From the Ledge

Immigrants will always be marked different – that strange custom of removing shoes upon entering someone’s house, that unique headscarf, that slightly off-kilter turn of phrase, will always set them apart regardless of how flawlessly they speak the native language, how successful they are, how educated their children become.  Gay people will always be marked different - again, that fastidious dressing, that obsession with Merman and Sondheim, that uniquely intellectual witty crack, will always set them apart in a heterosexual society that has ambiguous feelings about them.  Immigration and sexuality themes are always heady stuff, so the Israeli documentary, “Paper Dolls”, by award-winning filmmaker Tomer Heymann, about immigrant Filipino transexuals caregivers who perform in a drag revue, set against the backdrop of a politically volatile Tel Aviv, seemed to be one hell of a Ph.D class.  On a Sunday night, where your tv viewing choice is Eva Longoria jiggle or Vincent D’Onofrio clenched jaw, a Ph.D class seemed more of a worthwhile activity. 

So tranny friend SizeZero and I hopped into a cab and sashayed over to Piper’s Alley to attend the “Paper Dolls” screening at the Chicago Festival of Israeli Films.  The documentary follows the lives of five Filipino transexual “guest workers” in Tel Aviv who serve as caregivers of old men, many of them debilitated from Alzheimer’s disease.  On their one night off, they perform as the “Paper Dolls”, a drag revue that entertains the large Filipino immigrant community in Israel.  I find it very hard to write about the film; its themes affected me on multiple levels as a Filipino, as an immigrant, as a gay man, as an outsider trying to “fit in”.   Despite the fact that all the subjects speak and read flawless Hebrew, and seemingly have adjusted to the life in Israel quite well, they are tagged as different because of their skin, their “ladyboy” look, and their socially undesirable occupation. Even the openly gay director at the beginning of the movie, looking for one of them, described him as “half-man, half-woman” (which is quite ignorant, really). Individual scenes have a punch-in-the-gut quality:  a taxi driver calls them “repulsive” and the Philippines as “the cradle of evil” after they get out of his cab; the Paper Dolls are made to perform as Japanese geishas, rather than as themselves, in the hottest nightclub in Tel Aviv (is it because being Japanese means being the “right” (acceptable) kind of Asian in a society that derides Filipinos as menial workers? or is it more because the geisha symbolizes the universally-held stereotype of Asians as submissive and somehow “inferior”?) and then brought out to the club entrance after they perform, to bow to incoming patrons; one of the Paper Dolls, Cheska, explains to the director that the reason he can “live with an old guy for 24 hours, wiping his shit and piss” is because Filipinos are by nature and by culture, devoted and respectful.  It is a heart-breaking comment, which made my heart stop, since my own situation of immigrating as a white-collar, highly-educated professional in a major American city, is not the typical immigration pattern for Filipinos, who are spread out all over the world mostly as domestic helpers, day laborers, and caregivers.  Ultimately, all the Paper Dolls end up in a much better place from where they started, some of them as caretakers/nurses in London, and some of them living independent and comfortable lives (probably funded by their guest worker savings) in the Philippines. There is a joyous, celebratory air in the denouement, but the journey to it was harrowing. This is a powerful and important piece of film-making.