FILIPINO AMERICANS RESPOND TO ASSIMILATIONIST PRESSURES BY TAKING PRIDE IN THEIR CULTURE
The plight of Filipinos in Los Angeles is featured in The Debut. The Mercado family is about to celebrate the 18th birthday of their daughter Rose (played by Bernadette Balagtas), so a fiesta is organized. There is an elaborate preparation of coiffure and food (including lechón), dance performances are rehearsed (including singkil), and friends and family (including her grandfather) are invited; an emcee organizes the events, which begin traditionally and end with everyone participating in the latest dance crazes. The venue is the auditorium of a Catholic high school because the family cannot afford a debutante ball at a ritzy hotel. The real focus of the film, however, is on Ben Mercado (played by Dante Basco), Rose’s eighteen-year-old brother. Despite a scholarship offered by UCLA, Ben has cashed in some $6,000 in savings (including valuable comic books) to pay tuition at the California School for the Arts. Ben, however, is a disappointment to his family. His father Roland (played by Tirso Cruz III) wants him to become a physician, Rose is chagrined that he will not help in preparations for her party, and his Filipino relatives think that he is snubbing them because he hangs around with Caucasian students, including a girlfriend. Meanwhile, we see why he is disenchanted with life among Filipinos: Everyone tries to boss everyone else, using angry scenes, guilt, humiliation, and even the threat of violence as control techniques, without respecting or understanding one another. When the party begins, Ben quickly becomes fed up as his parents try to tell everyone that he will be going to UCLA, so he excuses himself from the table to await the arrival of his two Caucasian friends, Doug (played by Jayson Schall) and Rick (played by Brandon Martin), who drive him to a party where he can meet his girlfriend. But when they arrive, she is drunk and insults Ben by suggesting that he eats dog; the party turns out to involve too much booze and loud music, so the trio return to the birthday party. Ben then gradually falls in love with his sister’s best friend, Annabelle (played by Joy Bisco). Aside from the upbeat part of the story, the interactions among the generations, however, are designed to provide some humor as well as serious consideration of many issues plaguing Filipino Americans that have made the Mercado family so dysfunctional. One set of issues deals with how the ambitions of the various generations are unfulfilled; grandfather Carlos Mercado (played by Eddie Garcia), who flies in from the Philippines, is disappointed that his son is only a letter carrier, whereas Ben’s father cannot understand how Ben’s future career in art will bring credit to the family. The older generation is particularly miffed that some younger Filipinos are giving up their culture. Augusto (played by Darion Basco), a macho teenager, tries to corner Annabelle, showing that those who have little intelligence can gravitate to gangs and violence. Some themes focus on relations between Caucasians and Filipinos, such as the remark about eating dog meat. One Filipina friend of the family has married a Caucasian, who keeps injecting silly remarks, such as “Filipinos are not Asians; they are a Malay people.” A more politically savvy young Filipino reminds his peers about how the Americans fought a war to stop the Philippines from achieving independence from 1899 to 1902 and how American residents of Philippine ancestry who fought in the U.S. Army during World War II have never been given full G.I. Bill or pension benefits (though he makes no mention of the Hanapepe Massacre of 1924). Although the increasing importance of Filipinos in American society, constituting as they do nearly half the nursing staff at many hospitals, is duly recognized, surprisingly there is no mention of Ben Cayetano, two-term governor of Hawai`i. Augusto accuses Ben Mercado of being a “sellout” for associating with Caucasians, not Filipinos, and ultimately fists fly. Doug and Rick, nevertheless, are enchanted by Filipino dance and music as well as the beauty and charm of the Filipinas. The purpose of The Debut, thus, is for director Gene Cajayon to tell Filipino Americans that they should be proud of their culture and content to be themselves rather than trying to please everyone (a common Filipino ambition) while counting their material blessings amid the strange, often hostile culture of Los Angeles. MH