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Chua, Ana Micaela. "Enabling Mythologies: Specificity and Myth-Making in TRESE." Cultural Excavation and Formal Expression in the Graphic Novel. Eds. Jonathan C. Evans and Thomas Giddens. At the Interface, Probing the Boundaries. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Pr. 2013. 21–31. Added by: joachim (27/09/2025, 11:43) Last edited by: joachim (27/09/2025, 11:44) |
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| Resource type: Book Chapter Language: en: English BibTeX citation key: Chua2013 Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details  |
Categories: General Keywords: "TRESE", Baldisimo. Kajo, Crime comics, Myth, Philippines, Politics, Tan. Budjette Creators: Chua, Evans, Giddens Publisher: Inter-Disciplinary Pr. (Oxford) Collection: Cultural Excavation and Formal Expression in the Graphic Novel |
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| Abstract |
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TRESE, a comic book series by Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo, follows Alexandra Trese’s investigations of supernatural crime in the Philippine capital. The series appears to take advantage of ‘global’ popular trends, sharing generic grounds with Western supernatural detective fiction. This chapter proposes to demonstrate how TRESE establishes grand narratives while also enabling specific cultural engagement, making possible a vision of a local society that is at once culturally specific and culturally unifying. By building up narratives from a definite geographic base, TRESE not only employs local lore, it addresses sociopolitical issues specific to Metro Manila and comes to enable different approaches to ‘making sense’ of Philippine society. This chapter first presents a brief survey of some cases investigated by Alexandra Trese, the detective who is at once a mythic hero and an embodiment of hybridity, to demonstrate how twin trajectories of rendering specificity and returning to grand narratives occur simultaneously in the text. The chapter then tackles the most recent chapter in the series, ‘The Fight of the Year,’ which emphasises the specificity of Trese’s role in Manila through juxtaposition to that of Manuel - the equivalent of boxing champion Manny Pacquiao. The appearance of Pacquiao opens the TRESE universe not only to the international stage, but also to the idea that a hero’s defence of his or her home has limited scope, particularly in a country where national unity has always been problematic, and law notoriously ineffective. Even as a mythic hero, Trese is shown to be only one of many heroes, her approach to conflict resolution only one of many in dealing with the eternal battle between Good and Evil as it manifests on Philippine soil.
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