The Gender of Mythology: A Cultural Analysis of the Film “Ang Manananggal sa Unit 23B”

In the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth. When it had been time to create humankind, He created Adam — the prototype of man, and Eve — the original sinner. For the Tagalogs, mankind was born out of Malakas — named after his physical ability, and Maganda — named after her sexual attribute. This alone shows how the male-female dichotomy is deeply rooted in our psyches, whereas men are seen in a heroic light while women are reduced to being the inferior, weaker sex (Bever 2002).

This instance is also shown in certain Tagalog and Visayan Mythologies where male creatures are believed to be warriors and defeaters of evil, whilst female creatures are known to be deceitful, tempting, and the polar opposite of their male counterparts. Case in point, Bathala, a man, is the omnipotent creator of the universe. Handiong, a man, is the known slayer of monsters from the Bicolano epic, Ibalong. On the other hand, Maria Makiling, a woman, is known to be cunning and prey on male travelers. Sirens, which are predominantly women, are notorious to lure sailors to death through their haunting melodies. Lastly, and the point of this paper, the aswangs. While there are aswang creatures from both sexes, the gender tied to these vampiric, viscera-sucking creatures is that of the female sex (Nadeau 2011).

Ang Manananggal sa Unit 23B revolves around the lonely life of Jewel, a manananggal, and her feelings toward Nico, unabashedly human. In the unknowing eyes of mortals, Jewel is a normal human. The first time we see her, she is moving into an apartment complex with her lone pet turtle. She possesses a shy demeanor that no one would dare think she had a monstrous side. By night, she becomes the cannibalistic manananggal. Only in this story, instead of infants and pregnant mothers, Jewel preys on men and sexual predators.

While the film is hauntingly beautiful, filled with stunning cinematic shots paired with indie music, there are some hypersexual scenes in the film that is otherwise (cinematographically) unnecessary. For example, there was an extremely graphic sexual intercourse scene between Jewel and her prey, which ended with her being guilty of her actions. Another one is a masturbation scene where Jewel is “touching” herself to prevent the need to prey on men. While the scenes are integral to Jewel’s narrative and self-acceptance, how they were shot and edited proved how the male gaze, where women are sexually objectified in cinema (Mulvey 1975), is still intertwined with how media is created. The aforementioned scenes were uncomfortably long and graphic. It could be that the intention of the scene was not to sexualize the character, but the camera techniques used in the film prove otherwise.

How the film was created shows how certain Philippine mythologies perceive women — deceitful, cunning, seductive. Mythologies reflect the culture and customs of their origin and it is important to understand how the narrative about these femme fatale creatures started. In Philippine Mythology, it is believed that manananggals are half-bodied flying creatures who prey on infants and pregnant women. They seem to be harmless by day, even mingling with mortals. When the night comes, however, these young, beautiful women turn into manananggals (Philippine Tales 2013).

It has been a longstanding theory that the aswangs were created at the start of the Spanish colonial period in the Philippines when Spanish friars demonized the babaylans and shamans, who were predominantly women (Meñez 1996). This narrative has been used by Spanish priests to allow the church to have control over the Filipinos by giving them an antagonist to collectively fear and blame for any mishaps civilians may encounter (Clark 2017).

Although Meñez’s theory is only one of the possible origin stories of the manananggal, it sheds a light on why these monstrous creatures are usually women (Cudis-Ucag 2016). If this is the case in the Philippines, then why is it that even in other countries, women are regarded to as evil and cunning? Perhaps this is how patriarchal societies view women — a threat to their power (Marshall 2019). Thus, they are left with no choice but to reduce women into evil creatures or sexual objects.

This ideology is present in media organizations, which is dominated by men, specifically in its beginning years. Since most of the narratives are told by men, how women are portrayed in media is based on their perceptions. This ends with women being marginalized by their counterpart, as women are created to serve the fancies of men, in any way possible. To counter this, several feminist studies are created to further advocate sexual equality for both men and women. It is undeniable, however, that this patriarchal ideology continues to promulgate even in modern times.

The film Ang Manananggal sa Unit 23B is one of the films that seek to retell the story of the Aswangs by showing that they’re also humans who experience demons, just like any of us (Dayta 2020). It is successful in that regard, but how the story unfolded is still anchored on the male gaze. It shows exactly how women are portrayed in 21st century Philippine media — whilst we have come a long way from witch hunts reducing women to sexual objects, traces of this patriarchal view is still weaved onto products of media, and it will take severe efforts to untangle ourselves from that ideology.

REFERENCES:

Bever, Edward. “Witchcraft, Female Aggression, and Power in the Early Modern Community.” Journal of Social History 35, no. 4 (2002): 955–88.

Clark, Jordan. “From Babaylan to Aswang?” The Aswang Project, January 28, 2017. https://www.aswangproject.com/babaylan-to-aswang/.

Cudis-Ucag, Nancy. “Digging into the Politics of Gender in the Past: The Aswang (Part 1).” Medium. One True Sentence, April 18, 2016. https://medium.com/one-true-sentence/digging-into-the-politics-of-gender-in-the-past-the-aswang-part-1-fb02dc4374f3.

Dayta, Dominic. “A Cinema of MELANCHOLY: Prime Cruz and Ang Manananggal Sa Unit 23B.” Dominic Dayta, June 30, 2020. https://dominicdayta.com/2020/07/01/a-cinema-of-melancholy-prime-cruz-and-ang-manananggal-sa-unit-23b/.

“Manananggal (the Viscera Sucker).” Philippine Tales | Anthology of Philippine Mythology and Folklore, 2013. https://www.philippine-tales.com/creatures/manananggal#gsc.tab=0.

Marshall, Bridget. “Most Witches Are Women, Because Witch Hunts Were All about Persecuting the Powerless.” The Conversation, October 23, 2019. https://theconversation.com/most-witches-are-women-because-witch-hunts-were-all-about-persecuting-the-powerless-125427.

Meñez, Herminia. Explorations in Philippine Folklore. Manila: Ateneo de Manila Univ. Pr, 1996.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16, no. 3 (1975): 6–18. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/16.3.6.

Nadeau, Kathleen. “Aswang and Other Kinds of Witches: A Comparative Analysis.” Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society 39, no. 3/4 (2011): 250–66.