Flush the fashion

Here comes the future and you can’t run from it

If you’ve got a blacklist I want to be on it. — Billy Bragg, Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards

It’s already a decade since Mike de Leon’s Bayaning 3rd World was released. Hailed as a masterpiece by critics, it ostensibly depicted two filmmakers in their efforts to make a Rizal film. Originally, the director was tapped by GMA Films to helm the biopic of the national hero in time for the Philippine Centennial, with no less than Aga Mulach in the lead role. (After both the director and star left the project, the producers eventually got Marilou Diaz-Abaya with Cesar Montano to make the film.) Unable to shake the desire to do a film about the subject, he set out to do a Rizal film that managed to say that it was impossible to condense the man into a film while offering the only true insights of his legacy in cinema.

 Remembering the film, one scene stands out in particular, especially now in what RockEd’s Gang Badoy has dubbed “this irrational season.” As played by Joel Torre, De Leon’s Rizal addresses the camera at one point and delivers the following:

Fellow countrymen: I have given proofs that I desire as much as the next man liberties for our country; I continue to desire them. But I laid down as a prerequisite the education of the people in order that by means of such instruction, and by hard work, they may acquire a personality of their own and so become worthy of such liberties. In my writings I have recommended study and civic virtues, without which no redemption is possible. I have also written (and my words have been repeated by others) that reforms, if they are to bear fruit, must come from above, for reforms that come from below are upheavals both violent and transitory.

The extract is taken from Rizal’s “Manifesto to Certain Filipinos” (dated December 15 1896), which he wrote while incarcerated in Fort Santiago. At the time he wrote it his death was already certain. If anything, it wasn’t an attempt to save himself but rather the genuine insights of a man who had already proved his heroism by accepting his fate. The sobriety and clarity of his political thought is particularly resonant in the line, “reforms, if they are to bear fruit, must come from above, for reforms that come from below are upheavals both violent and transitory.” It’s no wonder why many of the more radical or even liberal political thinkers have exhibited a reluctance to accept him wholly. Ultimately, Rizal was conservative in his thinking but in the original meaning of the term — what the painter Francis Bacon described as making the best of bad job — and not the neo-conservatism of American politics. It’s the kind of sobriety and clarity of thought that is woefully absent today where the sound bite is the apex of political thought and taglines like “AkoMismo” or “I Am Ninoy” emblazoned on dog-tags and T-shirts are thought to be heroic acts in themselves. It’s as cosmetic as staging another EDSA revolution.

As of this writing, the Lower House has already voted to convene as a constitutional assembly perhaps to talk about shifting to parliamentary form of government. This is truly a cause for concern and before we start signing up on websites or wearing the shirt, it’s time we really think and rethink what it is we should be doing. Read up and write a blog if you like. Rally in front of the Batasan Pambansa even. But for heaven’s sake, don’t let it pass like last season’s fashions. (Where are the Euro generals, Jocjoc Bolante, Boyet Fajardo now? Hell, even Jun Lozada seems to be back in the green foliage away from public view.) 

If there’s anything that the recent repeal of the taxes on books should have taught us, it’s that the bang-and-clatter of a Senate hearing is no match for really tackling issues and establishing an intelligent debate even if it is in the form of talking to government officials or open letters on the internet. Even more powerful than anything in “aid of legislation” is giving away books to strangers on the Baywalk on Roxas Boulevard on a Sunday afternoon. Forget Hayden Kho. Remember Bong Revilla. (In fact, go to his office and talk to the man. Or write to him. See what he’s about.)

Read history. Read the news as well. (Find a DVD of Bayaning 3rd World and watch that, too.)

Know your heroes. Know your enemy.

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