Naked truth August 31, 2006
THAT was an awesome thing the University of the Philippines (UP) students did last Monday in answer to Raul Gonzalez's remarks about what UP had become. It was the perfect response to it. No, more than that, it was the most poetic response to it.
Last weekend, Gonzalez derided UP for having become the breeding ground of destabilizers and the lacking-in-breeding ground of exhibitionists. Well, he didn't say the latter, he doesn't have the imagination for it, what he said was that it was a place where naked people ran around. He said UP students should really be thankful their government was spending to educate them.
The kids responded by having 15 of their fellows run around the campus in their pristine state in a special edition of the Oblation Run, traditionally done around Christmas. Who says you can't have Christmas in August? The Run wasn't just meant to regale the audience, many of whom were women, with the truth about the body electric, it meant to expose to them the truth about the body politic.
At the very least, the kids did bring out some naked truths the justice secretary can no longer see. Chief of them is whom they owed for their education. As University Student Council chair Juan Paolo Alfonso pointed out, it was the people who were paying for their education, not government. Taxpayers' money is money that belongs to the people, not to Raul Gonzalez or his boss, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Tyrants, petty or otherwise, do have a way of forgetting that pristine truth. Tyrants, petty or otherwise, have a way of thinking that money entrusted to them by the people to be used for the people is theirs to dispense with as they like, or keep for themselves.
At the very most, the kids did bring out some naked truths their so-called elders-and-betters -- no, pretty nearly the rest of their countrymen -- can no longer see. Chief of them is that we have been plunged back right into martial law and are compelled to fight with the same weapons the previous generation used to fight martial law. The Oblation Run arose in much the same circumstances as today, the kids protesting epic fakeness. It began one fine day in 1977 when five students ran naked in the campus to promote the play, "Hubad na Bayani" ("Naked Hero"), satirizing Ferdinand Marcos. "Hubad na Bayani," of course, sounds like "Huwad na Bayani" ("Fake Hero"), which was what Marcos was. We had a fake hero then, we have a fake president now, both without a mandate to rule. The kids stripped the fakeness from Marcos' medals then, the kids are stripping the fakeness from Arroyo's votes now.
If I recall right, UP went on to become a beacon of light in a time of darkness during martial law. The student paper UP Collegian in particular rushed in where the national newspapers feared to tread, and the UP Law Center went boldly on where others had not gone before. If the UP people can resurrect that role in these new times of darkness and despair, may all my prayers to the God of (Poetic) Justice go with them.
Nakedness is the perfect metaphor, or to borrow a phrase from T.S. Eliot, the perfect "objective correlative," to draw attention to our condition today. Democracy is transparent, tyranny is opaque. Democracy is plain to see, tyranny hides behind subterfuges. Democracy is naked, tyranny wraps itself up in folds of deception.
Democracy is beautiful in all its nakedness, tyranny is ugly in all its cover-ups.
The guardians of Filipino morals, who bristle at the sight of nakedness in movies and elsewhere, including real life, will of course rail against this as an affront to Good Manners and Right Conduct. They are probably the same people who railed against Theresa Pangilinan for heckling her school's guest of honor, who happened to be Arroyo, during their graduation. Well, I've said my piece about Pangilinan. She at least was a genuine graduate, the speaker was a fake president. She at least had earned her degree by hard work, the speaker had won her title by Garci.
The Oblation Run may very well be the shock treatment this country needs to strip it of the indifference and cynicism that now cover its heart like calluses and its soul like barnacles. At the very least, it shows up a justice secretary who finds shocking the sight of kids displaying their formidable assets to a giggling world, but finds perfectly just andrespectable the sight, or sound, of a candidate plotting with "a Comelec official" to kidnap a poll watcher who is protesting fraud. It shows up a justice secretary who finds outrageous the sight of kids parading before the world the things they ought to be covering up, but finds perfectly lawful and godly the sight of Virgilio Garcillano, Joc-joc Bolante, and all the other officials the Senate has been trying to summon in vain, covering up the things they ought to be parading before the world.
But never mind the justice secretary. He doesn't need help from outside to show himself up, he does a good job of it himself every time he opens his mouth. Mind only ourselves or what we have become, a people who have lost the capacity to weep and gnash our teeth at the sight of so much death and dying. What is truly indecent, the sight of naked bodies traipsing gleefully in the groves of academe or the sight of bodies caked in blood and being eaten by the worms in the paddies of Nueva Ecija and Bulacan provinces, courtesy of one Jovito Palparan? What is truly reprehensible, the spectacle of kids shedding off clothes in protest of iniquity to the laughter and titillation of the world, or the spectacle of a usurper's mindless minions shedding blood in protest of sheer life to build a garrison state from a mountain of bleached bone?
Democracy is resplendently robed in all its nakedness. Tyranny is obscenely naked in all its finery.
http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=18149
Last weekend, Gonzalez derided UP for having become the breeding ground of destabilizers and the lacking-in-breeding ground of exhibitionists. Well, he didn't say the latter, he doesn't have the imagination for it, what he said was that it was a place where naked people ran around. He said UP students should really be thankful their government was spending to educate them.
The kids responded by having 15 of their fellows run around the campus in their pristine state in a special edition of the Oblation Run, traditionally done around Christmas. Who says you can't have Christmas in August? The Run wasn't just meant to regale the audience, many of whom were women, with the truth about the body electric, it meant to expose to them the truth about the body politic.
At the very least, the kids did bring out some naked truths the justice secretary can no longer see. Chief of them is whom they owed for their education. As University Student Council chair Juan Paolo Alfonso pointed out, it was the people who were paying for their education, not government. Taxpayers' money is money that belongs to the people, not to Raul Gonzalez or his boss, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Tyrants, petty or otherwise, do have a way of forgetting that pristine truth. Tyrants, petty or otherwise, have a way of thinking that money entrusted to them by the people to be used for the people is theirs to dispense with as they like, or keep for themselves.
At the very most, the kids did bring out some naked truths their so-called elders-and-betters -- no, pretty nearly the rest of their countrymen -- can no longer see. Chief of them is that we have been plunged back right into martial law and are compelled to fight with the same weapons the previous generation used to fight martial law. The Oblation Run arose in much the same circumstances as today, the kids protesting epic fakeness. It began one fine day in 1977 when five students ran naked in the campus to promote the play, "Hubad na Bayani" ("Naked Hero"), satirizing Ferdinand Marcos. "Hubad na Bayani," of course, sounds like "Huwad na Bayani" ("Fake Hero"), which was what Marcos was. We had a fake hero then, we have a fake president now, both without a mandate to rule. The kids stripped the fakeness from Marcos' medals then, the kids are stripping the fakeness from Arroyo's votes now.
If I recall right, UP went on to become a beacon of light in a time of darkness during martial law. The student paper UP Collegian in particular rushed in where the national newspapers feared to tread, and the UP Law Center went boldly on where others had not gone before. If the UP people can resurrect that role in these new times of darkness and despair, may all my prayers to the God of (Poetic) Justice go with them.
Nakedness is the perfect metaphor, or to borrow a phrase from T.S. Eliot, the perfect "objective correlative," to draw attention to our condition today. Democracy is transparent, tyranny is opaque. Democracy is plain to see, tyranny hides behind subterfuges. Democracy is naked, tyranny wraps itself up in folds of deception.
Democracy is beautiful in all its nakedness, tyranny is ugly in all its cover-ups.
The guardians of Filipino morals, who bristle at the sight of nakedness in movies and elsewhere, including real life, will of course rail against this as an affront to Good Manners and Right Conduct. They are probably the same people who railed against Theresa Pangilinan for heckling her school's guest of honor, who happened to be Arroyo, during their graduation. Well, I've said my piece about Pangilinan. She at least was a genuine graduate, the speaker was a fake president. She at least had earned her degree by hard work, the speaker had won her title by Garci.
The Oblation Run may very well be the shock treatment this country needs to strip it of the indifference and cynicism that now cover its heart like calluses and its soul like barnacles. At the very least, it shows up a justice secretary who finds shocking the sight of kids displaying their formidable assets to a giggling world, but finds perfectly just andrespectable the sight, or sound, of a candidate plotting with "a Comelec official" to kidnap a poll watcher who is protesting fraud. It shows up a justice secretary who finds outrageous the sight of kids parading before the world the things they ought to be covering up, but finds perfectly lawful and godly the sight of Virgilio Garcillano, Joc-joc Bolante, and all the other officials the Senate has been trying to summon in vain, covering up the things they ought to be parading before the world.
But never mind the justice secretary. He doesn't need help from outside to show himself up, he does a good job of it himself every time he opens his mouth. Mind only ourselves or what we have become, a people who have lost the capacity to weep and gnash our teeth at the sight of so much death and dying. What is truly indecent, the sight of naked bodies traipsing gleefully in the groves of academe or the sight of bodies caked in blood and being eaten by the worms in the paddies of Nueva Ecija and Bulacan provinces, courtesy of one Jovito Palparan? What is truly reprehensible, the spectacle of kids shedding off clothes in protest of iniquity to the laughter and titillation of the world, or the spectacle of a usurper's mindless minions shedding blood in protest of sheer life to build a garrison state from a mountain of bleached bone?
Democracy is resplendently robed in all its nakedness. Tyranny is obscenely naked in all its finery.
http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=18149
posted by dqfan06 @ 9:39 AM
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