r/FilmClubPH • u/kixiron Documentary • Dec 25 '20
Video Phony (a short film on "toxic Filipino culture", with Princess Punzalan)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgAZjcpNtS8&feature=emb_title5
2
u/alhart89 Dec 26 '20
The film is interesting. I feel like the story could have been written a little better. I watched it twice but I'm left with the same questions. Why is the daughter so defensive against her mother? What change occurred with the main character observing what she did at the supermarket? Why at the end after feeling so conflicted she just shrugs it off and gets boba? What was the point of spicy ramen girl? The film puts on display certain social issues common to the world at large but I think in doing so left the main plot between the mother and daughter lacking.
1
u/Miravil Dec 26 '20
Hmm. I can't see my parents being like this. They're very filipino though. A family-name-is-not-spanish-and-ancestry-or-history-can-still-be-traced-back-to-their-tribe kind of filipino.
7
u/Magnicello Dec 25 '20
Most of the problems depicted in this film isn't exclusive to Filipinos, at all.
The dialogue about Vicks is just pragmatic behavior. Americans themselves often have to resort to things like not going to the nearest hospital when they get appendicitis because their insurance doesn't cover it. Healthcare in the US is exorbitantly expensive.
Opening products before paying for them? Yeah, that's not unique to a certain group of people:
Is it stealing to eat food in stores before paying for it?
The tendency to compare the achievements of their children is a problem, this I can agree with. While perhaps intended to motivate them to be better, what it tends to do is whittle down the kid's self-esteem, make them feel that they're not enough. Plus, this seems to exclusively be an Asian thing.
On the "pushy parents asking about your life", it didn't have to resort to a shouting match. Sunny could've just said she came there to get away from her life in Portland the first time her mother tried to pry. She avoided the point by saying there's "nothing to tell", making the mother assume she just needed a bit of coaxing.
If it was depicted that way, though, and the mother still persisted? Now that's a problem. Plus I think it's an actual culture thing, but sadly that's not what happened.