BANANACUE
REPUBLIC
Vol II, No. 12
Mar 23, 2005

 
 
 social criticism by
 Vicente-Ignacio de Veyra III

CONTENTS

Literary website:
War Photos Museum 

Drama


I COULD be on the verge of giving up my column for something else; say, for a video reviews one. Recently I have been staying away from the news, seeing the inconsolable grief of monotony in reading between the lines, watching history repeat itself, witnessing the irreparable boredom of humanity’s greed and widening ignorance.

From the window of my Tacloban subdivision house I see that I have begun to fit into the neighborhood, becoming terribly contented and happy. I have started to routinely drink with new neighborhood buddies, their dogs that shit in front of my gate suddenly becoming my friends, this latter point almost akin to the worship and belief people in India have towards their cattle.

What do I have to complain about? I have a bit of a job that gets me my three-day meal and pay my bills, I’m working on a hopeful modest project for a Manila-based industry, and I still have my family. What reason have I to continue with this social criticism bit when I hardly seem affected anymore by any of the grunts and gargles of the selfish celebrities in the latest news on (mal-) governance? Let the greedy gnaw on my tax payments, puncture the air I breathe, stir the water I drink, nibble big chunks out of the consumer wage I get. As long as I feel happier than Bill Gates might be, more content with life than Henry Sy’s obsessive-compulsive mall-building streak, then I should cease and desist from spitting venom that nobody probably reads anyway and would only look upon as a small voice in the ecological balance of screams. Why not join the fun, then, since I’m already having fun anyway in this provincial drone of drinking, eating, cable-TV watching, beach bitching around? After all, what is politics but the hatred for things and people that threaten the things we love? And, seemingly, I’m on a streak with things I love: the provincial air tinted with animal shit odor, the brown river-laden beach with the occasional jellyfish-looking cellophanes, the communal camaraderie of unfulfilled dreams! You could say this is just the attitude that the George W. Bushes of the world love to exploit, but I could say back where were you when I was calling to you?

George W. Bush

BUT I’ll write on, if only with the hope that I’d get to that last word on deadline time, a last word that should round out that ample count for a column, a column that may or may not be society-critical. I shall write on. But what? What about? Whom about?

Okay. What did I do just a few minutes ago that may have the seed for this business of column-writing for the next issue? Oh yes, did a few laundry, washed the dishes, watched some foreign videos. Not much seed there. Videos! Wait! That’s it! I’ll review the videos! That’s just it, today will be the day I begin to write about movies and videos and give up writing about society! Let’s see, the first one I watched was Closer, a Mike Nichols movie set in London starring among others the lovely Natalie Portman in a stripper’s role that the Philippine MTRCB would not approve of, written by Patrick Marber based on his play (nominated for best adapted screenplay at the recent BAFTA Awards). Okay, that’ll do, but of course it already sounds like no social commenting is going to come out of this movie.

On the other hand, alas, I could fail in this sheer video-reviewing route. I learned, after all, this one thing from Karl Marx: that politics is mere awareness of its presence in anything and everything. There’s politics in expensive cake as much as in the affordable cotton candy. And social criticism is possible in the most pirated of entertainments.

Karl Marx

But one will have to say as one should that Closer is not a political or social-commenting movie at all, as is any movie in its category. In Closer's case, it’s just the story of four lives that interrelate closer to one another and then follows the route of entropy (physical and/or psychological). It could mainly be the story of Dan, played by Jude Law, and his clichéd writer nature for having an insatiable desire for more of the opposite sex and love (one partner for the sex and some love, the other for what may be love with some sex). This lust and love dual motor, supposedly triggered by an absent maternal presence in Dan’s early childhood, learns its lesson in the end, but not from the learned artist archetype in Anna (Julia Roberts) but from the naïve and demanding stripper typecast in the girl-woman Alice (Portman, for which role she was BAFTA- and Oscar-nominated). Okay! That’s the movie!

Where’s the social criticality to be derived from that story experience? Oh, well, let’s try. Something feminist perhaps in Alice’s awakening and self-liberation, something terribly Catholic in Dan’s submission to a karma state he deserves, something about society’s definition of love vs. marriage in the one-sided fate of the couple Anna and Larry (played by Clive Owen for which role he was also BAFTA- and Oscar-nominated). But are those significances terribly social? Well, my sudden take is this, that when movies talk about individuals’ special experiences, it shall be by necessity (or by Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe morals) social. After all, society – contrary to the old Communist belief and claim – is made up of individuals. Multiply the behavior of an individual and you have a reflection of a social more or tolerance. Furthermore, individuals’ behavior – by the lessons of the literary movement called Naturalism – is often or always a mere reflection of an environmental or social/cultural dogma or allowance.

Daniel Defoe

A reading of Alice, in fact, can also be extended to reflect the simple working-class individual’s view of love/possessiveness as devoid of the intricacies of art and artifice and glamorous beauty, even as the beautiful may be in this individual’s very persona. In the exhibition of the art-photographer Anna, Alice commented that all of Anna’s pictures were lies, virtually beautifying pain as is art’s conventions’ wont. Dan’s character can be expanded, meanwhile, to reflect the artist’s anti-social stance that often overextends itself to rebel not merely against social conventions but also against human nature, in this case the human or animal nature to possess and get jealous, elements that inform on the social wisdom behind marital law. The artist in Anna is of a different mold. It can be read as escapist, beautifying pain and ugliness as Alice said, but one that is also weak towards the archetypal other. This escapism is somewhat resolved by her giving in to convention in the end, almost surrendering love to the state or status quo if you will, but yet unresolved by what may be an eternal loneliness for that other she left. Larry’s is a dermatologist’s character whose view of life and love may be mechanical as well as a process of structuring by convention. But we ask, isn't this structuring utopia of selfish love what also structures movies' endings and life's proclivity to get entropic? Okay! That’s the movie!

the DVD jacket of Closer,
featuring the faces of the
movie's four characters
 

In one or two or all of these four characters we may find ourselves, and find in turn (in the process of social signification) our societies' character as well. Okay! That’s our movie!

IT’S hopeless. One cannot escape the curse of structuralism and post-structuralism, those doctrines that left a legacy of democratized criticisms upon a single simple melodrama, not only in terms of cultural possibilities in the diversity of angles but also in terms of the “legalized” over-readings that have now been turned into virtues instead of sins. Thankfully for my kind, now one can review any melodrama or even simpler shit and read almost anything terribly social into it, allowing one to remain within the structure of his specialization and not be on the verge of giving up his column for another. Not ever again.

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"What reason have I to continue with this social criticism bit when I hardly seem affected anymore by any of the grunts and gargles of the selfish celebrities in the latest news on (mal-) governance?"