FROM HOSTESSES TO WORKING GIRLS Sex Workers in Late 1970s Philippine Cinema

The depiction of morally wayward women characters as protagonists in Philippine cinema emerged in parallel with the trend in presenting gangsters and so-called bad boys in the late 1950s. Drawing influence from the spread of the French New Wave and its transformation of American cinema into the New Hollywood, the Filipino counterparts (of both genders) required comeuppances that were either tragic or reformist. One other tendency was to provide confederates for these characters, to the point where duos or, more often, groups would dominate the narrative. This paper will look at the possible reasons for the narrative strategies used by filmmakers as well as the breakthroughs these characterizations enabled during the late 1970s period of martial law, when the regime of Ferdinand E. Marcos consolidated the militarization of film-censorship prerogatives, resulting in film artists seeking effective ways of presenting social critiques without directly provoking the self-appointed guardians of morality.