Category Archive for: kapitalista

komentaryo

Why Sorry Ain’t Enough

Plagiarism is a major offense in the Ateneo de Manila University. Penalties range from disciplinary probation to suspension as outlined in your Student Handbook. Plagiarized work will receive a grade of zero.

This section was part of all the syllabi I put together when I was teaching English and literature in the Ateneo de Manila University, most recently from 2005-2008. And this is why it will be very sad if Manny V. Pangilinan’s resignation/retirement isn’t accepted by the Board of Trustees of the University. I have warned students about using other people’s words, have spent enormous amounts of energy at teaching them about proper documentation, have told them time and again that plagiarism is unacceptable, and is a crime. Rejecting MVP’s early retirement would do nothing for the cause of intellectual honesty.

MVP has done the honorable thing in writing what was in effect a resignation letter to the University President. All it takes now is for the Board of Trustees to see that while the apology was appropriate (in Fr. Nebres’ words), it cannot be enough.  Because in fact, this issue is bigger than itself.

This isn’t just about MVP pretending that he wrote his speech, or us all presuming that he had a speechwriter, or his speechwriters committing the act of plagiarism (for whatever reason including that they allegedly wanted to discredit him). This isn’t just about an Ateneo community discerning what it is that must be done here, given all notions of justice and fairness, owing to all the good things MVP has done for the school (yes, he has done plenty). This isn’t just about celebrating MVP’s admirable and manly act of taking full responsibility (it has even been called a gallant act) and owning mistakes that aren’t technically his own. This isn’t just about taking his side, and pointing a finger at his speechwriters.

Ateneo has to realize that its decision on this matter will affect every classroom from here on in within and beyond the Ateneo. It will have an effect on every student who sits in front of every teacher who spends precious time talking about intellectual honesty, and plagiarism, and the value of using one’s own words in telling one’s own stories. This is about whether or not we tolerate plagiarism as (ex-)members of the Ateneo and as part of the bigger academic community.

It is not surprising of course that the reactions haven’t been all about what’s right and wrong here. Because in mababaw-ang-kaligayahan Philippines, many are already happy with an apology. In kampihan Philippines, we demand that somebody else be reprimanded. In utang-na-loob Philippines, we will condone a mistake because we have benefited from it or from the man who admits to it.

We will focus on the fact that since MVP didn’t write the essay, he therefore didn’t plagiarize, forgetting that he was passing this off as his own speech, no speechwriters in sight. We will forget that someone like MVP should be writing his own speeches, or at least enough of it to know when the thought and sentiment of an essay aren’t his at all. We will make excuses and say he’s a busy man who still agreed to do the commencement speech for two graduation ceremonies, when in fact the right thing to do was for him to say no if he didn’t have enough time and energy to spend on writing a speech.

We will find a way to say it’s ok, you don’t have to go, even when that person has already said goodbye out of shame and embarrassment.

In fact, at this point, the kinder thing to do would be to accept MVP’s resignation and retirement. Maybe strip him of the honorary doctorate degrees, too. And know that he doesn’t have to be part of the Board of Trustees to continue to give to the University – in fact, wouldn’t that be the greatest judge of his character, if he continued to give? We know he has the capacity to do just that, tax cuts on donations to schools notwithstanding.

MVP, after all, is no small man. Which is the reason why he was able to admit to this mistake, but most importantly why we can’t just let him off the hook. Plagiarism is no small thing, and when it happens to such a big man, it becomes larger than (his) life.

It isn’t so much that we want MVP’s head on a plate. It’s the fact that if it weren’t him, that head would already be rolling. Most importantly, it’s the fact that if he gets away with this, no other head could ever be on that plate again.

kultura

Boob slips in the age of technology, Or the victimization of Anne

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…)

komentaryo

Anong problema sa walang harapan?

Full of themselves, is what ABS-CBN seems to be, after the presidential and vice-presidential candidates cancelled on their tandem debates for Harapan 2010. In truth, if I were these candidates, I would’ve backed out too, in favor of a miting de avance or campaign sortie in a far-flung province or city. The point is simple: who watches TV, a debate of all things, and who will go out and listen to the music, watch the fireworks, see artistas on a stage?

What this points to, quite simplistically, are markets, is access, is social divisiveness.And the middle class illusion that everyone has equal access to technology.

After all, ABS-CBN’s disappointments is borne mostly of its celebration of its use of new technology that has people actively responding to the debates they have been able to mount so far.

But where I work, teachers who lost their television sets to Ondoy have yet to buy new ones – it is in fact, far down in their list of appliances to buy. Where I work, we also don’t have easy access to the internet. Where I work, a debate is the last thing that will spell the different between voting for Noynoy and voting for Gibo and voting for Villar. Where I work, what spells a difference in presence and promises.

And this is my basis for thinking that ABS-CBN is all hot air here – it cannot, will not, should not speak as if this is the loss of the greater public. There is nothing extraordinary about the debates they have come up with. It does generate interest, yes, and we do watch and make candidates’ mistakes and fab answers our status updates. But that doesn’t mean it does a lot. In fact it fails horribly at asking the right questions, or even talking at length about the more important issue that might actually solve poverty.

Instead, half the time, it’s all punchlines and laughter and sensational statements, the status quos that we live with. Harapan 2010 will not go in depth about globalization or imperialism, America’s presence or foreign ownership of land, agrarian reform or workers’ rights, because that would point a finger at the industry that it is part of, the company it is created within, ABS-CBN as cultural empire, the Lopezes as oligarchy.

If anything, Harapan 2010, while informative, yes, and interesting and fun for the social classes ready to laugh at and praise our candidates, is also about television ratings, and the social and corporate responsibility of a media organization such as ABS-CBN. That in itself is replete with meanings, and cannot be dismissed as simply about being in the service of the Filipino. Utang na loob.

kultura

Meat h(a)unts you in Bacolor exhibit

It’s disconcerting for sure, even strange. But is it funny?

Felix Bacolor’s Meet Your Meat (Gallery 1, West Gallery, West Avenue) had the latter as goal, and yet it isn’t so much a sense of humor that this exhibit requires. Maybe a sense of irony? Maybe just a snicker – the physiological act, not the candy bar.

Because in fact, eating will be the last thing on your mind once you see Meet Your Meat. From outside the tiny gallery, the amount of meat across the space is startling; within the gallery, it is everything and disconcerting.

On the main wall are three huge images of stark white trays with individual slabs of raw meat: a drumstick here, some steaks there. The paleness of the chicken beside the bloody redness of the beef brought on an involuntary crinkling of the nose: images of raw meat, I realize, can only evoke memories of wet markets, with its ironic stench of freshness.

Smaller versions of these digitally modified images of raw meat make up the Warhol-inspired bigger work in front of the gallery. While this is a little less disconcerting because it isn’t extraordinarily larger than life, the discomfort does lie in the fact of its smallness, i.e., it almost seems like something that we would still possibly eat, although we’d fear growing a finger given what looks to be the size of a genetically modified animal.

But what does evoke an amount of fear in this exhibit is the stainless steel meat grinder that seems to be centerpiece. From outside the gallery, the grinder atop a wooden table looks like it’s spewing out raw meat in its various shades of red to pale pink. It doesn’t just require a crinkled nose, it begets a certain amount of disgust. Inside the gallery, the disgust turns into astonishment: what a good pair of hands can do with clay and some color.

On opposite walls of the gallery are two smaller works. One is an installation of a stainless steel meat tray made in China, which evokes the coldness of raw, unencumbered, meat. The other is what looks like a puzzle from our childhoods: cartoon-like images of a pig, cat and cow are cut up into 16 squares scrambled across a square frame. The goal should be to rearrange the pieces and complete the puzzle. In Bacolor’s installation, the manner in which the animals are cut up are telling of the meat parts we end up eating: the chicken’s legs and wings and breast, the pig’s snout and belly, the cow’s ribs and loin. The interest is necessarily sustained by a work such as this, given one’s gut reaction to “solve” a puzzle, yes?

At the same time, an exhibit such as this can really only be puzzling. On the one hand, there is the surprise and astonishment that sustains interest; on the other, there is the gut reaction of disgust that makes it too easy to walk out of, or not even walk into, the gallery.

One’s reaction to the real images of raw meat vis a vis the cartoon painting seems like a difficult test you can’t pass. Or, given that there’s no delicious cooked food in sight, i.e., no food as we know it, this could also be a cruel joke: we are being reprimanded as meat-eaters, being judged for what you do to those poor cartoon animals, being told of what it is you really are eating before it becomes your food.

In this sense, the gut reaction of disgust, the imagined smell, is a critique not so much of the exhibit, as it is of the meat-eater-self. That self that doesn’t care much for the meat one eats, has taken it at (cooked) face value all this time, without thinking of wherefore it comes and why. To say that this is a critique of capitalism is a stretch, but so is to say that it’s funny. Maybe in the end, all it becomes is the strangest of mirrors. The kind that reminds us as well that we are nothing but meat, just not the kind that’s made for eating. Though maybe the worst kind of animal.

radikalchick.lit

women’s month 2010: feminism on its head

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.