Gloc 9's Sirena...

Finally found the time to listen and watch to Gloc 9's Sirena.

Friend Victor sent a link to the vid to our group chat, but it was only recently that I got to check out the song and the MTV.

I like it. I'm not really a huge fan of rap (hehe!) but this song has quite a catchy tune and the words are still very much easy to understand.

The music video - the story, the treatment - is not bad as well.

The story is the all too familiar stereotyped image of a Filipino gay man. Effeminate, "wants to be a girl," weak and unable to stand up for himself - Roderick Paulate's characters in various sitcoms I used to watch growing up come to mind.

Hmm, I'm not really a huge fan of stereotype. When I was doing some graduate courses in Diliman, I wrote a "paper" on the changing image of gay men as shown in a film I saw that time. The review got published in the college's academic journal.

As much as it would be nice to veer away from stereotypes, the truth is the stereotypes do exist and are still very much part of the LGBT community.

One review of the song I read gave a very good reason why stereotypes still need to be recognized. While the stereotyped parlorista character is placed in sitcoms/comedy movies, one must also see that there is some "violence" involved in it. Forcing the son's head into a barrel of water while the usual tambays laugh at father and son; being jeered at while cheering for a crush at the community basketball game.

A line in the review goes, "Here is a song that deals with that violence, here is a song that refuses to laugh at it, and instead insists it is fact, it is truth."

Couldn't agree more.

One more thing that surprised me when I watched the video was seeing very good friend Carlo at the end of the video. There was also one person I was rather surprised to see.