Dream Factories of a Former Colony

American Fantasies, Philippine Cinema

José B. Capino

How the Philippine postcolonial imagination represents the American colonizer

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320 Pages, 6 x 9 in

Paperback
9780816669721
Published: November 10, 2010

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Dream Factories of a Former Colony

American Fantasies, Philippine Cinema

José B. Capino

ISBN: 9780816669721

Publication date: November 10th, 2010

320 Pages

8 x 5

"A former colony of the United States, the Philippine nation has long had its own version of the American Dream, and José Capino does a superb job of analyzing how that bittersweet fantasy translates onto Philippine screens in this valuable book. With detailed examinations of key films from the Philippines as well as transnational productions, his groundbreaking study does so much more than provide an overview of Philippine cinema history; it makes a significant intervention in American/Philippine cultural studies and provides a novel way of approaching the connection between colonialism and global screen culture." —Gina Marchetti, author of Romance and the “Yellow Peril”: Race, Sex and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction

Philippine cinema, the dream factory of the former U.S. colony, teems with American figures and plots. Local movies feature GIs seeking Filipina brides, cold war spies hunting down native warlords, and American-born Filipinos wandering in the parental homeland. The American landscape furnishes the settings for the triumphs and tragedies of Filipino nurses, GI babies, and migrant workers.

By tracking American fantasies in Philippine movies from the postindependence period to the present, José B. Capino offers an innovative account of cinema's cultural work in decolonization and globalization. Capino examines how a third world nation's daydreams both articulate empire and mobilize against it, provide imaginary maps and fables of identity for its migrant workers and diasporan subjects, pose challenges to the alibis of patriarchy and nationalism, and open up paths for participating in the cultures of globality.

Through close readings of more than twenty Philippine movies, Capino demonstrates the postcolonial imagination's vital role in generating pragmatic and utopian visions of living with empire. Illuminating an important but understudied cinema, he creates a model for understanding the U.S. image in the third world.

José B. Capino is assistant professor of English and media and cinema studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Contents
Note on Translations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: A Tale of Two Sisters
Part I. Visions of Empire
1. Terror Is a Man: Exploiting the Horrors of Empire
2. My Brother Is Not a Pig: American Benevolence and Philippine Sovereignty
3. (Not) Searching for My Father: G.I. Babies and Postcolonial Futures
Part II. Mobile Imaginaries
4. The Migrant Woman's Tale: On Loving and Leaving Nations
5. Filipino American Dreams: The Cultural Politics of Diasporan Films
Part III. Global Ambitions
6. Naked Brown Brothers: Exhibitionism and Festival Cinema
7. Philippine Cinema's Fatal Attractions: Appropriating Hollywood
Coda: A Tale of Two Brothers
Notes
Filmography
Index