This work has not been peer reviewed by the University of the Philippines Rainbow Research Hub or its project members. The views expressed are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Hub or its project members.
2026 Philippine Queer Studies Conference
POSTER PRESENTATION
For queer or not for queer? Audience construction and text-paratext alignment in Pearl Next Door and Open Endings
Kathlynn Z. Rebonquin
In many countries, more and more narratives about queer female characters have recently emerged across media formats. However, their number and the discourse surrounding them are still arguably lacking – especially in the Philippines, where very few such films are made and widely received. There are Filipino text producers who seem persistent on addressing this scarcity, and one of them is writer Keavy Eunice Vicente, who wrote the web series Pearl Next Door (2020) produced by The IdeaFirst Company and the film Open Endings (2025), an official entry to the recently concluded Cinemalaya 2025.
These two materials are interesting to explore as (1) they put the queer female characters front and center before a Filipino audience largely accustomed to heterosexual narratives and (2) they navigated marketing in the age of social media — during and after the pandemic at that — in which audiences form interpretations of texts without directly consuming them. These very reasons also complicate the way filmed texts potentially contribute to a positive representation — and reception — of the ‘queer female’ in Philippine media.
To explore how Vicente’s works tackle these pressures, this study will analyze the extent to which Pearl Next Door and Open Endings are aligned with their surrounding texts (e.g. promotional materials) in inviting certain audience segments and advancing the media visibility of queer women.
While the study employs textual analysis, it will also call upon the concept of paratextuality as developed by Jonathan Gray (2010) and Eve Ng (2017) and encoding as proposed by Stuart Hall (1973). In doing so, it is imperative to address the concept of gaze in relation to audience targeting, and the tension inherent in producing queer films, positioned between a desire to represent specific lived experiences and to stay accessible (and palatable) to mainstream audiences.
The results of this study may encourage further discourse on how producers can handle story concepts, casting, and marketing for local queer female films. As these texts continue to grow in number, the insights to be drawn from this study may also contribute to mapping efforts that will help determine the future of queer female narratives in the country’s film industry.