The History Dream Final

Kevin Nguyen
ICS 24
Marilyn
12/3/09
The History Dream
Churchill once said. “History is written by the victors.” This holds true since the conqueror can gloat and glorify all he wants and show the world in his image. The concept of history in Dream Jungle is an interesting one, in which reality and fiction have been merged together in a way that its almost indistinguishable. Jessica Hagedorn merges the Philippine’s dramatic history and the filming of “Apocalypse Now” with her very own fiction and message. She uses scapegoats, and foils for each character and historical contexts to make specific references to each event as it has happened, could have happened, and never happened because history is bound to repeat itself.
The first of a few references Hagedorn makes is the idea or history of “discovery and conquest” in the Philippines. In fact, it is what the first part of her novel is called. The Philippines have been conquered and occupied by foreign invaders many times before. The Filipino people and their resources have been raped, used, and wasted time over time again and again. A good example would be the Spaniards, who have sailed by and conquered the people under their rule in the process centuries ago. Hagedorn included several excerpts from “Primo Viaggio Intorno Al Mundo” by Antonio Pigagetta, who was the travel log recorder of Captain Magellan’s expedition around the world, and she included her own fictional character, a rich Spaniard aptly named Zamora de Legazpi. Zomora de Legazpi represents a parallel foil to the wealthy Spaniards, specifically Captain Magellan and many other conquistadores, who “discovered” a group of natives, “taught” them a lesson, “took” their woman and goods, and thus “conquering” the indigenous people. There have been many references to this from the excerpt of Antonio Pigagetta when he was observing the natives such as “…and those boats resemble the dolphins which leap in the water from wave to wave. Those Ladroni (i.e., robbers) thought, according to the signs which they made, that there were no other people in the world but themselves.”(4) Or when they were in shock and awe, experiencing defeat at the lost of their beloved Captain:
One of them wounded him on the left leg with a large cutlass, which resembles a scimitar, only being larger. That caused the captain to fall face downward, when immediately they rushed upon him with iron and bamboo spears and with their cutlasses until they killed our mirror, our life, our comfort, and our true guide. (106)
Ironic isn’t it? How they referred to their captain as if something great and holy, but he, the captain, along with everyone else, just wanted gold and conquest in the name of God.
Zamora, however, is pretty much the same especially when he bosses around his servants and taking advantage with the young girls like when he was naked and lecturing in front of Rizalina. “Enough about dreams. You’d better go, little girl. Or else your mother will think poorly of me…I’ve lived up to my promise, haven’t I?...You can stop trembling now. The lesson is over.”(49) Or when Zamora is flirty, eager to have sex with many mistresses outside of his marriage such as Celia, his baby caretaker, who just had an abortion because of him. Poor little girls, you can imagine how scared they were and how much of their innocence was lost. And then there is Bodabil, a small Taobo boy Zamora found deep within the uninhabited Philippine mountain regions. This is a reference to the Talibo scam back in the day with the President and false relief fund “PIMPF” in order to gain easy money. But the point is that Zamora claimed that he discovered these indigenous people and that he will save these people from their Stone Age ways for “ who knows what’s sake”. It ended in a terrible way more or less like Captain Magellan and his men, he was soon questioned with the validity of his relief effort, losing his family, losing Rizalina, and slowly dying away, losing his significance.
Zomora’s thirst for lust and dominance is like that of the foreign conquistadores centuries ago whose justification for conquering may be nothing short of “colonialism”, a term mentioned by Ann-Lesley. Legazipi also has an interesting foil of himself, the sadistic Mayor Fritz Magbantay. Hagedorn has created the sadistic Mayor Fritz to show how devious man can be as he lectures in front of his innocent victims (just like how the invaders and Zamora did) right before he does something shameful to them. Nap, Fritz’s driver, thought of this as he witnessed Fritz lecturing to Lina inside the car later on in part two of the book: “What’s the deal with her anyway? She was just a teenage girl, slightly prettier than most, but so what?” (257)
Another reference to history would be the filming of “Napalm Sunset”—the second part of the book—which is actually the filming of “Apocalypse Now” by Francis Coppola. Hagedorn replaces Coppola with Tony Pierce, and Cowboy with Vincent Moody, and many others while keeping authenticity of the hot difficult situation of foreign Americans filming and interacting with the natives in the Philippines. History, again, repeats itself here even though it features different actors and a new scenario. Pierce, Moody, and Fritz are shown how they naturally interact with and exploit the natives. Moody acts like a father to Lina and gets with her after meeting her at a strip club. Pierce hires cheap labor for his production, bossing around everyone alike and disrespectfully considers the surrounding land to be “a venture far too deep into the heart, where savages rule and civilization does not exist” or what ever Marshall was telling us how the director perceived the Philippine land to be—possibly a meaningless toy by the end of the movie. And then you have Fritz, who just wants to sell out his land’s resources to the American actors, and many other dirty businesses. His lusting efforts with Lina mentioned earlier were stopped because of Aling Belen, the protective old lady that watches over the foreigners with condemning eyes. From the book, how she acts is like an ancient spirit and pride of the Philippine homeland, watching over the land, agonized at the sight of the looting and raping of its people and earth.
Now, here comes the validity of history of Dream Jungle. It is true that Janet Pierce did a documentary of the movie and that the actors were partying and screwing around. The Spaniards did have done a lot of things towards the people and so have many other foreigners that come and go. Its also true that there was corruption (even today) with the high ranking officials selling out their people with the Talibo scam, prostitution, outsiders, and many more.
So what is false? The only false things here—but not limited to-- are the story of Zamora and his so called tribes, the diaries, documents and testimonies, the reporter Paz, and especially the old lady Alen Beling. But even if it is false, Jessica Hagedorn creates such fictional characters that to even dismiss it as false, would be dismissing the possibility of ever having such a type of person, attitude, and existence in real life. Lets take, for example, old lady Alen Beling, who represents the ancient spirit of her people’s homeland, and compare her with many of the old Filipino people who have seen the troubles that most young people at first don’t see. How can anyone like her NOT exist? These old people should already know how shameful it is to see their country wasting away by the unguided youth and ill intentioned foreigners. Or another example would be the recorded audio tape from Paz’s mother. What ever the mother was talking about could have happened, happened, or never have happened in this world at all like when she describes how she met Paz’s father. “Purely by accident.” She says (283) How many real life people in the Philippines could say that they did this? So in essence, the way history is in Dream Jungle is cultural, personal, and ethnical subjectivism.
Jessica Hagedorn fully integrates actual history with her fiction and story telling in such a way that it’s a blend of truth, untruth, and the unknown. The possibility that even such a person, place, or thing that existed can go along so well when it is indeed fiction alongside history, is the concept of her novel, Dream Jungle. One can only dream and fantasize with the idea that such and such exists and it may not even be possible, yet it could have happened. Think of it as an equation, where the history is the formula and the variables are humans, young and old. If you replace the setting or its pieces, the history will still be the same on the account that you don’t know IF it would ever not happen. The author does just that and presents to us a story heavily based on recorded evidence and the idea of indistinguishable real life drama scenarios.

Hagedorn, Jessica. Dream Jungle. New York: Penguin. 2003