Category: censorship

censorship and, uh, karen davila? is that you?

the day after ccp closed the kulo exhibit, the day karen ocampo flores resigned from ccp, a crowing karen davila on teleradyo phoned ccp president raul sunico and said: CLEARLY YOU WILL HAVE TO CENSOR ARTWORK (!)

it would be funny if it didn’t hurt so much… this popular broadcast personality, a u.p. graduate, masscom if i’m not mistaken, obviously doesn’t know that her own freedom of expression should be everyone’s freedom of expression, that the freedom of expression she enjoys was hard-fought and hard-won, that her freedom of expression is contingent on everyone else’s freedom of expression, including, especially, that of artists like mideo cruz, and, yes, works like poleteismo, na hindi pambababoy kundi pagpupukaw ng kaisipan in this very corrupt and catholic country, and not necessarily to the detriment of religion or the undermining of one’s faith.

after all, it could very well be as ust alumnus, now u.p. professor, neil garcia says:

i take issue…with the knee-jerk reaction of some dominican apologists, who are quick to disown mideo cruz with outrageous passion. this artist is indeed a thomasian, for he cares about the church, with which his imagination appears to be slavishly fascinated, even if or precisely as he can only express this care (and this fascination) in disagreeing and disagreeable ways. after all, given the mass reproduction (and reproducibility) of the church’s ubiquitous, habitual and fully habituated images, their willful and disagreeable deformation may in fact be the best way to make them perceptible (and therefore, efficacious) again… this artist may well be an evangelizer of sorts, in which case the philippines’ great thomasian institution should simply revel in this unwitting “accomplishment.”

but i guess that’s all way too high for karen davila who, like imelda and the bishops, simply can’t stand the sight of the penis, can’t see the penis as anything but vulgar and obscene, especially as juxtaposed with images that she holds sacred.  but bong austero, though disgusted and disturbed, too, sees the powerful implications of the images.

There are those who have condemned the art installation for its blasphemous and disgusting images and stop there, dismally failing to see through the powerful implications of the images in terms of preaching morality. Oh please, don’t we all use negative characterizations to preach what is right and moral? Our soap operas, plays, and movies rely on the sheer evil of antagonists to deliver powerful messages of redemption. We tell our kids stories of the big bad wolf and of the evil stepsisters to illustrate the power of positive values by contrast. Why can’t we draw parallels in this particular case? Just because something is disgusting and disturbing doesn’t mean it cannot be moral.

…The art installation takes things to extremes to bring home the message – it is art, for crying out loud, no less different from a play shot through with absurd imagery and over-the-top metaphors and symbolism.

…I have learned by viewing the exhibit that faith is strongest when put to the test. The icons that we revere are mere representations of the Supreme Being that we worship. When one’s faith is strong and resolute, provocation in the form of disgusting images can only strengthen it further rather than weaken it.

The tragedy is that we live in a country where freedom, tolerance and respect for diversity are mere theoretical concepts that are embraced only when these suit one’s comfort zone and never in situations when their application would truly matter.

worse we have a president who, after expressing disapproval of the artwork, now says there’s no censorship.  yeah, right.

the major major question now for karen davila is, paano na ang iyong rh bill advocacy?  and don’t tell me that one has nothing to do with the other.  charlson ong in imelda redux makes the connection, too, especially since anti-rh congressmen and senators have gleefully joined the fray.

Why has Art that has heretofore been the concern of a few gallery-goers, artists, critics, collectors, students and sundry eggheads suddenly become the object of congressional ire?

Might it not be that the Religious Right, gearing up for a final RH fight, and stung by revelations on the “Montero Bishops” are opening up another front in their war against “secularists” and their perceived allies in the Aquino Administration? Your paranoia is as good as mine.

more and more it seems to me this was a test case, the bishops and their anti-rh constituency testing the waters: will scare tactics work, will the media be supportive?  so paano na, karen davila?  you’ve given the bishops an inch, next time they’ll take a foot.  today it’s no to penises on artwork in the ccp, tomorrow it’ll be no to any and all mention of “ari” and “penis” in all media.  paano na ang sex education that young and old alike are in dire need of?

it was a trap, karen davila, and you walked right into it.  so now you’re cleaning up, it would seem.  can’t find your headstart interview with chris millado on you tube, can’t find pinky webb’s xxx either.  good job, girls.  self-censorship after such major major foot-in-mouth disasters?  not that we’ll ever forget.  neither will the bishops who must oh-so-love-you.  i’m sure though that it’s no ticket to any kind of heaven.

the industry of offense, art as sacrificial lamb 
boiling over: Kulo
Kulo full album 

CCP folds to terrorism :(

on teleradyo, karen davila and vic what’shisname are ignorance & arrogance personified.  speaking for an angry people daw, and telling us how to think and what to think.  hey you two, you’re back in the dark ages, along with the prez and some senators and congressmen, why am i not surprised, the bishops must oh so love you.  at the very least, please read this : rody alampay’s Democracy as Religion, and level up the thinking and talking naman!

Let us take it from the experience of Muslims. (Let us be honest to start, in other words: If there is any religion that truly reels from shallow and irresponsible discourse in the Western-media dominated modern world, it is Islam.) Just before 9/11, and even before some Danish cartoonist with balls started drawing Mohammed, Islamic nations led by Pakistan had begun calling annually for a non-binding UN resolution condemning “defamation of religion”. Every year from 2001 to 2010 the proposition received a majority vote from the UN Human Rights Council and the General Assembly.

But every year, too, that majority vote had grown smaller and smaller, with previously fence-sitting members of the UNHRC one-by-one siding with the resolution’s steadfast critics: they who had warned that the broadly-worded resolution would likely be used by repressive governments to stifle any expression that can even remotely be tied to religious sensibilities. (The Catholic Church in the Philippines, for example, ties faith and decency to everything from the Reproductive Health debates to jueteng.)

The “religious defamation” lobby, in a strategic retreat, abandoned the annual campaign for a UN resolution against defamation of religion this year. Instead, it sought common ground with advocates for free expression, who were coming to every annual vote with an ever-growing list of reports and governments that had been proving their fears well-founded. The result: the UNHRC this year voted unanimously, no longer passing a resolution “combating defamation of religions”, but in its stead, one (with a deep breath) “combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence, and violence against persons based on religion or belief.”

Two crucial shifts in the thinking. First, the focus goes from requiring governments to protect religion, to demanding that states protect individuals. Second, the emphasis is no longer on religion, but on tolerance.

The consensus no longer calls for restrictions on legitimate expression. Instead, it takes a more constructive and positive approach, emphasizing education, not prison and not violence, to weed out intolerance and bigotry (which, in any culture, is always seen as a symptom of maleducation, bad breeding, and an immature society.)

Tolerance will ultimately benefit all, the heretics as well as the faithful.

and to filipino artists out there.  i am dismayed that we are not united in protesting CCP’s surrender to CBCP’s censorship.  this is not about how worthy or unworthy mideo cruz’s art is.  this is about being forced to abide by values that blind and terrorize.  tinitimbang tayo nguni’t kulang :(

Let the artists be weird. They can only try to push the boundaries of thought and expression. That is why they are called the avant-garde. They are soldiers further in advance of the army itself, slashing and burning and clearing the path for whatever may follow. The boundaries must be expanded, but the artists themselves have no power to dictate where the rest of society will go.

For governments, on the other hand, as even the Organization of Islamic Conference effectively conceded, the reflex to empower itself, and to restrict rather than expand democratic space, is automatic. The notion that states can and should define and execute what is criminally insulting is an invitation to destroy all that a nation such as ours supposedly upholds: democracy as well as, ironically, faith itself.

Imelda Marcos, coming down on the side of the Inquirer, spoke of the Cultural Center of the Philippines as sanctuary for the Filipino soul. For all, she said more specifically, that is true, and good, and beautiful about this nation. She throws in the proposition that as a state institution, there is no place in the CCP for any thought that could insult any religion.

Actually, it is the other way around. As a state institution consecrated to the arts, the CCP should be agnostic to the notion of insult, and dogmatic to the possibility of expression, to the chance of happening upon art.

Art as Terrorism? Try Democracy as Religion. Where democracy is dogma, every expression is prayer, freedom is shared and miraculously multiplied to nourish the multitude – the idiots and even abusive among them. Abuse, of course, as in all religions, is a sin; but abuse of thought is also always indefinable, and so in the democratic theology, tolerance is the highest virtue. Democracy provides the only true environment where you can defend your faith, if you really have it, while also protecting the rights of others, if you really believe we all deserve it.

STAND FAST, CCP!

IF CATHOLIC clergymen had kept quiet, if Archbishop Oscar Cruz hadn’t called the exhibit “sickening,” if he hadn’t called the artist “sick,” if he hadn’t advised the artist to see a psychiatrist, if he hadn’t implied that the artist’s sexuality was abnormal, if Bishop Deogracias Iñiguez hadn’t called for a boycott, then Mideo Cruz’s Poleteismo could have gone unnoticed by the larger public.

Instead, ad hominem attacks against the artist — “supposed artist,” according to a member of the Catholic laity — have roused the curiosity of individuals, who are now buzzing about the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) looking for the piece that was branded “controversial” and “sacrilegious.”

talaga naman, what are the bishops up to?  stirring things up on the side to distract us from what?  the suvs?  but the senators have absolved them and the media have moved on to more current and sensational developments, i.e., whistleblowers on the cheating in the 2004 elections, the tandem illnesses of gma and her fg, the resignation of zubiri, the dbp suicide, the prez and the milf, at kung anoano pa.  can the bishops be trying to distract us from all THAT? but why on earth?

because really, why call attention to an “offensive” installation that the larger public was completely unaware of until their attention was called to it?  it’s not as if the installation’s out in the streets, like, you know, billboards?  and it’s not as if it’s the first time that religiously offensive art has been exhibited in the cultural center: Jose Legaspi’s installation in the Small Gallery, for example, which included a modified Pieta showing the Virgin Mother vomiting on the dead Christ.

but, okay, benefit of the doubt.  say the intention was not to distract, rather na-offend lang sila talaga nang grabe sa poleteismo ni mideo cruz, they were just so super scandalized by erect penises next to christ and crucifix.  kabastusan at kalaswaan, blasphemy and sacrilege daw.

on one free-standing wall hangs a life-size crucifix festooned with scapulars and rosaries, as well as a red phallus. Cruz shrugs off the outrage over the phalluses.

“It’s symbolic for patriarchy, a symbol of power. There are those who worship power, who put their faith in men who wield power even if the power is used against women, or against the whole of society. The fight for sexual and gender equality continues, doesn’t it? But the balance continues to be tipped in favor of the phallus. Is this good or bad? You decide,” he said.

(For some, the phalluses could very well represent the leadership of the Catholic Church in the Philippines – a group of grown men deciding on how women in the country do not have the right to control their own reproduction process, much less their sexuality. Currently the Catholic Church is hard at work campaigning against proposals for a reproductive health law. It has also come to a head against calls of the Lesbian, Gay ,Bisexual and Transsexual or LGBT community to allow same-sex marriages in the country.)

i would like to think that the bishops are aware of what the phallus symbolizes, especially as it applies to the church as a dominant power.  but certainly it is not to their advantage to allow the discourse to level up.  basta, they don’t want any talk of sex, much less any sight of the penis.  off with the penis!  yes to vandalism!  in effect demonstrating the truth of the message.

meanwhile the CCP is sounding somewhat conciliatory, correct me if i’m wrong. says ccp president raul sunico:

We have received many letters and texts coming from both sides. We just came from an emergency meeting of the CCP Board. It’s also divided about this. After this forum, we will continue to meet. In the end the decision must be beneficial to the majority.

the board is divided too?  that’s scary.  people who agree with the bishops on this matter have no business being on the CCP board.

STAND FAST, CCP!

HOW MONA LISA DIED

Walden Bello

Representative Edcel Lagman of Albay has a term for legislative measures that gain approval in a congressional committee yet never make it to a full floor debate owing to one reason or other. He calls them “Mona Lisa” bills. “Mona Lisa” because, as he explains, “as that line from Nat King Cole’s famous song goes, ‘they just lie there and they die there.’.”

The Reproductive Health and Population Development Act of 2008 – better known as the “RH bill” – is one of those Mona Lisa bills. The RH bill, however, did not die of neglect or lack of interest, which is the case with most of these measures. In this case, Mona Lisa was murdered.

During the last three Congresses, RH has been a topic that has elicited great controversy owing to rock solid opposition from the Catholic Church. In the 14th Congress, however, it was able to win approval in the Committee on Health, setting the stage for a much-awaited debate on the House floor. RH was listed as a priority bill throughout 2009; indeed, before the Christmas recess, the rules for the debate on it were being discussed.

When the House reassembled on January 18, however, RH had disappeared from the Speaker of the House’s list of priority bills. Inquiries by proponents of the bill produced evasive replies from the House leadership. When the House adjourned for the elections on Feb 3, RH was dead. The reason, however, was painfully obvious.

In December, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) instructed the electorate not to vote for candidates who espoused RH. Alongside this decree had unfolded a massive campaign that involved systematic disinformation about the bill. Among the malicious allegations that were spread was that the bill imposes penalties on parents who do not allow their children to have premarital sex. Another was that the bill promotes the use of abortifacients or methods of contraception that induce abortion.

It was not in the interest of the anti-RH lobby to have an open debate on the House floor because a rational, enlightened exchange would have revealed the aims of the bill to be not only morally legitimate but ethically imperative. Foremost among these goals is to provide women with the information and means to enhance their reproductive health. Second is to provide partners with the information and means to practice family planning. Third is to provide men and women with the information and means to avoid sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV-AIDS, which has now reached epidemic proportions.

The anti-RH lobby knew that even if the bill lost on the House floor, a debate on it would have contributed immensely to the enlightenment of the Catholic electorate, the majority of which, according to recent surveys, already favor modern methods of family planning and enhancing reproductive health. Thus, deploying its tremendous political clout, the lobby colluded with the House leadership to carry out a silent procedural homicide.

There is a great deal at stake in the RH debate. One of them is the preservation of the principle of the separation of Church and State. The Church seeks to prevent the State from having a say on reproductive issues. Yet the State must have a say since it has a responsibility for the health of the country and the health of women citizens in particular. The State must concern itself with reproductive issues because it must balance the needs of society and the fragility of the environment. The State must involve itself with reproductive concerns because it has a mandate to end poverty and promote national development.

Another bedrock principle of our liberal democracy that is threatened by the Church campaign against RH is pluralism. Many constituencies favor RH, and among these are other religious organizations, including Christian churches. Yet one religious denomination arrogates to itself the right to speak for all religions and to veto the opinion of other religious organizations on reproductive rights. This is absolutism, not democracy, and if allowed to go unchecked, it will erode the tolerance that is an essential component for the survival of our pluralistic polity.

Pro-RH people are not against the Catholic Church. Indeed, most admire the Church’s stance on many other issues – for instance, its urging voters to vote for candidates according to the dictates of their conscience. But does not this stand promoting respect for the individual’s conscience not contradict its ordering voters not to vote for pro-RH candidates?

The Church, to its credit, supports measures that would end poverty, like agrarian reform. Yet it opposes an initiative that would address one of the key causes of poverty, which is the failure of poor families to control the size of their families through natural means?

The Church has – again to its credit – taken up the cudgels for the environment. But it opposes effective family planning measures that would rein in one of the key forces behind environmental degradation: unrestrained population growth.

The Church lobby is powerful. Not only has it intimidated Speaker Prospero Nograles and the House leadership into killing RH procedurally. It has also now forced presidential contender Gilbert Teodoro to renounce his support for RH. And there are reports that Noynoy Aquino is also backing away from his support for RH.

Punishing people at the polls for their beliefs is certainly less reprehensible than burning them at the stake, which the Church did to dissenters centuries ago. But resorting to electoral punishment exhibits the same absolutist frame of mind that threatened Galileo with burning if he did not recant.

Yet, just as we have left the Inquisition behind, so are we destined to advance towards a more tolerant pluralist polity that makes decisions based not on intimidation and threat but on enlightened democratic debate. Mona Lisa may have been murdered this time around, but let those who have killed her be put on notice that, as Congressman Lagman predicted, she will be resurrected in the 15th Congress or in succeeding Congresses until she is finally enacted into law.