I watched with amusement the way that the controversy over Beauty Gonzales’s jewelry at the GMA Ball unraveled, with the call-out coming from a member of the academe, Marian Pastor Roces, angry and seemingly shooting-from-the-hip, done via a Facebook status. On the one hand, understandable, if one were living in the bubble of one’s algorithm, where such righteous indignation would get the expected likes and shares and comments of support. On the other, a real missed opportunity to engage in what could be a teaching moment, on a public platform, where a call-out could be phrased in a way that is calm and collected, an opening to a discussion instead of a door slammed shut on one.

Were there less anger about the gold Beauty was wearing, we could’ve started a discussion about the manner in which artefacts from our dead are excavated and brought into private hands. How does that even happen? Is it always about greed outweighing respect for collective heritage? Is it greed and the wilful disregard of the law? Or could it be an utter lack of knowledge about what exactly to do with artefacts of our past?

This was of course layered with the non-discussion on those artefacts being ear and eye covers for the dead. But at a time when we have been culturally changed by six years of a leadership that thought nothing of dead bodies, at a present where everyone with a modicum of power (including those in the arts and culture and heritage sectors) can be seen “flaunting excess”, don’t we know of more grotesque — “odious” — things? (more…)