Party Chromatics | SunStar Cebu | March 30, 2010

A “party,” as we understand it on a normal day, is that time when people gather to socialize, booze, wolf slabs of fatty sins, and unleash an entire discography with electrifying dance steps. A party, usually hosted, honors an occasion, say, a marriage, a saint’s birthday, passing the bar exam or an invented excuse, perhaps, when a pet Chihuahua conceives a quintuplet.

Well, that is not so for the last few months at this point in our national history. A party today, as you will see in the papers, is that photo of a grinning lineup of color-coded individuals who swears to pull you out of the rot you are in. Whatever that rot they are talking about, they are showing you optimism by the scale of a smile or the whiteness of dentures. The price Manny Villar has to pay for promising to end poverty or gaining power could not be gauged by the billions, but the regularity of Botox sessions. Gibo treads the labyrinthine alleyways of a shanty town and gets a dose of Philippine hyper-reality in the name of tagay. One local candidate had to shake hands with a man who just had a hearty bare-handed feast over dinuguan. Elections, indeed, can get that bloody.

Perhaps, at no other time, too, in our history has party chromatics been this psychedelic. There use to be a term, “traffic light coalition,” referring to a pooling of three parties. The term “rainbow coalition” is still around. Just how many colors does the arch have, you can ask your science teacher. But when you have a Bongbong Marcos and a Satur Ocampo in one party, you have a pretty intoxicating cocktail—a psychedelic overture. Or maybe, political chop suey.

By tradition, political parties assume colors for identity. Black, for example, was anti-clericalism’s official color in late 19th and early 20th –century Europe. In Germany and Austria, however, it is historically linked to Christian Democrats. I will congratulate any image handler in our side of town who will recommend black to a candidate. You’ll have a sortie that’ll look like the punks are coming.

Orange, says references, is sometimes associated with Christian Democratic and sometimes populist parties. Ukraine, for example, had their “Orange Revolution.” Unionism in Northern Ireland also had their “Orange Order.” I don’t know how the Villar camp picked orange. In Cebu last month, seeing yellow ribbons in the streets, his party sent its army scampering in the field to tie orange ribbons twice the size of the yellow ones.

Red is, of course, communism’s favorite color. You can brush up on Mao Tse Tung’s “red army” and “little red book” if you want red details. Erap’s camp uses red, although I’m sure the ex-president prefers a Johnny Walker Blue in a happy hour. He is not a communist.

Gibo wears green, although I think Nicanor Perlas is the quintessential green. The Nordic agrarian party uses green. Those who are fighting to keep the earth whole don green for a type-A uniform.

You can understand Noynoy’s yellow either through the eye of history or a song. In Europe, yellow is the color Liberals use.

The colors assumed, things are supposed to be pretty well delineated in the firmament of Philippine politics. But not so in the local level, which pretty much shakes up the entire chromatics and makes it all psychedelic. You look at the photographs of political line-ups and you pretty much feel like you had the worst shot of LSD. Man, lipong ko, man.

A political analyst will have a pretty tough job, like playing stacks of pickup sticks, at least in the local level. There seems to be a kind of arbitrariness in this mating season and you’re simply lost. But, really, what can you do. In the end, May 10 will have to be your private hour in the precinct with your ballot, beyond chromatics and all. All the partying becomes a joke.

Dukot | Sun.Star Cebu | March 9, 2010

Serguei, a Russian immigrant who wanted to be a cosmonaut as a kid, tells a familiar joke: “Everything they told us about communism was a lie…The worst thing is, everything they told us about capitalism was true.”

Serguei is one of those laid-off dock workers in the Spanish film “Los Lunes al Sol,” directed by Fernando Leon de Aranoa. Translated as “Mondays in the sun,” the term also refers to the thousands of displaced workers in Northern Spain who, stranded jobless, find themselves idled on Mondays under the sun and mooning for better lives abroad.

Serguei’s statement perhaps reflects the sentiment of many post-Communist Russians who were beginning to see more of the world. It was either that I felt old or I shared Serguei’s thoughts when I was watching Joel Lamangan’s movie “Dukot” over the weekend. The viewing came as one of the highlights of the social sciences celebration of the University of San Carlos.

“Dukot” is a movie about present-day desaparecidos, at the height of extra-judicial killings of journalists and activists. The story focuses on two sweethearts who were abducted my military intelligence operatives. At this time, the boy is deeply involved in the armed communist movement while the girl is trying to reclaim her life mainstream.

The movie begins with the abduction, perhaps living up to the title “Dukot,” but goes on with a series of flashbacks to give the viewers grounding. The girl’s father was shot by unidentified men while he was being convinced by protesting co-workers to join a picket. The year after, she confronts her mother and tells her she had become an activist.

On the other hand, the boy’s political awakening came somewhat too academic, as his father, the “liberal” in the family, told him once. Later, the boy would drop much of life’s prospects for a volunteer job in the mountains. Their commitment to the “party” would soon deepen, although at some point, that of the girl waned. Family needs softened her idealism.

While the movie keeps itself busy telling their story, there might have been missed opportunities. It didn’t show that political transformation, no matter its scale, is always personal. A viewer could not fully sympathize with their cause because the story treated the transformation as though it was just drawing a line between two dots.

Narratives run as cause and effect, and a good grounding on cause paves the way for maximum effect. To nail some pathos, the story used the relentless beating by their abductors to draw sympathy to the victims. In the end, the viewer pities the victims’ skin and limbs, not the larger body of context that brought them there in the first place.

Where “Dukot” failed, Lupita Kashiwahara’s 1976 film “Minsa’y Isang Gamu-gamu” succeeded. You’d know that when lead character Corazon de la Cruz says she is “Galit!” she hauls an entire history of reasons that pushed her to that end. You join her cause.

“Dukot’s” story assumed that viewers know why activists become what they are, and there’s no need to tell that part of the story, or perhaps tell it as a kind of token. Consequently, it might’ve chosen the wrong moment.

Instead of illustrating the anatomy of a transformation, it showed the spiral of death. In the end, a presumably clueless viewer still wonders about the nature of the characters’ conviction. You understand the scale of that conviction, the heroism and doggedness, but you’re left wondering what the cause was.

But it’s a courageous, and at best noble, effort to write and film “Dukot.” It trains our eyes to that which, otherwise, are merely crude inscriptions on the activist’s placard. In the season of “Wapakman,” “Dukot” is simply redemption.

(januarinbox@yahoo.com)

"Nelatch" | SunStar Cebu | March 5

“How could cheap hamburger costs as much as these kids’ innocence?” Student Cherry Claire Petiluna, a communications major from Cebu Normal University, asks at the last part of her groups’ video documentary “Nelatch.” The video wins the university’s CINEU Film Festival in the documentary category, and was likewise given the special Kapuso Award from GMA-7, which made them P5,000 richer.

In this day and age of endless wordplays, when coinages come and go, “nelatch” might just be another flash in the pan of subculture lingo. But not so for students Cherry, Nestor Moises, Charlette Cadavez and Tara Jane Miñoza, who, with sheer guts and enterprise, went out of their way with a borrowed video camera to doggedly pursue a story. In their sophomore year, this was also the group who produced “Jade Court Girls,” a documentary about the “karton girls,” which is worth another column altogether.

“Nelatch” is gay speak for “talent.” Just when you think you’ve had enough brief on the world’s perversions, this one’s different. The term also refers to boys who do it for gays. What gays usually do on men these boys do it on gays. One of the gays interviewed said the reversal of role brings him a different kind of “sensation.” The students’ documentary found a clique of “nelatch” boys in one of the municipal parks and was able to extract first-rate confessions from them. What’s devastating about this is that most of them ranged from 12 to 15 years old. “Para palit og hamburger,” said one of the boys who looked barely in his teens. As Cherry wrote in her script, “a hideous piece of reality,” but indeed it is one haul of hyper-realities for the aspiring filmmakers. She’d later say, “Indeed, it has changed my views, my group mates as well. I used to think that prostitution is just a NO, period. All those who engage in this are criminals, period. Then I learned that some of them should be heard and be given the chance to justify themselves. Not everyone is given much choice in life and not all choices given are fair enough. Most people who are in a better position in life should open their eyes wider to see a more realistic view of the world.” The idea gave me a rather interesting notion: filmmaking, or the documentary genre, as a rite of passage. Before they open up the minds of viewers, they first change the life of the filmmaker, and what better time to undergo through that than when you are young, robust with all the eagerness.

Travel is like reading 10 books in one week. The reportage gave them an education they could never get inside the classroom even for an entire year or course. Most of these nelatch boys wait for customers at the town’s park. The students asked a group of kids playing in the park if they know what the term means. The kids laughed and said they didn’t know about it. But one of them, after a while, confessed he had been one, and said an older brother taught him how. Did he tell his parents about it? No, the boy said. “Ikaw ra,” he said. With that, the team felt the weight of responsibility heaped upon it.

One of the gays interviewed in the documentary said nelatch boys are usually older in other parts of the province, but in this particular town, they’re way younger.

Cherry says, “At some point, we were afraid and unsure of what we were getting into. But as we got deeper into the interviews with the minors, we felt a mixture of emotions. We felt sorry and irritated that no one has helped them, not even their parents knew about it. We felt privileged but responsible upon knowing that we were the first people to know their experience. From being unsure, we changed and thought that maybe, if this was the least thing we could do for these kids, then we will do it no matter what kind of response we get.” (More next week)

(januarinbox@yahoo.com)

Unbeatable | SunStar Cebu | Jan. 8, 2010

FIRST day in office, she climbed the Capitol building to check its leaking roof, leaving a circle of photojournalists and TV crew scrambling after her. She climbed the ladder, paused on the ledge while photographers scuttled for the best angle.

Right that moment, you knew the papers’ banner photo was made.

All she needed then was to drop a few sound bites. She told a group of reporters huddled around her that she wanted to “hit the ground running.” She knew exactly what to do on Day One.

Right then, the next day’s news was already written. Second day in office, she was headline in all newspapers in the city.

It could have been a case of mutual feeding—the source feeds what media want, and media oftentimes coax the source to do or say what they want. With the governor, however, media doesn’t need to give the cue. She herself understands how it works and knows exactly what to do at the right moment.

In less than a hundred days in her office, I found myself working for the governor and made an AVP of her first one hundred days, which we made as an introduction to her speech at the Provincial Board. The whole time, from video to speech, I remember the PB’s session hall falling into a kind of awe.

It must’ve been the first time the crowd felt like they were at the Oscar awards.

The point is, the governor is one person who understands how things work in the public sphere. In 2004, I made the photograph of her first-day sojourn on the Capitol’s roof the symbol of the new leadership, and used the tag-line “bag-ong panlantaw” or new vision. The image shows her on top of the building looking down, and quite eloquently, it says that up there, it was altogether a different view of Cebu.

You go to the towns with the governor and you will see how the people respond to her presence. Here is a common scenario: women would huddle around her and give her a hug, and say “Ka-gwapa man diay nimo, Maam, uy!” The governor knows exactly how to respond, “Ay, sus, maayo ra gyud nga nianhi ko kay wala ko kadungog ana didto sa siyudad!”

You will see everyone around in a jovial mood. You will see how amused the people are in the towns. Sometimes, kids would run up to her and she’d get her purse, take out a few coins and send them to a candy store. When she chances upon a carenderia, she’d take the ladle and get a taste of her favorite dinuguan or paklay, much to the surprise of everyone surrounding her.

These are little details that escape the rather formal demands of news. But apart from the deliberately new brand of governance the Province has taken all these years, those small bits are what matters most to the people in the towns.

Here is one governor who doesn’t look and act like a governor, in the traditional sense. In the middle of a conversation, she’d hop into an outrigger and paddle all the way underneath a decaying bridge to inspect it from below—much to the horror of her close-in security.

She’s a relentless mover, and she knows when to pick the right moments. One official commented about how the governor looked “so un-gubernatorial” for frequently wearing denims while at work. Well, the next few days, the governor would be wearing jeans the whole time in office and in the field. She’d wink an eye and smile at her staff upon seeing another official whose pants climbed way over his navel.

The contrast becomes too stark when you hold her personality against her detractors. I do not quite understand where the confidence of Vice Gov. Greg Sanchez comes from. He’s a good man, don’t get me wrong, but when he delivers a speech, he’d put half the town hall to sleep. On that front, you simply can’t beat the governor.

Suspension of disbelief | SunStar Cebu Dec. 29. 2009 | Meanwhile

DEAR readers: Assuming that you exist, you’re probably such a vanishing tribe, given the fugitive nature of this column. Let me use a cliché—that even while I was away, I was always thinking of you. Don’t laugh.

For instance, a few weeks ago, I was in some kind of toy train circumnavigating Disneyland Hong Kong. With all my pretensions at being cool, it was rather unsettling. In that kitschy ride, I began to think how erstwhile Maoist China, on the eve of the HK turnover years ago, could’ve dealt with what is probably the shining symbol of Western capitalism—reduced into the face of one cute mouse.

The first turn skirted a jungle, and in the thickets were pocket clearings that revealed elephants, zebras, and giraffes made of concrete. Some crude robotics made their heads sway and their ears stand. Tucked in the leafage were speakers secretly blaring the jungle’s ambient sound.

I felt both fear and sadness. The first one because, given the rate mankind is blotting out everything that breathes, zebras will be zeroes. The second is a result of the first. Right that moment I swore I’d write my two-cents worth and email it to Op Ed Bong Wenceslao immediately. That did not happen.

The following day, I took a walk to a news stand and bought an English-language newspaper for HK $6. The other papers were in Chinese, but I’m an heir to a lost ancestry. My Chinese is limited to counting one to ten.

One news item caught my attention, and it went by the headline: “First government-backed gay bar opens in mainland China.” No joke. And this was at the height of the Comelec rejection of party-list applicant Ang Ladlad back home, a country that takes pride in being a dogged disciple of American “democracy.”

For one moment, I wanted to roll the paper, take the next flight home and thump the heads of all proclaimed morality messiahs in our midst. I remember one national artist advising a gay writer to move on and write other things because there is a multitude of them that are larger than themes of gayness. The young writer said he wrote large because gay rights are a social justice issue.

Mainland China is funding the gay bar as a means to fight Aids.

Right that moment, I wanted to write, but failed.

I failed, but I did not notice, too, that the afternoon passed and I was well into the “wonderful world of Disney.” I simply forgot at some point that I was right in the navel of kitsch.

Some 3D orchestra banged its finale and sent Donald Duck in a trajectory and crashing into the wall. When the lights were on, we burst in laughter and awe to see him stuck with his limbs sticking out. Humbug, that’s what slapstick is, but the crazy duck’s act quite strangely had me.

Ah, so finally, I could write something down this Christmas.

I’ve been a wee bit flat myself being at odds with most things about the season. Except for one, and I noticed that despite the season’s surfeit, there is something to be said about giving, not only as a sort of spirit, but as a concrete, collective expression. Without this, we seem to be short of chances the entire year.

In a scale you could not ignore, Christmas seems to re-appropriate kindness and love into a social rite. If you lost the child in you, you have at least that sense of community to count yourself in. But I bet you will still find yourself snickering to see that crazy duck stuck on the wall. To rest, said one writer, is to suspend all your judgments of the world.

Indeed, the season does what Exupery did in his book—which is to constantly remind us that we were all children once. Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on December 29, 2009.