Explanations for Bobby: Cultural Problems,

Homosexuality, and Determinism

By Artchil C. Daug
From an anthropological perspective, Prayers for Bobby presented an array of cultural problems.
To see it merely as a statement in the ocean of discourse that has come to be labeled under the
notion of gender is to delimit the possibilities of interpreting the film/event on one hand, and to
delimit the scope of culture in the other. The former of course is very much connected with the
latter because gender as a cultural construct is itself a signifier of a culture. Consider, as Geertz
did, for example the idea that culture is itself a systema system of symbolic forms as Cassirer
once arguedit becomes rather natural to treat gender as a cultural discursive apparatus; that
is, any talk/writing about gender becomes by the transformative power of interpretation a
means to or a mode of access towards a given culture. It is within this context that Prayers for
Bobby offers both a rupture and a redoublingit greatly amplifies a cultural system by
presenting it as a statement of discontinuity.
It is best to categorize these problems into themes. First is what one can generally call the
problem of modernity and bourgeois repression. This is much connected to the triumph of
capitalism as the economic system that replaced mercantilist feudal arrangement of medieval
Europe. Second is the role of religion and the way it can be attacked as representing the nonsecular aspect of bourgeois culture. The film, in keeping perhaps to the actual events from which
it was based, appears to be attacking religious dogmatism. Third is the issue of free will and the
nature/nurture side of the debate on homosexuality. And the fourth is a little consideration on
suicide.
Before proceeding further, a cultural note may be added. This is because a Filipino watching the
film may eventually see a degree of parallelism between Filipino culture and the American
culture portrayed in the film. On one hand, one must consider the religious construct of Filipino
culture; and on the other, the bourgeois nature of American culture. The parallelism is perhaps
deeply rooted in the cultural transformation of Filipino society from what can be considered as
the Catholic-traditional one towards a semi (petty?) bourgeois one. Filipino society, especially
those found in the countryside, is attached strongly to religion, but not necessarily in the similar
fashion of American Protestantism. As Durkheim argued before, bourgeois Protestantism
developed with bourgeois capitalism. One is tempted to say that typical rural Filipino culture still
reflects the upbringing brought about by Spanish colonialism, while the American culture
portrayed in the film appears to be reflecting bourgeois culture itself, with its heavy referral to
biblical texts (something that a rural Filipino could not really care about). Many Filipinos freely
interpret the Bible without the necessary Puritanical inclination. The point here is that despite the
parallelism, both cultures remain incredibly distinct.
The problem therefore of bourgeois repression, a product of modernity, is a little bit hard to
imagine especially in the countryside of the Philippines, where social support systems exist
within neighborhoods, within friends (barkada), and within families. And even in the
metropolitan areas like Cebu or Manila, these systems remain visible. Bourgeois society may

have been revolutionary at some point in modern history, but when it was established as the
status quo in the west, it became as dogmatic as the church in making sure the ideals of
modernity are kept. Repression emerged from social conditions brought upon by bourgeois
economics. One of its highlights, alienation, is the repression of actual social relations. Marxism
explained that because a laborer must only concentrate on an aspect within the production line
(very much unlike the medieval craftsman) and focus more on his or her contribution within
production, his or her mind is continuously conditioned to be alienated. The medieval craftsman
who continuously interact with other craftsmen to advance his knowledge of his craft (a system
preserved in the academe with its masters and doctors degrees) is transformed to an industrial
worker who must follow the instruction manual to keep his or her job. Marx pointed to this kind
of life as metronomicdevoid of any real creative activity except the activity of procreation,
which within this context can also be debatable.
It is not a coincidence that together with the mainstreaming of alienation, there also came other
movements like existentialism which was inclined more to the glorification of the individual
and his or her rights. The individual of course is a mythat least in the sense of a Barthes for
example. A tool to ensure power resides regularly to those who are considered valuable by
bourgeois societythe capitalists. The individual is a product of metaphysical imagination:
separated from any actual social network, alone, definable and re-definable, in other words,
essential (the ego or the I in its barest form). This is because s/he is essentially a tool. Much of
his or her capabilities are repressed (unless demanded by the market-driven society). Add to this
repression the religiousness of Protestantism, its almost fundamentalist stand in its interpretation
of the Biblewith its sexist tone, Bobby was trapped in a system s/he had no control. What was
repressed? And how is this repression relevant to the examination of power?
At home, religious conditioning placed Bobby within the scaffold of what bourgeois society
considered normal and appropriate. One can even suspect that in American society,
interpretations of the Bible is heavily inclined towards keeping the industrial order. Similar
perhaps with how the Spaniards used the Bible to justify its position in the network of power in
Spanish Philippines, American society utilized the Bible to justify the bourgeois lifeworld and
used (using?) the usual culprits (redemption in the afterlife, etc.) to help suggest to teenage
Americans (especially them) that the social hierarchy and structure of American society is the
natural order of things: if this world is bad, that is because this is a test and because the real prize
is the world beyond death. Home for Bobby was an example of religious conditioning; but just as
Foucault argued on the existence of a system of social surveillance to ensure that this
conditioning is always checked, the school and the peers appear to be agents of the system. It
does give a very succulent explanation as to why American teenagers long to be considered
normal and very much abhor any notion of differencea good example of modernity at
work. What happened when it appeared that the system failed and Bobby became different?
Psychiatrists and psychiatry sessions, medicines, religious enforcement of the system, parental
guidancebecause it was only when a different Bobby was emerging that the agents of the
system gradually revealed themselves. Bobby was alone to face the powers that be, at least that
was how he was conditioned to thing. (Probably because loneliness itself can be a very powerful
tool to prevent any sheep from straying away from the flock. The message after all of the missing

sheep and the prodigal son was not the appreciation of difference but the path back to the flock
and therefore to the system.) Bobbys mother became the shepherd, though it can be
appropriately said that she became the agent of the system (consciously or not at that time).
Bobby lost connection in the beginning: from his brother, his sisters, his father, his mother, and
eventually from himself. He became truly an individual, connected perhaps to the facticity of his
life only through bits and pieces of religious texts that his mother posted in many places in their
house that was becoming no necessarily a home for him. The problem with religion is that
because it is so much attached to culture, any question mark placed against a societys life style
is a question placed against religion. This is apparently normal. At the forefront of conditioning,
religion plays a very important role. It was after all Bobbys first experience with power. Was this
entirely religions fault? The film appears to be suggesting that it was or for many out there, it is.
This can be true only when one considers that religion is very much connected with social power
relations. Bobbys conditioning, as most people in American society perhaps experienced, began
with religion. As something that belongs in the forefront of conditioning, it naturally is primary
target. But to consider the events in Bobbys life as merely a religious problem is to deny that it
is most importantly a cultural problem. Bobbys mother, by her insistence on treating
homosexuality as a disease, unconsciously was herself representing that problem.
There appears to be a conundrum here. Bourgeois society raised ideas like individualism and
existentialism, but these are placed within a context of power that limits the extent of a persons
self-determination. A person for example can be bombarded with signs that point towards selfworth (the notion of individual empowerment), but there is a limit imposed (yes, imposed)
through the agents of the system. Bourgeois society utilize religion for control but religion
carries with it the inherent prejudices against many things. On one hand bourgeois society can
talk about freedom, liberty and human dignity, but on the other it must impose a system of
control (most brutally even a system of definition: you are human only within these acceptable
definitions). Bobbys peers and family somehow at some point represented this systemalmost
like willing but unconscious agents of it. To borrow from Marcuse, a one-dimensional society
ensures the one-dimensional man and to go towards another dimension is an act of deviancy.
(There is a very important note here on othering that is needed to be elaborated, but that is a
very long discourse appropriate in some other time. Needless to say, homosexuality is an other
that cannot fit within the singular dimension.) The most telling is when Bobby refuses at first to
accept that he is a homosexual (a deviant). Is homosexuality a choice in the first place?
This question is really deeply rooted on the question of free will and on the nature/nurture
debate. Perhaps a little digression to point here. Just an experiment. Think of a movie foreign or
local. If you have thought of it, explain to yourself why you picked that film out of the myriad of
films you already watched. Free will demands that you have total control over the choicethat
you picked it rationally in comparison to all the films. Because if one has to be morally
responsible over an action, there must be the clear intention of choosing. But why that film? Why
that reason? Why the reason of that reason? Ad nauseam. In fact, once can replace movie with
anythingthe toothpaste one is using, the TV show one just watched, the lecture one just gave,
the food one just ate, etc. In all these circumstances (very basic one might add), ones decisions
are usually determined consequences of other given and existing circumstances.

Recent studies in biology and psychology point towards the direction of determinism. From
Dawkins selfish gene to Sam Harris argument regarding the illusory nature of free will, it is
getting really difficult to justify free will. The problem is not epistemological, but rather social.
The ramifications of accepting determinism is potentially problematic in any justice system,
which relies of the premise of moral responsibility. How can one have moral responsibility of a
crime if s/he was a product of a deterministic universe? One however need no leap of faith to
argue that if a person is genetically capable of committing a crime, the commission of the crime
itself needs no punishment (a change in the language game of the justice system is really
necessary if determinism is accepted) but one also acknowledges that the commission itself is a
problem that is needed to be fixed. It is fixed by, for lack of a better term, caring for the person
and showing compassion to him or her by making sure s/he undergoes therapy to ensure such an
act will not occur again. Justice here is not vengeance, but a sense of compassion. This is usually
the example given on the side of a deterministic moral compass. The point really here is that
another models of social constructions can actually be made if humanity really embraces
determinism. Now, it is merely a matter of preference.
With that out of the way (for now), homosexuality then is not a choice; it is natural and it exists
and existed in the animal kingdom not as an anomaly of nature, but as a result evolution and
natural selection. Nor is this a disease that needed a cure. This must be accepted before
entertaining any notion that may consider homosexuality as detrimental to civilization (a stand
clearly identified in religious scripturesthat also damned nature as a source of sin). The view
that Bobby was almost criminal (in some sense) because of his deviancy, or that his very
nature is sinful and deserve punishment, or that it is a psychological illness that can be
cured, is based on the old justice system. What should have been done? Determinism suggests
that therapy may be undertaken not to save Bobby from homosexuality, but perhaps to stop
Bobby from killing himself (if one views suicide as something bad, can it be any good?). A
therapy that can enable him to accept himself and live with other despite differences. A therapy
that does not treat him as a mere individual living a world, but as part of a social community
where differences are accepted not abhorred. Because in the end, what really killed Bobby was
the alienation caused by society, by his family and in many great deal of sense, his own mother.
In a way, when one reviews the film, his path to suicide was already determined by the very
actions of the people around him. All there was needed was a push.
In another film, Cloud Atlas, the homosexual character also killed himself after being alienated
from his work and passion (music), from his lover, and eventually a threat to alienate him from
his life. He was told that this was the natural order of things. The thing one cannot forget about
that portion of the film was how he explained suicide as not an easy thing to do because nature
biologically demands self-survival. A common bloke may look at it as an easy way out of a given
circumstance, but he reasoned that when someone is biologically determined not to kill ones self
then it is quite courageous to go against natural instinct for survival. The death of Bobby in the
film, or even in real life, offered a tremendous size of a door to open the problems of modern
society (can that be any good?). Did he do the right thing in killing himself? This question only
makes sense if there is indeed free will. In a deterministic universe, the question absolutely
makes no sense. [Open ended this ends.]