposed the reason why nongay men sold their bodies to gay customers — poverty. Midnight Dancers (1995), a follow-up directed by Brocka’s onetime assistant Mel Chionglo, provided no new insight. Now comes Burlesk King (1999), also directed by Chionglo, with the same message and a few new plot twists. The film debuted in Los Angeles for a week in mid-October 2000. To start chronologically, Harry as a child had an abusive American father, who doubtless married a prostitute in Olangapo. When Harry’s mother was beaten almost to death, Harry fled and grew up into a strapping lad with a mission to kill his father. Harry (as a young adult played by Rodel Velayo) and his best friend James (played by Leonardo Litton) clean up and are dealers at a gambling house. When a gang tries to use muscle to take over the racket, both Harry and James defend their boss but decide that their lives are in danger, so they flee to Manila. James’s sister lives with a younger Lesbian, but both boys are welcome as members of the household. James, already a male prostitute beforehand, then leads Harry to a macho dancer nightclub run by the same Charlie Catalla who was featured in Macho Dancer. One of his rules is that no macho dancer is allowed to be gay, thereby maintaining distance and mystery with clients. Harry, however, prefers to service female clients, and we see that pimps prefer male over female prostitutes because they can have clients of both sexes. Harry falls in love with Brenda (played by Nini Jacinto), a prostitute, a self-proclaimed Mother Teresa of the city’s red-light district (for giving small change and food bites to street urchins) with a much sweeter disposition than the paramour of the lead in Macho Dancer, but the two are incompatible when they live together. James, similar to his counterpart in Macho Dancer, is killed by a gang, but this time the gang is from Olangapo. Harry, lonely for a family, searches for his mother, but wants to gun down his father. When he finds his mother, she has returned to prostitution. When he finds his father, he has AIDS and is living with an older Filipino gay, so he abandons patricide. When Burlesk King ends, Harry and Brenda reunite with Harry’s mother and father, a much happier ending than we might expect for a macho dancer, although Harry sheds many tears before achieving reuniting with his family, receives an award as Burlesk King of the gay bar where he plies his trade, and is informed by Brenda that she is carrying his child. Lino Brocka’s message that Philippine poverty is due to misrule in the Marcos era, thus, has been transformed into a thesis that redemption is possible even for prostitutes amid the continuing gap between rich and poor in the Estrada era. MH |