Category Archive for: kultura

kultura

the question of CareDivas*

Because CareDivas was one of those plays that everyone was raving about, that got TV exposure because celebrities sponsored whole shows, that was celebrated for being an original Pinoy comedy musical. Of course that it dealt with homosexuality must have had much to do with those raves, though as with anything and especially a stage production, there is more to this than just the fact of its subject matter. (more…)

kultura

the Marge and Jeremy show

i’m one to dish it out and so i know to take it, too. and i will apologize, i will admit to my own faults, as i already have in this case. but Mr. Jeremy Baer has not only attacked me twice, refusing to accept my apology; Dra. Margarita Holmes has also moved the discussion from her and my private Facebook pages to her Facebook fanpage. and so it seems about right to take this one on with as much kindness as they have.

i misattributed this question to Dr. Margarita Holmes in the 13th paragraph from the Rhian and Mo article: “Dr. Margie Holmes asks on Facebook: why weren’t they careful?”

after which i say: “We are after all living in a time when there seems to be no excuse for accidental pregnancies, a time when information might easily be had about birth control. But that is not true.”

about which she sends me a private facebook message:

in the comments section of the link to the article that i myself posted on her Facebook wall (obviously thinking she’d want to read it) she said this. and with it is my response.

Jeremy Baer, husband of Dra. Holmes, launched his first attack in response to the above exchange, quoted below with my own explanations, and pertinent quotes from the second attack he wrote when relevant.

From: Jeremy Baer, asawa ni Dra Holmes
(Primarily) for: Katrina Stuart Santiago but to you

That’s it?!!?
This woman puts words in your mouth that are untrue. Words that you supposedly said, about a subject you know about, makes you come out looking like an idiot, and all she says is, and I quote: “Katrina Stuart Santiago ooooh, yes you’re right tita. the discussion is what became about why they weren’t careful. yours was just mo. true true. that correction should be easy to make though. :)”

let me begin by saying, as i have said in that previous apology, and as is clear with this exchange from someone i call “Tita” and that doesn’t happen for many people in my world if you’re not my relative, that i was working with the fact not just of familiarity, but also with the tone that Dra. Holmes took with me in her reprimand. in the PM she said it was a “minor correction” in the Facebook wall comment she said “itty bitty correction” and a “slight tampo.” she ended that PM with “lovelovelove.”

and so i was wrong in thinking that Dra. Holmes’ tone was equal to how offended she was by that mistake? or i was wrong about thinking that she was giving me a kind reprimand? and i’ve apologized for reading wrongly the tone in the words of someone i respect enough to call “Tita” and who seemed to have been treating me like a “pamangkin” of sorts. Mr. Baer’s accusations though deserve a response too:

This woman puts words in your mouth that are untrue. Words that you supposedly said, about a subject you know about, makes you come out looking like an idiot.

here is where a textual misinterpretation is clear to me. when i said  “Dra. Margie Holmes asks on Facebook: why weren’t they careful?” all i meant to attribute to Dra. Holmes because she was “asking” is that question “why weren’t they careful?” and not the statements that followed it, i.e., “We are after all living in a time when there seems to be no excuse for accidental pregnancies, a time when information might easily be had about birth control. But that is not true.”

Mr. Baerns says i made his wife “look like an idiot” in this section. Dra. Holmes says in her comment above that having mistakenly attributed this question to her that “perhaps could be interpreted” as her saying that “there is no excuse for accidental pregnancies.” but that is not at all what the question “why weren’t they more careful?” means. in fact that latter question is everything and valid, and all i follow it up with — which i do not attribute to Dra. Holmes — is the fact that it is not easy to be careful in these shores.

but that is all moot and academic precisely because i have apologized for that wrong question attributed to her, and as i tell her in my comment, it was what that thread ended up being about, given the question she started with:

but also if i am to nitpick, in fact Dra. Holmes herself kept agreeing with people who in that same comments thread actually said that rhian was as much at fault:

so Dra. Holmes in fact agrees that responsibility falls on Rhian too, and not just on Mo, which in fact points to the question: “why weren’t they more careful?”

and yes that is my interpretation of Dra. Holmes’ stand on this issue, as she and her husband have interpreted what i’ve written, too.

but Mr. Baer has got more things to say:

First, if the correction is easy to make, why hasn’t she done it yet? I’ve just checked. Not only does she attribute a wrong sentence to you; she then corrects you about your supposed misperception. Then she doesn’t even apologise for doing this, once you have drawn her attention to it with your comments. Bloody cheek.

first, i attributed one question to Dra. Holmes, which if you read that thread of comments in fact is practically a question she herself validates. two, the apology or lack thereof is premised again on the kind of reprimand that it was — my bad for misreading the kind of tone Dra. Holmes took with me.

third, re the correction not being made right away: i have no access to the backend of GMANewsOnline, and as such could not have put in that correction myself. as this happened on a weekend (Saturday December 10), i did send my correction to my editor, but knew it would probably have to wait until the following Monday (December 12). ah, but that doesn’t stand with Mr. Baer, as he says in his second attack, after he refused to accept my apology, that:

3 Your excuse for the late response was that GMA doesn’t work on weekends. Perhaps that is true, or perhaps you made it seem not that important. I find it hard to believe that, unlike other news agencies that take themselves seriously, they would not have 24/7 service. This is a news story, and you represent them.

and also:

Perhaps she didn’t spell out that she wanted you to do it immediately but that is what journalists should do automatically when they are serious about their job and hate to find that they have twisted other people’s words. As soon as they realise their mistake, they do something about it, not think waiting over the weekend is ok. After all, you could have made an correction on your wall, and on Dr Holmes’s wall as well.

number one: there is no reason to bring in the 24/7 service, or lack thereof, of GMANewsOnline. this was an opinion piece, one that appears on their site, one that’s all mine, mistakes and all. i am a fulltime freelance writer, and i am not an employee or a boss at GMANewsOnline. in this article as in most of my writing i represent no one but myself. that is clear to anyone who reads me, anywhere online and in print. whether or not i represent any of the publications i write for is a matter of interpretation: what is clear to me and to my editors is that i’ve always kept my freedom to write what i want, how i want it. and they are free to refuse any of my pieces as i am only a contributing writer.

number two: i had corrected that mistake — not a twisting of words at all but a question not even in quotes — but knew of the standard time it takes for corrections to come in. this is not about me waiting on a correction to be made. were this something that appeared in a broadsheet you’d have to wait at least a full week for corrections and errata and apologias. i responded to Dra. Holmes on that same day she posted that comment. that my response was not up to Mr. Baer’s standards confuses me: i was not talking to him.

but given Mr. Baer’s anger, one that was not at all in Dra. Holmes’ note and comments to me, i did write that apology on my blog, and did put it on my wall, as it was posted on the thread in which the attack had happened.

number three: THIS IS NOT A NEWS STORY. this is an opinion piece, as all of my writing is, two of the more recent ones Dra. Holmes had praised. this one she herself praised not just in that PM, but also right above that comment slash reprimand.

this brings me to number four: Dra. Holmes gave me the impression here that what was more important was what i said in the rest of that article, extraneous to the “itty bitty correction” and “slight tampo” she had with me. the sense of urgency was not there at all, but again, that is apparently my fault for misinterpreting Dra. Holmes’ tone.

Mr. Baer attacks me in these rhetorical questions he addresses to his wife Dra. Holmes:

Finally, it was so easy to check what you really said. Why didn’t she? Too eager to show how you, who should know this field, actually don’t? or just sloppy journalism?

first, Mr. Baer also says that i “quickly sullied” Dra. Holmes’ reputation, that i was being “cavalier about the reputations” i “might have destroyed” because Dra. Holmes is “after all, considered an expert on this field.” and that if Dra. Holmes “were corrected because <she> needed correction, that would be ok.”

Mr Baer works with the premise of malice here, that i intentionally wanted to ruin the reputation of Dra. Holmes, that i wanted to put into question her credibility. again, that question is all i mistakenly attributed to her and nothing else. that he thinks the rest of that paragraph is about Dra. Holmes is his interpretation. that i’ve apologized for this is fact.

two: i am no journalist. i have never fashioned myself as one, have never ever called myself that. i do not even call myself a member of the media. that i’m called the latter is a matter of convenience for the institutions that need to label me as such. anyone who knows me would also know that rarely do i call myself a writer; i say that i write. those are two different things.

in Mr. Baer’s second attack, after he refused to accept my apology, he questioned the correction i asked my editor to make on that section mentioning Dra. Holmes. he also points out

how important it is not to misquote people, especially people who are respected for their knowledge, measured responses and integrity who try to ensure that what is based on research is presented as such, and what is based on opinion is also identified as such.

and what is in that Facebook thread of Dra. Holmes is clearly opinion, wasn’t it? she was not only asserting an opinion about Mo carrying the bigger responsibility here, she was, as she was responding to comments, also agreeing with other people: about Mo being older, Mo being without a career, Rhian being more responsible than Mo, etc etc. i did not even mention any of that because they were irrelevant. again all i attributed to Dra. Holmes was that one question, not in quotes, because it was a question that the thread ended up asking.

oh but let me not even make that correction in the piece anymore. it’s obvious Mr. Baer is unhappy with any correction i am to make, and has made up his mind about me and my writing.

i have asked my editors to remove altogether any mention of Dra. Margarita Holmes in that piece. it will stand on its own.

Mr Baer says:

While my wife is perfectly capable of taking care of herself, she is currently giving a talk at, and for, Occupy4RH at the Batasan. <…>

Finally, this is my own version of events and everyone else is free to give theirs, or decide too much has been said on this already, but for clarity’s sake, I think it’s important that somebody say something. My wife has three clients to see and two columns to write tomorrow (to say the least) and because she takes her work very seriously she may therefore not have time to respond to your apology for a while.

in fact Mr. Baer, while your wife was giving a talk at the Occupy4RH at Batasan, i was at Rock the Riles which raises consciousness about the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. and as your wife has a busy day today, so do i.

but here i am responding to you, because unlike your wife, i have no one to fight my battles for me. especially a battle that she herself — Dra. Holmes herself — didn’t seem to think was a battle to begin with.

kultura

for Dr. Margie Holmes, an apology

Dear Tita Marge,

This is in light of what has turned out to be bigger than the kind reprimand that you gave me re the Rhian and Mo piece. I apologize that my response was such, but I had taken my cue from you as you kept saying it was a minor thing, both in the private message you sent me and the one on your Facebook wall.

This edit was sent to my editor right after I read your reprimand.

As it is a weekend, I’m sure the edit will happen tomorrow.

I believe there has been a misinterpretation of that section of the piece.

Dr. Margie Holmes asks on Facebook: why weren’t they careful? We are after all living in a time when there seems to be no excuse for accidental pregnancies, a time when information might easily be had about birth control. But that is not tru

All I had wrongly attributed to you, as I say “asks” is that question. The statement after it, as this was not a question, I did not mean to attribute to you in any way. If this was not clear, then I apologize for that as well.

Certainly there was no malice in any of this as I was writing this piece, nor was there intent to “sully your reputation” or put your credibility into question.

This formal apology would have been written earlier were I not put under the impression that you were scolding me about a “slight tampo” and that I could respond with the same kind of familiarity that I reserve for very few people who go way back with Angela. If that was my own fault at interpreting the situation, then I apologize for that as well.

Katrina.

kultura

lives were lost

we should not forget. regardless of the success that is the distribution of Hacienda Luisita among farmer-beneficiaries.

Mark Savaltus' My Farmville (2009)
Mark Savaltus' My Farmville (2009)

 

kultura

The (Un-)Worth of Words*

Because there are no words, none worth using to talk about the Ampatuan Massacre, no words worthy of lives lost to such violence, to such power. What we should’ve been was out on the streets, angry, fearless, pointing a finger at (giving the finger to) the system that has been feeding private armies. But none of that happened. Instead we were quiet and enraged, watching the news at home, receiving word about the rumored real reason behind the encounter, which involved anti-Muslim Christian-biased notions of multiple wives and girlfriends and patriarchy.

We were more dead than those 57 people, double-dead because we knew this possible but we waited for it to happen. What can only be worse than that is having illusions about our words being worth anything.

This is my issue with the Anthology of Rage in Verse I. It isn’t even an illusion of change that’s here as it is a notion that it matters at all to anthologize 100 poems, with no titles and just poets’ names, collecting rage about the Ampatuan Massacre into one epic poem by various contributors. It’s no surprise that this notion of continuity is possible, because there isn’t much to look at here, not much to read as far as diversity’s concerned. Because whatever the individual perspectives (which tend to speak generally of grief/anger/brotherhood/hope(lessness)/rising from the ashes) the tendency at romanticizing the death of 57 seems all-encompassing, is really quite the default.*

This is easy to understand given the established poets’—all of whom submitted poems—defense of the project. There is Marne Kilates’ take on the goals of this anthology, “Protest poetry or poetry against violence is an act of language. It is an instance of language engaging the physical and the experiential, as language always does in everyday speech. But since poetry is not everyday speech, protest poetry or poetry against violence brings the engagement to a higher level.” This higher level’s relationship to poetry and the Ampatuan Massacre is something that Luisa Igloria works with when she says that the murders’ effect on us all should “rightly serve as ballast and ground for the language and lyric of poetry,” where Gemino Abad’s notion of collecting “the finest rage” perfectly fits in.

But what this massacre requires, its goriness, its kabastusan is the language of the everyday. In fact, it requires the use of a language that will hurt because it screams from the gut, shoots from the hip, or is as dirty and angry as those killers were, as fearless as the Ampatuans were/are. To use what is deemed as the high language of poetry, to insist on rage that is fine, or the beauty of poetic language, seems politically incorrect. In fact, poetry such as what’s in this anthology seems politically incorrect.

Because there are many things to do other than write. If writing is your weapon, then there is writing that matters now because it will be read, because it will be relevant, because it isn’t tied up in illusions of beauty and lyricism, highness and artistry.

Because what is relevant, always is. This is why we go back to the Lacaba brothers’ Martial Law poems. This is why we go back to the protest songs, to the songs of the revolution, to poems of nation. This is why books likeDekada ’70 by Lualhati Bautista and State of War by Ninotchka Rosca continue to be reprinted, year after year after year; this is why the Noli Me Tangere, El Filibusterismo, Florante at Laura are deemed national literature required in classes across the country. It is because while it speaks of a different time, it speaks of us now. It is because the reasons for rage against the Ampatuan Massacre have been with us forever, have been here since government ceased to be effective, since families across the country were allowed to keep positions of power, regardless of how.

Real relevant protest literature reminds us of how dangerous the pen is and puts fear in our hearts as we write it. It is here that there is bravery and courage in the act of writing; it is here that there is an amount of danger. Real protest literature is a threat to the always oppressive status quo, it’s something that any tyrant will fear enough to judge it worthy of declaring the suspension of rights to expression.

At the height of relevance, writing in protest puts our lives in danger, it is enough to get us jailed.

Kilates says that it’s possible that “we can never exhaust the subject of violence with impunity and too much random death.” True, but why would we want to? Write about violence when we can do something about it, I mean. When what the Ampatuan Massacre should’ve told us was that all our words that condemn oppression, all our literary work that questions the status quo, ends up being nothing but the status quo because it refuses to be more than just those words, because it is repeated as a mantra, it is celebrated as “the word”, fine and otherwise, and nothing else. It is an end point: this is what I’ve got to say therefore this is what I’ve done.

Luisa Igloria quotes Brecht, “In the dark times, will there also be singing? Yes, there will be singing about the dark times.”

Two hundred five.
One thousand one hundred eighty-eight.
One thousand nine hundred sixty-three.

These are 2001 to 2009 numbers of victims of enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and illegal arrests. These are bigger, more urgent numbers, than 57. Where have our poets been through these dark times? Or was the past decade not dark enough? Maybe this was a choice not to speak, not to empathize, not to rage all this time?

Maybe if there was rage then, the Ampatuan Massacre wouldn’t have happened. But then again, that’s giving poets—all of us writers—too much credit. Merlie Alunan says, “<…> let the words flood among us, into us, to grieve, to rage. Maybe to heal this wounded nation.” Ah, but the words that heal this nation don’t come in poems with high language, doesn’t happen on the internet, doesn’t come in any anthology of literary works. It happens on nationwide television, when the media-created messiah says we will be alright, and thousands of the oppressed believe him. There lies the change that disregards our words.

And why there is always reason to rage against the words we use to explain our world. Unless these can kill in the way guns and money and power can, they are nothing but unworthy.
———

Only poems in Filipino and English were read by this reviewer.

Quotes from poets via the comments section of Marne Kilates’ and Joel Salud’s individual Facebook notes defending the anthology.

Data via Karapatan’s 2009 Human Rights Report.

*this was written for High Chair’s 12, 2009-2010, which dealt with the Maguindanao Massacre, the 2nd anniversary of which is today. Read the rest of the High Chair issue here and here and here.