Smiles for Dolphy

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

The nation grieves, indeed, for the passing away of Dolphy and the passing of an era, the closure of a chapter in Philippine movies.

And among the countless tributes and thoughts that flowed the moment it was confirmed that he had died, it was his son, Eric’s tweet that was remarkable really: In honor of dad, turn to the person next to you and smile.

What better way to celebrate the man’s life than with smiles which he had in six decades brought to our lives, on the screen, and right in our living rooms.

I don’t think there is any Filipino, except maybe children 7 and below who has no Dolphy memory, and I think most of those memories are warm and wonderful.

“John en Marsha” also marked the time when mass marketing of television started in this country, bringing the story of this Pinoy family to an unprecedented number of households who were thrilled, not just by the family's happy vibes, but also by the wonders of the idiot box.

Dolphy would later reprise the loving father role in “Home along da Riles”.

In the last weeks, as Dolphy laid critical in his hospital bed, there has been a lot of debate about giving him National Artist honors and the latest bomb to blow in this was the revelation of former National Commission for Culture and the Arts executive director Cecile Guidote-Alvarez of the deliberations on Dolphy's case.

Violating the secrecy rule on the discussions, Guidote said Nick Tiongson had opposed giving the award to Dolphy because his portrayal of gays in his movies violated Pinoy values. Tiongson has since issued a denial, saying Guidote misquoted him.

The finger-pointing will escalate now that he has died, but what does that matter to the man? Sure, the national artist honors is the highest an artist can get, but for true artists, I don't think it is such an important be-all. Of course, artists would want to be appreciated, and their works understood, but I think most of them do not exactly work for the honors. They work because there is something in them that needs to be expressed, to be shared and not for some medal or trophy.

To my mind, however, the government erred in ignoring Dolphy's work by failing to give him the National Artist honors. After all, if you really come down to it, the man helped shape our national identity.

And I am not saying he did that by promoting the stereotypes he played on screen. Dolphy helped shape our national identity because in him, we found an icon that was truly Pinoy at a time when cinema was littered with Hollywood copycats and characters.

His fans will surely liken him to Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and even Buster Keaton and in the sense that these men did slapstick comedy, they are correct. But to my mind, his real contribution to our national heritage is not because he was the Pinoy Chaplin or Buster Keaton, but because he deployed slapstick in his own inimitably Pinoy way.

True, he had movies parodying Western characters like Captain Barbell and Tarzan. But he informed these roles with Filipino sensibilities, and turned them into characters that symbolized Pinoy pop culture of that time. Dolphy's biggest contribution though was his capacity to draw all segments of Philippine society to his movies, breaking class barriers at a time when our elite looked down on Filipino films as "bakya", and bringing to the screen the travails of the Pinoy Everyman. In doing so, he has unconsciously and, I'm sure, unintentionally made us all realize the beauty and cultural value of our everyday realities.*

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