Bring our museums to life
January 19, 2007 | 12:00am
Nowadays, no one really goes to museums anymore; not unless it’s for a (boring) mandatory class field trip, that is. And it doesn’t help much that, more often than not, there will be a paper on the field trip due the following day. Great. Not only was it a long and boring trip, but now a paper gets in the way of me and possible all-night jamming.
I watched Night at the Museum at the beginning of the week, probably because I was so drawn to the idea of a museum coming to life. As I was watching, I realized that it would be the regular family flick with a happy ending (not that this is bad, of course) and that story-wise, it wasn’t different from many other family-oriented films. I really don’t mind watching these movies because I do like happy endings and they make me feel good, even if the storyline is something I have already experienced before.
The one thing that really struck to me though was that the freaking museum came to life! I don’t really know much about 3-D rendering and whatnot, and special effects are cool, I guess; but, execution and putting the story into the film aside, the idea of the museum literally coming to life just got me. I remembered seeing the trailer a couple of times before then, and I think even the trailer could have been enough to satisfy me. Imagine that: old dinosaur bones coming to life and chasing you around, wax exhibits coming to life, diorama displays carrying out what it is they are actually doing. That’s pretty neat.
In the Philippines, you could talk to Lapu-Lapu and see the fierce leader who kept out the Spanish in their initial efforts at colonizing us. You could see the Tabon Man and see him in his Tabon ways – making Tabon coffee and eating his Tabon rice. The mini dioramas of the Banaue Rice Terraces would be alive with little people tilling the fields. And just imagine all the animals indigenous to the Philippines roaming around the museum at night, the variety and range of it all. I would love to see a Philippine museum come to life like that.
But maybe over here, that wouldn’t exactly be the case. The last time I went to a museum was about a year ago, to the National Museum in Manila. And it was pretty boring. No life-size replicas of stuff. Not much color. Many of the sections of the museum were closed off (but I don’t think they were very exciting, either.) There was, at the time, an exhibit on Spanish ships and their cargo, which was the closest thing, in my opinion, the museum had to an exhibit. And yes, I had to do a paper on it when I got back home. In Spanish. So you can only imagine my frustration: going to a museum that didn’t deliver, and having to write about it in a language that made my brain hurt.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. The National Museum is probably doing its best to keep up with the times and to keep people coming in. People buying entrance tickets, after all, pays for the salaries of the museum’s employees and pays for the upkeep of the exhibits. But really, it’s sad that our national museum looks so drab and boring because our culture is so far from that. Our culture is chock-full of color and a rich heritage, so there’s no way that our culture can look so humdrum. Maybe it’s because there’s not enough government funding. Or maybe I should go back and check up on the place and see if it’s stepped up its game recently.
Anyway, back to Night at the Museum. I figured that the movie was set in the US, and that their Museum of Natural History is an establishment that has been around much longer than our own National Museum. Thinking positively, our future museums should be as good, or even better.
But really, authorities should start doing something about it as early as now. Museums are for everyone, but my opinion is that to make museums better, you have to make kids like them first. Us older humans have more capacity to stand certain things – you know, putting up with boring situations, listening to stupid people, and all of that. Kids, on the other hand, are different. Once they don’t like something, they complain. And complain. And complain some more. I can imagine me if I were about six years old and I paid a visit to the National Museum. Five minutes into the tour and I would start telling everyone how much it sucked. And the one-hour tour would feel to me like 10 hours. I would never want to visit another museum ever again because of boredom trauma. I don’t want that to happen to today’s kids if they ever have to visit the National Museum.
In any case, there is still hope. And that comes in the form of what goes into the museums – our culture. Nothing would be more fascinating than to walk around a simulated jungle somewhere in Palawan, with all the animals around. Or taking a "dip" in one of our coral reefs and seeing all the colors. Or listening to myths and legends of the Philippines’ creation taken from the different regions. I don’t know, these are just suggestions. I am no historian, nor am I an anthropologist or the guy who has a mastery of all the native flora and fauna. But I do know what I would like to see, and that is for our museums to come to life.
E-mail me at enricomiguelsubido@yahoo.com.
I watched Night at the Museum at the beginning of the week, probably because I was so drawn to the idea of a museum coming to life. As I was watching, I realized that it would be the regular family flick with a happy ending (not that this is bad, of course) and that story-wise, it wasn’t different from many other family-oriented films. I really don’t mind watching these movies because I do like happy endings and they make me feel good, even if the storyline is something I have already experienced before.
The one thing that really struck to me though was that the freaking museum came to life! I don’t really know much about 3-D rendering and whatnot, and special effects are cool, I guess; but, execution and putting the story into the film aside, the idea of the museum literally coming to life just got me. I remembered seeing the trailer a couple of times before then, and I think even the trailer could have been enough to satisfy me. Imagine that: old dinosaur bones coming to life and chasing you around, wax exhibits coming to life, diorama displays carrying out what it is they are actually doing. That’s pretty neat.
In the Philippines, you could talk to Lapu-Lapu and see the fierce leader who kept out the Spanish in their initial efforts at colonizing us. You could see the Tabon Man and see him in his Tabon ways – making Tabon coffee and eating his Tabon rice. The mini dioramas of the Banaue Rice Terraces would be alive with little people tilling the fields. And just imagine all the animals indigenous to the Philippines roaming around the museum at night, the variety and range of it all. I would love to see a Philippine museum come to life like that.
But maybe over here, that wouldn’t exactly be the case. The last time I went to a museum was about a year ago, to the National Museum in Manila. And it was pretty boring. No life-size replicas of stuff. Not much color. Many of the sections of the museum were closed off (but I don’t think they were very exciting, either.) There was, at the time, an exhibit on Spanish ships and their cargo, which was the closest thing, in my opinion, the museum had to an exhibit. And yes, I had to do a paper on it when I got back home. In Spanish. So you can only imagine my frustration: going to a museum that didn’t deliver, and having to write about it in a language that made my brain hurt.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. The National Museum is probably doing its best to keep up with the times and to keep people coming in. People buying entrance tickets, after all, pays for the salaries of the museum’s employees and pays for the upkeep of the exhibits. But really, it’s sad that our national museum looks so drab and boring because our culture is so far from that. Our culture is chock-full of color and a rich heritage, so there’s no way that our culture can look so humdrum. Maybe it’s because there’s not enough government funding. Or maybe I should go back and check up on the place and see if it’s stepped up its game recently.
Anyway, back to Night at the Museum. I figured that the movie was set in the US, and that their Museum of Natural History is an establishment that has been around much longer than our own National Museum. Thinking positively, our future museums should be as good, or even better.
But really, authorities should start doing something about it as early as now. Museums are for everyone, but my opinion is that to make museums better, you have to make kids like them first. Us older humans have more capacity to stand certain things – you know, putting up with boring situations, listening to stupid people, and all of that. Kids, on the other hand, are different. Once they don’t like something, they complain. And complain. And complain some more. I can imagine me if I were about six years old and I paid a visit to the National Museum. Five minutes into the tour and I would start telling everyone how much it sucked. And the one-hour tour would feel to me like 10 hours. I would never want to visit another museum ever again because of boredom trauma. I don’t want that to happen to today’s kids if they ever have to visit the National Museum.
In any case, there is still hope. And that comes in the form of what goes into the museums – our culture. Nothing would be more fascinating than to walk around a simulated jungle somewhere in Palawan, with all the animals around. Or taking a "dip" in one of our coral reefs and seeing all the colors. Or listening to myths and legends of the Philippines’ creation taken from the different regions. I don’t know, these are just suggestions. I am no historian, nor am I an anthropologist or the guy who has a mastery of all the native flora and fauna. But I do know what I would like to see, and that is for our museums to come to life.
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