Power and Control, The Middle Finger in HITO
by Boris Yu
This review is published as part of the Youth Critics Initiative V, a collaborative mentorship incubator between the 27th Reel Asian Film Festival and TACLA.
I was recently asked whether my desire for control is over my own life or if it’s over others. I hesitated. To have control means to have power over something or someone, and while the former sounds inspirational, the latter…we’ll talk about that another time. Growing up in an immigrant household meant learning about power and control under nuanced contexts. The traditions and values of my Hong Kong-Chinese family approached control as a form of repression. Feelings, thoughts, and even “I love you” were things my parents rarely shared with my brother and me because, to them, actions spoke louder than words. I would be called out for being disingenuous if I vocalized my feelings. Living in this late-stage capitalist society exposed me to a side of control and power oriented toward individual success. Take control of your finances; take control of the way you present yourself; take control of others for your gain. It was about winning at life and securing a comfortable future at the expense of others.
In this awkward tug-o-war pulled on one end by this need to win in life and the other by the repression of my feelings, control and power became tools to mask my feelings and insecurities. I became someone unfamiliar to even myself, easily swayed by the currents and blaming the world for my problems when I was swept away. All it took was 30 years for me to realize I never had any control or power to begin with; at least not in the sense of someone who knew what he valued and treasured. I was cosplaying a form of control and power that left me empty. As another mentor in YCI often reiterated, I didn’t know what hill I was willing to die on.
Reel Asian became a therapeutic ground to witness various forms of control and power through creative practice as a way of resistance. In particular, the HERE WE ARE shorts program centred the human condition troubled by forces beyond our grasp, offering a collection of narratives where protagonists discover and express their agency in a world relentlessly boxing them into prescribed categories. Two hours went by quickly as stories of heartbreak, wonder, absurdity, and grief played out on screen.
I left the cinema with HITO by Stephen Lopez engraved in my memory. The short follows Jani, an unassuming high school student whose encounter with a talking catfish propels her towards a path of rebellion in search of freedom against an oppressive authoritarian state.
“Registration for mandatory military service will begin on July 1st.” — HITO
HITO begins with a military conscription announcement muffling the sounds of kicking and punching. Jani, the protagonist of this short, is seen fending herself against a school bully. CGI nuclear reactors tower in the background amidst a saturated hazy atmosphere, straddling reality and dreamscape. An unannounced encounter with a Japanese-speaking Shih Tzu leads Jani to an alternate reality where she is greeted by a quirky scientist, Brad, whom I can only describe as a san zai (山寨 — bootleg) version of the Oracle from The Matrix. I remember bursting into laughter in the theatre. It was a feel-good moment after seeing Jani’s struggles. As a token for her troubles, Brad gifts her Kiefer, a talking catfish and a rescued science experiment.
“I came here to save you from your terrible fate”
— Doraemon, All the Way from the Country of the Future
Freedom is not necessarily the talk of the town in HITO. Military broadcasts continue to play in the background throughout and we learn a curfew is in effect. In this dystopian sci-fi world, Kiefer and Jani’s interactions cut through the heaviness of the military and authoritarian undertone in Jani’s world. A catfish who loves to watch television and is rehabilitated to live with humans, Kiefer’s endearing nature reminds me of when Doraemon and Nobito first met. Jani’s confused and frightened look upon finding out Kiefer can talk was similar to when Doraemon’s voice was heard in Nobito’s room during their first meeting. Yet the two could not be more different. Doraemon shares gadgets; Kiefer shares memories and feelings that had my blood boiling with rage as the montage of protests, rebellion, and resistance reminded me of the power imbalance in our society.
The sun sits in the middle of the shot with Jani’s back facing the audience as she peers at the windmills in the background. The saturated orange overlay triggers a feeling of desolation and hopelessness in me. Images of project H.I.T.O flicker and in a moment of abruptness, a distorted electric guitar summons a progression of punk chords and videos of protest, police brutality, and violence appear one after another. The words sanitize, subjugate, cauterize, flash across the screen as I see protestors dragged and sprayed down by the riot police — I was not expecting Kiefer’s memories to be anger-inducing. Illustrations of what appears to be an elementary school textbook depicting the “ideal child” follow — children undergoing military training; children saluting with a nuclear powerplant in the background, and a teacher pointing out the word “pagkakaisa” (unity). I was glued to the edge of the theatre seat, my heart racing from the disturbing images. The music reaches its climatic height with its distorted guitar and fast-paced cutting as Jani flips between cut-outs of her facial expressions. The montage ends by returning to the initial desolate scenery, only now the wind turbines are replaced by goldfish swimming in the sky. Jani smiles into the distance—the first and final time we see our protagonist laugh.
Unlike the previous sequence with Brad, I was distressed and unable to discern my emotions. How could I feel anger and hope at the same time? Why was it unsettling to sit through a montage where goldfish were swimming in the sky by the end? WHY!? I learned in conversations with my mentor post-festival that this sequence celebrated and indulged in the essence of punk and rebellion. These were words that I had known before, but this might have been the first time I’d come face to face with the weight they carry.
“The ability to do something or act in a particular way, especially as a faculty or quality”
— Power, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary
I wanted to know how power was created in the world of HITO, as a way to understand what Jani was rebelling against. Whether it be through the nuclear reactor that stood as a monument across multiple scenes, the dilapidated powerlines, or the conscription announcement, I was desperate to uncover the decisions made by Lopez and his team, thinking this knowledge would give me the credibility needed to critique the short. What followed was a montage of research leading me to different points in the history of the Philippines, specifically the Marcos administration — failed promises of energy independence, political collusion, and martial law. The details that confused me rearranged themselves into learning pathways—a crash course on the history of the Philippines. Although for different reasons, I suppose this overwhelming feeling was akin to how Jani felt watching Kiefer’s transmitted montage.
Yet all this research only convoluted my understanding of the short, muddling my experience with context that I did not have language to express. The anxiety I felt watching the montage sequence the first time came back twice as hard as the confusion left me paralyzed within my thoughts. For a moment, it was if I was Jani, crawling backwards trying to catch my breath. I was overwhelmed by the information I gathered. I was saddened by this history.
I also had a double viewing experience, where watching HITO in person brought on a wave of nostalgia. There were uncanny flashbacks to when I was bullied and the companionship I’d yearned for when I was younger. My emotions were tethered to HITO via my childhood and its fantasies. When Jani was getting bullied, I felt each punch against her skin. When she laughed at the end of the montage, I felt joy for her. During subsequent viewings, however, my research attempts turned my nostalgia into powerlessness. I gained a deeper insight into the world of HITO but the oppressiveness of this setting paralyzed me. What could Jani possibly do when the odds were stacked against her?
“Why do you keep changing the narrative we’ve given you?” — Short quote
And then it happens. The world of HITO we have been immersed in crumbles.
It turns out, everything has been a simulation till now. This world of towering nuclear reactors has been a dream sequence stitched together to interrogate Jani into telling the military who gave her Kiefer, an entity deemed to be a terrorist weapon. In a breakfast sequence filled with awkward jokes and strangely loving parents, Jani’s confusion is met with a glitch in the system. Her parents lag out and a new scene begins, only for it to break down again when Jani asks her father for a Hito at the pet store. Cue computer glitches, looped dialogue, swapped backgrounds and cardboard cutout food while an emergency siren blares in the background. When we are sucked back into reality, Jani is actually strapped to a chair with a contraption on her head and wounds on her face.
HITO shares many similarities with tokusatsu (特撮). Referring to live-action sci-fi television or films incorporating heavy practical special effects, tokusatsu was and still is a genre to depict fantasy grounded in reality for superheroes and kaiju (怪獣 — strange monster) or kaijin (怪人 — stranger person) fiction. Growing up with works such as KAMEN RIDER and ULTRAMAN, there was nothing more exhilarating than rooting for my favourite superhero and imagining the flying rockets and explosions in my backyard. With its CGI elements and glitching SFX, HITO borrowed similar tokusatsu techniques and channelled my imagination only to trigger some of my most primal emotions. The fear I felt upon seeing Jani strapped down left me speechless. I thought to myself… “Ah, so this is the aftermath of what rebelling against power looks like.” I was fucking scared.
My fear, however, made Jani’s victory that much more powerful. After being flushed down the toilet by Jani earlier in the film to aid its escape, Kiefer reappears, no longer a realistic catfish but in kaijin form. Kiefer breaks into the laboratory in a Kool-aid Man-esque entry, frees Jani from the machine and together, they violently attack the military director, strapping him to the interrogation chair. And there, we have it: the climactic middle finger. The director bleeds profusely from his face after getting flipped off and explodes. Our heroes are covered in the director’s blood; justice has been served.
While writing this piece, I was forced to return to the question my mentors have been asking since the beginning, “Did the middle finger mean anything to you?” The answer remains the same, “Yes it did. It was badass, it was hype, it was liberating.” I internally screamed as loud as watching Deku from MY HERO ACADEMIA pull off a Delaware Detroit smash against Muscular. Jani’s middle finger was a “fuck you” to not only the director but to the system that has trapped and oppressed her.
Phew, that was a lot to process.
It’s shameful to admit, but there’s generally not a lot I care about. Controlling my emotions and finding power in being disciplined and desensitized prevented me from actively engaging with my surroundings; I was willing to only subject myself to the “feel-good” emotions and not the negative ones. Complicated doesn’t even come close to describing the roller coaster of emotions I felt watching HITO. Bearing witness to Jani’s hopelessness, anxiousness, and powerlessness, I almost felt justified in my decision to block out these feelings. I am afraid of being consumed by something I have no control over.
Yet as much as I attempt to limit what I feel, I was nonetheless moved by Jani. It wasn’t the act of giving the middle finger, but the courage behind her decision to rebel despite her situation. In the face of surmounting oppression, she chose to say (at least in my mind) “Fuck you, fuck this simulation, fuck your system. I will live the way I way.” I was originally overwhelmed and under the assumption that rebellion only had to be against state history or related to government politics. However, through conversations with my mentor, I started wondering what my own rebellion might look like. What hill am I willing to die on? To be honest, I don’t know right now. This isn’t a question that is easy to answer for someone who has closed off his emotions. Opening the floodgates and relearning the range of emotions and feelings is overwhelming, but it sure does sound better than never knowing what my authentic self looks or feels like. I’m not sure what my middle finger will be like, but the gates are open and I welcome my emotions to run their course as I find my anchor to stake my “fuck you” on.
Boris Yu (he/him) is a designer and artist intrigued by the discourses around the natural and unnatural world and its relation to our current emotionally detached environment. The studio’s body of work currently focuses on conceptual material research and objects as a carrier for speculative futures, investigating alternate narratives at the intersection of craft, nature, and technology.
IG: onlyoneyes
