Category Archive for: kawomenan

kultura

Attempted rape as teenage dream?

At the onset, having a light romance / romantic-comedy as part of the Metro Manila Film Festival’s self-proclaimed “change” and “revolution” was a good thing: it tells us that they weren’t deciding against certain genres just because these are considered “pop” and “therefore shallow” — it is after all easy to presume that all love stories are about the happy endings, and one can spot the formula from a mile away.

But even formula has allowed for an amount of creativity in the rom-com through the years (1) and it is with this sense of how the genre has evolved that one was hopeful about Vince And Kath And James (directed by Theodore Boborol, written by Daisy G. Cayanan, Kim R. Noromor, Anjanette M. Haw), because there is so much more to the rom-com now than just lead stars with chemistry: there is good writing and well-threshed out situations, the specificity of social class and gender politics. (more…)

komentaryo

Stop right there, congressmen!

It was in the early morning of Wednesday, September 28, when I read that House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez had declared that the world that the purported sex video of Senator Leila de Lima would be shown in the inquiry on the National Bilibid Prisons’ (NBP) drug crisis.

I thought the news would just die a natural death, because it is not only illegal, it is uncalled for, and if anything, it proves that government has absolutely nothing on Senator Leila de Lima and her role in the drug trade. Because if you have enough evidence against her, why would a sex video even matter? (more…)

komentaryo

Wanda, Yedda, Miss Universe: Pomp, pageantry, pretense

Tourism Secretary Wanda Tulfo Teo is evading a whole lot of questions when she says that government will not spend a single cent on hosting the Miss Universe pageant in the country.

The mere fact that the Department of Tourism (DOT) is all agog about finding sponsors, about doing press releases on this pageant, is already the Duterte government spending on the Miss Universe. This is a government office that should be putting together a real tourism plan, one that takes into consideration the crisis that tourism is faced with, interwoven as it is with environmental degradation, heritage destruction, and infrastructure underdevelopment.

For a pageant like Miss Universe, the DOT will be spending the rest of the next six months just working on this one thing, using whatever’s left of its P3.61 BILLION-peso budget for 2016. And you know this to be true because what else have we heard from the DOT since Secretary Teo was appointed?

Nothing.

(more…)

komentaryo

Media madness #DuterteSONA2016

It was hilarious actually, watching media make a mess of their SONA 2016 coverage — and we’re not even talking about those “power shots” of the President’s nostrils and hands.

In fact, I’m not even talking about the SONA itself — for how can media mess up that coverage when we were all stuck with video from Brillante Mendoza? I’m talking about the pre-event coverage, when our congressmen and senators arrive at the Batasang Pambansa. In the past, this was the time and place to talk about what the women of Congress and the Senate are wearing, an opportunity to talk designers, a veritable fashion show.

But with the directive that guests wear “business attire,” it seems the media got the red carpet pulled from under their feet. Because what do they now talk about? What questions do we ask? What stories can we spin, with no clothes, fashion, designers to talk about? (more…)

komentaryo

Divorce and freedom #Eleksyon2016

Triggered by The Rundown 2016, an ABS-CBN News Channel and UP Economic Society program that aired live on January 29, here is another issue that one must take into consideration when deciding on who to vote for. The Rundown asked the first batch of its Senatorial candidates about their stand on divorce, and to have had only one senatorial candidate say yes to divorce among the many who were there, is just utterly disappointing.

Of course the show’s format was such that the second batch of Senatorial candidates were not asked the same questions as the first batch, which does make one wonder: how do you choose among these candidates when we don’t ask them about the same issues? (more…)