Culture versus dignity

Willie Revillame, the billionaire TV showman, is absolutely correct when he defiantly declared that he did nothing wrong in encouraging Jan-Jan, his six-year-old TV guest, to gyrate suggestively. What are all those bleeding hearts, those professional do-gooders bleating about? In our consumerist society, the market determines how we act and think; Willie cannot therefore be charged with abusing the human rights of a child. He did what is in consonance with Filipino culture; that lewd performance was greeted with wild applause. We cannot argue against success.

And so this dilemma now challenges our institutions of justice, and most of all, our own perceptions and values. It is only right that we must now confront the crass reality of ourselves that we are a shallow people, mababaw ang kaligayahan natin — a mantra I have often repeated.

Listen! In its universal reach, our culture is not only shallow. It is also very earthy, for which reason, Willie cannot be excoriated.

Consider this: in that village where I grew up, there was this farmer who trained his three-year-old son to lie down on his stomach and at the father’s command, Trabajo!, the child started pumping as in the sexual act. The child was happily applauded. I am sure that all over this country, such an exhibition is being repeated in a variety of forms.

Listen to our languages — how sexually loaded they are. The Tagalog expletive putang ina mo (your mother is a whore) is very pejorative and could exact a killing at the most and a lifetime enemy at the least. The Ilokano equivalent, which is even a term of endearment when addressed to friends, okininam (your mother’s vagina), is also sexual but less demeaning. I have heard elderly Ilokano women spice every sentence with yot (fuck). As a boy, the limericks I recited, the folk songs that I sang like Pamulinawen — all their words are obscene.

This is culture at its rawest.

Alas, what Willie and most of us cannot see is that his popular program and so many imitations of it, exploits the very poor as well as our permissive culture; he compels those hapless and disadvantaged Filipinos — the young and the decrepitly old — to give up their dignity to perform as he wants them for the money which he dangles before them.

Willie has to be reminded that he diminishes and demeans the poor; we can even argue that he lures the poor with the promise of easy money and thereby encourages dependency, belief in luck rather than in hard work. His show as it stands should be barred from TV. He should have been fully chastised when so many were killed in the stampede to his show some years back. The market resurrected him. Obviously, popularity and money had swelled his head.

Afew months back, at a public forum I enlarged on the Willie ruckus which was first aired by the columnist Conrado de Quiros. I criticized our appreciation of TV personalities who are not talented, who cannot act, sing or give intelligent commentary. I also brought into the discussion quasi-religious leaders amassing wealth while feeding on the gullibility of Filipinos who, in their poverty, search blindly for faith and a better life. I concluded that we must decolonize our minds.

Those who eat three times a day and are compassionate should forgive our outrage at Willie’s insensitivity just as we can forgive him when he says he just wants to help the poor. But does he really? If he does, he’s doing it all wrong.

He should funnel his charity for the poor in a manner that will truly help them without them losing their self-respect. There is that old Chinese adage, give the poor man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him how to fish and you will feed him for life.

Invest in a charity that will do the most good developing skills in self-sufficiency, in education, in health care and a well planned program of feeding the hungry, the street children, because hunger cannot wait.

Always remember, the alleviation of poverty is never a political or economic issue — it is moral.

Our society is afflicted by insatiable consumerism, our institutions are beholden to the demands of the market, and finally, our culture is “damaged.”

These are the daunting realities people of goodwill must face. To undo these, the largest responsibility falls on the owners of media; they must compel their editors to do their job well, pay their workers enough so that they will not be corrupted so easily. And advertisers should take care that their publicity funds do not promote contrary attitudes.

All the owners of these giant networks must probe deep into themselves, at their values and help in building a strong nation and a moral people. Such will then dignify their billions in profit.