Category Archive for: arts and culture

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Superstar High

My entry point to Nora Aunor’s icon was borne of the women around me as a child. First my mother, who is a Noranian—the kind that watched her critically-acclaimed films, was happy to hear Nora expanding her repertoire with Richard Merck, even if in 1980 she got the chance to do an interview with the Superstar, and was made to wait for so long and was limited to so few questions, confirming—and writing about—the urban legend that was the Superstar’s diva behavior.

The other woman was my first yaya. I have few memories of her, save for two: she was a lesbian, and she was a Noranian. Mama would buy her all the fan magazines with Nora on the cover, she would watch Nora’s movies on her days-off, and she treated Superstar on RPN 9 like weekly mass she needed to attend. For a stretch, she would constantly re-read these tiny pocketbooks that were Nora’s biographies.

Yet, I was no second-generation Noranian. As I told an audience of Noranians during a forum to discuss President Noynoy Aquino’s refusal to confer her the National Artist Award in 2014, I am of a generation that grew up choosing between the taray of Maricel Soriano and the pa-tweetums of Sharon Cuneta. The taray queen (of course) was my icon.

Now I realize that much of who Maricel (and later on Judy Ann Santos) could be as a popular icon was borne of Nora.  The non-conforming, non-people-pleasing, real and truthful, complicated and complex woman, of a different shape, size, and tenor, with diverse inclinations—this was a path paved by Nora.

Growing up with Nora politics

Born in the mid-70s, I grew up knowing Nora Aunor as Superstar. My awareness of her was about the weekly TV show, where she sang, danced, and bantered with Kuya Germs and Jograd dela Torre. This version of her seemed more real, like she was free to be herself here, speaking in her signature quiet Tagalog, humble if not self-deprecating, enjoying the diverse songs she was being made to sing, throwing punchlines with the best of them when needed.

As I grew into socio-political awareness, Nora was a constant. She was Marcos loyalist who in 1986 appeared at the gates of Camp Aguinaldo for the EDSA Revolution, taking part in people power when it was time to kick Marcos out. We know of her loyalty to Erap, sure, as she would have it for FPJ—these are invisible showbiz ties that bind. Yet we also saw Nora cut those ties in 2001at EDSA Dos, when she came and stood with us as we kicked Erap out of office.

Popular politics has always had Nora, which is to say that my sensing of her as Superstar was as much about local pop culture as it was about the socio-political. Nora was one to appear at protests specific to issues, from higher wages for teachers to justice for victims of State violence, as she would endorse a diverse set of political aspirants every election (and even hope to win an election or two herself). This public persona is one that is heavily criticized, judged as being balimbing, with all its inconsistent political convictions.

Yet Nora might have been on to something.

Read the rest on Vera Files.

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Victor Paz, archaeologist

It would be in the middle of El-Nido-Palawan-nowhere, in the archeological site of Ille Cave, as it would be under the scorching sun on the untouched beach of Calitang, that I would find myself sitting with Dr. Victor Paz, archeologist.

It was not a conventional meeting. I had nothing planned on a trip alone to El Nido, save for some quiet time and plenty of reading. But it was difficult to say no to visiting an archeological site few have gone to and even fewer have written about. That I stayed – a night and two days more than I thought I would in any camp – is really because of Sir Vic.

Which is not to say that he talked me into it, as he would at the end of each day say: “You’re staying for tomorrow ha, Katrina.” Not a question, not an order, but a statement of fact. You wouldn’t know to say no.

It isn’t because Sir Vic is not one to compromise. In the course of talking to him I found that this was a man who has lived enough to know compromise like the back of his hand. It was refreshing really, to find Sir Vic to be that rare breed of academic who knows his limitations as someone who works at the University of the Philippines, and as an archeologist in the context of a nation that might not know what that even means.

He says it at some point in the interview, as we were talking about community engagement in archeological sites like Ille: “We always go against the default thinking that is merely about looking for treasure.”

But that’s getting ahead of this story.

(more…)

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Literary cliques, patronage politics, and the publishing mafia: The Philippine Book Festival

When you’re a writer anywhere, the kind that was not served publishing contracts or writing gigs on a silver platter, one of the first things you learn about is power. And not so much that you don’t have any of it—that seems normal enough for when you’re young and new in any industry–as it is how power (and opportunity, cultural capital, funding, etc. etc.) is in the hands of a very small group of people. In the Philippine writing and publishing sector, this surfaces simply as an exclusive clique, a cabal, a mafia (take your pick) that is called the literary establishment. This is your big publishing houses, putting out work by mainstream writers, who are also the leaders/consultants on the payroll of your national and local government agencies, teaching in your schools and creating syllabi and required readings, and founders/members of your writing organizations. It all ties together into a neat little package called power, and as a by-product of that, money. At the very least, undeniable cultural capital.

But as with politicos denying they have power and wealth and want more of it, so does the literary establishment deny that this cliquishness and exclusivity is something they nurture—sharing the few seats on that table with those outside their circle is not an option, and generosity is an illusion. As with the most corrupt politicos insisting that the work they do is about “nation” and “constituency”, so do the worst of the literary establishment claim that this is about “writing” and “literature” and “book development”. And as with politicos always denying their unethical and unjust practices, so does the literary establishment pretend the cabal doesn’t exist.

Sometimes though, it is surfaced for all to see. Ladies and gentlemen, the Philippine Book Festival. (more…)

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Drag Them! The case of Pura Luka Vega, conservatism, and us

When Pura Luka Vega was arrested and detained in late September, one of the dominant reactions was surprise: how can this happen in the Philippines? What happened to creative freedom? How could they get jailed for a case they had no idea had been filed, when they had been going from one city to the next facing persona non grata charges, in full drag, with Instagram documentation, and stories about the openness of these spaces to seeing them and their artistry?

But the curse of the Philippine present is that we are reaping the outcomes of our refusal to have the more difficult, because complex conversations about arts and culture, much of which is not simply about data and history, but about fleshing these out, tearing these apart, so that we know better the state of discourse, freedom, and creative work in the present. At the very least, we need these conversations so that we might be reminded that our freedoms — including all those enshrined in the Constitution — are never guaranteed.

Especially not when we are talking about artistic freedom. A sense of (recent) history in fact reveals how in the post-Marcos leaderships from Cory to Duterte, censorship was a constant. Sure, not in the Martial Law era kind of way, but in ways that were equally dangerous because insidious and consistent. And yes, there’s the MTRCB and its mere existence as a regulatory board; but there are also the acts of censure, the bannings, the cancellations that are borne of an ever-growing conservatism, one that is bound to the ways in which Catholicism is practiced in these shores, and in the age of online platforms, a predisposition towards simply swinging between black-and-white, right-and-wrong, acceptable-and-unacceptable for the loudest voice, the bigger mob. There is also a constant mistrust of creative work, as there is an insistence that it must serve the purpose of espousing a certain kind of morality, that is about a fixed set of rules, a list of lessons to be learned.

It is for this reason that Pura Luka Vega—their artistic practice and their performance—would never be understood. It is also why they have been victimized by these acts of censure. Because there is nothing simple about drag, and certainly nothing simplistic about the art practice of Pura Luka Vega. But censorship lives off simplicity, the black and white, and in the case of the Philippines, it lives off feelings of offense.

Which is why the better question is not: when did this start happening in this democracy? It is: how has our democracy come to this? How did we come to this point when being offended by something, disagreeing about a specific portrayal, a kind of artistic work, has to mean actions that curtail artistic freedom, from the cancellation of individuals, to campaigns to boycott their work, from online bullying to legal cases filed?

(more…)

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Legit bulaga: TVJ gets its groove back

It was difficult not to be brought to tears by that last moment of Tito Sotto, Vic Sotto, and Joey de Leon on Eat Bulaga! at once looking defeated and trying to contain their anger, as they said goodbye to their audience on GMA 7. It really was about the unceremonious ending and how these three men—icons and institutions all—weren’t even allowed to say goodbye to a time slot and an audience it has had for decades. For some of us, we grew up only knowing of noontimes with this show, our childhoods filled with memories of segments and jokes and moments that had it as backdrop, as subject, as familiar viewing habit.

That I cared at all was a surprise in itself. I had stopped watching Eat Bulaga! a long time ago. It could’ve been at some point in the Aldub phenomenon when admittedly, I couldn’t understand what the fascination was about. It is more clearly about Tito Sotto, when he took a strong anti-Reproductive Health Bill stance. Either way for over a decade or so, Eat Bulaga was ever only in my peripheral vision, a fixture in one’s popular consciousness.

Which might be why that goodbye, happening after the abrupt and disrespectful act of taking the show off the air, might have been emotional for viewers. It didn’t matter if you liked TVJ or not, or were watching Eat Bulaga! or not in recent years. To me, what was clear was that an injustice had been done to the people whose cultural labor went into that show. It didn’t matter what was happening behind the scenes, or whether we think they are the bane of pop culture (—to be clear, they are not). To have cut this team’s access to their audience, disallowing them a proper goodbye from a show that they had built for over three decades—that speaks to issues bigger than our beef with the show’s humour or hosts or mishaps. (more…)