The Asian Challenge / Rico Yan phenomenon

Prof. Samuel P. Huntington’s classic Clash of Civilizations remains the historic lodestone if we seek to understand the social, political and cultural turbulence shaking the world today. When he said way back in 1993 that "fault lines between civilizations are becoming the central lines of conflict in global politics", not a few harkened as though frozen on the ground by a new vision on the road to Damascus. Huntington hit it right on the barrelhead twice, like blinding flashes of historic lightning.

Eight years later on Sept. 11, 2001, two suicide aircraft reportedly manned by Islamic terrorists struck America right in its very heart.

The World Trade Center and the Pentagon, hitherto the majestic symbols of America’s economic and military power, were reduced to charred rubble in virtually the twinkling of an eye. More than 3,000 died. From then on the United States was never the same. Formerly invulnerable, as an eagle’s mountain aerie is invulnerable, America knew what fear was. What terror was. The "enemy" struck from within.

Nine years later, the same terror was being enacted in the Middle East, where the world’s two greatest religions, Christianity and Islam, were born. Jew and Palestinian were at war, the West and Islam. Thousands of lives are clashing cultures. Two men, one an irresistible force, the other an immovable object – Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat – faced each other like an aroused cobra and a hissing mongoose.

Suddenly, or almost, America the world’s lone superpower, was transfixed. Almost paralyzed.

Betokened as the US was to support, shield and come to the rescue of Israel against Palestinian "suicide commandos", it was glued to inaction. To succor Israel would alienate and presumably outrage the entire Arab world. The US needed the collaboration of such moderate Arab and Islamic nations like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, even Indonesia and Malaysia to contain and rollback "terror" everywhere in the world. The coalition against terror would collapse. Asia, which geographically embodied China and warrior world of Islam, would pound its collective chest and scream victory over the US and the West.

America would never allow this to happen. But what cards could it still play?

As Huntington states, the Asian challenge "is manifest in all the East Asian civilizations – Sinic, Japanese, Buddhist and Muslim." And he adds: "Both Asians and Muslims stress the superiority of their cultures to Western culture." And then China. In our last column titled "Fire in the East", we depicted China’s growing role as "the greatest player in history" (in the words of Lee Kuan Yew) determined to break the back of Pax Americana and assert itself as the only hegemon in Asia. According to most estimates, Huntington states, "the Chinese economy will become the world’s largest early in the twenty-first century."

So there you are. At a time America is out to crush terror wherever it exists, if finds itself confronting the lengthening shadow that is China while unable – at least until now – to behead the frightening visage of terror in the Middle East. Already, the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) is sending warning flares it will not allow the intifada (the Palestinian uprising) and Yasser Arafat to disappear under the boot of Sharon and his Israeli army, now on the rampage in West Bank and Gaza.

It is about time that we Filipinos understand the world around us.

For too long have we been a parochial country, lost in the mists and maze of a culture that historian Teodoro Agoncillo aptly caricatured as a blend of more than 300 years of the convent (Catholic Spain) and 50 years of Hollywood. It is a culture divorced from the rest or rather the whole of Asia. And so where the US sought to introduce troops into Malaysia and Indonesia to fight and slay Islamic terror and had the door slammed in its face, in the Philippines all doors were wide open. We are a country easily beguiled, easily duped, and easily screwed.

As Confucius reportedly said, seconded heartily by Raul Manglapus, if you’re gonna get raped, you might as well sit back and enjoy it. The thing is we’re being royalty screwed and paid on the cheap. And all the while the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo straps on the castanets in an Iberian dance, the flamenco, exults Ole! And announces to one and all the nation has never been better.

The Americans? They are just here for a lark.

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I cannot for the life of me understand why media have gone completely overboard in reporting the death of Rico Yan. The kid or rather this young man was undoubtedly handsome, engaging, dashing, a successful movie and entertainment star. His was a smother of short-cropped hair and a smile that unfastened all the hydraulic locks of the rivers Thames and Tiber. . . We were spending the Holy Week in Subic when news about his death came through cell phone. And truth to tell, I didn’t know at the time who he was, chewing as I did on the first bit of information he was the boyfriend of Claudine Barreto. The Claudine of telenovelas I knew quite well.

Then the news poured out as in a gully.

Rico Yan was not only front page, but headline or umbrella stuff. Radio couldn’t have enough of him. TV pulled out all the stops. The affliction that caused Rico Yan’s death – bangungot or fatal bleeding of the pancreas – was dissected in the minutest detail. Bangungot rode the grapevine like some malignant breeze from Siberia. Doctors and specialists were invited to talk shows to explain what it was. Helas! Everybody grieved that Rico Yan had to die of this affliction at a very early age. The level of devastation, of mourning, of grief bordered on Hiroshima after that Japanese city was hit by the atomic bomb.

Then came the memorabilia. The nostalgia. The many and endless pilgrimages along memory lane.

There was Rico Yan in every pose, every gesture, every flicker of his boyishly handsome face, interviews brought back to life, pages tenderly read and turned, all of moviedom huddled like stars in the heavens coming together and grieving, men, women, boys and girls in the streets temporarily stricken as though hit by lighting. I had never seen anything like it. The whole of Philippine media – including the most respectable of broadsheets – treated the event with a reverence normally reserved for the death of such an immortal as Albert Einstein.

Not even the mysterious death of Marilyn Monroe got this kind of splash in American media. She was front-page all right but not headline stuff. And remember she was Marilyn Monroe. A legend in her time, a legend for all time. An exception, of course, was Princess Diana, whose death in a car accident while being chased by paparazzi, sent shock waves all over the world. That was understandable. As Prime Minister Tony Blair said Princess Diana was the "people’s princess." And consequently, her dalliance with an Arab playboy opened every gut in the tabloid media.

It is not Rico Yan’s fault of course that our media have rung all the bells, except those of Balangiga, in reporting, mourning, grieving his death and lifting all the veils of his life, including his failed romance, it seems, with Claudine Barretto. He probably was an exceptional celebrity and entertainer and deserved his rightful share of publicity.

But now I ask the question: Why all the media hullaballoo?

I strongly suspect that social and political life in the Philippines is so barren, so devoid of heroes and great men and models that the celebrity world has pre-empted that void. Ninoy Aquino is no more. In fact he has virtually been forgotten as are Exequiel Javier, Pepe Diokno, Ramon Magsaysay. Who really cares today? The world of the cinema has taken over, the world of celebrity, the world of the young, the bold and the beautiful. We are all bewitched by form and not substance.

It is convincing proof – if proof we still need – that our world of politics is an empty, bombinating drum. Who really can we admire in the Senate? This is supposedly the citadel of great and lofty minds but many of its members today are better located in the pirate holds of Long John Silver. And the House? The popular perception is that they are all scum, thieves who live off the fat of the land, cutthroats who would slit their grandmother’s front neck for a fast buck. And they are not even handsome. Just take a look at Dingalen Dilangalen. And the men and women around GMA? Dante Ang is today’s favorite for thrashing. He deserves every nasty word he gets.

Now maybe I can understand the phenomenon of Rico Yan. But still, I cannot accept the media hype.