Black Comedy
aagbayani@theguidon.com
I have mixed feelings about Lady GaGa.
Her recent work has slumped under the weight of her grandiose concepts. She’s become so pretentious that, in interviews, she tends to spout out mindless babble with profound words thrown in. She can’t direct music videos because her understanding of visual storytelling is fundamentally flawed.
Nevertheless, she’s undeniably the most exciting and least predictable artist to have emerged from the pop scene in quite a while. She has rare musical chops and has always fought for the weirdoes and the outcasts.
Last month, Manila’s weirdoes and outcasts (and fine, maybe a few thousand casual fans with cash to burn) gathered to see her. At the same time, the Bible-thumpers, homophobes and conservative bandwagon-jumpers protested the arrival of “Satan’s bride” on Philippine soil.
I felt embarrassment for their kneejerk reaction of taking issue with something they didn’t understand and wasn’t that big of a deal. Moreover, I felt frustrated because this kind of tension is deeply rooted in our history and culture.
In 500 years, we’ve seen animistic, pre-colonial beliefs mingled with hardline Catholicism, and drizzled with a dose of global liberal attitudes to form this divergent body of people who call themselves Filipinos.
Our culture has been described as “Frankensteinian”—it seems to stitch together found pieces of culture and build this single, monstrous body that’s both glorious and terrifying. We adapt, grow and change as a nation with every piece appended.
Take Cubao, for example: a place where shopping malls, sketchy abandoned cinemas, an obscure religious denomination headquarters and an indie expo all coexist within a block of one another. No one takes issue with this proximity.
Often, we celebrate this spirit of diversity and take pride in our strange heritage. However, it has its drawbacks, particularly when it comes to setting a direction for the nation.
Public opinion can become so polarized over issues such as reproductive health, LGBT rights and controversial pop stars that like a hulking monster fashioned from contradictory elements, we stumble as a nation.
Had our society been less Frankensteinian, it would have gone one of two ways: the Lady GaGa shows would have proceeded with a lot less fuss, or they would have been cancelled altogether.
The tension between contradictory cultures allowed for a compromise. With other contentious topics such as the Reproductive Health Bill, however, it translates as a flat-out stalemate.
When congressman-boxers get away with discriminating homosexuals and Church leaders release tarpaulins wishing cancer on women who use birth control, it feels quixotic to imagine a progressive country in the future. As the world moves towards openness and acceptance, we can only hope that, one day, the monster can take a step forward.
