Rock Hudson’s rustic gardener’s cottage stands next to a frozen lake. The sky is a garish baby-blue, the clouds are ethereal wads of fluffy white cotton. In this perfect picture-book American tableau, plaid hunting jackets, roaring cellophane fires, smoking chimneys, and stark winter forests of skeletal trees provide costume and setting for Hollywood’s version of a typical rural Christmas.
The novel commences in an unusual way: with detailed descriptive imagery of an actual Hollywood film. The characters are taking advantage of the cool promise of an air-conditioned theater in 1956 to watch All That Heaven Allows. The choice of this film is significant as it was originally dismissed as mere glossy soap opera at the time, but with the ensuing passage of time has risen in status significantly. Today, the film is highly regarded as an example director Douglas Sirk’s corrosively ironic critique of American ideals in highly conformist 1950’s. This dualistic aspect of the film will become thematic significant to the novel as it plays out its own critique of American culture’s influence among foreign populations.
“…there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow men for whom Christ also died. And then I went to bed, and went to sleep and slept soundly.”
The quote above is excerpted from an actual speech delivered by Pres. William McKinley in 1898 in response to discussions about the possibility of the U.S. annexing the Philippines. This speech was delivered around the peak of America’s devotion to the expansionist policy of “manifest destiny” which is simply a nice term for all-encompassing practice of taking land we wanted because God told us to. The Philippines and America have ever since been partners in one the stranger international alliances in the world and McKinley’s patronizing tone may give some indication of the nature of that relationship.
“Shelley Winters is so ordinary. She deserves to die. Que pobrecito, Montgomery!”
Another movie, this one also somewhat underestimated at first by critics upon release, but still recognized as an indictment. In fact, it is not going too far to say that until Parasite took home the big prize in 2020, A Place in the Sun was the most corrosive critique of American capitalism to ever snag a major Academy Award. What the character is speaking about here goes straight to the heart of that critique: Shelley Winters plays a nagging harridan whom the character played by Montgomery Clift impregnates. After he in turn falls in love with a young heiress played by Elizabeth Taylor, the pressure mounts and Winters drowns during a canoe ride in the dark.
Pucha is not the first and won’t be the last to root for the poor unpleasant girl to drown so dreamy Monty can go off in the happily ever after with Liz. That is the point of the film’s critique of American capitalist culture. It fit then and it fits now. The movie is placed in counterpoint to the Rock Hudson film because one is a glossy Technicolor soap opera and the other a pure black and white portrait of the ugliness of America and yet both equally entice from the young Philippine audience with a tantalizing picture postcard of America as the land of dreams.
