If you could have chosen which race or nationality to be born as, which would you choose? Really. Would you want to be Chinese? How about British? Or Swahili? Would you choose to be Filipino? And why?
I’m glad that I didn’t have the luxury of choice in that matter—but if I did, I would either choose to be born a xenomorph (the alien in the, uh, Alien movie) or a Space Jockey, the alien creator/s of humans in the film Prometheus. However, I was born a Filipino—and therefore live in a very, very interesting society that is a blend of fun, absurdity, horror, outrage and inexplicable joy.
June 12th is a very good day to reflect on what it means to be Filipino. After all, three hundred, or even two hundred years ago, we Filipinos didn’t really exist as a nation. The question is: what defines us as a people?
See? Google believes in us, and wishes us well on our Independence Day.
Identity is always a tricky question, and an emotionally charged one as well. Take for example the recent controversy about the Bayo ad, which made a parallelism between the act of mixing and matching clothing—for the sake of fashion, looks and individual expression—and the mixing of genetic parentage among Filipinos, i.e. having foreign and “native” Filipino ancestry or heritage.
The issue, which became all the rage at social networking sites last week, simply proves that fashion and procreation do not mix, not in the least because many of us take off our clothes while engaged in the latter.
Even dummies know that procreation involves fashion marginally, at best—but those pillows truly rock, don’t they? Source: http://keithssongs.blogspot.com/2010/12/wooden-sex.html
Surely, being of mixed-ancestry is not the real issue behind the Bayo controversy. There is no “pure” Filipino anymore. Many, if not most, of us are already a genetic blend.
Somewhere in our family trees, there’s bound to be a Spanish friar, a Chinese hardware store owner, an Indian money-lender, an American G.I., a Japanese guy who frequents karaoke bars, and a Bornean datu. Now, imagine what happens when we put all of them together inside one of those stuffy, cramped MRT elevators. Just imagine the chaos inside our genes.
I suspect that the Bayo ad campaign was controversial because it focused spotlight not only on the matter of mixed ancestry also, and more importantly, on the social and economic inequalities in our country. In our culture, of course, “mestizo” does not only mean having mixed-parentage but, specifically, parentage from the upper-classes of society. So, usually being “mestizo” means having access to advantages—social, financial, etc.—that non-mestizos do not have.
I mean, look at the contrast between this photo:
Jasmine Curtis Smith, the sister of actress Anne Curtis, models in this photo.
Photo by Alexander S. Latupan
Now look at the photo of the sleeping boy again and think: What percentage is his Filipino-ness? What has fashion got to do with his life? Did he end up that way because, unfortunately, he’s not 50 percent Australian?
Of course, the Bayo ad did not intend to highlight our present socio-economic inequalities but the implication will always be there as long as 1) We don’t get over the psychological scars caused by our history of oppression and inequality in the hands of those with foreign blood; and 2) We see the results of such inequalities (and continuing oppression from the oligarchs) every day.
All that, I suppose, played a big part of the umbrage that many people took. Many Filipinos already feel that they are unfairly shut out of opportunities because of their parentage and social status. Even if this is not empirically true in an individual’s life, the bifurcated (Google the word up—it’s not a gender preference) cultural and psychological sting of it, brought about by our history (of being oppressed by foreigners or those
with foreign blood), is still perpetuated in our teleseryes, TV shows and movies.
This is why Pinoys love Manny Pacquiao and, more recently, Jessica Sanchez, so much. Certainly, both of them don’t look like mestizos. And their backgrounds do not place them in the same class as mestizos at all. The Legend of the Pacman has so much cultural currency: his story is that of a “native” who grows up to kick the ass of any foreigner who dares look down on him.
Manny Pacquiao's glorious KO victory over Ricky Hatton. Photo source: Video grab
Admit it—when you see this photo, your inner Lapu-Lapu growls, “Take that, white man!” Warning: the preceding statement might actually be racist—but then weren’t the Spanish, the Americans, and the Japanese also being racist when they took over our homeland? Lesson: we need more respect, fairness and equality in our relationships with other nations. But how do we earn their respect? Certainly, the Pacman alone can’t do it for us.
Whenever Pacquiao says “my fight is the fight of every Filipino,” that’s not just hyperbole or an advertising tagline—we know that that is true at some level in our collective psyche.
This leads us to ask: do we have a national inferiority complex that causes us to get irked whenever we are compared to foreigners?
I don’t discount that possibility but maybe the matter is more complicated than that. After all, experiencing outrage over a slight to one’s dignity is perhaps the opposite of feeling inferior. Certainly, we don’t feel inferior compared to boxer Timothy Bradley.
Inkcanto message to Bradley: Even when the judges say you won the fight, Manny Pacquiao still puts you on a wheelchair. Congratulations! Source: mmamania.com
Filipinos were so pissed at what happened in the Bradley-Pacquiao fight that they wanted to unleash the fighting team of Raymart Santiago, Claudine Barretto, and Pink Man on Bradley:
Photo sourced from Facebook.
Anyway, the reaction to the Bayo ads may have been entirely different if they changed the taglines, the copy and the photos. For example, what if the photo depicted Jasmine sitting in the cart, having a fun conversation with the boy? Or what if she was shown sitting in the cart and enjoying isaw, kwek-kwek or tokneneng with the boy?
Then the tagline could be: “Jasmine is half-Aussie; Jun-Jun lives in Pasay. Both: 100 percent Filipino. ” My God, that concept is brilliant! Bayo, you should hire me for your next campaign!
Seriously, though, we really must define what being Filipino is. We know that it’s not just about the mix of one’s genes. So what makes us Filipino? Let me take two guesses:
Are you Filipino? Look at your passport! This makes a lot of sense. Not only does your passport show your nationality—it also stirs up pre-conceived notions or even prejudices on the part of immigration officers in some countries. For example, Americans are known by the rest of the world to be rich (on the downside, as arrogant and stupid). Filipinos are known as nurses, laborers and domestic helpers. And both are treated—by some, not all—foreigners accordingly.
Fortunately, the foreigners who do get to stay in the Philippines acquire a totally different view: Filipinos are friendly, caring, cheerful and fun to be with. And yes, they see that we are talented, hardworking, intelligent, and articulate—unless they’re with our politicians. Also, we are a beautiful people. Just look at how many foreigners fall in love with us—this brought Anne and Jasmine Curtis into existence, after all.
You identify yourself as Filipino. Poet-critic J. Neil Garcia wrote somewhere, in response to the Bayo controversy, that identity is “performative.” Now, to the average person like moi, the term “performative” will immediately mean something we do onstage, on TV, at a family reunion or the talent portion of a local beauty pageant in some province.
I mean, when the immigration officer in London, for example, inquires about your nationality, you don’t start to think, “My Filipino-ness is performative!” and so you start dancing the tinikling or the pandanggo sa ilaw in front of the immigration officer.
“And what’s your nationality? Wait, why are you dancing with those bamboo poles? Why are there candles on your heads?”
What we mean by “performative” in relation to our Filipino identity is this: being Filipino is not something we ARE, but something we DO. Every day, every minute, we are engaged in acts that, collectively, perform and express our being Filipino.
The sense of this notion was brought home to me when, for an article in a Japanese newspaper, I interviewed Josephine, a young woman who was born to Filipino parents, but grew up in Clark Air Base with the American community there—before Mount Pinatubo erupted and drove the Americans away.
The thing is, Josephine (not her real name), grew up with American friends, used American products, ate American food, all throughout her childhood. She spent most of her time with Americans. So, after Mount Pinatubo erupted and the base was abandoned in haste, Josephine was traumatized. She was going to high school then, at a Filipino university, but the core of her life and her identity was tied to the American community inside the air base.
When I interviewed her, Josephine was pre-occupied with becoming a true-blue U.S. citizen. She simply doesn’t identify herself, psychologically and emotionally, with being Filipino. She buys U.S. products, from tissue paper to cheese, to her soaps, shampoos and other toiletries, and the food she eats every day. She’s like an American lost in the Philippines with no way of going home—her passport says she’s Filipino, but her performative identity is American.
Josephine has tried all sorts of ways to be an American citizen because the U.S. is where—she truly believes—she belongs. She even tried an arranged marriage with this older guy from the U.S. but he turned out to be some sleazoid so she called the deal off. I wish her luck and hope she truly finds her home, whether here or in the U.S.
Yes, it’s our one-hundred and fourteenth year as a free people. What have we done with that freedom? To be fair, we are a young country. As a democracy, we’re not even fifty years old, if you consider that after the Americans let us go (sort of) when they officially ended their imperial designs upon us, we had twenty years of dictatorship under, well, a Filipino president.
And by the way, for all other fashion-related businesses out there: you don’t need to hire a big shot ad agency to get ideas for your ad campaign (anyway, you will likely pay a writer cheap, and so get your money’s worth in bad copy). Just go to Facebook for ideas like this:
I believe that with time and with effort, yes, we can make ourselves worthy of our freedom. We can realize that being Filipino is, really, a choice. It’s not your genes that make you Filipino—it’s all in what you do, every day, for yourself, your loved ones, and the rest of the people in this archipelago.
