Karagatan at Kabaklaan: Ang Pagyanig sa Kasarian ng Kulturang Popular sa Pamamagitan ng “Sirena” ni Gloc-9 (itinatampok si Ebe Dancel)

Abstract

This article is part of a larger study that focuses on the space occupied by kabaklaan within the milieu of local contemporary music. By close reading the song’s lyrics and the various ways in which the song performs itself—whether textually or visually (i.e. music video)—this article shows the continuous reconstructions and reestablishments by and of kabaklaan, and how this becomes a major component of the country’s discourse on homosexuality. The theoretical body of this article draws from the works of J. Neil Garcia and Dick Hebdige. This article explores the emergence of a local construction of kabaklaan from the song “Sirena” by Gloc-9/Ebe Dancel, and how this performance of identity contributes to the constant movement of the bakla through various forms of signification, protest, and struggle, in relation to the gender identity that is both his parallel and his opposite, the lalaki.