Author ORCID Identifier
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Abstract
In this paper, I critically examine Alyx Ayn Arumpac’s documentary, Aswang, which follows the campaign of extrajudicial killings carried out by the Duterte regime against alleged drug users through the stories of its victims and their communities. In its provocative usage of a metaphoric device—the titular aswang—primarily associated with Filipino folktales, tabloid gossip, and local horror films, Aswang challenges the boundaries of documentary as a genre and its associated truth claims. The paper begins by situating Aswang within two genealogies—those of Philippine cinema and of Philippine folklore. As a cinematic work, Aswang is interesting because it is a documentary which draws from the tropes and techniques of horror; however, Aswang’s tendency to treat Metro Manila as an unproblematic synecdoche for the Philippine nation obscures the ways in which communities outside Manila have imagined the aswang differently. In the sections that follow, I investigate how the documentary’s varied depictions of the victims of extrajudicial killings both characterize and call into question the neoliberal moral economy by which the Duterte regime positions some citizens as deserving of death and others of life; how themes of grace, redemption, and sacrifice as articulated through syncretic practices like penitensiya place the film in conversation with the Catholic cosmologies introduced by Spanish imperialism; and how the film explores potential avenues of dissent against the Duterte regime through its depiction of protesters who, through obscuring their faces, challenge a politics based on positive identification with a moral community.
Recommended Citation
Chua, Ethan
(2026)
"The Many Faces of Aswang: Ghosts, Monsters, and State Violence under the Duterte Regime in Alyx Ayn Arumpac’s Aswang,"
Kritika Kultura:
No.
49, Article 3.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.13185/1656-152X.2242
Available at:
https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss49/3
