Category Archive for: arts and culture

kultura

Run Barbi(e) Run*

But of course she can’t, not with those feet on tiptoes, ready for stilettos. In fact, with those big boobs, she might not be able to run at all. Barbie might be the most impossible and horrifying model for any young girl, who sees the big boobs and tiny waist, sleek long hair and made-up face, and think ah, that’s how I want to look.  And since Barbie apparently now represents the modern woman who has graduated from college and can keep every job possible, earning enough to have her own house (townhouse, 3-story dream house, Malibu dream house, take your pick) with fancy appliances and to party like there’s no tomorrow, then she does become a perfect aspiration, doesn’t she?

Except that Barbie is false, her whole lifestyle is. And even when there are seemingly more powerful images of her as career woman (most recent careers? News Anchor and Computer Engineer!), she has remained the same in many ways: she’s still as thin, regardless of how her hair or skin color have evolved; she still has the same features, the same particular body type, the same… uh… impossibilities. Yes, even when she has already run as Presidential Candidate Barbie (in African-American and White skin colors!).

Because Barbie cannot run, she has no knees for it. Yet as I began to run to get that endorphin high (over the more obvious need to lose weight), I found that much of it was about Barbie. And no, it isn’t about the body, for I got over that (im)possibility long ago, instead it’s about what Barbie does continue to stand for, over and above those jobs she can now have: it’s about being fashionista. (more…)

kultura

Growing up with Joey*

No, not Tribbiani, but de Leon. The Joey de Leon of Tito Vic & Joey fame. Anyone born in the 70s would’ve grown up with noontime show Eat Bulaga over lunch, and therefore would remember the Vic Sotto and Coney Reyes relationship, would know of how Aiza Seguerra was the cutest thing on Little Miss Philippines, would watch as Tito Sotto disappeared to run for and win a seat in the Senate. We would see the barkada growing to include late Master Rapper Francis Magalona and Joey’s son Keempee, the name being shortened to EB, and the show creating a family, that might include us who have grown up with them after all.  We would see countless rival noontime shows being born and dying in the face of Eat Bulaga.

To the joy of Tito Vic & Joey  (TVJ), but most obviously to the pride of Joey, who will defend the show to his last breath, get into fights about decency and kabastusan with Willie Revillame from the rival show – the one that has survived Eat Bulaga the longest. Joey, who delivers jokes cum sexual innuendoes daily, would be calling the kettle black, except that really, Revillame is not just bastos, he’s also … crass.

Which does allow Joey an amount of class, one that shines through whenever he’s forced to explain himself and his kind of humor, as he proves that he knows what he’s doing, he is not just a dirty-minded guy.  In fact, Joey educated comedy knows that when he disrespects a belief or a kind of conservatism, it is with a sense of what he’s up against, and what he deems a mature enough audience who will take that joke and think, ah, that is funny because it’s so true. (more…)

kultura

The poet is alive

Mula Tarima Hanggang (University of the Philippines Press, 2014) is Ericson Acosta’s new book of poetry and songs, one divided across the periods within which he wrote them. The heart of the book are the poems he wrote while in detention; framing this are poems on the bigger space that the poet navigates beyond jail, from Cubao to nation.

Given who Acosta is, you might imagine that you already know these poems: many writers have been jailed before him after all. You might also think of activist writing to fall within a particular aesthetic: the raised fist on the page can look the same, sound the same, be the same.

But where an argument can be made for the redundancy – the easiest one being how systems do not change, and therefore the demands of the people remain the same – the bigger argument that Mula Tarima Hanggang makes is for the poet’s voice as independent and distinct, no matter that it might form part of the bigger narrative of militant literature.

It is no different from every text’s insistence that it has something new to say. Acosta should not need to prove himself deserving of readership any more than the next poet.

The silenced artist

Tatuan mo ‘ko, kosa, sige pa.
Tatuan mo ako ng kamao.
Tatuan mo ‘ko ng maso, ng karet, ng tabak.
Tatuan mo ako ng bangkaw, ng AK-47.
Tatuan mo ‘ko, tadtarin mo ‘ko ng pag-asa at ng tapang.* (more…)

komentaryo

The women of the Philippines VS Julian Ongpin

In what world is Julian Ongpin a victim? Under what circumstances would a man born to privilege, to massive wealth, enough to fashion himself as “art patron” and “angel investor” at such a young age, in what world would he be a victim?

Found with the lifeless body of Bree Jonson in a hostel room they shared, a death surrounded by more questions than answers, any other person would be kept in detention—and rightfully so.

Found with 12.6 grams of cocaine in that room they shared, and testing positive for drugs, any other person would either be dead with a placard on his body labelling him as “nanlaban,” or be arrested for illegal possession and kept in a jail cell teeming with drug suspects.

Found on CCTV moving about the crime scene strangely—from disappearing to go to the fourth floor of the hostel, to getting a ladder to remove jalousies from the bathroom window of the hostel room, and then not going through that window, to finally disappearing into the room and only some time after calling on the hostel staff for help—any other person would have been treated, and tagged, and seen as a suspect.

Julian has elided all of this. He is not in detention—not for drug possession or for being a suspect in a questionable death. He is not being tracked by the authorities—at some point the police admitted they didn’t even know where he was (maybe in their house in Manila or Baguio, they said). According to the police report, he “continuously drank liquor” in the presence of the police—a disrespectful, arrogant move only the wealthiest among us would do.

And now charged with drug possession by no less than the Department of Justice—not the police, not the National Bureau of Investigation, but the DOJ—Julian has opinion columnists like Emil Jurado and Tony Lopez, writing about his alleged innocence. Two (old) men who obviously have no sense of gendered writing, and are revealing for all the world to see the kind of misogyny they believe in, are framing Julian’s innocence by trampling on Bree’s character.

As woman, as human. None of us should be having any of it.

(more…)

komentaryo

Ma’am Lilia #LQS

I’ve always considered myself lucky to have been in the State U in the late 90s to the 2000s, across an undergraduate degree and my MA, because it gave me the opportunity to have the best teachers in the humanities.

LQS was one of those teachers, and she didn’t just welcome me as a sophomore into a basic Filipino classroom, she also would have me in her MA classes the years before she left for the States. I don’t remember much about what those classes were exactly, as much as I have a keen sense of what it was that I learned in them, beyond readings and syllabi, given the kind of teaching she practiced.

It was in that sophomore Filipino classroom, for example, where I had the best lessons in diversity and unity, history and empathy. It was there that I became friends with Anifa, who was the lone Muslim girl in class, and who LQS grouped me with for final projects. This meant being forced into discussions about Muslim Mindanao and the struggle of the Bangsamoro, with the goal of building upon similarities, toward working on truths borne of the multiplicity of voices. I was in over my head. I realized very quickly that there was no cramming all this information about Mindanao into my head, and that I had to settle for admitting that I knew very little, and what I had instead were questions. It was also the first time I had a sense of risk and privilege. Where I realized that a conversation such as this one meant so much to Anifa, whose life, history, heritage were on the line, while it did not, in any way, affect the way in which mine would unfold.

At some point before that final project’s presentation, I told LQS that I felt it was important that Anifa be the one to lead the discussions, and she nodded. Like I had learned the lesson she meant for me to discover for myself. Read the room. Let others speak. Admit your limitations. Be an ally. Know your place. (more…)