Poverty as a Motive for a Film

Two years ago I drafted a script for a friend who was an aspiring filmmaker. The script was about a young boy whose mother was an OFW. The boy imagined that his mom was Darna, a comic book heroine created by the legendary Mars Ravelo. The boy's family was lower middle class, and his grandmother and elder sister were the ones who lived with him in their cozy and respectable apartment. My friend wanted the script to be a funny and quirky story. I opted for the tragic and surrealist approach, wherein the boy eventually becomes a ghost recollecting memories of his mother. In the final scene I even had the boy disappear like a bullet fired towards the sky, which was possible since he was already a ghost. I strongly assumed my friend didn't like how I transformed a story with a quirky idea to a cautionary tale, because I never heard him discuss the script after I gave all fifteen pages of it to him. Instead I offered another script, this time the protagonist is a cross-dressing thief who enjoys snatching expensive wristwatches and jewelries from hapless victims. My friend asked me what the protagonist's motive was for living a life of crime. I told him that my cross-dressing hero/heroine was orphaned at a young age and therefore had to resolve to snatching expensive items in order to live, and the probability of escaping an impoverished future would be easy if s/he was able to save enough money, start a business and come out clean. My friend scoffed at the idea of poverty as a form of motivation. Poverty has always been a motivation in most Filipino films. Couldn't I be more creative with the protagonist's motivation?

When I thought of it, I did notice that most substantial Filipino films are indeed motivated by poverty, from Himala to Scorpio Nights, Jaguar to Balweg, Crying Ladies to Magnifico. Even in Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros, poverty is an issue. Poverty probably had always been a scapegoat for stories. The old mother killed her child because she cannot feed her anymore. A young couple was forced to live under an old, decaying bridge because they cannot afford a home. A woman resorted to a career of crying in funerals because the opportunity to pursue her dream was bleak. But how do we escape poverty as an issue in our films when it is part of our daily lives? Wouldn't it be a great disconnect to the Filipino audience if the motivation was more first world in sensibilities? As artists, shouldn't our works reflect society's issues, and not just create art for art's sake by putting into story a motivation that may not even tickle the fancies of an ordinary Filipino viewer?

I personally believe that poverty should always remain a motivation in our films as long as it exists in our society. Even if my friend wants me to be more ambitious in looking for a different motivation, I believe that will be difficult for me to do. I don't want to pretend I'll be this "genius" with  a blind eye on everything around me and surrender in my ivory tower so that I can pull out an idea that might change the face of cinema. I'm mediocre, and I'm not afraid to say otherwise.

Hmmmm....

A little buzz is inching its way inside my cranium, almost to the point of my mind losing consciousness.

Scary thing for me to be in right now.