MTRCB to meet 'Bubble Gang' stars on 'sexually-sensitive' segment

The Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) is requiring executives and cast of the GMA 7 comedy gag show “Bubble Gang” to attend a conference on Monday, December 9, 9 a.m. over a segment which it deemed showed disrespect for women.

In its Twitter account posted on December 7, the MTRCB cited the show’s November 29 segment titled “D’Adventures of Susie Luwalhati.”  Rufa Mae Quinto as Susie  Luwalhati, in a “skimpy hanging low neckline tank top,” approached Beethoven Bunagan (Michael V)  to apply as cook and puto bumbong seller.  He turned her down at first because she lacked experience. But he soon changed his mind.

When he taught Susie how to make puto bumbong  from a bamboo tube, a group of men were looking at her “with sexually-oriented delight.”  They saw that her breasts were shaking vigorously while holding the bamboo tube. The MTRCB added that “in moving her hand up and down, Susie (who later got the job) gave the impression that she was simulating male self-abuse.”   

The MTRCB, headed by lawyer Toto Villareal, explained that the segment projected women as an “object of rather frivolous, albeit carnal delight” and that such “commodified depiction of a woman” in “Bubble Gang” is demeaning in the context of the Magna Carta for Women.

The Board also noted that even the name of Rufa Mae’s character “is a spin from the Tagalog word for a woman’s breast.”