Insipidity and beauty pageants

Loi Landicho, now known to many in the blogosphere as the political satirist Professional Heckler, was features editor when I took the exams for apprenticeship in the UPLB Perspective, the official organ of the State University’s Los Banos campus.  The year was 1994.

 

For the features exam, Loi foisted at least two alternative topics for examinees to write about. One of the topic choices I remember vividly was Manila’s hosting of the 1994 Miss Universe beauty pageant and the controversies surrounding it. I cannot recall his exact question, but it was that pageant related topic that I chose to work on. On the spot, I scribbled down on at least five sheets of long yellow lined paper my thoughts on the highly talked-about pageant.

 

I only saw the 1994 pageant on our old malfunctioning colored television back in Albay, but having had the youthful audacity of a pageant enthusiast, I could then easily churn out important details of the event and be (pseudo)polemical about the controversies that it somehow invited. It was from factual details stored in my long-term memory that I spun out the analysis of the story. I passed the exam and became a campus journalist of some sort.

 

I was told later on by one of my senior colleagues in the paper that Loi gave me high scores for the exam (which I never confirmed anyway). I would like to believe that it was not so much my prose style that got me into campus journalism-LB style. It was perhaps the fascination for details of a freshman student that probably caught the attention of my would-be editor.

 

In hindsight, I believe it was beauty pageants that actually added texture to my otherwise boring student life and the relatively more interesting life that came after.

 

Unattractive and overbearing at times, I probably lead one of the most uninteresting lifestyles in the queer universe. But thanks to beauty pageants and the nuggets of wisdom—yes, wisdom—they have given me, I have at least been able to experience varying shades and textures of green and grey in my life journey.

 

Beauty pageants have undeniably added flavor to my personal style—whether in the teaching-learning situation or conversation with friends.

 

With their proclivity for impressive and memorable stylized performances, pageants have inspired me to be conscious that my vehicles of expression are as important as what is expressed itself. In my own terms, I had to reinvent the dated journalistic notion that one has to write and speak or communicate to express and NOT to impress. Beauty pageants have taught me that in the market place of ideas, one has to do both—to express AND impress, because victory almost always awaits those who can generate substance and fashion it in style.

 

And when I’m down and troubled and I need a helping hand…I find refuge in talking and acting and playing out anything pageant-y. Pageants are a subject of playful mimicry—whether I’m in the virtual world or the world as we know it biophysically. I sashay my way out of my shell—my study area or the university library thinking I’m a star or the reigning title holder (Of course, except for a very few distracted library habitués, nobody notices because everybody is just so busy dealing with the weight of academic work imposed on him).

 

I would also consider pageants as a semiotic resource—a lens for making sense of the world. Pageants can offer illuminating examples of how one infinitesimally small being in the infinitesimally expanding universe can make his life worth living. Isn’t it that pageants tell us to maintain our grace under pressure, display candor under harsh interrogation, adapt competently to the situation at hand, stand up when we fall (“whether on or off stage”)?

 

On the other hand, they tell us that while victory is always sweet, it is OK to lose because there is life for everybody after a debacle or a failure and that there would definitely be people who will still love you “even if the crown is no longer on your head” or hasn’t even touched your head at all.

 

And more importantly, even if there is truth to the claim that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder but some have more power to behold than others”, one can always celebrate the beauty in oneself. Because celebrating beauty is never the monopoly of the powerful few. Beauty has been has been scattered all over the universe for everyone to witness and feel and yes, play with! The littlest gestures, the slightest movements or simplest poses, the most candid utterances—those devoid of contrived profundity, which is something one would find in this prose, hahaha—they can turn perceived imperfections into something fabulously perfect! And that is beautiful.

 

At this point, it is also a welcome respite from the burden of having to write a 250-page dissertation. It makes me hopeful and excited and exuberant even on an unproductive day. Needless to say, it keeps me sane. 

A Little Act of Terror on the First Sunday of Advent

Somebody threw a firecracker at me last night. Yes, a firecracker.

The firecracker blew up close to my abdominal area. I was a bit hurt by the little explosion, but it didn’t leave any noticeable mark on my skin (I guess my growing belly is thick enough). It did leave a conspicuous piece of evidence, though, by tearing the lower part of the shirt I was wearing last night. It was a relatively costly shirt I bought just more than a month ago when my laundry was piling up in the dormitory. The firecracker also almost tore my favorite slim fit jeans.

The incident, which had been boggling me the whole night, happened at around 9:30 pm while I was inside a jeepney coming from SM North EDSA on its way to the UP Campus (I was seated in front of the public utility vehicle and was close to the driver’s seat). It happened along the street connecting Quezon Avenue to the East Avenue—a route where one quite normally sees the pavements crowded by informal settlers, street kids, and more likely, street gangs. Incidentally, it happened in a quite familiar location in what is touted as the richest city in Metro-Manila.

I had been passing by that route in the past few weeks and it was relatively safe until last night. When that little act of terror happened, I was a bit taken aback. That I could actually be a victim of a firecracker was farthest from my mind on the first Sunday of Advent. While I initially felt disgust towards whoever did such an irresponsible act (I suspect it was committed by one of the street kids or a member of a teen gang), I couldn’t get myself to be so furious to the extent of getting off the jeeney, confronting the group of kids along the street, and reporting the incident to the nearest barangay (village) hall.  Besides, I was also afraid something worse might happen to me if I did all that in a zone where I would be treated as the intruder and never as the victim.

When I sniffed the burnt smell on my shirt and felt the hole on it, I began to imagine the worst that could have happened.  The firecracker could have exploded on my face, but thank God, it didn’t. It could have bruised me, but it only burned and tore my more-than-a-month old maroon polo shirt. It could have been a bomb—which is not impossible given the tense political environment in this country—but it was just a firecracker.

And then my mind swirled and twirled and whirled a bit more.

That could not have happened had I stayed put in the dormitory working on and analyzing my texts on a Sunday afternoon. Or I could have been spared from the incident had I opted to take a cab to the campus and paid ten times the jeeney fare (which is ten Philippine pesos). Or the kids or teens wouldn’t have inflicted that little act of terror on a commuter like me if an Efren Penaflorida or a CNN Hero of the Year were in that community keeping the kids busy with books in a pushcart library. Or they wouldn’t even have bothered playing with firecrackers and inflicting discomfort on passersby had there been a Manny Pacquiao boxing event scheduled at that time. Or they wouldn’t be cramping that part of the city had the local and national executives been busy doing their jobs rather than politicking. Or there wouldn’t have been informal settlers and urban poor causing pedestrians and commuters discomfort had the wealth of this country been equitably distributed!

Or, …I think I have digressed too much.

I guess when the Christmas season is fast approaching, such untoward incidents happen more often.  In a country ravaged by poverty and usual elitist indifference, the poor, I suppose, don’t seem to have much of a choice but to inflict little acts of terror in order to rivet attention from those who they perceive to be in more comfortable stations in life. Unfortunately, their victims, more often than not, are those that aren’t that well off—ordinary people who also struggle in the big city.  Because those who are really comfortable are usually shielded from those little acts of terror in their fancy cars, and perhaps, at this time, are just too busy prettifying their swanky houses with glittering Christmas lights.

(5:38 am, Room 4, Bonifacio Hall Dormitory, UP School of Labor and Industrial Relations)

On gay marriage and the parliamentary struggle

The fear that an LGBT (Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) group in the party list system would usher in the erosion of the Filipino family is unfounded.

Of course, the fear emanates from the fact that some sectors of the LGBT community are advocating gay marriage, a position which allegedly poses a potential “threat” to existing legal and constitutional provisions on “the Filipino family.”  (Ang Ladlad, the party list group recently denied recognition by the Commission on Elections, has, in earlier reports, however, clarified that gay marriage is not among its agenda.)

It should be made clear to the public that an LGBT party list group in congress doesn’t necessarily mean a vote for gay marriages. The issue of gay marriage, after all, does not and should not define an LGBT representation in a hall of democracy.

On the one hand, there are other (in fact, more pronounced) forms of discrimination against gay persons in various spheres of public life (work place, school, government offices, etc.) that need to be addressed by such a representation. On the other hand, there is still (a healthy) debate going on among gay circles on the issue of gay marriage. In other words, not all gay people are advocating gay marriage.

I for one am not convinced with the idea of gay marriages.

I do not believe marriage is the only legitimate place or “the holy ground” for the expression of love including consensual, responsible, and yes, passionate, genital expression. To embrace the idea of marriage as the only legitimate ground for such human expression is to submit and be complicit to the heterosexist invention that human love is circumscribed. I don’t think there is anything liberating about that.

What is liberating to me is when respect and recognition are accorded to partnerships that do not necessarily fit within the heterosexist definition of marriage.  Respecting these partnerships would mean not using them as bases for discriminating people when applying for employment or for admission to schools or for promotions in the work setting. Recognizing these partnerships would mean an end to their construction in media and public spaces as objects of spectacle—as curious cases of human intimacy (what is so curious about two people loving each other?) and as targets of ridicule.

Such respect for and recognition of the diversity in human-to-human relationships can only be achieved, though, within a context that is devoid of feudalistic, unequal power relations, which ultimately sustain the hegemony of heterosexism in Philippine society in particular and in human societies at large.

In other words, there are bigger social problems that are beyond the immediate concerns of gay people but that a gay representation in Congress should pursue and address. These social problems (e.g., militarization in the countryside) may appear to be remotely related to what is purported as the “gay cause” (e.g., an end to discrimination), but whose resolution remain significant to the gay cause and other liberatory causes nonetheless. They are problems within which the experiences of Filipino gay people and other minority groups are deeply implicated.

Addressing these social problems through parliamentary struggle and through representation in the Philippine hall of democracy should therefore not be denied of gay people and other minority groups. 

 

"Half-full" and some musings on an early Friday morning

(Written at 1:38 am at Room 4, Bonifacio Hall Dormitory, School of Labor and Industrial Relations, UP Diliman Campus)

It’s 1:38 in the morning and I can’t get myself to sleep.  There are a lot of things going on in my head; chief of them is how to get a chapter on what to me is a rather unexciting period of recent Philippine presidential history over and done with.

Yesterday, I was supposed to resume academic work after a brief vacation in my hometown in Albay. But it was gloomy the whole day in this side of the world, and so was the progress of my writing.

There were a few bright spots though.

 First, I was able to successfully send via facsimile to my home department at NUS a completed form of the renewal of my research scholarship for another year—my last year—an ‘endowment’ without which I would have difficulty surviving in a very expensive city-state.

Second, I was able to procure back issues of the journal called Public Policy, some of whose articles I need to have some sort of an academic handle of the Philippine socio-political context of the last twenty years.

Not to be forgotten was my meeting with Jas—a former student, an aspiring pedagogue, and most likely, a future colleague—who gave me a glimpse into another interesting version of life after getting a UP diploma and who, I’m very glad to know, has shown great interest in education work and how its complexities can be viewed using a disciplined lens. She is now doing her MA in Language Education in the Diliman campus.

Another interesting moment was getting myself (and Jas) suddenly interested in what the ‘museum’ in the Museum Café, located in the (literal) margins of Diliman’s Vargas Museum and the Filipiniana Research Center, has to offer.

Incidentally that afternoon, after sipping hot lemon tea and taking several measured bites of some fancy slice of cake with Jas at the somewhat funky Museum Café, there was the opening of an exhibit of art works featuring youtube star Juana Change in various modes of undress. Her curvaceous, voluptuous body on canvas and in photos tells me that I was right when I foisted sometime ago that “flab is fabulous.”

Body beautiful doesn’t always mean Slimmer’s World or Vicky Belo. (If you are in Quezon City, do visit the exhibit at the Vargas Museum in the UP campus. It is a testament to what art can do in tweaking, if not recreating, reality to the advantage of those deliberately disadvantaged by big business and consumerism. Art thumps advertising this time.)

The icing on the cake offered by that visual feast of an opening exhibit was getting to hobnob with the delight of the (contemporary) Philippine art world. There, Jas and I came face to face, side by side, with a section of the Who’s Who of Philippine Art (thirty six artists were there according to Juana) – a crowd with whom Mr. Carlo J. Caparas, Malacanang’s or Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s National Artist for Visual Arts and Film, would probably detest hobnobbing.

But perhaps, the highlight of my Thursday was reading Conrado de Quiros’s rather optimistic take on the world economic slump—which has incidentally taken its toll even on scholarship grant packages offered to so-called foreign talents by “posh” global universities. How he capped his article captures the kind of optimism he projects in his usually captivating prose imbued with his characteristic criticality: “Maybe in this hour of want, we may discover abundance.” 

Such point is made resonant by an earlier passage in the piece: “On a still broader plane, I am glad the slump has happened because it forces us to wonder about the things that matter in life. It’s not just a question of settling for less, or even doing more with less, it’s also a question of doing better with other things. If the slump makes us a little less material girls and boys, if it makes us a little more spiritual travelers or seekers, then it’s worth its weight in, well, gold” (“There’s the Rub,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, 5 November 2009).

For some of us whose life stations are too remote from enjoying the guilty pleasures of the rich, the slump is nothing new. It’s same same.  In one of our conversations some time ago, when the world was just starting to come to terms with the reality of an economic slowdown, a friend said that the “crisis” shouldn’t be a problem for the majority of the Filipinos who have known poverty all their lives. She adds, “The Philippines has been in an economic crisis for centuries; what else is new?”

Arguably, the slowdown only poses to be a major problem to those who aspire for or are used to the media-constructed “good life.” And I will have to agree with Mr. de Quiros that the crisis should give the affluent—and even those of us who do not belong to the affluent category but more often than not get deluded by media constructions—time to reflect on “what matters in life.”

But it’s not actually the critical optimism in Mr. de Quiros’s article that struck me the most. It is the portion on developing a sense of wonder and on being a spiritual seeker or traveler that did. And these are apparently recurring themes in his essays with or without an economic crisis at hand.

My 12-hour day trip by bus from Legaspi to Cubao on Wednesday actually rekindled that sense of wonder and I would like to thank Mr. de Quiros for helping me articulate what I had felt throughout the journey.

On my way to the Philippine’s capital region last Wednesday, I realized things haven’t really changed significantly in the regions south of Metro Manila since I left the country to study in a foreign land. No, things haven’t really changed significantly since I started traveling fifteen years ago from Legaspi to the Southern Tagalog region to study communication arts in UP Los Banos.

In the countryside—which easily dwarfs in proportion the business districts of any major city in the Philippines, you still see public school children in worn out uniforms and tired slippers earnestly braving long distances of stony, dusty sidewalks just to be able to get to school, and then you wonder how many of them would enter universities and read the kind of books you are excited to devour at your own pace and during your precious “study time.”

In the countryside, you still see public school buildings ingloriously painted with the names of some self-indulgent local politicians or of a national leader, who, in asserting her legitimacy, makes sure no stone is left unturned, and you wonder whether the many books and articles providing incisive critiques of the personalistic and patronage oriented character of Philippine politics ever get to seep through the Filipino public mind.

In the countryside, you constantly see parents of these school children carrying heavy loads of produce from the farms they till, and you wonder whether topnotch research from the best schools in the country has ever made the lives of these farmers better or lighter.

Still astonished by what one discovers when looking through the glass windows of an air-conditioned provincial bus, I have begun to wonder on the relevance of my research agenda. It is an unwelcome thought especially at this time when I could actually visualize a homestretch in a year’s time. But it is a thought worth pondering nonetheless.

(At this point, I couldn’t get off my mind a question purportedly posed by a student to Dr. Ruanni Tupas when he was still teaching in UP Diliman, “Will Critical Discourse Analysis feed the poor?” Hell, I don’t even know how to deal with that question squarely at this point!)

I don’t know if deluding myself into thinking that I am “ahead of my time” would work this time.  (With candor, I am inclined to think that a “sophisticated” reading of Philippine presidential discourse—in English—is something that would be better appreciated in a more developed Philippine context.)

I am inclined, though, to accommodate the unwelcome thought, that source of disturbance, for a while, if only to keep reminding myself that it will take more than my modest scholarship to create even a minor dent in the Philippine countryside.

 ***

Warsaw, Frederick Chopin, and the intrusive, 'exotic' gaze

A day-long tour around the city of Warsaw after the 3-day International Conference on Political Linguistics in Lodz in September 2009.

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A request from UPFC Alumna NIna Rita Simon

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