On August 7, 2011, the History Channel premiered its 48-minute documentary on the bus hostage drama that happened in Manila a year ago on August 23, 2010.
For a full week after the premier, this same documentary would be replayed every day, sometimes three times a day, on cable TV. There was no noise about it, barely any media mileage other than what looked like press releases from the History Channel itself, where the documentary is sold along with the rest of the channel’s offerings for August.
For a nation that prides itself in having a powerful online and mainstream media, for a nation that can pick on a private citizen like Christopher Lao, and an artist like Mideo Cruz, we sure as hell know when to keep something under the radar. We sweep it under the proverbial rug, so to speak, just in case we might also be allowed to forget it. Speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil, means we cannot be seen as evil? (more…)
on August 11 the presscon of the group Palayain Ang Sining became interesting to me for many reasons, least of all what was being said. and no, this wasn’t a measure of who was speaking, or what was being said, but the kind of room it became, filled with media as it was.
and no, pinky webb wasn’t even there. neither was karen davila. but there were men with huge versions of their penises, este, long hard lenses. and they weren’t pointing it at who was talking.
media and their lenses
i’m this close to that man’s elbow because he was practically standing over the girl beside me. we were facing the front of the room where National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera, Karen Flores-Ocampo, Myra Beltran, etal., were making their statements about freedom of expression, which should’ve matter to all of us in the audience. except that these men weren’t interested in who was talking, nor did they want to gain a better sense of what’s actually going on here, complicit as they’ve been in the manner in which freedom of expression has been compromised given media’s treatment of the exhibit Kulo.
instead they had their sights set on the one person they had sacrificed and made into their headline, and who was refusing to speak that day, who has (thankfully) refused to speak since.
media & mideo 1
what astounded me about these members of the media, in this small conference room of the college of mass comm in UP, was not so much that they were zeroing in on mideo, but that they were ultimately bastos about it. they not only had their backs turned to the ones speaking in front, they also kept disrupting the proceedings as they reprimanded each other and talked in loud whispers among themselves. they didn’t evenstop taking pictures as we sang the national anthem. they didn’t stopfor the national anthem when there was a Philippine flag in that room.
that morning, and without a doubt, the media showed what it is they’re made of, and why they are so capable of irresponsibility and sensationalism. we should all just admit that in the end, when push comes to shove, all we want is to find an enemy and serve him on a silver platter to the religious and conservatives and powerful in this country, thinking that we’re gaining tickets to heaven by doing so.
in truth, we’ve built a version of hell here, and it’s pretty clear who the devils are.
Going to art exhibits and events since 2009, I find that what I enjoy most about it is the solitude and silence. I’m not known in art circles (or any circle for that matter) and can go around unobtrusively; on “gallery days” it’s rare that there are other spectators, least of all someone I know, in these art spaces. It’s a gift, a break I take even as it requires trips to places from UN Avenue in Manila to West Avenue in Quezon City. The time becomes mine, the art I own with my gaze.
It was with this same gaze, within the same task of going to see as many exhibits as I can, that I went to Kulô at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) on July 2 2011. I was doing Virgin Labfest 7 marathons, and made sure to come early to spend a good hour at the gallery. A day or so after, I virtually happened upon participating artist Pocholo Goitia and told him how much I loved the exhibit, the best of the Rizal efforts I’d seen so far; a couple of weeks after he tells me in passing that it’s gotten into some controversy or other and I brush it off: who has cared about art in the past three years that I’ve been engaging with it in my own way(s)? Given Kulô’s premises I also thought the only ones who’d wrongly take offense would be the University of Santo Tomas (UST), alumni as the exhibiting artists are of the said university, the Goitia essay particularly placing the exhibit within, beyond and against the said institution.
When the noise about Kulô became real to me, I couldn’t even believe it was about Mideo Cruz’s “Poleteismo.” My experience of the installation as part of the exhibit was limited to two points of interest: one, the manner in which the various works of Cruz were curated and put together into this one installation that allowed it to be powerful from outside without the crucifix and without zeroing in on what else was attached to those walls; and two, the fact that it still seemed to work for me, old as the work was. Context could only be the reason for the latter, and in the case of this exhibit which consisted of many old works, context was key: there’s the fact of UST no matter the individual relationships of the artists with the institution, and there’s the 150 years of Jose Rizal, a UST alumnus.
there is no excuse — no excuse — for a President who not only presumes that 85% of this country are the same kind of Catholic; he also then thinks that this is a valid enough reason to gauge public anger. no excuse for a President who is as bad as Vic de Leon Lima. let me not begin with the fact that his own father died for democracy and freedom, the same things that this President has sacrificed here. and you are wrong, Ser Noy, this is not a question of whether or not freedom is absolute; it’s a question of you folding to the CBCP and Pinoy conservatives, who in this country have proven themselves as bad as the kukluxklan. this is about you — and everybody else who sacrificed critical thinking in this case — revealing whose got the balls. and it is apparently all them priests and conservatives who could only zero in on those penises, because that’s all that was in that exhibit as far as they were concerned.
except that there were these works:
Alfredo Esquillo Jr.'s Mama Kinley IIRonald Ventura's UntitledJose Tence Ruiz's CSI Chimoy Si ImbisibolJose Tence Ruiz's CSI Chimoy Si ImbisibolCon Cabrera's Kompo
Andres Barrioquinto's Alam ng DiosRai Cruz's SalinlahiConstantino Zicarelli's VandalismIggy Rodriguez's PagbabantaJoseph de Luna Saguid's Kulo (excerpt)Mark Salvatus' Empire
been living under a rock, or just in the midst of book production and thesis writing, that i only realized people were finally angry with Bench for their darn sexy ads when the Philippine Volcanoes’ images (the National Rugby Team for you) were removed from the Guadalupe northbound stretch of billboards. Now know that on this stretch I have seen too much of Kris Aquino, strangely photoshopped Calayan beauty clients, and recently fully-clad Bench boys doing pretend-dancing, that when i saw photos online of the Philippine Volcanoes’ billboards i was overwhelmed with regret: why oh why did i NOT see that when it was up?
yes i am exaggerating (sort of), because really, from afar (and i mean zoomed out on my computer screen) those billboards looked no different from the other fictional men i’ve seen top naked, o sige na nga, bottom na rin kung naka-brip lang. i mean at this point we’ve seen them all topless: Piolo, Dingdong, Aljur, Derek, and the question could only be: what was wrong with the Volcanoes? or the Azkals for that matter. before the uproar, there was that Century Tuna billboard of Phil Younghusband, topless; and the Ally Borromeo billboard on southbound Guadalupe, about which all i thought was: baket naka-pucker ang lips ni kuya?
Aly Borromeo with puckered lips.
but the straight men in government weren’t looking at these men’s faces, and for the Philippine Volcanoes it was their lower halves that was reason for offense. when i say straight men i mean Mandaluyong Mayor Benhur Abalos, Valenzuela Mayor Sherwin Gatchalian who covered his nieces’ eyes when they passed through EDSA lest they see the men in briefs, as well as MMDA chair Francis Tolentino. which does beg the question: bakit ngayon lang? not even related to all the skimpily-clad women in billboards, but in the context of all those other men we’ve seen in briefs before?
ah, the truth of the matter is in MMDA assistant general manager for planning Tina Velasco’s words:
bulging crotches! voluptuousness! the straight men in government might not have wanted to articulate it, but they knew of it enough to take offense. and in which case it seems that they don’t mind bulging (augmented and otherwise) boobs, or the woman’s crotch since walang bulge ‘yon? they don’t mind women’s and men’s come-hither looks no matter how voluptuous, as long as walang bulge? got it.
kapag side view, o likod, ni Michael de Guzman, ok lang?
that this reeks of gender politics is the foregone conclusion, but the more important assessment has to take into consideration the gay gaze, the one that the liberated men of the Philippine Volcanoes and the Azkals, and every metrosexual man in between, have ceased to mind. if all i saw in the Borromeo billboard were his puckered lips, and if all i thought when i finally saw those boys of the Volcanoes in their underwear is: ang babata naman ng mga ito! then i obviously ain’t its market, as it might be every kafatid, vekz, vekla who passes through EDSA.
they're just boys!
call me a girl but i will swoon at a man’s eyes on a billboard (Derek Ramsey’s), and his moreno smile (Jericho Rosales’), and his silliness (John Lloyd Cruz) fully clothed as he might be. kebz sa kung may abs siya o wala.
oh, but Mayor Gatchalian insists that his goal is to:
sige sir, lagpasan ko muna ang paggamit mo ng salitang irregardless, i want to know if you cover your nieces’ eyes when you pass billboards of skin whitening products and boob jobs. no seriously, sir. because that is our little girls’ enemies if the goal is to bring them up confident in themselves, with as little superificiality as possible, comfortable in their own skins. whitening in the land of morena skin, beauty clinics in the the third world? that is what’s ultimately problematic about our billboards; celebrities who are white to begin with selling whitening products? that is the lie little girls will grow up believing.
at least with a real man’s body on a billboard — bulge and all — they won’t grow up afraid of the crotch. unless those are the kinds of little girls we want to bring up: afraid of men, afraid of her own brown skin, afraid of being themselves? que horror.
meanwhile let me end with this: if we’re against bulges and suggestive images here let’s be clear what the rules are. because the ad board is right: if we’re selling briefs, then damn it show me the body that will wear them! so dear straight government official, pray tell: how big is an acceptable boob? because you know a D-cup looks obviously augmented, but so do C-cups in the land of Asian women. and how big is the acceptable bulge, given the fact it would seem strange for bulges to be missing, in tight fit jeans or board shorts, and i’m sure you don’t want your kind to look castrated, yes? and while we’re at it, how seductive can the eyes be? are puckered lips now disallowed? how about men’s hands? because you know i find those sexy.
Arnold Aninion and Darran Seeto: nothing like some arms and hands for some sexy eh?
and then there’s this question, one that i truly wonder about: should we remove men’s feet from billboards altogether?
