Category Archive for: kultura

kultura

Run Barbi(e) Run*

But of course she can’t, not with those feet on tiptoes, ready for stilettos. In fact, with those big boobs, she might not be able to run at all. Barbie might be the most impossible and horrifying model for any young girl, who sees the big boobs and tiny waist, sleek long hair and made-up face, and think ah, that’s how I want to look.  And since Barbie apparently now represents the modern woman who has graduated from college and can keep every job possible, earning enough to have her own house (townhouse, 3-story dream house, Malibu dream house, take your pick) with fancy appliances and to party like there’s no tomorrow, then she does become a perfect aspiration, doesn’t she?

Except that Barbie is false, her whole lifestyle is. And even when there are seemingly more powerful images of her as career woman (most recent careers? News Anchor and Computer Engineer!), she has remained the same in many ways: she’s still as thin, regardless of how her hair or skin color have evolved; she still has the same features, the same particular body type, the same… uh… impossibilities. Yes, even when she has already run as Presidential Candidate Barbie (in African-American and White skin colors!).

Because Barbie cannot run, she has no knees for it. Yet as I began to run to get that endorphin high (over the more obvious need to lose weight), I found that much of it was about Barbie. And no, it isn’t about the body, for I got over that (im)possibility long ago, instead it’s about what Barbie does continue to stand for, over and above those jobs she can now have: it’s about being fashionista. (more…)

kultura

Growing up with Joey*

No, not Tribbiani, but de Leon. The Joey de Leon of Tito Vic & Joey fame. Anyone born in the 70s would’ve grown up with noontime show Eat Bulaga over lunch, and therefore would remember the Vic Sotto and Coney Reyes relationship, would know of how Aiza Seguerra was the cutest thing on Little Miss Philippines, would watch as Tito Sotto disappeared to run for and win a seat in the Senate. We would see the barkada growing to include late Master Rapper Francis Magalona and Joey’s son Keempee, the name being shortened to EB, and the show creating a family, that might include us who have grown up with them after all.  We would see countless rival noontime shows being born and dying in the face of Eat Bulaga.

To the joy of Tito Vic & Joey  (TVJ), but most obviously to the pride of Joey, who will defend the show to his last breath, get into fights about decency and kabastusan with Willie Revillame from the rival show – the one that has survived Eat Bulaga the longest. Joey, who delivers jokes cum sexual innuendoes daily, would be calling the kettle black, except that really, Revillame is not just bastos, he’s also … crass.

Which does allow Joey an amount of class, one that shines through whenever he’s forced to explain himself and his kind of humor, as he proves that he knows what he’s doing, he is not just a dirty-minded guy.  In fact, Joey educated comedy knows that when he disrespects a belief or a kind of conservatism, it is with a sense of what he’s up against, and what he deems a mature enough audience who will take that joke and think, ah, that is funny because it’s so true. (more…)

kultura

The poet is alive

Mula Tarima Hanggang (University of the Philippines Press, 2014) is Ericson Acosta’s new book of poetry and songs, one divided across the periods within which he wrote them. The heart of the book are the poems he wrote while in detention; framing this are poems on the bigger space that the poet navigates beyond jail, from Cubao to nation.

Given who Acosta is, you might imagine that you already know these poems: many writers have been jailed before him after all. You might also think of activist writing to fall within a particular aesthetic: the raised fist on the page can look the same, sound the same, be the same.

But where an argument can be made for the redundancy – the easiest one being how systems do not change, and therefore the demands of the people remain the same – the bigger argument that Mula Tarima Hanggang makes is for the poet’s voice as independent and distinct, no matter that it might form part of the bigger narrative of militant literature.

It is no different from every text’s insistence that it has something new to say. Acosta should not need to prove himself deserving of readership any more than the next poet.

The silenced artist

Tatuan mo ‘ko, kosa, sige pa.
Tatuan mo ako ng kamao.
Tatuan mo ‘ko ng maso, ng karet, ng tabak.
Tatuan mo ako ng bangkaw, ng AK-47.
Tatuan mo ‘ko, tadtarin mo ‘ko ng pag-asa at ng tapang.* (more…)

kultura

Badoy, banned books, and the Marcos challenge

Every day, I spend a good hour on a Tiktok algorithm that I’ve nurtured since last year, when the election campaign began and I realized that the Marcos campaign was releasing videos and photographs from the old man Marcos years (Papa FEM to this Tiktok algo), which I thought then was, and think now is, important.

But also, it is on Tiktok that I catch what government is doing, every day: what the First Lady is doing, what Bongget (that’s President Marcos V2 to the rest of us) is busy with, which government officials delivered the best soundbite. It’s also here that one realizes how much the algorithm lives off the press briefings of Press Secretary Trixie Angeles, who is celebrated and touted as one of the better voices from the new administration. Often, this algorithm fascinates me in its complete and utter removal from the echo chambers my algorithms on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram keep. It still confounds me, sure, but only in the way that the unfamiliar always does.

But then on certain days, even I have to say that the Tiktok algorithm makes more sense. That’s what happens when you listen to Lorraine Badoy, speaking on her new show on Quiboloy-run SMNI, where for two hours every day, she is free to spout anti-activist and anti-Left rhetoric like it’s nobody’s business—which is to say to absurd proportions, which is to say to attack anyone at all, really, and tag anyone as “red.”

(more…)

kultura

Toni, Bongbong, history and #Halalan2022

Here’s the thing about Toni Gonzaga: she is a symptom as she is the condition itself, a very critical condition of lies, falsity, and disinformation at a time when murderers are condoned and the corrupt are shameless, when the plunder of resources has been normalized, as has the violation of basic rights, at a time when algorithms run our social media lives which, given this pandemic, is pretty much the life that we live.

Here’s the thing with Toni Gonzaga: this is ALL on her. She—as with other content creators, celebrities, influencers, you and me who do social media—is making decisions about what content to put out into the world, and SHE is solely responsible for those decisions. There is no one else she can blame for what is put on her accounts and her channels, there is no network to hide behind, no producer or manager to point a finger at.

At this point, we are seeing these personalities for who and what they are. And as Toni said: she’s got nothing to hide. And to some extent she’s never hidden that she is a Marcos loyalist—she’s just more shameless now, right on the month of Martial Law commemoration, in utter disregard for the thousands killed, the thousands more who live with its trauma, and the millions plundered by the Marcoses that all of us have suffered for.

Maybe this is the pandemic effect on her: I got nothing to hide, I got nothing to prove. Here, see me as a Marcos loyalist! I don’t give a flying f*ck. You only live once.

Here’s the thing with Toni Gonzaga: she knows, she has seen, how she will not be held accountable. (more…)