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“Smooth Criminals”: Mimicry, Choreography, and Discipline of Cebuano Dancing Inmates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2013

Lorenzo Perillo
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Abstract

On July 17, 2007, Byron Garcia, Cebu provincial security consultant, uploaded the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center inmates' performance of Michael Jackson's iconic, record-breaking music video “Thriller,” which has gained enough popularity to be ranked You-Tube's fourth all-time favorite video. I ask how 1,500 Cebuano prisoners performing “Thriller” hold the global gaze so captive? Also, how do issues of sexual, racial, and cultural desire and anxiety inform “Thriller” in both content and reception? I analyze the filmed “Thriller” dance in Cebu in order to open up its ambivalent success as explicated through issues of mimicry, choreography, and reception. I argue that “Thriller” takes part in a century-long conversation on Philippine representation, discipline, and imperial meanings. What subjects are formed through this experiment designed to literally choreograph discipline onto “deviant” bodies? Finally, when situating this user-generated spectacle in the contexts of Filipino diaspora, postcolonialism, and bakla performance, what epistemological shifts do we make from the gaze-spectacle binary?

Type
Research Article
Information
Congress on Research in Dance Conference Proceedings , Volume 40 , supplement S1: Dance Studies and Global Feminisms , 2008 , pp. 197 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2008

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