Archive for category: Current

(Rejoinder to the previous entry)

A reader rightfully asked, “Where’s the outrage over F. Sionil Jose’s offensive article?”

A cursory search of reactions on Mr. Jose’s controversial article, “Why Filipinos are shallow,” shows a somewhat overwhelming number of favorable responses.  This is disturbing, yet at the same time expected: the response to the “mephitic anodyne” is an attempt at self-reflexivity bordering on self-mutilation.  It’s as if to say that we’re beyond redemption, much less saying that every allegation and accusation made in a public forum against the Filipino is only true because it hurts.

The reason why it eats at me is because it cringes upon Filipino cultures.

Ten years ago, the foundations of America – and the free world – were shaken by the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  After ten years and countless fronts in the Middle East later, America continues to mourn, in what can only be described as a protracted outpouring of national grief.

One would surmise that the wounds of America would have healed ten years after the tragedy.  It should be: Osama bin Laden is dead, Saddam Hussein has been executed, and the rest of the world has changed.  Under the Obama administration, the United States faces a new war far more dangerous and with more far-reaching consequences than terrorism and fundamentalist extremism.  Yet today America continues to spread the message of its victimization: one that cost countless lives in a war whose fundamentals are still being questioned.

For all intents and purposes of bias, I like the idea of having an ad man as the Tourism Secretary.  In Philippine advertising circles, no one has credentials like Ramon Jimenez.  True to form, Mon Jimenez says that the Philippines should be as easy to sell as Chickenjoy.  But before this is construed as a hectoring tirade against the idea of selling (on social media), this is more of an insighting exercise/mindfuck on how to sell.

At first, I thought editing James Soriano’s infamous Manila Bulletin column should be enough. Yet after reading a lot of opinions about the issue, I think that there’s more to it than just a case of bad writing.

It’s a case of bad perspective.

Ludwig Wittgenstein writes that the limits of our language are the limits of our world.  Let’s take that a step further: the social reality that is language, and the use of it, uncovers other social – and personal – realities.  In a somewhat condescending tone (which may be attributed to the column being just a first draft), James refers to Tagalog as the “language of the streets:” one attributed to the tindera, the manong drayber, the katulong, the people who make a sheltered and privileged life possible.

This isn’t a rant about the national language, though.

On that note, James reveals the pink elephant in the room: the tindera, manong drayber, and katulong are people perfectly capable of learning English, given the right opportunities and means.  Yet these are people who didn’t have the privilege of a private school education.  They didn’t have mothers who bought flash cards to teach them the English alphabet.  They didn’t have the English-dubbed cartoons for entertainment on a Sunday afternoon.  They didn’t have private tutors to teach them the basics of the language.  It’s often the case that they learned the basics from decrepit, overcrowded classrooms, punctuated with the lack of books, threadbare uniforms, and the many breakfasts they skipped to get schooling.  Underscored by teachers and educational instititutions that lack motivation or resources.

Is English the language of privilege?  When we lend a perspective beyond pride in one’s own cultural artefacts, to learn and use English is a privilege in a condition marked by social inequalities, economic inequities, and human injustice.  Yes, it is a language of privilege, and of the privileged.  It is a means to get other privileges, like a career where “excellent communication skills” (read: English) are a key to success.  People privileged enough to get an education that emphasizes English get the privilege of learning English, which in turn leads to a privileged life.

The same is true with so many other things; like robotics, elementary Latin, religion, advanced mathematics.  We cannot divorce the way we are educated – formally or informally – from our economic standing and our social capabilities.  Rather than become a key to success, education – especially public education – becomes a way to reaffirm the status quo.  Education may be the way out from poverty and deprivation, but if the education system is itself poor and deprived, then it does nothing to foster the thirst for knowledge, much less how adept one is with another language.

The rich boy has all the opportunities to become richer because of the advanced computer classes in his school and the English-only policy in its corridors.  The poor boy has all the chances to stay poor because he can’t afford to pay for the rich boy’s tuition, instead learning English from underpaid schoolteachers, or learning its halting forms in the streets if he’s not in school.  Through no fault of his own, may I add: the lack of investment in basic education on the public, national level makes it so.

It is that lack of investment that reflects itself in so many aspects of society: employment, politics, the banalities of everyday existence.  It is not an issue of what the national language is, but how language is used in the nation.

Which brings me to a very important point: education, the Great Equalizer of all opportunities for people to succeed, is not immune from the distinctions and realities of social and economic class.  In fact, education can even be a weapon or a tool to keep things the way they are, instead of improving the lot of people in the world.  In his self-deprecating (?) way, James Soriano pinned it right then and there: the fact that he is not the son of a tindera or a manong drayber or a katulong – and enjoys the services of those beneath him in the social system – establishes the fact that he, indeed, speaks the language of the privileged, the wealthy, and the learned by virtue of privilege and wealth.  Privilege, wealth, and learning in their most material, perceptible forms: money, resources, social capital, and yes, warsh-warsh English.

Which makes him representative of the sentiments of that top tier of society that uses language – among other things – to reinforce the status quo, to affirm oppression, to doom the poor to a state of poverty simply because of the way they talk.

It’s not syntax, semantics, or structure that lends value to a system of language.  Rather, it is the way this language is used in society.  Many of the stupidest, most idiotic ideas find a perfect means of expression in the English language.  If anything it is the use of language as a weapon for oppression that James Soriano hints at.  And in the process, reveals his presence on that side of the equation.  The side that Other-s the tindera, the manong drayber, and the katulong to that condition because of the way they talk.

There is an expression in Filipino: mata-pobre.  Connect the dots.

At the wake of Mideo Cruz’s controversial “Poleteismo” are conversations about censorship, engagement, and even the connections of the work to something like the Reproductive Health bill.  Yet this piece raises a very valid argument:

Then I realized that this whole controversy is not an issue of whether Cruz’s artworks are offensive or not, this is an issue of how most Filipinos look at art. The country doesn’t lack artists who impart challenging and progressive ideas, the country lacks a refined appreciation for art.

- CJ de Silva, Think Before You Get Offended

Her point is very important, in my view.  Think about it: our museums are in the cities, out of the way of those in the provinces, and charge fees that are beyond the reach of the poor.  Art is not given enough priority in Philippine public education, and in sectarian schools religion takes precedence over art and music.  Art is a minor subject among minor subjects.  The museum trip is treated as a way to leave school premises to get kids to look at woodcarvings and canvasses more than a practical application of what was learned and taught in the classroom.

Here, those who enter museums, collect art, and appreciate various pieces are those who can afford it, and/or those who are educated in it.  The costs go beyond entrance fees and currency like transport costs and what to have for lunch.  These include opportunity costs, social costs, long-term investments in education that translate into trips to the museum or the gallery.  We cannot eat art.  Art is something luxurious, an indulgence of the rich and the educated.

The Church, on the other hand, is free to enter, free to join, and close to the poor.  People settle around the Church, because it is an important part of their lives.  To go to Church is to feed the soul, to get a step closer to the Kingdom of Heaven, to create the moral foundations of life.  Art is not an out-there interpretation of some part of life or some philosophical school, but integral to worship and praise.  People would understand the teachings – and the demands – of the Church more than those in museums and galleries, for the simple fact that the Church is closer to them.  And when the Church says that a crucifix with a phallus is sacrilege, they would believe in the same.  Somehow that meaning resonates with them better than what was meant by the artist.

(Side note: we have entire institutions engaged in the business of censorship for decades now and here we are crying foul over a piece of artwork, but that’s another story.)

The fact that things like artistic merit should, in Dean Andy Bautista’s words, “be left to the sound and wise sophistications of our literati, culturati, and artistes” is to forsake our common stakes in promoting – much less creating – art.  Most arguments against Mideo Cruz’s work, in fact, aren’t literary, cultural, and artistic as they should be.  We lack a refined appreciation for art, but we have a very refined relationship with religion.  Many of the negative reactions to the work of Mideo Cruz weren’t born out of artistic viewpoints, but institutional ones born out of the canons of fundamentalist readings of Catholicism.

At the end of the day the circles by which Cruz’s work are praised or chastised are not those that the rest of the people walk in.  Things like food, wages, and shelter are still not yet addressed, or met enough for them to be concerned with the pursuit of art.  The best, most critical appreciation, creation, and evaluation of art is done by those who are nourished.  Not only physically, but intellectually and creatively.  The reaction to “Poleteismo” should be that point where we should re-evaluate, re-position, and reinforce the position of art in society.

It all starts with providing more time and resources to art in the educational system.  There must be a way to configure the current curriculum to accommodate more art education and art studies, at the very least at the secondary level.  And all of this cannot be divorced from the state and the other sectors of society to meet the essential ends of human survival: food, shelter, clothing, and education, so as to bring people closer to realizing artistic and creative potentials.  With that nourished body and mind, the conversations about art become artistic.  There must be ways of bringing art closer to the people.  Like indigenous art, conceptual art, traditional art, even street graffiti.  There are ways to bring out art outside our galleries and into daily human experience.

Mao Zedong writes that there is a need for the unity between the political criterion and the artistic criterion.  True, but as long as our society has a chronic problem meeting basic needs, we cannot be prepared enough to meet peripheral needs.  As long as we have a problem meeting the ends that are political, we will have very serious problems meeting the ends that are artistic.  The state of art cannot be divorced from the state of society.  If our people are hungry, our art is hungry.  If our people are sick, our art is sick.  If our people are not educated, our art is not educated.  To solve the problems of art, we need to solve the problems of society first, and perhaps use art as a way to liberate and emancipate the people.  The way Mideo Cruz’s piece was chastised and censored is proof that we need more nourishing.

Beyond the notion of the starving artist, malnourished art comes from a malnourished society.  We cannot feed the painting, but indeed we can feed the painter.  More than that, we can feed those who see the painting, and have a common stake in it.

We live with the ambitions – and perhaps even illusions – of the “civilized world.”  The veneer of liberty, politics, and democracy have somehow shielded us from atrocities, from barbarism.  Great strides in knowledge have rendered the concept of “race” obsolete, and now we embrace cultural and social diversity.  For all our differences, there are more things that hold us together than keep us apart.

Yet we live in a world where an atrocity is deemed by a fanatic as “necessary.”

Freedom is somehow tolerant to a fault, that even the most extreme and asinine ideas find equal and firm footing in free speech and assembly.  We accept them not because we agree with them, but because they are part of the marketplace of ideas.  The world is full of homophobic, racist, xenophobic charlatans who spend days and weeks and months preaching their twisted zealotry to the masses with no sign of outrage.

Yet that act of freedom ends where one begins, and it doesn’t have to be murder.  Murder is a very distant line crossed.  It is a line made in the picket lines of anti-gay religious fanatics, in racists smashing windows, in xenophobes proclaiming the most obsolete and discredited ideas of the last century to be the salvation of the few.

The promise of multiculturalism is in harmony, in mutual learning, in sharing.  Yet some prefer the chaos of isolation, the belief in a false sense of superiority, and simply refuse to share.  We continue to live with people who believe against immigration, who think of other cultures and religions as inferior, who think of the wonderful melting pot of cultures as a parasitic infection that threatens the purity of “races.”  Liberty, politics, and democracy may have sought to change these misnomers, but somehow a terrorist like Anders Breivik sought solace in them.

The crusade of Breivik was against multiculturalism, and it behooves us all to be crusaders for it.  Not because we seek to avenge the 85 (and counting) people who died in Norway, but because we seek to establish that freedom means life, that freedom means respect, and freedom means recognition.  Not because it took a bomb and an automatic weapon to trigger our sensitivities towards the existence of terrorist ideologies with terrorist actions and consequences, but because we’re all products and beneficiaries of what a terrorist sought to destroy.  We join in a crusade for greater understanding, recognition, and respect of multiculturalism and the diversity of cultures brought about by immigration and exodus.

While one person with a belief is equal to the force of thousands who only have interests, no idea is worth the senseless death of one.  While one person with a belief is equal to the force of thousands who only have interests, people with the belief of peace and harmony far outnumber those who believe in terrorism as a solution.  No one man, in his right mind and with respect and faith to others around him, will ever believe the twisted beliefs of Breivik and endorse the violence he caused.

Today, we mourn.  We cannot fathom the extent of grief for the victims, for the survivors, and the nation of Norway.  Today, we rage.  We cannot bear to forgive the act, nor can we bear to endorse the beliefs he stood for.  We are beneficiaries of the differences he loathed and despised, of things he sought to destroy because of his fanatical, maniacal beliefs.  Today, we stand as one, with recognition and respect for color, place of origin, differences in culture.  Our greatest revenge is not to see him brought to justice and stand behind bars with a diverse group of criminals and malcontents, but in living the dream of harmony he so disagreed with.

And yet we are shocked, for in this free world – where we always lived in complete freedom from people who shared an ideology like his – we saw a monstrosity take place in our midst.  We are unnerved.