Category Archive for: media

komentaryo

Revisiting EDSA ’86, failing the revolution

The failure happens first on the level of being disallowed to take photos in the Ayala Museum, something that’s even stranger when the exhibit is purportedly about people power, and yet the people aren’t allowed to take photos anywhere in that museum, a reminder really of why I’ve stopped going there.

It took an exhibit like Revolution Revisited (Ayala Museum, Makati City now up at on a mall and campus tour) by photographer Kim Komenich to make me step foot in this museum again; it is also an exhibit that I can barely be happy about. Komenich’s curatorial note attached to the exhibit is a failure in itself, a re-writing of history from an obviously removed perspective, one that has stuck to a narrative of EDSA 1986 that has since become highly questionable, if not proven false.

Two of the more glaring things: many factors informed the people’s march to the streets on February 22 to 25 1986. There was the cheating in the snap elections, the only one that Komenich acknowledges, but also: the civil disobedience campaign that had Cory and the people going up against the oligarchies and capitalists, the military defection of Juan Ponce Enrile and Fidel Ramos even when that was filled with too many silences still, and the truth that since Ninoy’s funeral march the people had gained an amount of courage that just kept on growing, through the Cory campaign, then the snap elections and poll watching, fearlessly ignoring the possibility of being picked up by the ever-watchful Marcos military.

Another glaring historical mistake was the assertion that February 25 1986 was the birth of what Komenich calls “the people power phenomenon.” What of tanks being stopped on February 23? What of people welcoming defiant soldiers who refused to disperse the crowds on February 24? What of artists and celebrities coming out to the streets and providing entertainment through the wee hours of February 23 to February 25?

I cringe at the idea that the 25th was the one day that gave birth to people power. I dare argue that its birth happened when people showed literally the kind of power they hold collectively, not when the dictator and his family began packing their things to leave Malacañang. I daresay that people power was born when people joined Cory’s civil disobedience campaign and literally refused to buy San Miguel and Nestle products, emptied Rustan’s of its shoppers, closed down banks, deemed the economy unstable. These were the same people who thought to, who knew to, stop tanks at EDSA. They proved people power then.

Komenich’s reading of EDSA ‘86 to be about cheating in the snap elections and the Marcos dictatorship ultimately just allowed it to revolve around the Cory-Marcos dichotomy, which wasn’t all that those four days was about. This reading of EDSA ’86 actually set this exhibit up for failure.

Which is not to say that it didn’t try to speak of the people, too; except that the way it did only begged the question: but in what light? The exhibit begins with photos of the every man pre-EDSA ‘86: a farmer with a carabao in the fields, a woman carrying a new born baby surrounded by even more of her children, a malnourished boy looking out onto the world. Then Revolution Revisited goes back and forth, from a photo of Cory Aquino’s proclamation rally and the aforementioned every Pinoy in 1986, to 1983 onwards with photos of Lean Alejandro, Evelio Javier, Ninoy Aquino and the snap elections. What was more surprising to me than the fact that our local photographers have their own versions of these photos, is the fact that of the four days of EDSA, what this exhibit had was only three days — three days! There were no photos of Day 3, February 24 1986, unless my turning around and going back to look for even just one photo was a failure in curation.

Day Three of course was a crucial time of defections and false alarms, people jumping and celebrating, government stations being taken over, as well as the threat of Marines in Camp Aguinaldo poised to shoot at Crame. Its absence in a revisiting of EDSA ’86 just seemed like a huge dark gaping hole.

Meanwhile, the stretch of colored photos at the end of this black and white exhibit  highlighted even more the distance of the power players from the people who made EDSA happen. That these personalities were allowed to speak about EDSA seems like the most redundant of things: we know what presidential daughter, now sister, Pinky Aquino-Abelleda, as well as Fidel Ramos, Juan Ponce Enrile and the rich of this country, would say about EDSA ‘86: they’ve been saying it the past 25 years.

And then there is this: these personalities are already the ones who contribute to a mainstream narrative that speaks of EDSA ’86 on the superficial level of unity and the general notion of change. They are also part of the oligarchies and powers that Cory had set out to fight through the civil disobedience campaign. Pray tell why would I want a businessman and capitalist to talk to me about EDSA ’86?

Ah, but Revolution Revisited also lets the faces of the every Pinoy in the beginning of the exhibit to speak at this point. Their photos are taken within the same contexts as before, reminding us that the farmer is still a farmer, the impoverished mother is still such, except that it’s been 25 years. Yes, nothing has changed for them, and this they also say in so many words. The malnourished boy has since died, and his family is still as poor as they were in ’86.

Thus this exhibit ends with the heaviest of feelings about EDSA ’86, highlighting the idea that it has led to nothing, that it was to a certain extent pointless. To have ended with the impoverished and the constancy of their conditions is to forget that EDSA ‘86 was a promise of possibility. That the poor are still such, that the conditions have stayed the same, is the fault of those big personalities who were in power yet have failed to truly affect change. It is not the failure of EDSA ‘86, or of people power at all.

Revolution Revisited in this form is thus just a reminder of the fact that Komenich’s  perspective is that of someone who might have lived with us in those four days of EDSA, and who might think himself one with us. But ultimately this exhibit is reminder that he is just a foreigner who fails tremendously to see and celebrate EDSA ’86 for what it was then, and what it should be about now: a time when the greatness of a people was proven by their collective ability to be fearless and courageous in the face of possible death.

This exhibit’s revisiting of EDSA 1986 fails the people power revolution; as such it also ultimately fails all of us.

Revolution Revisited ran until March 5 2011 at the Ayala Museum, Makati Avenue corner Dela Rosa St., Makati City, and is now on a mall and campus tour.

 

EDSA 1986 historical facts from reading Chronology of a Revolution by Angela Stuart-Santiago. All of it is up at EDSARevolution.com.

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

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.

komentaryo

babae kase!

fact: i grew up around men who, whenever there’s an accident on the road, or there’s undue traffic, would say: “Babae kase!” with a shake of the head, sometimes hands up in the air. yes, they let go of the steering wheel to show their disgust.

fact: i grew up around women who are crazy ass drivers, cousins and an aunt about whom is said: “Parang lalake ka magmaneho” complete with that head shake, by the men in our lives.

when the MMDA announced that it would propose that bus operators be required to hire women drivers, that is, ascertain that at least 50% of their bus drivers are women, the reactions, especially from women in media, were wanting. the early morning show hosts made fun of the idea — and in effect of women — saying that this would only mean people being late for work because women drive slow, saying that masyadong maingat the female driver for comfort. this was a general reaction that i now fail to remember who said what, but i do remember Shawn Yao of Sapul sa 5 saying that this reeked of sexism.

though one does wonder, is it the MMDA that’s being sexist? or is it us, all of us, who reacted to this with a shrug and a mental image of very very slow buses plying EDSA?

there was in fact, nothing sexist about the MMDA’s proposal. what was absolutely wrong was the premise for these statements by MMDA Chair Francis Tolentino. because when he said that female drivers rarely get into accidents, which female drivers was he talking about? obviously private vehicle owners, yes? and that’s us who don’t need to drive our cars for a living, who don’t ply EDSA as a matter of feeding our families at the end of the day. more than being sexist, Tolentino created a world where every woman is the same, forgetting that the women drivers he speaks of aren’t the ones who will be driving those darn buses.

those buses are the source of livelihood for driver and the conductor, who need to earn a certain amount for the bus company first before they earn their keep for the day. if that system isn’t going to change, then really, those female drivers will be as reckless on the road as their male counterparts. because they need to be, because they have no choice.

to reduce the issues of class and the systemic dysfunction of the bus industry to an issue of gender is unfair. it’s also just dumb.

and really, some common sense please: traffic and accidents on EDSA and Commonwealth are also such because while private vehicles cannot go beyond that yellow line, buses can. where lies the discipline? it is the rules, the ones that aren’t followed, that endanger lives. those rules the MMDA is responsible for, those lives they are responsible for.

‘wag niyo na kami bolahin na mas okay kami mag-drive, para kunwari magaling kayo sa trabaho niyo. though maybe the wish is for women, especially the ones who drive their own cars and are in media, to see this for what it is: a classist proposal, that they’ve reacted to in the most sexist of ways.

komentaryo

pinky and press ethics

you’ve got to give it to the Webbs, yes? I mean you may believe differently about Hubert etal getting that acquittal. you may want to read up regardless, because at the very least those in Bilibid Prisons need an open mind — your open mind. I believe that 15 years is enough, I even think that 10 is enough, even just one year, when there’s a slim slim possibility that anyone’s innocent, a teeny tiny chance that they aren’t guilty of the crime they’ve been accused of. to a certain extent, the shame, the lost years, the lost time, the sadness, the silence, is enough.

and it is silence that someone like Pinky Webb, politician’s daughter, media personality, sister of recently freed Hubert, knows to keep, and consistently. if there’s one thing that needs to be said a day after Hubert’s acquittal, if there’s one thing that we might want to see as one particularly bright light in all of this, it’s this.

in another media personality’s hands, this sister would’ve considered this her scoop, this would’ve been milked all it was worth, almost her chance at fame and fortune given the kind of media stardom that is now possible for members of the press.

especially in recent years when the media personality has made the news not necessarily for her professional achievements or public service, as it has been for the personal news that she herself feeds, Pinky is a breath of fresh air, one that’s surprising actually, but is such a measure of breeding. as it is of a clear sense of ethics that in this case is about the distance she keeps from the media spotlight that wants nothing but for her to speak of her private self.

this refusal to speak, the decision at silence, for me is just a wonderful example — one that we rarely see, yes? — of how the public media personality should handle any news related to her private life.

of course in third world philippines the extreme opposite of Pinky is the peg that Kris Aquino has created, also a politician’s daughter, also a TV personality, who likes to get the scoop, who uses her personal relationships as scoop, whose lack of ethics is most measured in instances when her own family is in the news — and they always are, not just because her mother was president, and her brother is now president, also because she likes to make the news. literally, she creates news about herself. case in point: if you saw that TV Patrol live patch, Ted Failon actually didn’t know what hit him as Kris just kept going on and on. making fun of others should be illegal in Kris’ hands; i wonder about the freedom of speech, too.

and it is because of Kris and every other media personality who has appeared in a magazine talking about her personal life, every media personality who speaks of personal things in 140 characters or less on Twitter, every media personality who has turned — quite shamelessly — into a lifestyle host in the guise of current events host. it is because of all these that we barely know to see Pinky Webb here, maybe because we don’t know how to deal with such class, such grace, such a display of press ethics.

sometimes and here, in the most tragically beautiful of ways, we are still surprised by members of our media. and in this horrid state of affairs when Kris and Boy are considered credible, and Korina and Noli can just go back to being “objective” newscasters, well.

thank goodness for Pinky Webb. may she be remain the peg for the right amount(s) of silence and quiet, the correct refusal to sell private self, that we so aspire for in the members of media. because that is a measure not just of their ethics, but also of their trust in us as audience who are mature enough to deal with media personalities without the personal. we get what we deserve, I know. and maybe Pinky Webb’s proving to us that sometimes we deserve the people with breeding and class, the ones who hold their privacies dear, because we all should, too.