kultura

on class, the indie film divide, and what unity must mean

the breakdown and aftermath of the Rafael Santos debacle is interesting to me mostly for what’s still unsaid.

1. the fact of Santos’ class, and i use that word not just to point to his lack of social skills (for goodness why would he think a joke like that funny?) and bad manners (he was asked about actors he himself worked with for his film, yes?), but also his social class. that humor, if we’d like to call it that, is one that we know exists, that we might have heard before from rowdy boys in some sosy Starbucks, or kids we’ve taught in our time as teachers, and it’s a humor that isn’t surprising in its existence. what is surprising is that Santos did not turn it off for television, that he actually thought this was an interview that would be so comfortable, his humor would be fine. which bring us back to the fact that he might be a rich kid — a konyo kid in our context who feeds his cat catfood and thinks lowly of skyflakes (equals 1 cup of rice kaya and isang pack no’n!) — but apparently rich doesn’t mean classy.

2. which is what that show Cityscape is, more pang-mayaman than anything. Sir Anton Juan is so correct about pointing out how that host is at fault as well, though there’s the mere existence of lifestyle shows for the elite like this one that’s just wrong in third world Philippines. that show, as is David Celdran’s ANC show, is a bubble that allows the ones who are in it to believe that everyone speaks the same language, thinks the same, live the same, i.e., we’re all rich, you’ll get my humor. is this to defend Santos? of course not. it’s to point out that other than this articulation, there’s a fundamental problem in a media system that creates a venue for him to speak this way, and think that it’s ok. it’s telling of a crisis in media, isn’t it, when the rich can be shameless about their lives and lifestyles, as if they were not in impoverished philippines?

3. some critics of Santos are angry because he draws a divide between film and theater. i say it’s a reminder: despite Eugene Domingo, John Lapus moving from theater to film, and despite numerous mainstream actors moving from mainstream and finding more credibility in theater, that divide still exists. and it’s one that’s painfully and obviously about money, i.e., who will make money for TV and movie executives and therefore will get better pay, and not at all about who does the better job at acting or entertaining.

now that divide gets a little more complex when we talk about the indie film industry of which Santos is part. the indie in fact is theater in light of commercial film; it’s where the more artistic, more creative filmmaking happens, where the better actors are found. i always thought the indie employing theater actors meant a team effort of sorts, one that spoke of both industries’ struggle to prove creativity on the most flimsy of budgets, on a dire lack of support. Santos’ articulation pointed to the fact that the indie film industry has it’s own divide to deal with, and it’s one that’s becoming more and more stark as they go about this business of being “independent.” while it’s true that there are countless writers and directors who financially struggle to get a hold of a camera and finish a film, it’s also difficult to ignore this fact: there are also these kids who go to some sosyal film school, are given cameras on a silver platter and think the struggle is just like wow pare, it’s so hard to make the film i want, coz i want to do a tarantino film or like a kubrick? and the philippines is so not prepared for me.

wow pare, ang tindi ng struggle mo.

4. and lastly, Tanghalang Pilipino’s artistic director Nanding Josef wonders:

And it also makes me wonder what the outsiders, the ‘uzis’ (mga usisera), the non-artists and the critics of the artists make out of this free-for-all, uncensored and free-flowing downpour of expletives, name-calling by the artists against another artist, albeit a beginning artist.

here’s what i think, Sir: while i’ve got a brother and sister-in-law who were part of theater in the Philippines before they left for Holland, and while i’d like to think myself a theater critic at times (though i cringe at that label half the time, especially with gibbs cadiz and exie abola around), as outsider to philippine theater, i think this emotional outpouring of anger and disgust at the issues that underlie Santos’ articulations is the perfect reason to start talking about a theater actors’ union.*

of course in this country insisting on a union is a red flag up for the powers-that-be. but seeing the theater industry’s united stand against this articulation (even those who have forgiven Santos admit to his fault here), i think the theater world’s 100 steps ahead of the fight for what every creative industry worker deserves: a spanking-new union.

the writers among us can only be envious.

 

*and i mean a real one, not like the UMPIL for writers, which doesn’t really function to protect writers or standardize how much we might get paid, but seems more like a fraternity of writers. i mean a real artists’ union, much like the Philippine Models Association of the Philippines (yes, they are smarter than us all), that standardizes pay based on seniority and skill of their members, and is responsible for any of its members not performing their jobs well.

komentaryo

A script that took forever and a day

To get anywhere really, and in the end didn’t even get close to redeeming itself. Unless of course redemption is about finally – finally! – having a local romance that doesn’t end as happily as usual? But even that gets lost in the aftermath of a movie that was more than anything, a waste of talent (the actors’ and director’s) and time (mine).

Forever And A Day (directed by Cathy Garcia-Molina, screenplay by Melissa Mae Chua and Carmi G. Raymundo) began with the grand goal of talking about love and death. In the end what resonates is that the self-centered executive Eugene (Sam Milby) compared his work problems with the pain of Raffy (KC Concepcion), a cancer patient. What resonates is that this movie’s dream of a complex love story ultimately had a nightmare of a script, one that created characters with no real motivations, one that had a story that could not for the life of it deal decently with death and love.

When I say that this movie doesn’t deal, I mean there are no real conversations here, no conversation at all between Eugene and Raffy on that one day (actually three) that they found themselves thrown together in Bukidnon and Cagayan de Oro. On those days all we saw were the two doing extreme activities, first with an amount of yabangan, later with some laughter, but nary a relevant conversation.

That this lack of conversation is in the first 30 minutes of the movie when Eugene and Raffy are supposed to fall in love, made that famous scene where KC delivers the line, “Kaya mo bang mahalin ang isang taong alam mong mawawala rin sa’yo?” absolutely laughable. Because the real answer to that question should’ve been: “Try mong mahalin ang taong hindi mo kinausap.”

the rest is here!

kultura

too much Torre 1: on Amaya

i’ve begun to call the saturday inquirer Nestor Torre Day: open it on any given Saturday, and there he is dishing it out about local TV and celebrities. now this would be fine, though a bit shameless (isn’t it, to have your name appear so many times in one section of the paper, on any given day?), were he obviously keeping in touch with popular TV and contemporary culture. but this, as he himself reveals, he doesn’t do.

recently Torre raised two things in separate articles (of course) about the epic serye Amaya: (1) Marian Rivera’s acting and whether or not she deserves the title “queen of teleseryes” and (2) Amaya‘s storytelling as predictable over and above a setting that’s nothing but exotic. on the latter, Torre says:

<…> after some weeks in play, the series’ plot line is turning out to be a mere variation on teleseryes’ generic penchant for love, perceived betrayal, revenge, and all sorts of strife and convoluted conflicts.

really now. Torre obviously missed a chunk of this show if this is his assessment of it. he seems to have missed that wonderful father-daughter relationship between Datu Bugna and Amaya, one that was anything but simple, one that was informed by the complexities of honor and trust, of woman power and oppression. and what of Amaya’s refusal to be tied to her hut as binukot, her insistence on being brought out into the night by her uripon, and knowing enough to take responsibility for it when they got caught?

via igma.tv
via igma.tv

and where is romantic love here, really? Torre makes it seem like this is nothing but a love story, when in fact Amaya hasn’t been shown to care much for Bagani’s fascination with her. in fact, the kind of focus Amaya keeps on her struggle for liberation after her father’s murder is what resonates here: love isn’t on the table, and her heart is not a topic of conversation.

and yet Torre’s saying this is nothing but cliche, and is completely unhappy with this story, which makes one wonder: how much of it has he seen? this tells us how much:

To be fair to Marian, she works really hard to make her latest TV starrer a success—to the extent of “going backless” in some scenes to show how cruelly her character has been punished and degraded. She also shouts and expresses anger with greater unction than ever.

Unfortunately, she looks too fair and soft to be believable as a “warrior princess” in the making. Her crying scenes are still too “hagulgol” to be truly touching. And, her training scenes as a warrior are patently nominal and phlegmatic.

first of all, ser, the bare back is culturally grounded in the epic’s pre-colonial setting: a sign of Amaya turning from binukot to uripong. she is not the first or only one who’s backless in this show, which should tell us all that it’s symbolic for something bigger than just, uh, going backless. second of all, and more important, ser, fairness is a trait of the binukot, a product of her being kept inside her hut, her feet never touching the ground, her face unseen.

as for Marian’s acting, i do wonder what the peg is for good acting as far as Torre is concerned. because i’d like to think that i’d scream too were my father being murdered in front of me; i’d scream too were i being lashed with a stick; i’d cry and scream in defiance when my servants-turned-friends are being lashed as well. were Torre watching this show, he might have a sense of how this louder voice Amaya’s now using is but logical in light of her voice as daughter: playful and loving in equal turns, too intelligent for her own good, smarter and kinder than her half-sisters, hidden as she was. were Torre watching, he would’ve seen this as an evolution of the lead character versus just the one truth about her character.

as for whether or not Marian is the “queen” of teleseryes, it seems but logical doesn’t it, that we look at the terrain of soaps in recent times: lead female characters are few and far between, as the male leads have begun to take on equal if not the more central roles in soaps and seryes across both networks (Coco Martin in Minsan Lang Kita Iibigin, Robin Padilla in Guns and Roses, Richard Guttierez in Captain Barbell, for example). in this sense it’s easy to see that Marian as queen is premised on the fact not just of a network investing in such a huge project for her, but that she’s in this title role at a time when there’s no other show like it.

but too, what Torre fails to consider is Amaya as a show, period. he fails to see how this show’s pre-colonial reality actually works and is difficult to dismiss, which of course would only be apparent if you’re actually watching the show. this is a show that had obviously prepared to take itself seriously, at the same time that it was careful in dealing with its fictionalization of history. and of making sure to create a story of one binukot that can only be powerful as it highlights the possibility of a powerful woman being part of our roots, if not as historically viable ideological truth.

now if all that a reviewer can see in Amaya is simplicity and cliché, then that barely seems like the show’s problem.

komentaryo

Walang K ang K-12

School year 2011-2012 is the first school opening under the PNoy administration.

The government may be new, but the problems of education remain the same. The stars of this crisis are the lack of teachers, classrooms, toilets and school desks. Look at these numbers:

  • 101,612 — shortage of regular teachers
  • 66,800 — shortage of classrooms
  • 2,573,212 — shortage of school chairs
  • 135,847 — shortage of toilets

These numbers are based on Dep Ed.

In front of Batasang Pambansa, at Batasan Hills National High School, each class has 80 to 100 students, with many classes without school chairs, and students seated on the floor. Also near the Batasan, at Patayas B Elementary School, each of their 24 classrooms have been divided into two, and 60 to 70 students are crammed into those half-classrooms.

In other words, on its first year, the PNoy administration has failed to respond to the problem of shortages in the educational system, and Secretary Armin Luistro’s promise to Congress that they will fix these shortages in the first two years of this administration is far from happening.

But the focus now is on the Aquino administration’s only program for education, K+12. This year marks the beginning of K+12’s implementation, particularly universal kindergarten or kindergarten for all five-year old children.

We are united on the importance of universal kindergarten. This is a crucial step in lessening the number of students who stop in the first four years of elementary school. Last year, 1.5 million children were enrolled in kindergarten: 500,000 in private schools and 1M in public schools. This year, Dep Ed opened the doors of kindergarten education to 1M more 5-year old students.

In the past six months, the Dep Ed aggressively promoted and enjoined the public to enroll their children. This is a historical moment when the State decides to shoulder kindergarten for all, especially for the poor. For the longest time, only those who are well-off and the rich could afford kindergarten.

This is why it’s in the interest of all to implement universal kindergarten properly. Sadly, based on what we are witnessing on the first few weeks of classes, this isn’t happening.

Let’s begin with budget. In the 2011 GAA, only 2.33 billion was allocated for early childhood education. Because of this there is a lack of 34,900 teachers and 26,500 classrooms for kindergarten.

How does Dep Ed respond to this problem? On May 4, Secretary Luistro released Dep Ed Order No. 37, the “Policies and Guidelines on the Implementation of the Universal Kindergarten Education for SY 2011-2012.” This is how he proposes to respond to the lack of classrooms:

  1. Schools without kindergarten classrooms shall utilize available classrooms, library, science laboratory, home economics building, resource center, and other available spaces.
  2. In cases where classrooms and other spaces are not available within the school premises, school heads are urged to link with the Local Government Units (LGUs) for the use of existing day care centers and/or barangay halls.

Does this sound like the policy of a good credible government? They will enjoin all 5-year olds to enroll in kindergarten, when there are no classrooms to put them in, and instead they will be forced into “any available spaces”?

And to respond to the lack of kindergarten teachers, Dep Ed Order No. 37 states that Dep Ed will use Kindergarten Volunteer Teachers. These are the requirements for becoming such:

  • Bachelor’s degree holder in education or education related courses;
  • Preferably resident of the community where the school is located; and
  • Registered as volunteer in the school and/or division office.

Notice that Dep Ed doesn’t require a PRC license of its volunteer teachers, a license that can only be obtained by education graduates who pass the Licensure Examination for Teachers. In other words, it’s now Dep Ed policy to hire unqualified and unlicensed teachers to teach kindergarten. Would we allow an unlicensed nurse to work in a hospital? Would we allow a building to be built by an unlicensed engineer? Why is Dep Ed allowing unlicensed teachers into our classrooms?

This is not just a shameless act of sacrificing the quality of education, this is a clear violation of the law, particularly RA No. 7863 which is the “Philippine Teachers Professionalization Act of 1994.” Section 27 states:

“No person shall practice or offer to practice the teaching profession in the Philippines or be appointed as teacher to any position calling for a teaching position without having previously obtained a valid certificate of registration and a valid professional license from the Commission.”

According to Dep Ed, volunteer teachers will be paid an honorarium of P3,000 per month.

It is obvious that this is unjust, if not inhuman, compensation. In fact the lack of applicants for volunteer kindergarten teacher is proof of how low this compensation is.

As representative of teachers, I condemn this scheme of hiring volunteer teachers, which is even worse than contractualization, and which disregards professional qualification in teaching, as well as establishes the government’s refusal to justly compensate teachers.

Nakalulungkot mang sabihin, pero dahil sa mga nabanggit, malinaw na “walang K” ang K+12 ng administrasyong PNoy. Walang kahandaan, walang kalidad, at walang karapatan.

If this is the way PNoy’s government will implement its flagship educational reforms, then it is clear that K-12 should not push through, and our Filipino children should not be forced into the program.

Rep. Antonio Tinio’s Privilege Speech on School Opening and K+12,Batasang Pambansa, 6 June 2011. Translated from Filipino, 17 June 2011, slightly edited.

radikalchick.lit

the gift of elsewhere*

i grew up not really knowing what being an inaanak means, where i never had to call anyone ninang, where that didn’t mean any different from a standard aunt.

but the three kids all the way in Holland began calling me such, and i realize it means something, especially when it comes with Lucien instinctively leaping onto the bed to hug me, or Francisco giving me a shy knowing smile like we’re the same age (coz we probably are you know), or when Jacinta began calling me ninang inang. and last year, by all counts, along with the rest of a nuclear family that moved heaven and earth (OA!) to send me to Holland, these three kids saved me.

and Jacinta who kept me company, in bed for afternoons on end, or on the couch on mornings on end (so yes, you guessed what I did there), was supergirl of those three without knowing it. with her it all made sense, the daily ritual of watching the same cartoons, of doing the same puzzles, of still finding these absolutely entertaining. easy laughter is one that’s a gift of good friends, or just of children who love you and want to play.

how telling that on that first time that i could visit these three kids in their Holland home, they probably did more for me than i did for them. which is exactly what they do for me now, still, even if only via pictures, fresh from being forced into bed and hospital by an ailment reminiscent of my own shortlived motherhood.

Jacinta turned 4 recently, and so did another inaanak Mayumi, all the way in America. unlike Jacinta who has slept in my bed in Manila, and who resurrected my old barbie dolls and dollhouses on her last visit, i have yet to meet Mayumi, all four years old of her.

but i remember now what i told Mayumi, what i wished for her, on her christening. where i promised there would always be home in Manila, that there would always be us here who love her and her parents, and that in fact we are always with her, no matter how that seems so ambiguous and abstract. i remember i told her to not forget nation, to not let it go, regardless of America, of wherever it is she goes.

i think of that now and realize things have changed. i would still wish Mayumi, as I do Jacinta, a love for this nation, but now i know enough, now i’ve become a mother enough, to realize that there are things far bigger and brighter than nation. and it’s not because Europe or America is richer than the Philippines, it’s not because it’s cleaner where they are, not because it’s third world where i am.

it’s because where i am, women’s rights have yet to be seen as a valid enough cause period, one that can logically, rationally and single-handedly mean passing laws for our protection. it’s because in this country i call mine, one that belongs still to Jacinta and Mayumi, their rights and futures are always sacrificed for the louder more powerful voices of the men who rule — the congressmen and senators, the priests and conservatives. it’s because right here, where i would wish them both to come home someday, they will become adult women who will be subjected to the Church’s presumptions of their sinfulness, the men’s insistence on their silences.

recently i was made to see that my issue with un-freedom is one that isn’t my fault. it’s the fault of a nation that’s unable to take care of me, and my needs as a woman. i cannot give this possibility of shackles to any daughter, i cannot wish them this fight that’s both frustrating and tiring and ultimately feels like a lost cause.

i especially cannot wish it on Jacinta and Mayumi who are already in places where they are cradled by laws that will protect them, as children, as women, as human beings, period. where they will have freedoms that i can only imagine having, where they will be given choices and will not be scared of it because they will also know to do the right things. where they are, they’ve got their families, but more than that, where they are, they’ve got rights.

and if that’s also the gift of not coming home, if that’s the gift of being far away from the rest of family, from language and culture, from roots, then i say, it’s a gift that’s worth giving. it’s a gift that’s theirs, that comes from my heart. because now i know i’ve been wrong: there might be many wonderful things about this nation, but there is so much more to be said about freedom.

*for Jacinta in Holland, and Mayumi in America. with all love possible from Ninang Ina(ng).