So congratulations are in order, or at least, a shout out, literally: Mabuhay Ang Federasyon! The landscape of male objectification in cinema has evolved because of you. I might complain, but I do with all my heart, appreciate it. After all, plenty needs to be said about the fact that women can now fawn if they wish to. And that is thanks to you my gay bestfriend who has become the bigger market.
basahin ang kabuuan dito.
If there’s anything that Anne Curtis’ swimsuit malfunction highlights about us all, it’s that we are ill-equipped to handle the advance of technology. And I mean, all of us, those who hold cameras in our hands, and those who love being in pictures. In this sense, Anne Curtis is a victim of both the one who shoots, and she who has enjoyed being shot, and even makes a living out of it.
Because in fact, the victimization of Anne could’ve began with the fact that the show’s production allowed people to watch the show with cameras and camera-phones in hand – the more famous shot of Anne has her dancing on stage, right breast exposed, a gazillion hands with camera-phones aimed at her from the audience below. A less famous shot is one that’s taken from the other side of the stage, in a higher position, maybe a tree?, and has Anne being carried by Sam Milby, in the same dance number.
The fact is, we have allowed cameras like these in public exhibitions such as this, because it’s free pre-publicity: in the age of Twitter and Facebook, everything is a status update and photo upload away. Propriety, obviously in this case, be damned. (more…)
This turned out to be a different creature altogether from what I imagined I would write about being invited to a Playboy launch party. Not surprisingly, talking about feminism and womanhood in the face of other Pinays just turned everything personal.
As with all year-ender lists, this is necessarily full of itself, and can be accused of having a false sense of power, imagining itself to be comprehensive and truthful and correct. Unlike many of those Best of 2009! lists though, this is conscious of itself and its limitations, and is willing to be shot in the foot for missing the point entirely. Too, this isn’t really a Best Of list (haha!); this is really just a list of my top 10/11/12? spectacular (-ly negative, positive, happy, disappointing) things that did happen in our shores as far as popular, alternative, online, indie culture was concerned, as distinct from what have been termed notables of the year in books, theater, art and music. All these terms of course are highly arguable, but then again, culture is highly arguable, and is in process, as with everything that is lived. So maybe this is really just a way of reckoning with the past year, looking at what we did, where we are, what else is there to do, given the good the bad, the sad the happy, the almost-there-but-not-quite, that happened for and to culture in 2009. The hope is that we will continue to argue in the year 2010, over and above – and more importantly because of – the relationships we hold dear, the interests we treasure, and well, where we clearly stand about real and relevant change.
1. Uniting Against the Book Blockade. In the summer of 2009, poet and teacher Chingbee Cruz blogged about being taxed at the Post Office for books that she had ordered online. This would begin the fight against the taxation of imported books which, according to U.P. Law School Dean Marvic Leonen is against the law: books are tax-exempt, no ifs and buts about it. And yes, the last we heard, we are going to court on this one. (more…)
a version of this was published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer yesterday, June 8 2009, Arts and Books Section.
It begins simply enough, with four chairs, four small tables, and two clothes racks onstage. The moment the actors begin the first monologue “I Am Man” though, it becomes clear that this is going to be more complex than that stage and its four actors.
Because there is more to making a powerful and revolutionary play than just being inspired by the Vagina Monologues, and reconfiguring it to highlight man’s “humanity”. There more to the project of New Voice Company’s The Male Voice than just telling the individual stories of countless men to pinpoint their existence as affected members of family and society. There must be more to this than that cliché of an ending: men will choose to be part of the solution, instead of the problem. (more…)