Category Archive for: pulitika

kultura

N.O.A.H. survives the flood

a version of this was published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, in the Arts and Books Section, September 21 2009.

There is nothing like a Christian musical for kids that can get any adult-with-a-heart clapping with glee and stomping her foot to the beat. Trumpets’ N.O.A.H., No Ordinary Aquatic Habitat surprisingly did just this. I had braced myself for a born-again musical, i.e., one with a lot of preaching and conventional praise songs. Yet, despite some of these, Trumpets still managed to surprise me, what with its wit and humor, and even more so with some political consciousness – in a Christian musical? God forbid!

In N.O.A.H., while God might have been everywhere and anywhere, speaking to Noah from the heavens, he was also quite political. Case in point: when the flood finally cleans up the world, the narrator (Sam Concepcion) doesn’t just talk about the literal trash and decadence that was washed away, he also mentions corruption and politicking. Add to this the fact that one of the antagonists who first appears onstage looks like GMA, complete with the hairdo and the mole, as well as a placard that screams “Vote Me!” and you’ve got a whole lotta politics going on here. (more…)

kultura

The Truth and Raya Martin

Though admittedly not the best of speakers, it was difficult not to be enamored by young independent filmmaker Raya Martin on a Saturday afternoon at the Lopez Museum. Even when he sometimes lost his train of thought, and dared speak of filmmaking as an ultimately personal thing – almost a refusal to consider us as audience.

What Martin had going for him wasn’t just his youth and its contingent rebellious streak, but a consciousness about his craft that was surprising. Here, Martin proved he wasn’t just your run-of-the-mill indie filmmaker who’s wont to churn out the now familiar movie on slums and sex, violence and volatility. For this lecture, which had a mix of film practitioners and students as audience, Martin revealed why he was more than just a kid with a digital camera.

Because he spoke of history and the personal. Cinema as image. Sound as a distinct element. There is the interest in film versus the digital. There is the project of the anti-narrative. There is the reinvention of genre – from documentaries to the autobiography. There is the dream of making a commercial film.

It is clear that Martin has more than just all those international grants going for him and his films. There is a thought process to Martin’s creativity that he admits comes from his upbringing, but also is borne of wanting to go against this upbringing and everything that this requires.

No rebel without a cause

And yet this is no stereotypical rebellion. In the case of Martin, this is about a critical mind’s resistance to the conventional ways of seeing and speaking. He hated the way in which history was taught in school, where his grades were dependent on how many names and dates he could memorize. The product of this has been a conscious effort at creating films about and of history, with a very personal perspective. (more…)

radikalchick.lit

cory and (lost) memory

the only thing that links me to Cory Aquino is really memory. because while yes, it has been about these images of yellow my grandfather and mother carried, as her death sinks in it’s also about many other images in my head.

of Butz Aquino and ATOM, and an uncle who was part of it. of Kuya at 13 asking that he be allowed to go with our older cousins to EDSA because, as he told my mother, what if there are 999,999 people there? he would make it one million! of a lola who scolded my lolo waving a huge foam laban sign at helicopters hovering over their house: friend! baka mabaril ka!

of being 10 years old, and not knowing much, really. except that three years earlier, Mama was so depressed that Ninoy Aquino was murdered. of finally seeing Cory, his widow, and of watching her campaign with Doy Laurel, and of the yellow and green fighting it out with the red and blue. of crazy elections, and walking with my father to Sto. Domingo Church to see who was winning in our district.

but too, i remember how at a certain point, there were no bottles of San Miguel Beer at our reunions. and the blue tubs of Magnolia Ice Cream were conspicuously absent, too. i imagine now that the adults must have had some Gold Eagle Beer, because what the kids had were Selecta Ice Cream, the less famous, therefore we presumed, less tasty choice.

but it must have tasted the same. after all ice cream is just ice cream to a kid.

what was different, i realize now, was how that unfamiliar tub of ube ice cream was a symbol of a nation coming together. of supporting this woman battling it out with the masculine dictatorship. of believing that it was possible to change things by choosing a different ice cream — or beer — brand. i realize now that this belief in Cory’s call for a civil disobedience campaign, did bank on innocence. a naivete about how capitalism works, and how a boycott rarely does.

that it was successful is also so telling of why our collective memory as articulated by the media has yet to remember this aspect of Cory’s rise as the widow who beat a dictatorship. maybe we have become afraid of remembering that it is possible to hold capitalism by the balls. maybe we have also ceased to appreciate our capacity at believing in one person enough, to change our lifestyles around her cause. maybe we have lost all innocence.

and with Cory dying, in the midst of another dictatorship, maybe even all hope.

komentaryo

palparan, benigno, bencard: alin alin ang naiba?

what i’ve hated aboutmuch that has been blogged re Melissa Roxas via Filipino Voices is that it dissolves the issue of the abduction and torture of activists into anti-left rhetoric. and this happens, not just because of the bloggers themselves, but the comments that are allowed to take over the discussions.

so far, it is benigno who takes the cake. true, he insists we have become desensitized to extrajudicial disappearances and killings because it has become part and parcel of our everyday existence. but in the process of saying this, what he questions is Roxas’ choice of activist affiliation: why Bayan-USA? which he cleanly and easily equates with Bayan Muna Partylist, and then with the Communist Movement in the country.

benigno then asserts that Bayan Muna is the “satellite organisation fronting for a movement whose singular mission is the destruction of everything that we currently consider to be legitimate” — an ultimately dangerous accusation that puts the lives of real people in danger: and no, this isn’t just about the lives of Bayan Muna congressmen, but also the lives of Bayan Muna members.

of course benigno is not alone, other than many of those who have commented on his entry, some on jester-in-exile‘s are also quick to judge Roxas character and intelligence. Bencardsays Roxas is a “misguided alien political activist who chose to immersed herself in another country’s domestic strife <…> by her voluntary action, she has assumed the risk of being treated as an ‘enemy’.”

what this fails to consider is why Roxas can even be considered as enemy AT ALL. she was legally in the country, going about her research as an academic and as a member of an activist organization, and that IS NOT a violation of the law.

in the end, what is telling about all these critiques of and suspicionsabout Roxas’ case, is that they fail to consider their role in the bigger scheme of things, in the truth that as they label Roxas “communist” they are red-baiting too, and giving the GMA government and military more reason to believe that what they are doing to activists are justified.

they become no better than Palaparan, who today insisted that Roxas is a member of the NPA — and they had her alias as proof! — as if this justifies AT ALL that she be abducted and tortured, as if this allows the military to take the law into their own hands, just because they’ve been allowed to imagine that they are the dictators of democracy, freedom and liberation.

no thanks to benigno and his ilk.

komentaryo

big bad randy

it was a joy to find Victor Agustin writing about the issue of U.P. Prof. Sarah Raymundo’s tenure vis a vis Randy David’s announcement that he would run for congress if GMA does so in Pampanga. this was long in coming for mainstream, i.e., print media, and has yet to happen on the pages of the big-time dailies like the “http://www.inquirer.net”>Philippine Daily Inquirer.

but i guess that’s no surprise? other than Randy being a long-time opinion columnist of the Inquirer, it is telling how the blogging world was all agog and celebratory when he announced his plans to run: idolatry much? the philosopher as king, they screamed! yey, the good one gives politics a try! let’s help him out! and yes, let us slap people who criticize randy!

much of what needs to be said with regards to Sarah’s case and Randy’s political plans has been discussed via stuartsantiago and kapirasongkritika. and while the virtual noise has died down — no one has taken on my challenge to prove Sarah culpable in any student-activist disappearance, nor have Randy’s fans been able to prove that he isn’t responsible at all for the refusal to grant Sarah tenure — some truths remain clear here.

somewhere in quezon city, in a tiny apartment, a woman who has proven herself a competent and well-loved teacher and scholar is technically jobless — without courses to teach — because her own Sociology Department has unjustly refused to give her tenure.

this woman is activist. the kind who lives her politics everyday, within and beyond the classroom, the way all teachers do. her difference is that her politics has been deemed unacceptable by the same Sociology Department — and University! — within which she grew and became, within which she had nurtured her love for nation and nationalism.

this woman is daughter, sister, breadwinner. now left without the one house and home she always thought the Sociology Department was, without the friendships she had nurtured there, without the stability she thought it could afford her.

this woman is friend. someone i grew up with, who affected my formative years in the University we both love, and whose life — yes, political and activist and kikay and baduy in turns — has taught me more than any of those theorists we read in school. more than someone like randy david could ever teach me through his writings.

the dignity with which Sarah lives her life — her refusal to sell-out, her ability to stand strong on principles that are important to and true of nation — over and above her competence as a teacher and her intelligence as a scholar, is what the current crop of UP students are missing out on.

THAT is the saddest truth of all.

and that is also enough reason to keep this fight going against the big bad wolves of this world. be it GMA or be it Randy David and his Sociology Department.