BANANACUE
REPUBLIC
Vol II, No. 08
Feb 23, 2005

 
 
 attitudes by agnesdv

 




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2005


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Seeing Through Our Illusions
(Part 1)


I grew up not knowing what I wanted to be when I grow up. Not that I ever asked myself that. Sure, as a kid, I had dreams, but only the kind of daydreams you never really follow up on. I wanted to be an astronaut, a pilot (influenced by our favorite tv show "The Six Million Dollar Man") and even a skydiver (from "The Bionic Woman"). I wanted to be a detective (from the many detective shows and the Nancy Drew novels I read as a kid) and a secret agent (from the James Bond movies). I also wanted to be a genius because the geniuses in tv shows seemed to know everything, even read minds. If I remember right, everything that I wanted to be were influenced by the shows (fiction) I watched and the books (fiction) I read. And since all these were creations geared towards attracting an audience for the sponsors, the larger than life they were, the better. I grew up wanting to be a larger than life character.

I was lucky, everything "impossible" then is not impossible now. We have bionic men (what we call cyborgs), we know spies are real, and a genius and visionary did end up the richest man in the world. If I had followed up on any of those dreams, I could be a spy, or a genius, or rich by now. So says my media mentors.

As technology improved, advertising and the media world became more complicated, and so did their creations. I remember watching Star Wars in the early 80’s and thinking "wow, is that world (the future) possible at all?" Spielberg and Lucas always made us dream of a larger future, bigger than our minds could imagine. And so did Bill Gates. These were men who could see into the future and made us see it with them. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the mangga (Japanese comics) evolved into animés (Japanese cartoons), and now we have a real east meets west world of media technology. I don’t know if the kids of today are luckier than we were. I guess in the entertainment sense, they are. They have the tools and the technology to make their ‘future’ possible. But in the larger sense, are they? Imagine recreating  yourself into an anime character.

Is it possible at all to recreate yourself the way you want to be?  And would you?  That is the question of today. If we have the technology to do so, are we doing it? And do we know who we really want to be?

What I like about living in the province is that life is simpler. We are not constantly bombarded by the media telling us how to look like a model or a bold star, who to emulate, what headache drug to take, what SUV car to buy, what new Japanese cellphone to own, which plush village to live in, what American fashion designer shirt or jeans to buy... we don’t have the media telling us how to look good. Sure we have television and cable, but that’s a medium we can easily turn off. It’s a medium we still have a semblance of control over. In the big cities like Manila, there are billboards everywhere. Driving in the Manila roads, all you see are buildings and billboards. The bigger and hi-tech the billboard, the more people notice it. The more good-looking or popular the model in them, the better we notice the product. The EDSA road for example has no skyline, everywhere your eyes look, there are billboards to read. Buy this, buy that, look like this, look like that, own this, own that... You have no escape. And if you’re not vigilant, you end up being hypnotized by them, reading them like there is nothing else to read in the world. Before you know it, you’re trying to be who you’re not anymore.


I embrace the future and its possibilities. I love the idea of shaping ourselves according to how we want to be. I wouldn’t go as far as getting a cosmetic surgery, for not only is it painful (it does look painful), but it’s also expensive. I prefer the more natural way of doing it, and what takes willpower and discipline. Today, we have surgeries to do the outer changes for us, unfortunately, they can’t reshape our attitudes in an instant. Some things we have to do ourselves. But that too, we have people to help us with. We have therapists, self-help programs (in groups), and classes to make us behave better.  Aside from the media telling us what to be, we have writers, spiritual gurus, writers-turned-gurus, and if we work in a company, there are programs to make us all look and behave alike.

Aren’t we scared at all that when we re-create ourselves, it’s towards something someone else defined for us? Not to mention the frustrations involved when we can’t be what we ‘should’ be? Isn’t it at all surprising that we’re turning into a violent society? We have to get what we desire, we have to, we have to, we have to... that’s what the media do to us. We’re their Pavlovian dogs.

Last weekend, I stopped looking at billboards. I would intentionally glance away, and not read or look at the models, or the words, or the products. I didn’t want to know what ‘beautiful’ means in the advertising world, I didn’t want to know what the latest gadget was to feel ‘in’. I didn’t want to know the latest show in town, UNLESS I planned to watch one and only then will I look at the schedule. I didn’t want to be hypnotized by the catchy words, and to spend precious time trying to figure out the cleverness of the words. I chose not to be under the media’s clutches. And until they find a way of putting those billboards right in my face, I have my free will back. 



Posted 02/24/05, Manila.  Send your comment to bananacue_republic@yahoo.com

 

 

 




"Aren’t we scared at all that when we re-recreate ourselves, it’s towards something someone else defined for us? Not to mention the frustrations involved when we can’t be what we ‘should’ be? Isn’t it at all surprising that we’re turning into a violent society? We have to get what we desire, we have to, we have to, we have to..."