(on the left is my version of tuhog)
(on the right, ****)
*the actual film 
**the film within the film
tuhog*. we love this film, don’t we? hehe. and definitely, hayok sa laman** as well!
tuhog and hayok sa laman both show the sin of incest. but as a whole, the movie exhibits the cruelty that at times happen in our country’s film industry. putting in danger the names and even the lives of other people for money’s sake.
what i would really like to discuss in this blog entry is not the film itself, or even the film within it. rahter, i am interested in sharing my thoughts on the ‘theory of imitation’, then relating it to the tuhog and hayok sa laman.
it is evident that in ‘hayok sa laman’, a lot had been changed. still, the people responsible for making the movie, made public that it is based on a true story. when it should have been portrayed as a film full of drama, it ended up, intentionally, as a bold movie.
as discussed in class, should painters, poets, and other artists as such feel bad that they only ‘imitate’ an imitated piece? i agree that they do really just copy an already imitated piece, but maybe they should not actually feel bad about it if their intentions are genuine — for personal bliss or to make other people happy without stepping onto others’. but for those who make a piece of art and yet they endanger other people, these people are the ones who should feel bad when they imitate something that has already been imitated.
like in this film, some details were changed in ‘hayok sa laman’, because they believed that if they change the story into a more daring one, it would sell more and be snapped up.
for me, it’s really not an issue if you imitate something. even imitating something that has already been imitated is fine, as long as your intentions are pure. as long as it is for art’s sake.
besides, we naturally are born imitators.
****
(image source: http://www.cbcpworld.com/cinema/archives/2001/assets/tuhog.gif)
