Sabi sa article ni A.O. Scott sa new york times, nagiging retro new york, back to the 70s ang drama. People started noticing it after the great blackout, a throwback to the summer of sam, sa looting, sa disco era. The 70s era New York was immortalized in film as the golden decade, with both ends of the spectrum well represented: Scorsese et al’s nihilistic sewer view in films like Taxi Driver, Mean Streets. Woody Allen and his jazz scores in Manhattan, Annie Hall.

Ano ba ang Manila ng 1970s? Golden Age din yun ng Pinoy cinema. You had Brocka and Bernal and the grimy city after dark, Maynila sa kuko ng Liwanag. We were under martial Law. Underbelly din ang focus ng mga pelikula.

Let’s say that New York=Manila, does that mean that we should also be having our own golden age right about now? Hindi lang tungkol sa pelikula, kundi sa buhay as well. Maynila is grimy, but it has its attempt at “beautifying” itself. Pero garish ang dating, those disco lights are not remotely close to being elegant.

People are starting to yearn for the past. But the thing is, NYC had this period of relative affluence. Meron ba ang Maynila nun? We recently had a coup, and we had Kris Aquino declaring to the whole wide world that she was a victim of domestic violence, blah blah. The ensuing melee with Mayor Joey hardly parallels her father’s stance against Martial Law.

If recycling is good for the environment, is it the same thing as far as art* goes? (*uuy, art daw. Hehe) Or is it just a natural condition, ie, something expected because we live in postmodern times? Is this whole cultural revisionism thing a good thing?

To some extent, of course, all of this is a local manifestation of the endless cultural recycling project that has been going since, well, the 1970's -- the postmodern habit of pillaging yesterday's junk for today's treasure. In the popular culture at large, the 70's revival has by now lasted at least as long as the decade itself. And the rose-colored reinterpretation of 70's New York as a place of lost innocence dates back at least to Spike Lee's ''Crooklyn,'' set in Bedford-Stuyvesant in the early 70's and released a decade ago. But if the childhood perception registered in that movie is necessarily partial, it is not for that reason false. And if the appropriation, ironic or affectionate, of discarded styles and obsolete consumer goods can be glib and superficial, it also expresses a desire to locate a spirit, an attitude, a set of possibilities that seem otherwise unavailable, and to drag them into the present.