Risk Management, Probability, and the Theory of Games in Segurista (Dead Sure) and Kubrador (The Bet Collector)

Two films that portray the risk culture of millennial capitalism, Segurista (Dead Sure, 1996) and Kubrador (The Bet Collector, 2006), are used as textual evidences in discussing and challenging game-theoretic and probabilistic concepts as applied in the Philippine economic context. The ideological acts of the female protagonists, with their own depictions of risk perception and risk management, allow the characters’ adaptation to the quicksand conditions of their fluctuating financial affairs. Issues on tourism, prostitution, labor flexibility, and the social practices of gambling are used as variables in formulating arguments that under the volatile conditions of an unsound economy and a muddled, corrupt political environment, it is the body of the Filipino female worker that safeguards national collective survival.