has gone viral. posted just two days ago by gma news online, the link has been shared 44,500 times! the charice challenge, that made it to the list of Best Music Writing 2011’s honorable mentions, was shared some 2 to 3,000 times, and we thought that was a lot.
Nora Aunor with a cig: So what?
By Katrina Stuart SantiagoLet it be said that Superstar Nora Aunor’s comeback is by all counts a success, if we are to measure it not by media mileage or product endorsements, not by tell-all interviews in every darn showbiz talk show or by grand statements about home being where the heart is.
Ate Guy’s return has been about none of this and that is precisely a measure of this comeback’s success. Because would she be the unbeatable popular culture icon that she is, the film actress par excellence, the Superstar in the real sense of the word, if she came back and fell into the trap of showbiz as created by the Kris Aquinos of this world?
Not at all. Ate Guy is everything that contemporary showbiz is not. And that was true long before she left, that was real to anyone who saw her films and respected her daring, this was always true for those of us who couldn’t help but be astounded on the one hand, and then be downright impressed on the other, by the life choices she was making, given the little that we actually knew of her. She was rebel long before it became fashionable to be one, she was rakenrol like no other, and in the midst of that she was inadvertently pointing out that she was, should be, nothing but actress, but singer, but star. Ate Guy might be the only icon on these shores who can say to her public: here’s who I am, deal with it.
Because if we can’t, then what a shame. If we can’t, then that is ultimately a measure of us, not of her. And I’m talking to you, Philippine Medical Association (PMA), as well as running priest Fr. Robert Reyes, who insist that the cover image of Ate Guy in the October issue of Yes! Magazine is unacceptable because (gasp!) she’s shown holding a cigarette. That this is even in the news as news versus it being questioned and argued about is a measure of our media; that the PMA and Fr. Reyes are even allowed to imagine role models vis a vis magazine covers and pop culture images is just stupid.
For really, who is Fr. Reyes talking to when he says to Ate Guy: “The Filipino public is not dumb, if you want to be popular again, be wholesome”? The good priest obviously knows not of what he speaks. Look at the most popular celebrities in this country, and see their billboards that sell sex and sexuality even when they’re holding a can of tuna or are selling computers, look at who’s on television every day and see them selling everything that’s about changing how we look through whitening products and beauty clinics.
You demand wholesome? Show me what’s wholesome about the lies that these advertisements sell, and then explain why we’ve let them bombard us every day. You demand wholesome? Begin by insisting that no female celebrity who’s white to begin with should be allowed to sell whitening products; insist that no celebrity shall sell beer or gin on nationwide television; insist that no bodies be used to sell products on billboards, no body at all. And then convince yourself that this will mean role models all around and our kids will be better off.
This is at the core of this kind of response to Ate Guy’s photo, holding a cigarette, staring straight into the camera. It’s the question of pop culture icons being role models, a question of how these images are necessarily aspirational ones. They are saying that this image of Ate Guy is so powerful that it will make us get a pack of cigarettes for ourselves the moment we see it. This fails to consider the fact that Ate Guy, is the Nora Aunor, and she doesn’t aspire to be role model, never has, never will.
It also forgets that as Nora Aunor, there is more to this photo than that cigarette in her hand. Done by Marc Nicdao, this image renders the Superstar not so much in a role, as she is revealed finally to be comfortable in her own skin. There is nothing here that’s about being the usual cover girl who’s prettified, no heavy make-up, no glamorous clothes, seemingly no digital editing. In black and white, we see the age on her skin, in her hand that holds that cigarette, her crow’s feet, her laugh lines. She’s in jeans, and what looks like a stylized polo shirt, hair cropped short, styled but barely so. But what will grab you are her eyes, questioning and judgmental, just ultimately matter-of-fact: I’m back, I’m here, what’s it to you?
No one else, no one else, has the daring to have a photo like this taken and agree to have it on the cover of a magazine as a real portrayal of self. Yes, some younger celebrity might hold a cigarette on the cover of a magazine too, but that would only be within a fashion editorial, a fictional portrayal, ultimately no meaning other than fake edginess.
In the hands of Ate Guy, that cigarette is a reminder that there is no one, no male or female celebrity on these shores, who has the chutzpah, the gall, the guts, the darn rakenrol, to release an image of self so real, it makes us all uncomfortable. This is precisely why it’s a refreshing image to see, not just of Nora Aunor, but on a magazine cover. It’s an image that tells us we’ve matured if only because the Superstar now knows to let it all hang, to lay her cards on the table, and she’s forcing us to be prepared for it.
You do not change Nora Aunor, you are changed by her. And in the context of local pop culture’s pomp and pageantry, the industry of fake bodies and glossy faces, hair straight and long, necks covered up with scarves, women in conventional outfits or acceptable near-nakedness, I dare say Ate Guy is the most refreshing cover girl there could ever be. The most powerful, too: she has changed here the way we might view ourselves as women, aging as we all are even as we deny it, looking as she does at that camera and refusing to be objectified by its gaze, fearless and without pretentions, Superstar par excellence.
Right here is Nora Aunor, all her years as artist, as woman, as pop icon, showing. If only we were more prepared for her. But then again, we apparently never are. – GMA News
so i’ve just been called a pedophile on facebook because i protested against a poster of a goodlooking teenage boy in the briefest of white briefs in macho-dance pose. says the poster:
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quite offended i commented that the poster was too too much! totally unfair to willie and his sponsors! that the 6 year old was the one who wanted to go on tv to show off his dance routine. he had done it many times before elsewhere, even in school, and was rewarded and lauded for it. that willie was just as surprised as everyone. and that we’re imposing our sensibilities on the masa, sensibilities that they don’t share. whats indecent to us may not be indecent to them. that there’s clearly a class divide here.
and that’s when one of the commenters said i must be a pedophile, or a media executive, which at the moment daw are the same thing. i’d cut and paste that comment except that it was deleted by the commenter soon after i replied: oh wow, this is not an intelligent conversation. signing off… the downside of social media: having to deal with the whole spectrum, from the stupid, sometimes irrational, many times unthinking, to the intelligent and creative and occasionally sublime comments that any blog, tweet, or fb status is open to, especially when one is in a major major disagreement with a lynch mob, such as the kick-out-willie movement.
of course because it’s been sensationalized to the max, mainstream media are taking up what social media started. the inquirer has it on the front page: Willie treatment of dancing boy ‘criminal’ says the broadsheet. Revillame treatment of dancing boy in tears criminal–CHR says the online version.
MANILA, Philippines—What the show “Willing Willie” did to Jan-Jan Suan, the 6-year-old boy who was told to simulate a striptease while in tears in exchange for cash in front of a cheering studio audience, was criminal, the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) said Tuesday.
The CHR said it would investigate the episode as it appeared to have violated a law protecting children.
“The commission will investigate this incident in order to identify the person/s liable and to recommend proper legal actions against them,” it said in a statement.
what’s scandalizing to me is the CHR’s, or is it the inquirer‘s? summary of the situation: “the 6-year-old boy who was told to simulate a striptease while in tears in exchange for cash in front of a cheering studio audience…”
this makes it seem like willie told the boy, o sumayaw ka ng “striptease”, bibigyan kita ng pera. when in fact it’s not the way it happened at all. anyone who watches willing willie would know that the kid would have been given money, kahit ano pang isinayaw niya, lalo na with tears effect, which was not because he was feeling “humiliated.” anyone who has taken the time to check out the story and really watch the youtube video en toto, and then watched the interviews of the boy and his parents in the following days, would know that it was the production staff’s responsibility, and that they had toned it down na nga, pinalitan nila yung music na dala ng bata, which was hayden kho’s “careless whisper”.
also, it was nothing close to a striptease. there was no shedding of clothing or suggestion thereof. does the CHR, or the inquirer, even know what macho dancing is like? it’s no different from what little girls dancing like sex bomb dancers do.
karen cardenas reflects: …on The Dance and what we impose on it. He was fully dressed, he was making movements, he wasn’t provocative. What is the difference from ocho-ocho or for heaven’s sake, the grind or tahitian or dirty dancing or lambada? Kasi pang “macho dancer”? Bakit niyo minamaliit ang macho dancer? —facebook 29 march
of course the next question posed is: why didn’t willie stop it right away, after he had seen the macho-dancer routine. why did he let it go on and on? it was so inappropriate, so offensive, and what about the little boy, kawawa naman, umiiyak na nga, yada yada yada
willie tried to explain, everyone was having a good time, the father, the aunt, even the boy, who gamely danced everytime he heard his music instead of running away when he had 10k na in his pocket — i mean you know, if he was aware enough to feel oppressed by what he was doing, he would have been smart enough to get off that stage the moment he got the money, okay na, panalo na, but he didn’t.
everyone was having a good time. the first time i saw it, natawa rin ako. natawa ako sa bata, natawa ako kay willie, natawa ako sa audience. of course i knew by then that there was an uproar over it in social media, so i was also thinking omg yes it’s the sort of thing na pagdidiskitahan ng opus deis and couples for christ and their ilk. still i could relate to the laughter, what fun to break out of the norm, do something different, even, defy a sexual taboo, mwahaha! and susmayorsep alam kaya ng batang ito kung sinong sumasayaw ng ganyan? mwahahaha! sana hindi! mwahahaha!
read karen’s Willie, Humiliation
… when Willie makes jokes, is it to humiliate the contestants, to make them feel lowly, inferior, or is there a collective humility in all of them, an unspoken awareness that it’s open season. Laugh at me, make fun of me, because it’s just one big hilarious joke, everything we are doing here. It’s one big show, and it isn’t real.
Willie, from what i have heard, came from the same situation as his contestants. He was, as far as the stories go, also struggling in life before he became rich and famous. My guess is he, like his guests, understands self-deprecation, he knows what it is like to laugh at himself, at his situation.
Feeling humiliated may not be something they concern themselves with because their lives are hard enough, and if they can have a little fun in an arena meant for them, why not? Don’t Pinoys love to laugh, even at themselves?
and if we go even deeper, and attribute more intelligence to the masa, the poor, the lower class, i daresay the exploitation wasn’t one-way. sure, the capitalists exploit the masa with this sort of show, but it is just as possible that the boy’s family had read into the system of the gameshow and thought: this is the way to go, we do something different, we do something a little naughty, we make more money. depende sa perspective. which is only to say that there are no absolutes here, and willie does not deserve the wholesale villification and opprobrium.
it is so clear now how hated willie, hero of the masses, is by the know-it-all self-righteous self-proclaimed pundits of social media, led it would seem by fellow celebrities in the showbiz industry who just can’t stand being upstaged by a willie revillame na hindi naman guapo, walang ka-class-class, pero tumatabo on primetime tv and in opm CDs, laban kayo?
because hey, the masses love him, he’s one of them, just a little smarter and luckier, and i’m sure they love that he is medyo bastos, which is, wittingly or un-, an up-yours to the moralist establishment that is at the root of their poverty.
and speaking of bastos, sino ba talagang bastos. di ba mas bastos yung nag-upload ng video of the little boy sa youtube? di ba mas bastos ang nag-upload ng poster sa facebook, na natanggap ko rin sa email, for the sake of the little boy daw? what kind of caring is that?
like katrina says of the offensive poster:
sinong bastos ngayon?
no really, lalabanan ninyo si Willie Revillame by doing this?
how crass. how un-intelligent. how irresponsible can you get.
i was one of those who, upon hearing that charice was going to audition for glee, nervously asked: but can she act? hindi kaya tayo mapahiya? well, she passed the auditions, what a relief that was, and now that i’ve seen her debut in glee 2, what can i say but wow! has she levelled UP! good job, charice! and good job, america! i’ve always said that the u.s. is tops in the entertainment performance arts, and i’m just so happy for charice. oh, and also for katrina, whose essay The Charice Challenge, special feature on gmanews.tv, is breaking readership & “recommend” records. great timing, howie ;))