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I don’t. Temptation Island is waaaaay old! It was directed by Joey Gosiengfiao in 1980. That old.

But my sister and I found a funny clip from it a couple of years ago. Took me quite a while to find the exact same clip. Managed to find it in video blogger Davebron Babaran’s post.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7701988&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

Scene translation:
“We keep lighting fires, but no airplane comes.”
“At least we have music.”
“Of course, I have everything.” (not sure if I heard the last word right)
“There’s nothing to drink. There’s nothing to eat. Let’s just dance then!”

The girls dance for a bit and then suddenly, someone slaps someone and the girls end up pulling each other’s hair. My sister and I went, “WTF!? What just happened there?” and proceeded to laugh till our tummies ached. We heard it was a cult classic; plus the clip had intrigued us so much that my sister took pains in procuring a copy of the entire thing. We just had to find out why those women were being catty. There must be a reason! (We were to glean later that the movie is somewhat of a tribute to women’s cattiness.)

Coincidentally, my summer cognate professor in linguistics and literature, Dr. Milagros Laurel, just recently discussed the historical progress of Philippine English. I immediately recalled what I saw of Temptation Island: old buildings and landscapes (“Is that De La Salle University I see? Wait, rewind! Oh my God, it is La Salle! But you can see the bay view!!!”), vintage clothes, barely disguised phallic symbols…and, most relevant in my study of contemporary issues in language: the characters’ use of slang and code-switching patterns. This was a film from my mom’s generation and the language was totally different! While my sister and I could understand what “wheels” meant, we were at a loss when it came to other metaphors, like “cats”. Ah! But you have to admire their word play. It really is something worth studying.

It’s interesting to observe how Taglish has become quite banal these recent years. There’s very little poetry or wit, unlike in my parents’ time when the “Bagay Movement”, which Atenean professors and students began in the 1960s (the movement probably survived till the early 1980s), was at its peak and scriptwriters would interweave bilingual lines so expertly.

Hm…I wonder how Filipino gay language was during that time? It’s usually people in the gay community — at least, in my time — who can bilingually twist meanings in such an adorable and hilarious manner.

Be warned if you’re going to watch the entire film. Some of the scenes can be very very disturbing. I really couldn’t count the number of times my sister and I uttered expletives out of sheer disbelief.

I suppose this also takes care of my geek posts for a while. I haven’t been doing geeky posts in this blog lately. I’ve been doing it in one of my other blogs, where geekery is least expected. Unwelcome, even.