BANANACUE
REPUBLIC
Vol I, No. 15
Dec 15, 2004
social criticisms by
Vicente-Ignacio de Veyra III
A Hobbesian
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I DO NOT know why the Mr. Bean animated series on cable
TV’s The Disney Channel is popular to kids. Maybe it’s because cartoon
drawings function like doll or mascot figures, referencing reality
distortedly and thus not realistically, which maybe makes cartooning the
more honest portrayal of The Real.
Mr. Bean is an evil but fumbling character with a
stereotypically retardate face. That personality combine is probably what
makes him amiable instead of despicable, enhanced of course by the
atmosphere that declares the saner world as no less evil and corrupt.
If by Hobbes we can admit that man is by nature an evil
animal only struggling to be virtuous (for one realized reason or another,
which reason by the way couldn’t be selfless), then in the light of a
world requiring bits of evil in order to survive, Mr. Bean must be to
adults a symbol of relative goodness, for the body of sheer innocence or
ignorance or retardation or stupidity might be considered exempt from the
Hobbesian principle. Yes, Mr. Bean not the merely laughable but the
ultimately amiable, for perhaps we wish we could be as innocent as he in
our mistakes and cunning.
Christian authorities mostly stand by this declaration of
sinfulness by innocence as forgivable, in contrast to the unpardonable
sins of the knowledgeable.
PERHAPS God is an aesthete, for after watching way too many
movies I’ve come to the conclusion that man is at his most saintly and
beautiful state in moments of extreme vulnerability, whether these moments
span a few seconds or---as in the case of Robinson Crusoe---a few years.
God should win at least a billion best director awards.
In the movie Cast Away (where the businesslike might notice
the value of putting some all-star cast away for a while to make a
blockbuster), the hero played by Tom Hanks is amiable from the start, even
while at his most cranky-boss frame of mind. It seems like this modern-day
Robinson Crusoe wasn’t exactly unaware of his crankiness as a put-on,
almost allowing underlings to make fun of him.
The amiability is of course enhanced a hundredfold by his
isolation in an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And it’s not
just because we love to see people put in spots that weaken them but also
because we kind of miss those spots in our lives. In present-day drabness
amidst routine, the enjoyment of watching such movies as Cast Away could
be both a celebration of our good fortunes within our lives’ drabness
and also a vicarious adventure of our repressed Survivor-like desires to
be put on the spot.
It’s the same double-edged and contradictory enjoyment
that we have with action heroes in deadly self-assigned missions. It’s
the same double-bladed knife that cuts our hearts while reading stories
about heroes who have gone through oppressions from the majority in a
village, city, or country. It shouldn’t be a mystery therefore to find
we, every now and then, are rooting for the underdog. Rooting for the
likely winner, in contrast, is often accompanied by either our perceiving
or witnessing or knowing some oppression upon this person’s person from
somewhere or sometime, otherwise by a tensive vulnerability through this
likely winner’s limits-testing vanity.
Politicians have an all-too-conscious feel for this PR
reality concerning the public’s attraction to the pained. So that when a
most hated political opponent dies, they offer their possible presences or
sympathies lest the suddenly softened public veer away from their hardened
souls.
Gossips also suddenly feel both triumphant and sympathetic
when a subject of their hateful judgments begins to cry.
Many women even possess a backhanded sexism towards their
own kind with the recurring pride towards their being tagged “the weaker
sex”. In the Philippines, where women can freely wear mini skirts and
can run for president, many Filipinas still believe that real men don’t
fight with their wives but merely allow their wives to be the emotional
and articulate ones. As if a woman’s outbursts are to be equated with a
child’s tantrums, best left relatively unattended or reacted to not.
Having said all of the above, we can perhaps say that
humans are masochistic beings. They become truer persons in the tension of
possible death or during cinematic moments of slow passing away.
THE REASON why we can easily fall for the gibber of actors
is because we’ve seen them play most vulnerable and oppressed characters
that have endeared us to them. To the public eye, too, artists are often
seen as likeable soft personas, despite the swagger or tough look that
some of them might display in the mall or bar.
A national hero is a mere emblem of some political
mythology that we generally don’t consign significance to, until we see
a movie about the hero’s mistakes and demoralizations. Then he becomes a
true hero, almost a friend.
This doesn’t stop at our impressions upon others. It also
extends to our regard for our respective selves. Although many find it
hard to admit this truism, still it is not hard to remember that the
moments where we have been most proud of ourselves were in those moments
that we faced a truth, admitted a mistake, or wore modesty like a suit.
In a national scope, an Asian race usually proves itself
equal in political or military virility to superpowers’ braggadocio and
bullying when it begins to feel comfortable about its difference, its
shorter penis or body height, and takes strides forward in the aftermath
of the admissions. The Japanese, prime examples of Shintoist-Buddhist
courage within humility and selflessness, demonstrated this well.
In the case of oppressions, an individual begins to take
strides in a process of moving on when he finally concedes to the
impossibility of enlightening a majority that is always wrong (or always
right for the wrong reasons), proceeding thence to take care of himself
and cease trying to help a public that refuses to be helped.
Stories of a weakened existence, of tension threatening
annihilation, or of an Achilles' heel that took a step towards love, . . .
these are human signals that make heroes real, enemies friends, the
despised suddenly adored. Never mind if it’s sometimes too late an
acknowledgment, because it couldn’t really be otherwise.
Given all this, it is perhaps safe to say that the ideal
human being would be one who acknowledges these human characteristics of
our constant vulnerability and weakness while practicing our selves’
righteousness or recurring greed. Christians call this being reminded of a
God other than Mammon.
Now, just today Fernando Poe Jr. died. Before his demise he
was declared, by his opponents of course, as a symbol of the Filipino
supposedly good however flawed but all too willing to forgive all those
who stood for greed, larceny, and hedonism, letting himself be surrounded
by these like unrepentant Magdalenes that were his disciples or
puppeteers.
The party of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo did indeed display and
voice out the thought of that above paragraph at their political sortees
in recent days, never mind if they were wont to put aside their own
questionable dealings and shortcomings in governance and power.
Macapagal-Arroyo, however, recognizes that today Poe will
be the people’s good man, having been weakened by Death and been
Christianized completely. So the former called him a good man and so on
and so forth, never mind her party’s likely guffaws at the thought of
Poe’s wife’s Susan Roces’ being touted by the opposition as Poe’s
successor.
This is understandable. After all, in the eyes of God we are all Mr. Beans. We’re all evil but fumbling characters with funny faces. That personality combine in us is probably making us amiable instead of despicable in heaven, enhanced of course by the atmosphere that declares the saner world of good governance as no less evil and corrupt. God should win at least a trillion best director awards.
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Posted at the Bananacue
Republic website 12/08/04. Send comments to:
[email protected]
"(Macapagal-Arroyo) recognizes
that today Poe will be the people’s good man, having been weakened by
Death and been Christianized completely."