Category Archive for: komentaryo

komentaryo

no, being hospitable ain’t cutting it anymore

when you’re told point blank by a foreigner, and with all honesty instead of malice, that they don’t know anything about Manila, that when he told his friends he wanted to go there they asked “Why?”, that in fact Manila is at the bottom of his list of cities to see, how do you even respond? it gets worse, too. you’re asked do you enjoy Manila? is it a safe city? the answer to the first question is easy of course.

sometimes my honesty does get the better of me. especially since i know they’d see i’m lying through my teeth otherwise.

Tatsu Nishi (Japan) covers up the iconic Merlion, making it into a hotel room.

the happy giddy context of wine in our bodies and the Merlion all covered up by a red box shall save the day: we talk about art in Manila given the art that’s here, Louie Cordero’s paean to the urban legend of videoke singing of My Way, Mark Salvatus’ interest in empty walls and capturing what’s untraceable in people. we talk about the absurdity of what they’ve seen in Manila: a Virgin Mary portrait that is actually made up of words of the Old Testament that you can only read through a magnifying glass (i want to know where that exactly is), the Socialist Bar in Manila where a naive foreigner could only walk into (no it’s not really socialist eh?).

we talk about their horror stories: of walking through the city itself of Manila, across the stretch of CCP and realizing that lamp posts slowly but surely ceased to be lit. of being told by their family and friends to keep safe by hiding their cellphones and ipods, by not wearing any jewelry at all. both of them were men who’ve gone to Manila on almost adventures. and despite the horrible hotel service at Clark Pampanga both (because now they know me, we say) are thinking of going back there and doing things differently, give it another chance.

and then faced with a man who knows nothing about the Philippines, he says. and who, in the middle of talking about Jollibee and Manny Pacquiao, Apl D Ap and carjacking (yes you fall back on all that), says excitedly: oh the au pairs! that is your contribution to the world. he then goes on to talk about his au pair who played favorites, of friends who had au pair trouble. and i could only but mention nurses and teachers, and thank the heavens for the New Yorker from Japan who had a grade three Filipino homeroom teacher, Ms. Caoili (god bless her), who was just wonderful she says.

but there is no escaping Manila and its stereotypes, especially because i could not for the life of me say they weren’t true. i couldn’t lie and say that walking through the streets of and around CCP was safe, given that still stark media memory of the bus hostage taking. i couldn’t say that if they looked at a map, they could go through the galleries and museums across Makati City, and they’d be fine: the lack of a map is contingent on the lack of order that would otherwise protect pedestrians, local and foreign after all. i couldn’t say just come — COME to Manila! it’s totally different from what you imagine.

Louie Cordero's "My We" at the Singapore Biennale 2011

because what if it’s exactly the same as, or worse than, what they imagine.

that they imagine the worst of Manila is just sad, but also it is not unexplainable. you only walk the streets of one of the safest cities like Singapore and you know that there must be something we can do about our own city. you think of Bangkok or Hanoi or Phnom Penh or New Delhi, and while it might be easy to imagine the dangers of these spaces as well, it still seems a lot safer.

or maybe its vibrant cultural images are just more concrete, more real. it seems that the dangers of a third world city (country) are balance out by a sense of its cultural vibrancy, its ability to speak of itself strongly and concretely to be about something, that something making it worthy of a visit, that something as its best cultural product and production, its best tourist attraction.

you want Manila (and the Philippines) to be a tourist destination? let’s begin by agreeing on how we’re selling it and what we’re going to say about its cultural productions. stop making it seem like the cheapest country in the world: because we know how cheap means two things.

and realize that really, being hospitable doesn’t cut it anymore. nor do our notion(s) of diversity and being free-for-all.

komentaryo

dear Jim Paredes,

it is with deadlines looming and the need to earn my keep that I write this. which is to say I have more important things to do with my time, including of course your notion(s) of action, as they do include what you wouldn’t be caught dead doing for nation.

but your tirade against the armchair … este … the revolutionary armchair … no wait, the armchair revolutionary! cannot be left unquestioned, lest the world thinks we all agree with you, and that would ultimately be a misrepresentation of this country’s ability at coming together and kicking presidents out: nakaupo man tayo sa armchair o lupa ng EDSA, nakataas man ang ating kamao sa Mendiola o nagki-click ng mouse maghapon.

this is not to say at all that I’m a revolutionary — my knowledge of who exactly are the revolutionaries of our time keeps me from imagining myself as that. you meanwhile seem to have no issue with calling yourself such, seeing as you critique its armchair version because as far as you’re concerned real revolutionaries translate it into action: I imagine you mean that workshop you had with your Pinoy Power NGO?

don’t worry, I shall get to that in a bit.

right now I find the need to write you as a matter of defending my chair, which is not an armchair, as it is an ergonomic chair — the better for one’s lower back. this is to defend this chair, many versions of which exist across this country, and in every space in the world where there’s a Filipino. this is to defend this chair, because on it sits the Pinoy who clicks on the Like and Dislike button on FB, and (re-)Tweets what he or she thinks.

we are the ones you critique yes? you admonish us: do more! do more for country! act on your tweets, act on your FB statuses!

I’d tell you with as much excitement that we’ve been doing this all this time, but I don’t want to rain on your parade of imagined self-importance. instead let me point out two things:

(1) all the activists on my FB friend list and the ones I follow on Twitter are activists period. do you follow them too, Jim? these are intelligent people who continue to teach this side of the world about nation, extending the teaching process to Twitter and FB, and yes, blogging (which I presume is an evil too as far as you’re concerned — oh the time we waste just sitting to blog!)

I don’t know where you’ve been Jim, but we established a long time ago, and I think it’s now common sense, that these social networking sites reproduce who we are as people to begin with. tool po ang tawag sa FB at Twitter, Tumblr at Posterous na ginagamit natin para sa ating mga pagkilos sa labas ng virtual nating mundo. who exactly said and believed that this was an end in itself?

I do wonder now: when you admonish them people who Tweet and put up FB statuses, and question what it is they’re doing, who are you talking to? obviously not the activists who have continued to exist, over and above your leaving and living again in this country Jim. or is this really just your recent realization about yourself?

(2) or maybe you mean me? with no time really other than the few precious minutes I spend finishing a cup of coffee, which I use to do any or all of the following: look at my Twitter feed and retweet the tweets I agree with, look at my FB News Feed and Like the statuses that are funny or relevant or both, Share notes that I feel are important to read for whoever will catch it up on their News Feeds. if there’s time, I might tag the people who I feel must read these posts, be it on Twitter or FB.

but you know, time away from writing means no money to pay the bills, Jim. and things aren’t difficult for me, as it actually is for a bigger working class in this country: the ones who are underpaid and mistreated, underemployed and overworked, be it in BPOs across the country, or just in horrid creative jobs that really only look good on paper, all of the educated class who would know to use FB and twitter as tools, if not as possible escape.

and so you see Jim, I’m actually happy enough when there’s any sense of nation in the FB statuses or tweets of my students — now all mostly working in crappy jobs that don’t do justice to their skills or intelligence. I celebrate when they Like an FB post of mine that’s about the fight for passing the RH Bill, or about a current event or other that they might not even know of otherwise. I take the chance to respond to their questions on my blog, or in private messages, because you know it means they took time, that there was time spent at thinking about nation, at removing one’s head from the daily grind and clicking on what Miss Ina said today about nation.

that Like, that (re-)tweet, that Shared FB note, means more to me because I know of the lives they live, and the way in which time is equal to money where they work. and yes, those Likes or Shared posts from public school teachers where I used to work, the ones who keep my feet on the ground, the ones who have taught me more than they can imagine because of the lives they live: those are enough too, Jim.

because the question really is: who can afford to get out of his armchair and scream at people to do the same? no really, Jim. isn’t this just all about you?

yet you speak as if it’s about us, as if you know all of us; you speak as if we are all in the same boat. and you question us, Jim, you question us who are here, have stayed, and have no where to go really, though we might leave and work odd jobs elsewhere — not at all the case for you, right? you speak of us who can’t just go around building NGOs, holding photography workshops, being paid for being us, Jim.

you are not the same as the rest of us, and I said it long ago, and I’ll say it now: you and Carlos Celdran are in the same boat, from which you have the option to watch us all sink, from which you both speak of changing nation, and yet will keep the status quo. unlike you though, Carlos has been touring us through Manila, and fighting for the RH Bill, to his own detriment. what have you done that even equals that, Jim?

not much, really. and yet you will brag about making your house a relief and donation center in light of the 2009 floods in Luzon, to which I respond with two questions: (1) what have you done since then? (2011 na diba?), and (2) why do you speak like you have a monopoly on this act of opening up one’s house and home?

countless Filipinos did this in Manila and beyond post-Ondoy, Jim, and they might have been tweeting and putting up FB statuses while they were doing it, too. you don’t know my sister-in-law, but she lives in The Netherlands, has three young kids and a house to keep, and she kept an operation going in the aftermath of Ondoy. like many Filipinos here and across the world, she didn’t even think of bragging about it. for most Filipinos the relief operations were not a claim to fame, or a claim to moral high ground. in fact it was nothing but a national spirit that cut across the world, in every tiny space there was a Filipino. yes, chairs included.

you have single handedly made it seem like we weren’t doing much during Ondoy, Jim, and I don’t know how that helps nation — how that helps any of us — in any way.

nor is it clear how a weekend workshop of 99 people who ate like the poor in one exercise — only sardines and instant mami you say — helps nation. no really: how does a workshop where you ask the question “are we a people wired to fail?” help nation? where does a workshop even stand, that whole weekend spent talking to each other about being Pinoy, in the context of the urgencies that we live with in this nation every day, both personal and national.

sa totoo lang Jim, many of us don’t need to do an exercise where we can feel like the rich or poor: we know exactly what that disparity is like. many of us don’t have time to talk about being Filipino and Filipino identity Jim, instead we live it and its contingent oppressions every day.

and this is not a question of you having the privilege of time and money Jim. it’s a question of what it is you’re doing with it. because there is no reason to blame us for the time that you have on your hands; no reason to look at our tweets and FB statuses and think: what are they doing with their time? and finding only the answers that are about highlighting what you’ve done.

in truth: you’re writing on air, Jim, in a country where writers write with their own blood, and die poor and hungry.

really now Jim, you must know this is a lot of crap. and you must know it because you’re talking to yourself, sitting in every kind of chair you’ve got in your house. and no, there’s nothing revolutionary about that.

komentaryo

plump and pretty and political correctness

on an otherwise quiet Saturday, driving home from a jog in the Fort, I could only be jarred into the realization that the cities we live in survive on activities within and in and by itself. and no this doesn’t mean fiestas anymore, not in this day and age.

it seems that the city’s local beauty pageant had just been held, a tarp with the Mayor’s face actually announces the event. the Miss Mandaluyong candidates had one tarpaulin each, hung on a post each, around the City Hall Rotonda.

tarps are the new “in” thing, a way of saying: “Sikat ako, ikaw?”

on posts, alongside advertisements
ms.mandaluyong 2011!

yes, those tangled wires represent the state of electrical maintenance in this city that has a beauty pageant. but i digress.

as i turn right into Boni, it takes me a while to realize that the set of tarps that line this narrower minor street actually has a different set of women. it was also about a different pageant altogether, one that obviously wasn’t just about beauty.

 you are reading that right: Bilbiling Mandaluyong 2011. and i cannot tell you how stunned i was at the idea of a whole city having excess fat, though i imagine that is beyond what the city hall thought when they put together this pageant.

this pageant that we’ve actually seen done on TV and the movies, yes? but also in the current scheme of health consciousness and early mortality rates is just startling. the gut reaction is to think: how politically incorrect is this? the other reaction is: but who’s to say, really?

in these times when being healthy is everything and commercialized, when it necessarily sinks into a consumerist culture that’s about the brands that matter, the places to run in, the workouts to do. in these times when impossible thinness has come to be seen as normal; when all thinness requires is a lot of money to go to some slimming clinic of other of which there are plenty.

in these times when we should know better. we should know that half the time it isn’t about misrepresentation as it is about class, the other half maybe those who worry about the world less actually get it right. in these times when we should know that all the time we are all victims of the culture of beauty of any given time, and yes this includes the men, too. in these times when whitening the skin and straightening the hair, whittling the waist and trimming the thighs, and for men being buff and sleek and metrosexual, is what’s seen as normal.

maybe the ones who don’t want to take some diet pills have got it right, are actually better off, are actually on a healthier track spirit-wise.

in context, on the street.
tabi-tabi portion eh?

i’m far from calling this revolutionary of course, but i will say this: maybe it makes for the most uncanny of steps in the right — because different — direction. hopefully these ladies refused to be made into the laughingstock of the pageant, ideally they are given the same kind of courtesy and respect accorded Ms. Mandaluyong. because there is more to Bilbiling Mandaluyong than the additional weight. especially if these Bilbiling candidates prove that their intelligence is just as big, their brilliance equally overwhelming.

now, maybe i hope for too much.

komentaryo

dear Dep Ed, on EFA and another additional year

early in the week, on one of those hectic mornings that I keep the TV on to Sapul sa 5 for company, I heard your plans for instituting public kindergarten as part of our educational system, and I could only tweet about it as violently as I could.

though of course in the midst of the violence in Egypt then (now turned into a version of people power eh?), and the fare hike, this was barely carried by the rest of the day’s news.

but I feel it needs to be said: it is stupid. and I say that with all due and possible respect to Bro. Armin Luistro. I imagine many others want to say it too, but will not for fear of the heavens. I have no such fear.

what I fear is that all the money that’s been allocated for education (wow, P207 BILLION PESOS!), something that the Dep Ed is so proud about, will go to nothing but a false sense of what ails the educational system. there are real problems of teaching teachers, changing the curriculum, improving learning attitudes in students, that the plan of the K-12 program fails to problematize.

given that, institutionalizing kindergarten is just unfair if not unjust, and ultimately heartless. just heartless.

it means a 13-year educational cycle yes? it means creating the need for extra classrooms, extra skills, extra money from teachers. and there is no point in saying that it will be free — because public education is free! — when anyone who’s talked to a parent who sends a child to public school will tell you that they spend, more than they can afford. and when that money runs out, when there’s no money other than for putting food on the table, education rightfully becomes a non-priority.

and here lies the problem with institutionalizing kindergarten for our poor: it begins the cycle of spending earlier, it creates a need that isn’t there at all.

because who truly goes to pre-school in this country other than the middle to upper classes? and they do because their families can afford it, because there is a pre-school industry that has burgeoned in the recent past. this is not to look down of pre-schools, but it is to say this: in many ways and many places (like Tiaong Quezon) it is nothing but a way of making money, preying on parents who are made to think their kids need it, that it is imperative to their growth and learning. these are the same spaces that have pre-school teachers with questionable capabilities, the ones who are un-learned in that particular area of expertise that is pre-school education.

In light of this, I want to know who Dep Ed imagines will be teaching public kindergarten. in the real and credible pre-schools, teachers studied to teach on this level, having gone through courses in child psychology and education, and are adept at handling children. what I can imagine is that Dep Ed’s getting existing teachers to teach additional classes for the younger students, forgetting that teaching pre-school is a very particular specialized skill. no one will get me to do it even with my years of teaching and my love for children.

it also seems like 10 steps back in pre-school education. instituting kindergarten in our public schools when it is being questioned, and when the notions of home schooling for the middle and upper classes is becoming more and more viable and logical: it keeps parents responsible for their children’s formative years, and if that means showing poor children how difficult life is in this third world context, then so be it.

meanwhile, Dep Ed’s overactive imagination allows them to piece two and two together –kindergarten and two more years to the education system — and see that it will fix our educational problems. that they even think this is the first step instead of curriculum revision, teacher seminars, wage hike for teachers, extra classrooms, better textbooks is beyond me. that they haven’t even called on volunteers from the industry to help out is proof of its refusal to change its policies, to revise it given other perspectives.

because really. tell me that i can teach in the public school closest to my house, and i will. tell me to teach teachers and i will come up with a plan. tell me to write a textbook and i will. on minimum pay, on practically volunteerism, and i will do it. as so many others will, i tell you. as so many others are willing to.

but you need to include us, you need to include the members of this nation, the ones who have taught for years, the ones who are willing to learn. Dep Ed has fantastic imagination as it is, but maybe what it lacks is creativity. along with some good sense about the educational system of decades past, what ails this, what will truly and really fix it.

creativity would also allow them to create a plan that isn’t about adding more years to the problematic 10 that’s already there, but about fundamentally changing from within, because they know what is wrong from within.

give us a plan Dep Ed, show us a plan that will allow us to help out, and feel like we’re part of the change this administration promises. additional years are stupid. even more so kindergarten. it’s a plan that’s doomed to fail. and one that no intelligent teacher will be for, will want to help out.

and pray tell, how will additional years mean fulfilling the goal of Education For All (EFA)? it will only mean more impoverished families giving up on education, because it takes longer to finish it now, which means it will cost more. and yes, this will only bring us to that vicious cycle of arguments about “but public education is free!” that only the naive would think to say.

EFA is the goal? well, at this point, EFAk naman Dep Ed.

komentaryo

the Boy of the arts: not even a patron

ambassador. — noun. 1. a diplomatic official of the highest rank, sent by one sovereign state to another as its resident representative. (via dictionary.com)

granted that diplomacy is what Boy Abunda has plenty of and “his ability to communicate ideas” is the soundbite that’s suppose to explain why he’s been appointed as Arts Ambassador.  of course there are so many other people who do this just as well if not better: i can give you 10 names off the top of my head across culture and the academe. but most of them are not on TV, aren’t almost-sisters with Kris Aquino, and most of them will most probably be critical of government. and right there you have the REAL reasons why Boy has become Arts Ambassador.

it’s not that he’s extraordinarily skilled, or even skilled at this job at all. it’s that he’s the right friend at the right time. and you know what’s clear about PNoy: he is paying his debts. because this ability to speak that they say is Boy’s specialty? he’s a PR guy turned showbiz talkshow host, who can spin, if not wrap you around his little finger: this is every marketing person’s specialty. and this is not to look down on people who do PR; this is to be truthful about PR. it’s about selling, about making something look good, regardless of how bad it truly is. they should just put Boy in PR for the whole government: right there is where they need image boosting and fakery.

but for government to pay its debt to Boy in this way? it’s one that the arts and cultures sector of this country will pay dearly for.

owned by ABS-CBN. not just the photo really.

this is not at all to question Boy’s abilities as talk show host, or as talent manager, or as PR person. this is to point out that Boy’s Arts Ambassador appointment  is just depressing to those of us who are part of the creative sphere and know that it’s in the throes of suffering, of disregard, of neglect. this is to point out that there are countless people more deserving, more experienced, who have for years been at the forefront of and living and suffering within the arts and cultures sphere.

some life advice in a CD for someone who doesn't sing

this sphere that has suffered long enough, because government just doesn’t seem to care about it. Boy is part only of TV and no other cultural production, unless you count his CD of life advice and advertising given his endorsements. this appointment is so telling of what this government thinks about arts and culture, how they imagine that someone who hosts on TV must be the best choice. it’s like saying that anyone who travels can be a travel writer, anyone who eats food a food critic.

which i understand, this uh, horrid dismaying presumptions about what is art and culture; after all Cory’s presidency didn’t just kill the local movie industry, it also put Kris on TV. but surrounded as PNoy is with advisers and writers who make him look good, surrounded as he is with people from the arts and academe, i thought we’d at least have a bunch of better choices for Art Ambassador.

now i’m the last person who will say that popular productions aren’t culture; but i’m also the first person who will tell you that TV is but a drop in the large river of art and culture that we create. the ability to interview people is an even smaller smidgen — katiting lang ‘yan ng kakayahan ng napakaraming manggagawang kultural na kumakayod sa Pilipinas araw-araw.

kayod. Boy did not have to work for this, and hasn’t really worked for culture all this time. i don’t know why the NCCA even believes that he is an “advocate for arts and culture” when in the years that i have heard Boy on TV with the equally noisy presidential sister, they have not once struck me as supporters of the local arts other than when one of Boy’s talents are part of a movie or show or photo exhibit, other than when it’s an ABS-CBN / Lopez cultural empire product.

they will talk about a Cory exhibit, but really talk about Cory and not the art; they will mention art and photography, but only when ABS-CBN talents are its subjects; they will mention a book, but not once have I heard them talking about Philippine literature; they will give you a list of the books they love but it is rare if at all that this includes a local author; they will talk about movies and it’s always just Star Cinema films, or Regal Films depending on whether or not Kris stars in it, and then the rest of the time it’s Hollywood; they will talk about foreign designer clothes in the midst of a sea of local designers; Boy will endorse a foreign book, one that talks about God, which of course already limits the realm of arts and culture that he can even begin to wrap his head around.

and this realm, IS HUGE, just in case it isn’t being realized at all. arts and culture in this country is a diverse dynamic world of crisis and contradiction, and in the ideal world an Arts Ambassador would include all of that — all of us — in his vision.

this is not about reading Maya Angelou (who Boy always quotes, goodness gracious). this isn’t about watching Oprah all the time and copying her interviewing style. this is not about supporting one or two or three Pinoy designers for one’s clothes. this is not at all about watching Pinoy TV and film and being a fan of it. this is not about studying for a post, which he promised he’d do when he said no, not yet, to a government post.

this is about having read our Filipino writers all this time,  and having a sense of what ails the publishing industry. this is about keeping track of what’s going on in the academe, in the arts and culture it churns out, and seeing what ails our intellectual production. this is about watching plays and going to art exhibits, watching all of TV and not just ABS-CBN, going to the movies mainstream and indie, and seeing how much more — how so much more — can be done to spread that wealth around. this is about knowing the regions and seeing particular pockets of arts and cultures in languages as diverse as there are islands. this is about not being indebted to anyone — anyone at all — and being responsible for the kind of cultural products you yourself produce.

boy blind tastes a corned beef brand on nationwide television

because as Arts Ambassador, Boy’s own productions come into play. as Arts Ambassador it is respect and credibility that are difficult to earn, locally and internationally, given the diversity and division, given the lack of a clear Pinoy identity and agenda.

but here you have an Arts Ambassador indebted to the greatest cultural empire this side of the earth, which disallows unions and illegally dismisses its workers. he sells — is endorser of —  a mobile service provider, detergent, corned beef, pineapple juice, a beauty center, writer for a particular newspaper and magazine, and is in TV shows only on ABS-CBN 2. this in itself is replete with bias, and a limited view of what else is there about culture, about the arts.

ambassador for the arts sells beauty and surgical center. that's him with a trench coat in the middle of the photo.

and i won’t even go into becoming laughingstock of the bigger international world of arts and culture. not just because of the fact that our arts and culture ambassador is a, uh, product endorser but more than that because when and if they Google him what they’ll see is this:

via http://leviuqse.blogspot.com

and a photo for what is a hypothetical show that regardless, appears on Google:

via http://chuvaness.livejournal.com/557621

ladies and gentlemen, our Arts Ambassador, the guy who will face guests, art practitioners, cultural ambassadors all over the world at the up and coming Philippine International Arts Festival!

you can tell i’m excited.