komentaryo

hello partyline?

(or laughter as the worst medicine)

it was an unlikely but perfect match: a bad stomach, a long rainy, dark and dreary day, and three lessons learned from 4:30 to 5:30 with only coke and very little food in my body.

one, you can pretend that you ARE an activist by saying that you WERE one during the first quarter storm and throughout Martial Law. it apparently gains you enough credibility to be invited to talks and have books published in this country, even if they are about communism – and even when the issues you raise are old and the problems you assert have since been solved. apparently, any person who’s proven by word of mouth as activist of three decades ago, can get away with pretending that he remains one, by virtue of the fact that he continues to talk about it. with an air of credibility, and  – dare i say it? – wisdom. which is directly connected to something i proved to be true: if you admit to being old, you also apparently deem yourself wiser. and you can say, i’m tired and want to study rats. can you – addressing the young impressed audience, of course – please continue what i started? (which of course presumes that what you’ve done so far is worthy.) (more…)

kultura

Chicks Rule!

published in PCIJ i-report, special report on Literature and Literacy, of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, 19 June 2007
http://www.pcij.org/i-report/2007/chick-literature.html

N.B.S.B. (No Boyfriend Since Birth). Love hurts. Hearts heal. Relationships are overrated. Marriage or living in? Promiscuity versus loyalty. Every girl needs a gay bestfriend. Better pay or fulfilling job? M.U. (Mutual Understanding). Shopping! Vacations. Self-worth and –confidence. Self-love. Single – not an old maid. Falling in love with your male bestfriend. The search for Mr. Right. H.D. (Hidden Desire). (more…)

kultura

On Lumbera’s Plenary

“National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera reaffirms Asian identities in the national languages, as Int’l Literature Conference closes”

This was a most fitting end. After two days of plenaries and panel sessions that talked about particular aspects of a very diverse set of cultures within Asia, Filipino National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera tied everything together by highlighting our dependence on, and thus the importance of, translation in his paper entitled “The Necessity of Footnotes: Translating the Culture.”

In light of the various languages in this region we call ours, this couldn’t come at a better time. (more…)

radikalchick.lit

Confessing Selves: Notes on the road to realizing self-centered lives

published in PCIJ i-report, the investigative reporting quarterly, of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, Issue no. 6, Oct 2006
http://www.pcij.org/i-report/2006/blogging.html

Saturday, August 19 2006
Endings…

I have a confession to make: I used to have a blog. It is one that I have since become ashamed of, but can’t quite figure out how to delete. The shame comes from the force that drove me to even start it: a broken heart. And since that has ceased to exist, there is a need to delete proof that it ever did.

But more than what brought the blog on, it’s what it ultimately became that I find shameful: a sorry excuse for recovery and moving on, and in the process, proof of self-centeredness.

Few people know of that blog, and yet I fear that at some point I will be revealed as that forlorn girl all too willing to wear my heart on my sleeve for the entire (internet) world to see. A girl who could only exist within her tiny little world of pain, in the midst of this sad suffering country.

Monday, August 21 2006
… and Beginnings: Why Blog?

While I realized long ago that my blog was a poor excuse for productivity at a time when there was a dire lack of it, I have yet to lose my liking for reading other people’s blogs – from friends to those of near-strangers. It’s brought on by whatever you might think: voyeurism maybe? Curiosity, most probably. The possibility of finding gold on a bad bad day, usually. Gold is found when I am made to realize that I can’t be worse off than that near-stranger who reveals that her issue of the week has been how to fix her unmanageable hair.

Self-gratification, I find, is the name of the game as far as blogs in this country are concerned. Writing is after all a very personal thing. And using it to alleviate anxiety and anger, to celebrate happiness and excitement, is as old as the act itself of sitting down and gathering one’s thoughts.

There was a time of course when we wrote about our lives in diaries and journals, keeping them hidden from the rest of the world, and keeping the unsaid just that: not worthy of articulation, or just too sensitive an issue to be articulated. In writing a diary under lock and key, it is the release of emotion that is the point; and it becomes the only goal. That many will say writing has allowed them to survive, or that articulation was all they needed to move on and recover from an event in their lives, has become cliché.

Now imagine this: to the act of journal writing, add a blank unspeaking computer screen, an invisible audience, and the freedom to be anonymous. What have you got? Confessions made public. The internet, through the weblog or blog, has allowed for this to happen, giving anyone who has an internet connection and the leisure to sit in front of a computer the tools to vent out frustration, release pent-up energy, and scream the unspoken. The World Wide Web after all, is about the right to our freedoms: of information, of speech, of expression. And the blog is but one internet genre that allows its users to exercise – and have access to – these rights.

That is ultimately what makes blogging a most liberating thing.

Thursday, August 24 2006
What is True…

What is it about blogging that appeals to so many of us? Letting it all hang out in public is the strangest of things, and I continue to be dumbfounded at some bloggers’ utter disregard for an audience that might read them. At the same time, does the internet qualify as “the public”? Does having a blog, ultimately mean having an audience?

It is difficult to imagine a confessional blogger whose reason for writing is the possibility of readership. When the treatment of the genre is that of a diary, then that audience is in fact irrelevant. In truth, given the vastness of the web it is impossible as well to expect an audience. What can be expected is a fixed set of readers mostly made up of friends and acquaintances who are interested enough in what a certain blogger-friend may have to say – even if it’s only about the last movie she saw or that crazy coincidence of meeting an ex-boyfriend.

In the academic and literary world I move around in, blogs are linked to each other, authors are known, and coming full circle is quick and easy. The six degrees of separation may be cut down to three or four, and it’s no surprise. We after all keep to the circles that are familiar, within and beyond the internet. That this one is not only quite small, but also quite forgiving, is indicative of the kind of literary and academic world we have in this country. Everyone is doing exactly the same thing, and no one is about to pinpoint the fact of say, being apolitical, or being too self-centered.

Forgiveness in fact, seems to be beside the point. And criticism is obviously uncalled for. Given the confessional blog, it is difficult to even comment on the things that people concern themselves with, mundane as these things usually are. Confessions, while now on the internet, are still pretty limited to very personal things – from family to work, art and craft, new shoes and what-not. And it is in this espousal of the personal that the confessional blog escapes criticism.

As reader and observer, as voyeur if you will, my existence is irrelevant to these blogs. These existed before I started reading them, and they will continue to be produced beyond my prying eyes. I am ultimately part of that invisible audience – the internet public – that can exercise its freedom to stop reading any of these confessions if I think they’re a waste of my time.

That’s the truth.

Saturday, August 26 2006
… and False

I’ve been told often enough that anonymity is a cop out: if there’s something that needs to be said, that person who speaks must have a name. Anyone who remains anonymous does not deserve a decent response or an audience. But on the internet – particularly in blogs – this discussion is subsumed by an even touchier topic: the visible writer. Those who identify themselves to an audience who are, within the blog, disallowed from doing criticism because they will be told: this is my blog, don’t tell me what I can or cannot write about.

This is a subversion of the writing-reading process altogether: the writer cannot be held accountable for what has been said, nor is there a responsibility to the reader that must be upheld.

But self-centered as these discussions on the author are, what this in fact glosses over is the fact of what is important. Is it about who’s talking? Or is it about what’s being said? The struggle with anonymity only really happens when there is an issue that needs to be talked about, and those involved assert ascendancy by saying they will not argue with a penname. And yet, we celebrate writers who had to write with pennames to distinctly pinpoint one type of work over another like Quijano de Manila (National Artist Nick Joaquin); and those who needed to use pennames in order to get published like the woman writers of old. Anonymity does not put into question the issues that are being raised; the other side of that coin in fact asserts that the lack of a known and named author allows for the issue to be highlighted over and above its personalities.

The author is dead we are told. And this, the blog teaches us well. What we are left with then, is the blog as text which can be viewed over and above the author that speaks within it, and which ultimately allows for criticism. What does the confessional blog’s content prove about its writer? What is the context of the confession? How do we even begin to deal with something as personal as the confessional blog?

Well, apparently we don’t.

Sunday, August 27 2006
The Uncanny

There is a two-mindedness to writing a blog.

We want to remain anonymous to many, to bask in the glory of unlimited and limitless space where we may speak without worries. The liberation we experience through the process of writing and maintaining a blog, is without a doubt unparalleled. There is no audience we are answerable to, no censors we must keep in mind – and particularly for the anonymous and confessional blogs – no backlash. Nothing we say can be taken against us; the blogs we own are no one else’s but ours.

And yet, the act of writing itself requires an audience, invisible as it may be on the internet – imagined as it is in our heads. To sit, and write, and “publish” as we’ve done surreptitiously through the blogs is to assume that there is something special in what we have to say, that there is something unique in our articulation, that there is an amount of importance in those words. And that this confession will find resonance in someone from that internet public which we refuse to acknowledge.

The confession as an end in itself is only true for that time when diaries were under lock and key, and everything said was mere articulation – not a publication. The blog has allowed for the private confession to move to a public realm. And in that mere movement, there is no escape from criticism. Or interrogation.

The blog is and must be viewed as text – one that is not safely tucked into the discourse of the private and personal, pretending to be oblivious to audience, while unconsciously demanding it. The blog can be interrogated on the level of its personal assertions, particularly in the context of a country that requires vigilance and involvement, currency and social consciousness. When there are so many pressing issues of the day, what is the relevance of worrying about the way our hair looks?

Within the blog is power derived from the mere articulation of lives, yes. But towards what end?

Thursday, September 14 2006
The Unhappy

Elsewhere in the world, in China, governments fear blogs and close them down; in the U.S., many blogs have been monitored since 9/11. While that is an impingement on human rights, it is also proof of how something so personal is political. And how blogs can change minds, and the world beyond it, precisely because the freedom within it allows for more than just the confessional.

While it’s easy to generalize about my generation’s entrapment in the confessional blog, many have in fact started to use this form to consciously assert the personal as political. While speaking of issues that seem to be self-centered as well – experiences of a flash flood, an academic encounter, a rally – these blog authors are able to shift from the personal to that which dictates this mere articulation: the political.

None of what we say is only release, nothing is free from criticism, and no one is free from interrogation. The moment a blog is published it involves itself in the discourse of writing in this country, one that is to begin with wrought with the discourse of the personal and political, and the refusal to admit that they are inextricably tied.

But these bloggers of my generation are few and far between. And that is the saddest thing.

Friday, September 15 2006
Another Ending.

I wonder sometimes, what was that girl like who thought productivity meant consistently updating her blog? Who thought her own suffering was the most important thing? Who lived in her head and though that she was all important? Who could justify her self-centered concerns and confessions by the fact of her broken heart?

And then I think: that was a girl whose politics became the personal, and whose life was being defined by emotion. That was a girl who had nothing better to do, and who wasted time and money to heal herself through the blog, as if articulation was all that she needed, as if a broken-heart was a matter of life and death.

At that time the self, my self, was all I had going for me; and it was that inch of the internet that my blog occupied – anonymous as it was – that told me I existed and I was fine; that allowed me to live in a tiny little world where only I mattered. That this was also the time when activists started being killed and disappearing, when the Philippines sank deeper into poverty by the day, was irrelevant and unimportant.

Then, I didn’t deserve to have the freedom of the internet and the skill of writing in my hands.

Now that’s a girl – and her blog – worth deleting.

komentaryo

Getting Away With It

Since the ULTRA stampede there seems to be no end to insults added to the injury that is the senseless death of 74 Filipinos and the battery of over 600 others, who remain nameless and faceless, only identifiable by the label masa.

The first insult is the most obvious. Although it took ABS-CBN most of Saturday to take responsibility for the tragedy, when they finally did it also decided to work overtime – and not just in assisting the victims as Tina Monzon-Palma would like to make us believe. In fact, it was pretty obvious that from the beginning, ABS-CBN’s machinery was also working towards damage control, with rhetoric that ranged from “no one wanted this to happen, we are shouldering all expenses, we are doing everything we can to assist the victims of this tragedy, we are taking responsibility” which has of course evolved into “this tragedy is a wake-up call for all of us, to the whole nation, because we are now dealing with the issue of the economy and poverty” as well as “we never treated our audience as animals, we are here for only one reason and that is to entertain”.

This spin of course began with Charo Santos-Concio in pale (peaceful) blue, close to tears, obviously in awe of what had happened; Tina Monzon-Palma in (serene) white, composed and ready to take on the challenge that was the tragedy; and close-ups of the casually-clad ABS-CBN CEO (in a T-shirt and a baseball cap) Gabby Lopez and environmentalist-sister Gina Lopez – both obviously distraught. And then there was Willie Revillame, in tears, and just all over the place. By the afternoon of the tragedy, soundbites from Sharon Cuneta and Joey Reyes via the station’s ETK (showbiz) talkshow were heard, and right there the spin that would be central to damage control began: the real reason for this tragedy is poverty.

A day after the tragedy, ABS-CBN’s biggest and brightest stars, come together in prayer – in public. Televised for their benefit, we are treated to cameras panning the length of pews and across aisles showing ABS-CBN bigwigs with Dolphy and Maricel Soriano, their teen stars and their comediennes, as well as Kris Aquino serving at the altar, all obviously sincere in their grief. And then, the gist of one of their prayers: we are broken and suffering, please heal our ABS-CBN family and guide us in recovering from this trial. And then the CBB (closing billboard) of the mass with the title “Isang Pamamaalam” and one wonders, goodbye to whom? This is perfectly followed by Gary V. opening the variety show ASAP with the song “The Warrior is a Child” – as if speaking of themselves as the child who “lately has been winning battles left and right, but even winners get wounded in the fight”. And a soundbite: people are willing to die for them at ABS-CBN.

Revillame has since been hailed hero by this station; Boy Abunda and Kris Aquino have reiterated that ABS-CBN is helping out in many and various ways, and that they started doing so without being asked; it has been said that they are adopting the families of those who had died for the whole year. As ABS-CBN went back to normal broadcast, its news and current affairs programs as well as their cable news channel ANC continued the spin: Revillame going to each of the wakes of all 74 victims; Gabby Lopez angered by the assertion that the audience had been “treated like animals”; the ABS-CBN Foundation (tax-shield as it is) putting out all the money in order to assist the victims. ANC and shows like The Correspondents have gone on to interview various “experts” on the topic – at least Gigi Grande of the latter had the sense to go for sociologist Randy David who reiterated ABS-CBN’s responsibilities. ANC, on the other hand, has gone into tangential issues: Pinky Webb talking about poverty in this country, and interviewing the wrong resource person – the secretary of the Commission on the Eradication of Poverty who only had government propaganda numbers (only 27% are impoverished in this country!); Cito Beltran talking about debriefing and emotional recovery for victims, as well as looking into the liability of places such as ULTRA and pointing a finger at the city government’s having allowing such a dangerous entrance to the venue; Ces Drilon talking to Michael Tan about the latter’s conclusions on the cultural implications of a tragedy such as this – we are a people that collectively ignores rules and cannot fall in line, we are a people in search of idols.

And therefore, the tragedy?

The biggest and most unforgivable insult of all is the fact that a week after the stampede that killed 74 Filipinos, we continue to prove ourselves incompetent of dealing critically with this tragedy.

Opinion columnists and TV personalities have helped along, if not parroted, the rhetoric of ABS-CBN. Yes, many assert that ABS-CBN, as the organizers, must take responsibility. But practically everyone has zeroed in on various causes of the tragedy – that is, other than the host of a party sending out more invitations than the venue allowed. People have been wont to look at what they call the final analysis, the bigger picture, the bottomline, with many, like Cuneta, asserting that poverty is the reason for this tragedy. Some, like Belinda Olivares-Cunanan and Neal H. Cruz, bring it as high as GMA – she whose responsibility it is to alleviate poverty. And then there are those like Tan, reading the tragedy and saying it is first about idolatry, and then later about a culture of anarchy. This is no different from the many who insist on looking at that crowd and reading them as savages: that stampede, they say, was a mob, this crowd of people were uncivilized creatures who couldn’t, wouldn’t follow simple rules; blame must rest on that person who pushed first. This, even Winnie Monsod accedes to, as she says in her Debate spiel: this is not about poverty, this is about people’s greed, and how they will step on other people just to get what they want.

That day of the incident, when everyone including the Vice President kept mouthing the words “puno’t dulo” I was forgiving; we were all stunned by the incident after all and weren’t ready to point a finger. But now, a week into the tragedy, with ABS-CBN soundbites and images in our heads, with a failed DILG report, and the NBI entering the picture, it just seems like were being way too kind to not point fingers. Or maybe, just plain stupid?

Poverty is the answer to many things, but what is the important question here and now? If we are looking for who could’ve prevented this tragedy, if we are looking for the reason behind this tragedy, if we are looking (as we should) for someone to blame for such senseless deaths, the answer is obvious. The bottomline of this tragedy is ABS-CBN’s lack of preparation, and their underestimation of a hungry, tired, and impoverished crowd’s capability to be rowdy and unruly when lured with the possibility of getting P1 million, and then are told that it would be impossible for them to have that chance. The bottomline is ABS-CBN, proved itself undeserving of the adulation of the masa it says it serves and wants to help, as they did not make sure that this masa would be treated with an organized humane system while waiting for ULTRA gates to open, days before it was suppose to. The bottomline is ABS-CBN chose the ULTRA as venue – bad roads, steep declines, narrow passageways – included, and Wowowee’s producers had command responsibility the moment the people they had invited started to arrive. The bottomline is that Willie Revillame, through ABS-CBN, invited his viewers to come and join their anniversary celebration, dangling money, the house, the jeepney and taxi, and pandering to these masa’s needs and most ardent desires.

The bottomline is really quite simple: ABS-CBN is a capitalist media organization, out to make a profit, on precisely the poverty that many say is the root of all this evil. They may be entertaining this audience along the way, and helping those who are lucky enough to be picked, I will not argue with that. But intention and benevolence is irrelevant to the fact that 74 Filipinos have died and hundreds more were injured on their invitation. This is blood on their hands, no ifs and buts about it.

Poverty is only the context of this tragedy, it is not the bottomline. I do not doubt that it brought the masa there. But it was upon the invitation of Revillame, it was upon the media hype of ABS-CBN, that they flocked to ULTRA oblivious to the lack of a safe, secure and organized system that underlies the “first-come-first-served” invitation. Poverty should not be espoused in the same breath as ABS-CBN’s command responsibility. The more we use the idea of poverty in relation to this tragedy, the higher the probability that ABS-CBN will be able to successfully turn this around and make themselves the victims, if not the heroes, in this all. The more we muddle discussions on the tragedy with big words like poverty, eradication, culture, the more the ABS-CBN machinery will be allowed to abuse the dead, the grieving, and the tragic in the name of profit and ratings. And the greater the possibility that they will get away with it. If they haven’t yet.

Let’s keep an eye on that ball and demand that ABS-CBN pay dearly and equally for the lives lost in that Saturday stampede.

And then let’s talk about poverty, since, as it turns out we all care so much for the masses we say are victimized by this system that has impoverished them. While we’re at it, let’s talk about the farmers of Hacienda Luisita, the workers of Nestle, as we do the urban poor who flocked to ULTRA. Let’s make the past and present governments pay for their irresponsibility. Let’s deal with the fact that many of us only want to speak of poverty now, that 74 people have died for nothing and no one, in ULTRA. Then let’s prove that we can keep our collective eye on that bigger ball. And involve ourselves in solving that bigger problem.

As for Mareng Winnie, I tell you this: try living off of one meal a day, or minimum wage, and let’s see if you don’t start making a distinction between greed and desperation.