komentaryo

Paolo Roxas #TikTokNotes #Halalan2025

The first time I saw Paolo Roxas on my Duterte-Marcos Tiktok algorithm was in December 2024. It seemed apolotical enough: the older brother arriving to the hugs and joy of siblings Pepe and Pilar. It was only then that I realized that this tall moreno was in fact Mar Roxas’s son. Soon enough it was clear that he was running for public office, and not because there was any campaign slogans or ayuda content—as I have seen in much of this Tiktok algo since mid-2024. Instead there he was, going around the community, speaking in the vernacular to manangs and manongs, playing with kids, throwing some high fives around. On Christmas there was some dancing, and recently, a video of him singing Top Of The World in a karindera. On Valentine’s there were the default jokes and content about love.

Across this whole time, no sloganeering, no early campaigning. Just content of Paolo walking riding a motorbike with a squad of bikers, or having fun with the community, and of course some videos with the special participation of Pepe and Pilar.

It was only last night when I realized that despite seeing Roxas content often enough, I actually don’t know what he’s running for. And while campaign strategists might say this is a bad thing, a failure of the campaign; I think it’s a welcome change from the same content from majority of politicians on this algorithm: trend-dancing (from Janette Garin to Bong Revilla, Bam Aquino to Kiko Pangilinan, Isko Moreno etal—Imee Marcos has been doing it since late 2023), giving out ayuda from ampaw (Isko Moreno) to appliances (Vilma Santos / Luis Manzano), to bigas (that woman fighting it out with Vico Sotto in Pasig), to anyone at all who campaigns with Speaker Romualdez—who looks like corruption personified.

This is a tiny fraction of what is on this algorithm every day. It really is a display of the utter shamelessness with which politicians mount their campaigns. And it’s easy to know what the majority of content is, because when Paolo Roxas comes on, and his content is devoid of all these things, it just stands out.

That, and the fact that he is obviously not his father’s son. There is a charm here that his father could not even begin to muster, a connection with community that is not about looking down on them.

Recently, I saw a photograph of Pres. Manuel Roxas on a Philippines Free Press cover, and I thought: he looks familiar. I meant Paolo. The charm is there, too. Must’ve skipped a generation?

It is telling that my next thought is: well, at least someone will give Sandro, Baste, etal a run for their money. ***

 

komentaryo

Llamas, Heydarian, Esguerra: the post-Duterte macho punditry

The thing with six years of a fascist leadership like Duterte’s, built on fragile masculinity and misogyny and violent rhetoric and male chauvinism is that it changes us culturally. Women and the LGBTQIA+ community are more sensitive, and therefore angrier, and rightfully so. We are also exhausted.

But the men. Oh the men.

It’s one thing to have had to deal with the likes of Banat By and Jeffrey Celis during Duterte years and the first years or so of Marcos governance when SMNI continued to give them a platform. It’s another thing altogether to find that even men who should know better, ones who claim they are better, media personalities even, can use exactly the same tone and tenor, the arrogance, the same machismo, as that which the six years of Duterte had enabled and encouraged.

And of course this could only surface at scale when they are talking about a woman like Sara Duterte. Because there is nothing like a woman in rage to get men frothing at the mouth. (more…)

kultura

The Metro Manila Film Festival: As Martial Law corpse

In pandemic year 2020, when the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) had to go online, and it was impossible to do the pomp and pageantry of what has been sold as an annual Philippine film “tradition”, Sen. Imee Marcos claimed it wholly and completely as a Ferdinand Marcos creation from Martial Law year 1975, when the best picture film was “Diligin Mo ng Hamog ang Uhaw na Lupa”.

We liked to dismiss the Marcoses’ claims to culture pre-2022, but none of what Senator Imee says there is a lie.

And despite little of it probably getting into your algorithm, neither is it a lie that in 2024, First Lady Liza Marcos was front and center (literally) of MMFF, not just in the photos for the launch of its purported 50th year in July 2024, but also with her husband, PresidenAt Bongbong at the Konsyerto sa Palasyo para sa pelikulang Pilipino on December 16, and throughout the year, since February, ostensibly stepping into the Imeldific role of joining hands with film industry stakeholders on the promise of supporting the film industry. That the outcome of this is yet another cultural organization called CineGang, Inc. that’s supposed to promote local films to a global audience, which apparently means needing a fancy new office in Makati City, private investors, golf tournament fundraisers, and a Malacañang-hosted first meeting with the First Lady herself in November 2024, is a conversation for another time.

For now, the more important conversation is how it is that after 49 years, the MMFF is still lacking in transparency and credibility, and remains riddled by controversy. That it was created by Marcos Sr. during Martial Law speaks to why.

(more…)

kultura

Llamas, Heydarian, Esguerra: The post-Duterte macho punditry

The thing with six years of a fascist leadership like Duterte’s, built on fragile masculinity and misogyny and violent rhetoric and male chauvinism is that it changes us culturally. Women and the LGBTQIA+ community are more sensitive, and therefore angrier, and rightfully so. We are also exhausted.

But the men. Oh the men.

It’s one thing to have had to deal with the likes of Banat By and Jeffrey Celis during Duterte years and the first years or so of Marcos governance when SMNI continued to give them a platform. It’s another thing altogether to find that even men who should know better, ones who claim they are better, media personalities even, can use exactly the same tone and tenor, the arrogance, the same machismo, as that which the six years of Duterte had enabled and encouraged.

And of course this could only surface at scale when they are talking about a woman like Sara Duterte. Because there is nothing like a woman in rage to get men frothing at the mouth.

I will admit that the impulse to label SaraD for her year-end political performances was strong. After all, we had come from six years of old man Duterte doing those midnight madness press cons, and her Blairwitch Project version just brought it all back. Consider too that those press conferences about imagining beheadings and wanting to exhume the dead and talking to assassins to take down the Pres-FirstLady-SpeakerOfTheHouse trio were happening alongside Congressional Inquiries where she refused to take the oath and Senate Inquiries where she shiminetted her way through all the questions about accountability and public funds.

Which is all to say that it was easy, too too easy, to simply fall back on calling her every kind of crazy after the two presscons. After all, we called her father that, too. But what is unique to SaraD is that macho commentary reduced her to only that. And given the digital and media platforms that have the same male opinions on repeat, then it is normalized as discourse for a certain algorithm: the woman in rage is an unhinged woman.

Ronald Llamas is at the forefront of this male chauvinism, but it is because he is being given the platform across mainstream media’s Storycon (also hosted by men, with a woman on live video) and guestings on shows like Karen Davila’s Headstart, as he always is on digital platforms from Christian Esguerra to Richard Heydarian, and is co-host of Bilyonaryo’s four-male panel called Kwatro Kantos. These hosts practically give Llamas free rein over conversations, and in relation to the SaraD press cons already frame the conversations so that it justifies the sexism.

Read the rest on Vera Files.

komentaryo

How are we under this Marcos presidency?

Still breathing a sigh of relief. At least that’s me, half the time, three years in.

Having shifted quite easily from campaigning heavily against a Marcos return in 2022, to watching BBM perform his Presidential becoming, it was only a matter of time before I realized I had eased into this new status quo with a voice in the back of my head: thank heavens it’s not another version of Duterte. At least not a fascist of the same scale, at least not going off the rails at midnight press cons, at least not falling back on threats and fear mongering to justify violent anti-people government policies, at least not shameless and disgusting in all the worst ways populists across the world are.

Yes, BBM is still a Marcos, yes. And yes, he is still not taking responsibility for the murder of citizens and the plunder of national coffers during his father’s time, yes.

But.

This Marcos is not a Duterte. Not so far. (more…)