A closer reading of the video reveals the power in the Filipina American women’s performance and shows how through the body and representation, these women assert desire, express enjoyment and claim sexual power. What we need to watch out for (in the video and the critique) is how hypersexuality is too easily condemned in ways that also over simplify the power of sexuality in representation.
That is, the letter belittles the feminist, sexual and visual power of the bebot herself. Reminding us of the power of popular culture to shape lives, these critics prioritize a victim position for the women in the lens of mainstream interpretation. The open letter inserts to the burden of representation critique the pain of representation for spectators in primarily gendered terms. How does this feminist critique converge with visual, sonic and sexual analysis? Because sightings of Filipino American popular representations continue to be rare, the artists of color committed to presenting such images are met with a lot of adulation and expectation. Political, harmonious and stylish, the Filipino/African American singer/dancer Apl De Ap, founding member of The Black Eyed Peas, uses music, dance and fashion to articulate, in the most recognizable and noticeable form today, the Filipino American diaspora in transnational popular culture. What Stuart Hall called “the burden of representation” for artists of color rears its head anew in the form of feminist critique.
BEBOT BEBOT BEBOT! FILIPINO! FILIPINO! SKIN
I suggest we dig deeper by asking questions about both sexuality and representation that complicate the primarily gendered critique of the “Bebot” videos: Does the sight of brown female skin evoke its many colonial deployments in ways that obscure the political intervention that different representational forms, structures and grammar can offer? In this particular case, is sex always already demeaning and negative for marginalized women? I re-visit this controversy to assess how feminism, nationalism and popular music and representation interact today. 2 In effect, the open letter argued that the visibility and celebration of Filipina/o culture in popular representation happens at the expense of women who are presented as objects for male consumption and whose bodies are the terrain on which national and ethnic pride are established. They wrote: “s Filipina/o and Filipina/o American artists, academics, and community activists, we are utterly dismayed by the portrayal of hypersexualized Filipina ‘hoochie-mama’ dancers” in Generation 2, the contemporary version of the video, and the problematic representation of Filipina women as sexual objects for Filipino men in the historic portrayal of early Filipina/o America in Generation 1. and the Philippines condemned the hypersexuality and objectification of Filipina women in the “Bebot” videos. In an open letter, feminist Filipina/o Americans across the U.S.
1 As I listen to the album’s first single, “Boom Boom Pow,” I recall the Filipina/o American feminist controversy launched on the internet three years ago regarding the Black Eyed Peas’ song “Bebot” or “Filipina Hottie” and its two music videos: Generation 1 and Generation 2. The Grammy-winning, multi-platinum-selling, global hip-hop phenomenon The Black Eyed Peas debuted their latest album at number one early this summer.
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