Category: the arts

media & mideo, bishops & rape

there’s a real live rape-of-a-minor court case pala in the works against a parish priest of agusan del norte, who denies the allegations of course, and whom the diocese bishop has taken into his palace (yes, palace! frailocracy pa rin) in butuan city, instead of surrendering him to civil authorities.

i can’t believe that this is the first i’ve heard of it.  it would seem that after reporting the rape complaint by “leah” in early july (when i was hectic, proofreading, indexing, etc. and thus missed it), media dropped the matter completely until two or three days ago. (google it and you get either a july 2-7 item or an august 27-30.)

why did i hear nothing of it all through the mideo crucifixion (when i was paying attention na) — from pinky webb’s xxxpose to karen davila’s censhorship rants to ccp folding — when bishops ruled as though from on high and the inquirer justified vandalism?  all through those august weeks, i didn’t hear anyone in/through media bringing up the rape case, even if only to bring down the bishops a notch, level the playing field, even if only in a token way.

i wonder how much money went around to focus media’s attention on mideo and away from leah.  okay, okay, siguro naman hindi sila lahat nabibili.  pero siguro rin, yung mga hindi nabibili, wala namang balls.  how terrible.  the rape of leah, if true, and other such cases since the time of damaso, is prick power at work, mideo’s poleteismo verfiied and validated, how disgusting in many ways is this church that professes to embody christ.

samantala, in her tribune column, armida siguion-reyna rightly jeers at the holier-than-thou.

Where now are the sanctimonious? Where now are those who took offense with the “sacrilege” they insisted visual artist Cruz committed with the display of his works at the CCP? Butuan, Agusan, Diocese Bishop Juan de Dios Pueblos, he who had led the call for President Benigno Aquino III’s resignation because of his appointing “kaklase” and “kaibigan” to government posts, how come there’s nothing from him, especially with the alleged rapist priest under his care?

Nothing, as in not even a peep.

worse, what’s with this priest:

In a radio interview, Fr. Raul Cabonce, the parish priest of Tubay, said “I categorically deny allegations of rape hurled against me… please check the background of the family of the victim first before judging me.”

Fr. Raul Cabonce in an interview on Bombo Radyo Butuan on Tuesday alleged the sisters of the victim were all victims of rape and that people of Las Nieves town, where used to be parish priest before transferring to Tubay, knew the background of the victim’s family.

the sisters of the victim were all rape victims… therefore, what?  they are not to be believed?  they deserve to be raped?  hey, lord bishops, methinks this priest might not only need help sublimating his libido, he could use some gender consciousness & sex education too :(

inquirer, blasphemy, sodomy

i leave it to radikalchick to respond to the world-class self-centered bigoted douchebag (in the words of carlos celdran) and his ilk who insist on their narrow shallow fallow takes on mideo’s art and censorship and the ccp.  but this letter to the editor from ernie lapuz of sto. tomas, batangas, calling out the inquirer on its “tunnel vision” and disconnect with reality, deserves to be shared and taken to heart (and mind).

WHEN ART SERVES AS A MIRROR FOR NATION TO SEE ITS REALITY

A fictitious literary character, Dorian Gray, kept a special portrait of himself. Dorian never aged a day and remained handsome through time. His portrait aged instead of him, and with every detestable sin he committed his portrait became more and more hideous.

“Poleteismo,” by Mideo M. Cruz, is a hideous portrait or artwork. It is so hideous and disgusting that it is being bashed over TV, radio, newspapers, and in the streets. And it’s quite understandable why people are angry, but this anger may have given even the Inquirer a bit of tunnel vision when its editorial on the artwork said, “If all this does not constitute sacrilege, blasphemy, or attack on religion, we don’t know what does.” Come on, surely the Inquirer knows of worse things than “Poleteismo” that constitute blasphemy and sacrilege. The paper writes about it every day. For instance, it has written about an absurd game show host who promotes mendicancy while idiotizing and exploiting the poor by making them salivate over thousand-peso hand-outs while he earns millions for himself. Doesn’t he make Christ look like Mickey Mouse or a clown every time he makes fun of the poor and declaring “All I want to do is help the poor”?

This paper writes about the abuses of the government and the Church. Can’t it feel in its hearts and guts that to call a cheating and utterly corrupt former president, her “First Plunderer” and their cohorts “devout Catholics” is more disgusting than a diseased male organ stuck on a crucifix? And when “Princes of the Church,” filthy rich “Evangelists,” “Ministers” and “Anointed Sons of God” ask and even demand favors (SUVs, a new superhighway along their vast prime property, special appointments, etc.) from government in exchange for their “constant support” of leaders who “steal from the poor,” they actually prostitute religion. Translate this reality into artwork and we may behold a full cathedral ceiling mural of Jesus Christ being held down by “most reverend” clergymen while being sodomized by hordes of “honorable” political leaders. Such an utterly sacrilegious, blasphemous, disgusting, offensive and hideous cathedral artwork will surely be despised, condemned and vanished.

Now what about the reality that is faithfully reflected in that virtual cathedral artwork? Do we see our reality as perfectly normal, acceptable or even handsome as Dorian, or should I say Juan? What kind of infernal gall have we in condemning people who hold up a mirror to us to show us bluntly the true state and configuration of our nation? “Poleteismo” is a reflection of the reality of Juan de la Cruz. And I thank God for the art that serves as our mirror. We can’t banish our collective ugliness reflected in the mirror by bashing that mirror. Surely, God’s mysterious ways are at work here as He Himself is holding that mirror to us. Art as a mirror reveals that it is us who actually commit the sacrilege. It is the reality of our nation, government, churches and ourselves that we need to reform.

—ERNIE LAPUZ
nitelites@rocketmail.com
Biga, Sto Tomas, Batangas

media & mideo
The real immaturity
The morality police came to town (with a lynching mob)

Iconoclasm in art / failure of nerve

By Elmer Ordonez

Senator Edgardo Angara may well have put the “Kulo” controversy to rest by not recommending sanctions against the CCP board. All possible sides were heard at last Tuesday’s Senate probe presided over by the former UP president. Enlightened and benighted views and questions were entertained. Angara seemed satisfied that the CCP board promised to review their procedures for exhibits.

All’s well that ends well? Here’s my take on the issue:

Weeks of pressure from the Church clergy/ partisans including Palace intervention compelled the CCP board to pull out the entire “Kulo” exhibit, not just the controversial installation “Polytheism” of Mideo Cruz.

CCP chair Emily Abrera said the board did not “cave in” to the pressure but a decision was reached, by referendum, to withdraw the exhibit before its expiry today. Against the closure were Abrera, Florangel Braid, and Carol Espiritu while a majority of six including CCP president Raul Sunico were for closure for reasons of “public safety.”

The exhibit had already been shown at Ateneo and UP Diliman and no problem arose from viewers. The exhibit was to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of Rizal by alumni artists of Rizal’s alma mater, the University of Santo Tomas, celebrating its 400th year of its founding. Historically, the UST’s school of fine arts under the late National Artist Victorio Edades was a pioneer in modernist art while the University of the Philippines was still following the classical style with Fernando Amorsolo and Guillermo Tolentino as leading lights. Edades’ 1928 exhibit triggered a running debate between the moderns and the conservatives.

At the about the same time Jose Garcia Villa was suspended from the UP for his “obscene” poem “Man-Songs” by a committee led by traditional poet Dean Jorge Bocobo who must have thought Villa’s modernist work was “bad writing.”

The advent of modern art or “the shock of the new” came rather late in the Philippines. Mideo Cruz’s installation would have been in its element during the time of “Dadaism” in Europe. Edades’ works were modern in style but were they infused with “ideology and politics” like Picasso’s anti-fascist “Guernica?” Edades’ “The Builders” had a proletarian touch; his students were more into depicting Filipino history and identity like the murals of Carlos “Botong” Francisco.

“Dadaism” itself (with Marcel Duchamp as a favorite example with his “Fountain,” a urinal hanging from his installation) was a protest against the senselessness of the First World War and against bourgeois art. He did not expect the public would tolerate his “shock art.” Just as the academe in Loyola and Diliman did not create a big fuss over Cruz’s work. Thanks to a TV camera man who showed shots to the bishops when the trouble began.

“Kulo” or revolutionary ferment was obviously inspired by Rizal’s iconoclasm in the last decades of the 19th century when Rizal and the Propagandists produced incendiary literature that would lead to the 1896-1898 Revolution that ended Spanish colonial/monastic rule. Rizal and Marcelo del Pilar were particularly scathing in their anti-friar writings. The two novels of Rizal to this day are taught in some schools expurgating or sanitizing passages considered offensive to the Church.

Constantino Tejero of Inquirer thinks Cruz’s “Polytheism” is expressive of “racial memory embedded in the subconscious”— a virtual history of church and colonial abuses up to the present. Lito Zulueta also of Inquirer consigns Cruz’s work to iconoclastic art. Iconoclasm has a long history of idol-smashing (literally and figuratively) in religion, politics, culture and art. The Church itself destroyed images and icons carried by its forces deemed responsible for their defeat in battle.

In Rizal’s time the theocratic state responded to his “blasphemous” and “heretical” novels by banning them and ultimately having him shot by firing squad. Today, if some defenders of the faith have their way, they would perhaps have the offending artist burned at stake like Joan of Arc, and those responsible in the CCP for approving the exhibit, charged in court and made to resign.

Those who find Cruz’s work offensive have the right to protest or to picket the exhibit but do they have the right to resort to vandalism or arson? The latter act conjures images of book-burning, and history is replete with examples of this kind of censorship in totalitarian and supposedly democratic societies. The Church provides the faithful with an index of approved books bearing the phrase “nihil obstat” or nothing objectionable. “Prior restraint” cannot be imposed in a pluralistic society.

The UP Arts studies department statement provides the aesthetic and intellectual justification for engaging controversial art works in discussion rather than banning them. It says: “While there are contending interpretations of an image presented by art, the ethical course of action is to process the contentions and that is what art ensures: a process of communicative action. The closure of an exhibition only achieves the closure of democratic, informed and thoughtful engagement.”

The CCP board may still redeem itself by standing their ground against the recrudescence of obscurantism and repression. They will not be alone.

eaordonez2000@yahoo.com

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