Censorship Blues

Inquirer Commentary January 9 & 10, 2000

Early in 1999 Pinoy society’s moral guardians were out in full force trying to stop government from executing the convicted child rapist Leo Echegaray on the grounds that to take his life, no matter how grave his crime, was not only wicked and immoral, it would also not deter would-be rapists from raping. At year’s end, the same people were screaming for Armida Siguion-Reyna’s head and demanding that the citizenry be spared (deprived of) the pleasure of sexy movies because said pleasures are obscene and incite viewers to rape.

In effect, these sanctimonious ones are saying that to prevent the incidence of rape, they would not execute the rapist; instead they would clamp down on media, entertainment, and the arts, and forbid the public exhibition and broadcast of all sexually arousing material. Yes, they would take it out, not on the guilty rapist, but on the innocent public, that’s us, who are all potential rapists daw. Isn’t that pathetic?

In fact, studies do not show any causal relation between pornography and rape. Not even hard-core pornographic films, much less the boldest of Pinoy boldies, can be said to drive adult viewers to commit rape and, columnist Michael Tan is right, it is “not only dishonest but dangerous” of Sonny Alvarez, Manoling Morato, and their cohorts in the religious and showbiz communities to claim such because it leaves the real causes of rape untouched. In fact, sexual crimes are rooted in sexual abuse or (the extreme opposite) in sexual repression in childhood and/or adolescence, not in pornography. In fact, when pornography was legalized in Denmark, the incidence of rape fell.

Maybe the dishonesty is not deliberate. Maybe the likes of Morato and Alvarez are simply ill-informed, or maybe they’re unimpressed by facts, guided as they are by politics and religion, which are matters of trickery and faith. Not surprisingly, their ecumenical chorus line of bishops and priests, pastors and ministers, Ettas and Coneys don’t know, and aren’t behaving, any better. Clearly the dishonesty does not bother them, never mind that it violates their churches’ eighth commandment, the sixth comes first, it’s okay to lie or “bear false witness” when it is to defend against sex. Talk about double standards of morality.

I think they’re simply hysterical, as in, emotionally overwrought, so they’re not thinking straight, much less talking sense. This is what being confronted with sex does to people who are sexually hung-up, repressed by the outdated Christian notion that it is for married couples only, behind closed doors, and that otherwise all sex, including the display and patronage of sex in cinema and television, is evil and leads to hell.

Whether they know it or not, like it or not, ready or not, times have changed,­ yes, even in our basket case of a mental colony. At the very least, we know more about sex than our parents did at our age, thanks to the liberalizing effects of mass media as well as of the sexual revolution that brought AIDS to America and inevitably to our shores, raising sexual consciousness like never before. As a result, moralists worldwide are down to a noisy minority; but of course it doesn’t seem so around here, given how Catholic kuno the majority is and therefore silent, nay, inarticulate, on the joys and intricacies of sex.

Factor in as well the fourteen long years of dictatorship—when the dumbing of the Filipino began, when we let Marcos do all the thinking for us, and we not only lost our critical faculties, we also lost track of and fell behind the rest of the developing thinking world—and no wonder that we have media practitioners who are so behind the times, they can’t see beyond the surface of things and naively mistake the moralist din for the sentiment of the majority. And so, with only sales/ratings in mind, they gleefully religiously relay and echo, without criticism, the concerns of anti-“pornography” advocates about malaswa films, obviously blissfully ignorant, not only of what’s pornography and what’s not, but also of the implications of film censorship on the rest of the media (now, the movies; next, the newspapers? TV? advertising? fashion? the internet?).

And what about the anti-Armida columnist who wants to know why our National Artists and leading academicians and intellectuals are silent on the so-called clamor for censorship. How distressing to need to explain that artists and intellectuals are, first and foremost, free spirits and naturally they’re rooting for Armida’s MTRCB on the matter of classifying rather than censoring films, thereby upholding the democratic freedoms of expression and choice. The last thing any true artist or thinker would abide is censorship.

Even the few newspaper columnists and TV talkshow hosts (among them Kris Aquino, thank Ninoy!) who have spoken up against censorship are hard put defending sex in films and most have such a low opinion of Filipino movies, they won’t even concede that any of it qualifies as art. In a late-night talkshow the hosts asked why bomba movies appeal and why they keep coming back, only to admit at the end of an hour’s talk with some movie directors and movie patrons that they have no answers.

I would refer them to the same US Supreme Court ruling cited by the MTRCB that cautions against censorship of sex in art and literature: “Sex, a great and mysterious motive force in human life, has indisputably been a subject of absorbing interest to mankind through the ages; it is one of the vital problems of human interest and public concern.”

Sexy movies appeal and bold movies keep coming back because we are not only thinking creatures, we are also sexual creatures, endlessly fascinated and drawn by (once awakened to) the pleasures and pains of sex. And why not? Sex is the natural in us, and, like nature, it has a way of intruding, erupting, into consciousness, whether we’re up to it or not. In the words of my favorite (anti-feminist) feminist intellectual and art critic Camille Paglia (Sexual Personae, 1995): “Sex is the point of contact between man and nature, where morality and good intentions fall to primitive urges.”

Society is precisely our defense against nature and its excesses and while society’s guardians cannot be faulted for being paranoid about sex, they can and must be faulted for insulting our intelligence (threatening horny ones with hellfire and eternal damnation when AIDS, syphilis, gonorrhea as well as unwanted pregnancies are more frightening) and denying us Pinoy adults the option to confront and learn about our sexual nature both through sex education and exposure to the arts, the better to make sense of and come to terms with the whole (and not just fractions) of our selves.

Sex education in school and “parental guidance” at home are crucial, not just for the facts (as opposed to the myths) of it, but also for passing on a sense of control over the sexual urge (mind over matter) and a sense of it as creative energy that can be harnessed and channeled to enhance other aspects of the personality and other activities of the body-mind.

But even all that would not be enough, dry data never are. “Wet and wild” (as a ’60s softdrink commercial went) is more like it, and other than from first-hand experience, we can only get a sense of that kind of sex from the arts, cinema in particular, which comes closest, literally, to the flesh, visually capturing sex’s passion and convulsions for our delectation, turning us all into voyeurs and affirming the universality of our sexualcondition. It’s normal to be horny.

The question for the MTRCB and the film industry is where to draw the line between the bold and the pornographic. It used to be easy to tell one from the other: in bold films the sex was secondary, occasional and subordinate to the story; in porno it’s all nudity and sex with no story worth remarking. But now we have stories about sex that justify more sex than usual and so verge on the pornographic yet sizzle with social relevance—these are the ones that keep the MTRCB on its toes and drive the moralists really crazy. Again, I think the latter’s fears are unfounded.

As long as we stay away from pornography and as long as we strictly enforce the “For Adults Only” rule for bold movies, I think that generally there is little danger of these films inciting civilized viewers to rape. No doubt some adults walk out of the moviehouse feeling hot and hoping for some real exchange of fluids with a significant other as soon as, but I think it is just as true that the very experience of being turned on by sexy scenes can be pleasure enough, a kind of pleasure that peaks with the hottest sequence and declines, or is resolved, along with the storyline. By movie’s end, it can all be just food for the imagination, filed away with other reference images that inform one’s private sex life, for retrieval at the appropriate or opportune time.

Pinoy cinema may not measure up to Hollywood standards but that is not to say that our films do not serve the same ends or are socially irrelevant productions and do not qualify as art. To my mind, every movie, bold and not-bold, is a work of art, the product of creative thought and technology, and whether it’s worthwhile or not, successful or not, is a matter of taste, which is diverse and inconstant, and not for any one person or agency to dictate.

But I do agree with film critics who deplore the mediocrity of Pinoy films. Mostly I find the stories wanting in depth and vision, and trailers promising more than they deliver. Some of the “super-bold” movies that so scandalized the noisy minority were more boring than shocking and none of them, to my mind, deserved a second viewing, not even just for the erotic scenes (unlike Peque Gallaga’s Scorpio Nights). Nonetheless, they have a place, as we all (“moral terrorists,” as Carlitos Siguion-Reyna calls them, included) have a place, in the scheme of things, if only as reflections of a process of transition from censorship to self-regulation.

If Armida and the MTRCB can be faulted for anything, it would be for failing to anticipate, one, that the film industry would, after so much repression, first test the limits of liberalization—thus quickly progressing from Scorpio Nights 2 to Sutla, stopping only when the moral terrorists’ howl peaked to hysterical heights—and two, that theater owners and video pirates would think of profits first and children last.

Filmmakers will just have to be more creative in using the space, no matter how limited, that Armida has opened up for them. Limits, financial or “moral,” aren’t necessarily dead ends; they can also push artists to look elsewhere, change course, go deeper, beyond appearances (there’s more to sex, and life, than meets the eye), and still manage to appeal to the market.

To Armida’s credit, she has survived the crisis with aplomb, giving in a little here and there without giving up the cause. To the film industry’s credit, producers and directors have cut down on the sex, even if reluctantly, which is as it should be. The Moon in Scorpio, sign of sex, death, and rebirth, on the first day of Y2K presages more sex rather than less. No doubt the new millennium will see filmmakers continuing to test the limits of the MTRCB (Armida or not), and the Board continuing to debate on where to draw the line between “enough” sex and “too much” sex, and the moral terrorists continuing to harass us all.

I VOTED FOR ERAP (HOW STUPID OF ME)

October 9, 1999 Inquirer

I was looking for a winner who would not sell out to foreign interests and, in 1998, Joseph Estrada was not only the most likely to win the presidential elections, he also seemed to be the least likely to sell out, going by his vehement No! in 1991 to the continuedpresence of US military bases and US intervention in our economic affairs and, later, his avowed love for the masses.

I thought the No! was rooted in some sense of history and the slogan “Erap para sa mahirap” came from a real and informed bias for the poor. I thought that even if later it were all that could be said of him, it would be good enough, mabuhay si Erap! I even thought his sanggano ways were made to order, perfect for staring down the Americans and bullying them into giving us better terms all around.

Instead, horrors! it’s us, the nation, that he’s bullying around, ramming the VFA down our throats last May, and now fast-tracking changes in the 1987 Constitution that would remove what little protection we have against foreign predators, all in aid of globalization. It’s the mother of all sell-outs and our heroes must be turning in their graves.

My only consuelo (de bobo) is that, had I not voted for Erap, he would have won anyway. Given his popularity with the masses, there was no avoiding or preventing an Erap presidency.

I suppose we are meant to suffer this chapter in our history (the economic and political and intellectual pits) seeing as it is only consistent with, and the logical outcome of, recent chapters that saw the nation opting for a professional housewife, and then a professional soldier, for President, never mind that she was a political neophyte, never mind that he was an intellectual lightweight, we didn’t want anyone too brilliant and sophisticated, not another Marcos for sure.

Well, now we have a professional actor, an intellectual featherweight, reciting a globalist script, which tells us that he is not pala the man of the masses he made / makes himself out to be (artista talaga) but a man for the rich, that is, the business community here and the business cartels abroad.

Times have changed, the President says, since the early nineties when he said no to the US bases — then, we needed to get the Americans out; now, we need to get them (and other foreign investors) back in. It’s the only way, he says, of raising the money for the infrastructure that we need to be globally competitive, which, he promises, would redound to the benefit not of the rich but of the poor.

Unfortunately, the promise is basedon the myth that the gains that free trade and globalization would bring to the business community would trickle down to the masses and improve the quality of their lives. In fact, the trickle-down theory has long been discredited. After four decades of foreign investors and their export-oriented “development plans,” the country has little to show for it other than a few million rich and relatively rich vs. 50 million poor people and a ravaged environment.

Contrary to Erap’s propaganda, Charter change and globalization will not usher in a new economic order that would alleviate poverty by distributing wealth more equitably. It would only (if more intensively and easily) continue with the same economic order, the one dictated by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank for the US government and its cronies (American transnational corporations), that has been exploiting our natural and human resources all these years for the profit of a privileged minority while marginalizing the majority of Filipinos.

What’s a million or so jobs that globalization might bring when millions and millions of Filipinos are unemployed and under-employed and the population ever increasing? What’s so great about high-tech infrastructure when it’s obvious that only the rich (and some of the middle-class) minority would have any use for most of it?

Anyone who reads, anyone who has a sense of the larger picture, particularly of globalization as an imperialist scheme to keep the United States and the European Community rich and powerful and (countries like) the Philippines poor and beholden, cannot but snort and fume at the President’s agenda and propaganda — twisting things around (just like Marcos used to do) and dismissing anti-chachasectors as either communists or anti-poor.

So what’s Erap really up to, what’s the “hidden agenda”? Many suspect that he’s just paying off political debts, fulfilling promises he made to the businessmen here and abroad who financed his campaign and who would profit from an open economy. As many suspect that he’s after the removal of term limits, which would allow him (or his chosen few) and his multi-extended family to run again and again and again for spurious re-election a la Marcos, with and for the perpetual support of the biggest imperialist of all time, supercop America.

Erap denies it all, of course: the VFA was a done deal, thanks to FVR, and he has no interest in a second term, the job is too stressful. If true, it might also explain why he is in such a desperate rush to open up (down) the economy — at least then, there would be some growth, never mind how limited and skewed in favor of the rich and famous, during his watch. At least he would have something to show for his six years in office, which could, in the final analysis, be all he’s after – to exit in a blaze of glory, never mind who gets burned.

Anything for a rave review. Artista lang kasi.

Imelda’s Boy

Inquirer January 25, 1999

Book Review / America’s Boy by James Hamilton Paterson

Being familiar with James Hamilton Paterson’s fiction (Ghosts of Manila and Griefwork) and non-fiction (Playing with Water), and liking his elegant British prose and insights on the Filipino psyche from many years of residence in these islands, I couldn’t wait to get a copy of his latest work, America’s Boy / The Marcoses and The Philippines, certain that he had something new to offer, or why would he bother.

To my great disappointment, the only thing new is that Paterson has revealed his true colors: loyalist and white, as in white trash, fiction posing as fact, as in whitewash, touching up the Marcos myths (he was no thief, he was rich to begin with; she isn’t mad, she’s an inspired subversive) and just in time, what a coincidence, for Imelda’s bombshell of an admission that they “owned practically everything” in her heyday and that she is poised to file a P500 billion lawsuit vs. bad Marcos cronies (greedy dummies) who refuse to surrender Marcos assets to the family.

The Filipino-history part is entertaining enough, in prose less elegant than sensational, quick and candid and ironic, bashing old and new ilustrados, bashing imperialist America, exposing Marcos and Imelda, with the juiciest inside stories, some of it old hat (Yamashita’s treasure), some of it new and intriguing (4000 tons of gold) if anonymous and dubious, but I give Paterson the benefit of the doubt (he must have done some research) because it’s all too interesting,indeed what if it’s all true.

But it’s not all true. The martial-law and EDSA parts are jolting, agitating, patently partial, barely researched. His earnest defense of the conjugal dictatorship and its excesses on grounds of cultural idiosyncrasies and American collusion raises my hackles, impossible to stay calm, to suspend disbelief, not when I know better, specially about the EDSA Revolution.

In defense of his view that Ferdinand Marcos was a heroic, if tragic, figure in the time of EDSA, Paterson cites the “extraordinary” moment on live television when Marcos denied Fabian Ver permission to bomb the rebel camp that was then surrounded by human barricades. “To many of those who knew and worked with him,” Paterson writes, “this is still regarded as Marcos’s finest hour. It was the moment when, no matter what orders he might have given in the past in the name of expediency, he refused to give the instinctive datu’s command that would have translated into wholesale slaughter.”

How romantic of Paterson, and how naïve, to fall for Marcos’s palabas. In fact, that extraordinary exchange was pure sarsuela, a (failed) ploy to scare the people away from EDSA, and, incidentally, a response to Pope John Paul II’s plea for a non-violent resolution of the conflict, and to the US Congress’s threat to cut off all economic and military aid to the Philippines should violence break out.

In fact, Marcos and Ver had long gone ballistic and given the kill-order but the Marines, led by General Artemio Tadiar (at EDSA/Ortigas on Day 2) and Colonel Braulio Balbas (in Camp Aguinaldo on Day 3), kept defying these orders. When Marcos had that exchange with Ver on nationwide TV, he was just being his wily old self, making the best of a bad situation by pretending to be the good guy (look, ma, no bloodshed), hoping to fool Washington D.C. and the Vatican, if not the Filipino people, a little while longer.

Paterson’s problem is, he swallows hook, line, and sinker the loyalist version of EDSA that blames the United States for Marcos’s fall. Marcos was America’s Boy, he says, only until Ninoy’s assassination, whereupon the Americans started to plot the dictator’s downfall and to make peace with the ilustrada widow Cory, setting off the chain of events that led to EDSA. He insists that the Americans planned the entire operation, all the way to the abduction of the Marcos gang and the flight to Hawaii. A story that has long been discredited.

Whatever the CIA was up to, the State Department was playing the situation by ear, being very careful how they dealt with Marcos because Ronald Reagan would brook no moves against his friend. In fact, the Americans were in no rush to replace Marcos until a more likely and desirable candidate other than an anti-bases housewife emerged. In fact, the Americans were as stunned as anyone by the display of People Power that forced Marcos out and moved Ramos and Enrile to give way to Cory (at what price, we should wonder). And in fact, the Americans did intervene, but only on Day 3 (the battle was practically won), and only to offer the Marcoses a way out of the Palace.

According to my research, Marcos could have made it to Paoay on his own whether on wheels or with wings: there were other escape routes available to him that Tuesday evening, Day 4. Carloads of security personnel bound for Clark Air Base were able to leave the Palace grounds undetected by the crowds outside; presidential choppers, pilots, and crews had been on stand-by since Monday morning, waiting to fly him anywhere he wished. Even rebel defense minister Juan Ponce Enrile had offered him safe passage out. But Marcos opted to trust the Americans instead, his fatal mistake.

JUSMAG General Teddy Allen had been ordered by US Ambassador Stephen Bosworth to take the Marcoses anywhere they wished. But Marcos informed Allen too late of the destination and Allen found out too late that the Ilocos airport had no lights for a night landing, thus the Marcos party was forced to spend the night in Clark. There, Marcos and Ver wasted no time working the phones, mustering support for an Ilocano army that would re-take Manila. Dismayed, his ministers tried to talk Marcos out of the scheme. Worse, one (possibly all) of them went farther and reported the matter to Enrile and Ramos who, in turn, relayed the news to, and impressed upon, Cory and Bosworth that Marcos should not be allowed to get to Paoay. “Nabigyan tiyak ng rallying point ang puwersang loyalista at pinag-agawán tiyak ang Maynila. Hindi kami makapayag na mangyari iyon habang pinapatatag pa namin ang puwersa ng gobyernong Aquino,” Ramos explained when I interviewed him in 1991.

Unfortunately for Marcos, People Power had by then wrought its magic, moving Reagan at last, as Enrile and RAM had been moved, to give way to and support Cory. At 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, the Marcos party was awakened and told to prepare for the flight to Guam. That — helping Marcos escape from the Palace and removing him from the country — was the extent of the Americans’ part in the February revolt.

Ninoy Aquino’s part was infinitely larger, equally so the people’s part, but Paterson shrugs them and EDSA off: “Substituting an oligarch for an autocrat was no kind of revolution.”

Indeed. But that is a verdict on what happened AFTER the revolution, when the elite had taken it over, and that is no reason to ignore EDSA.

To ignore EDSA is to miss out, as Paterson misses out, on core dimensions of the Filipino psyche—the revolutionary impulse, for one—and on a major sector of Filipino society, the silent middle-class masses, who made EDSA happen and who can make it happen again, given a similarly (hopefully better) informed and motivated environment.

Unfortunately Paterson’s book is out to intrigue rather than inform, which does not help the cause any. Worse, he’s stuck on Imelda, and that’s the most boring part of all.

Rooting for Bill and Hillary

Inquirer 28 September 1998

There is much to be said for transparency and morality in government, but there is also no denying the right to privacy that is essential to the psychological well-being of every individual human being, be he or she a private citizen or a public official. In continuing to persecute US President Bill Clinton, the Republicans go too far. First the lascivious Starr report on the Internet, then the raw videotapes of Clinton’s grand jury testimony on television, what next? Video taped reenactments of the Oval Office encounters, Series 1 to 10?

Clinton’s critics have lost all sense of proportion, anything to weaken the Democrat in the White House, never mind the hypocrisy, never mind the damage to society. Likewise, the press, especially cable TV news, especially CNN, goes too far, seizing on the scandal, feeding on the frenzy, capitalizing on the demand for information, the more salacious and ugly the better, let the chips fall where they may.

Unfortunately, public well-being is not always served by a surfeit of information, especially when it’s sex-related and explicit and therefore inappropriate for immature audiences. Clinton deserves censure, indeed, for having behaved so mindlessly while in office (literally), but he doesn’t deserve (no one does) to be treated so vilely and exposed so viciously for what is at most a low misdemeanor. What married man does not lie about sexual indiscretions, if only to spare (if belatedly) the wife and children from heartache?

Filipinos are right, it could never happen in the Philippines. Here a President would have no trouble keeping the law and media at bay with regards to his private life. Here, an apology a la Clinton’s (the more contrite, the better, of course) would suffice to appease offended souls (at least until the next scandal), and any calls for impeachment would fall largely on deaf ears. When it comes to consensual adult sex, Filipinos will pay lip service to the sixth commandment, a formal acknowledgment of society’s sexual mores in aid of peace and order, but that’s about all. The Catholic layer is a surface thing, like icing on a cake, our best feet forward. Beneath the civilized mask we are a people in touch with our sexuality, and how one deals with it in private, whether physically or spiritually, solo or with a partner, monogamously or polygamously, same sex or different, quickie or kinky, for free or for a fee, is nobody’s business but one’s own.

This is not to say, as some Filipino machos suggest, that we are a sexually liberated or sophisticated people. If we were, we would have sex education programs, birth-control pills and condoms for the youth; pornography would not be illegal; and sexually transmitted diseases would not be on the rise.

The traditional macho defense (falling back on biological determinism, the notion that men can’t help it, they get hard-ons) is programmedinto their genes in aid of propagating the human species. But there’s nothing sophisticated or worldly wise about it. Rather, it’s all about self-indulgence and vainglory, and Filipino women learn to live with it and deal with it, each in her own equally private way.

Ironically enough, it’s the Americans who are trying to be sophisticated and adult about sex. The sexual liberation of the ’60s (free love) that peaked in the ’70s (women’s lib, gay lib) regrettably brought sexual disease to America in the ’80s (AIDS), and the ’90s has seen an attempted return to monogamy (full circle) with a safe-sex twist – it doesn’t have to be life-long, it can be serial or one-at-a-time, which at least limits one’s chances of catching the deadly AIDS virus. For the irrepressibly promiscuous like Clinton and Lewinsky, AIDS prevention advocates recommend safe-sex or alternative rituals such as condom-protected intercourse, mutual masturbation, anything that brings pleasure (including mint and cigars) without bodily fluids being exchanged. At least Clinton was practicing safe sex.

Unfortunately for Clinton, the ’60s also saw the human mind moving from fragmented scientific thought to a new wholistic (or holistic) view of life that has since influenced attitudes and found applications in almost every aspect of human life, particularly in medicine, psychology and the environment, even in sports, the military, regional planning and world peace. New age wholistic thought views a person’s body, mind, and spirit not as separate and independent parts but as interconnected and integral parts of a creative functioning whole. And when a person is whole, when body mind and spirit are one, sexual energy is creative power that can be controlled and transformed and expressed in higher ways, from healing the self and other wholes to recreating the world.

This is where Clinton’s most strident critics are coming from. The new age notion is that a man in Clinton’s position should have been capable of mastering his lust and withstanding the temptation posed by Lewinsky. And I suppose they’re right. If he had said no, who knows, all that pent-up libido might have been harnessed and applied to the crafting of a more creative response to Arab terrorism than a bomb for a bomb. If he had said no, all that energy wasted on depositions and apologies might have been put to better use responding judiciously to the Asian economic meltdown, rethinking free trade and globalization, and reinventing the IMF.

But really, it’s all too much to ask of any president so soon after the examples of JFK and LBJ and Miterrand. And it’s too soon to be harsh and unyielding when the majority of Americans seem inclined to forgive the guy. After all, he has confessed and apologized, and he’s been punished, humiliated, enough by the media and the Internet exposure. The Republicans are now in a position to draw a line beyond which it is indecent to dwell, if only they were seeing straight.

The media, of course, cannot be expected to lay off and give the guy and his wife a break when it’s the rating-est story ever, bigger even than Diana and Dodi, or Charles and Camilla.