One day, after ng interview ko sa Philippine Science High School na mukhang sure thing na, ay may nagtext sa akin from Star Cinema. Tinanong ako kung interesado ba raw akong sumali sa creative team nila. At, bawindang akiz! Oo naman, pero pinagpapasa ako ng sample story line. Ay, windang ang lolo! Hindi ko alam itei. Kwento't tula lang ang alam kong sulatin. At essay. Pero story line? Anech itei? Pero mega keri lang, send ko lang 'to, just in case. ^_^
Ang kwentong itei ay matagal na sa aking isip. Sa paraang ganito ko nalang inilabas. My friend Joni told me it's actually an easy Indie piece. Pero I dunno. Basta maisilang na itong kwentong matagal nang nabuo sa aking isip. At nailabas sa ganitong porma. Ang pamagat nito ay "DOKYU".
Si Marvin, 19, mass communications student, ay sumama sa field trip ng kanilang sociology class sa Camp Sampaguita. Nagkaroon ng programa ang mga inmate at sa isang bahagi nito kung saan kumanta ang chorale ay may lalaking tumugtog ng gitara—isang lalaking maputi, makinis ang balat, may boyish charm pero hindi katangkaran. Ito’y si June, 19 din. Noong nakita ni Marvin si June, may kung anong excitement itong naramdaman ngunit itinago lamang niya ito.
Hindi bakla si Marvin. Pero hindi pa ito nagkakanobya. Dahil sa sobrang subsob nito sa pag-aaral ay hindi pa nito naranasan ang totoong mainlove sa isang tao. Naalala niyang may crushes naman ito noong high school siya ngunit hindi talaga niya hinarap ang mga ito dahil sa pressure ng kanyang mga magulang para maging ace student, mag-top, mag-first honor. Sa kanya pang pagmumuni-muni at pag-alala sa mga high school crush niya ay naalala niya ang kanyang pinakamasasayang araw noon kung saan magkasama silang dalawa ng kanyang best friend na si Jake sa ilalim ng punong mangga habang nag-gigitara at nagkakantahan.
Umuwing gulong-gulo ang isip si Marvin. Hindi nito makalimutan ang inmate na iyon na bukod sa galing mag-gitara’y napakaamo pa ng mukha. Ngunit higit sa lahat, dahil nakikita niya ang kanyang best friend sa katauhan niya. Ang best friend niyang mula ng magkaroon ng girlfriend ay hindi na sila naging kagaya pa uli ng dati. Muli, atat siyang bumalik sa Camp Sampaguita, yun nga lang, wala siyang maisip na idadahilan. Natapos ang semester na sobra siyang balisa.
Sembreak, at nagkita-kita uli ang landas nina Marvin at Jake. Si Jake ay kasing kulit, kasing kengkoy at kasing loko parin ng dati, at panay akbay pa nga ito sa kanyang best friend gaya ng dati ngunit uneasy na si Marvin sa mga ganito. Maaga siyang umalis sa party na iyon. Mas lalo itong naguluhan sa kanyang sarili. Bakit hindi na ako gaya ng dati? Bakit iba na? Bakit paranf hindi na tama?
Dumating ang bagong sem. Naatasan silang gumawa ng dokyu sa isang subject. Naisip agad niya ang gumawa ng project tungkol sa mga kabataan sa loob ng Camp Sampaguita na hindi na ininda ang kung anumang panganib. May pagdududa man ang mga kagrupo’y siya naman ang lider. Siya ang tipong pasarap lahat ng kagrupo habang siya na ang bahala sa lahat. Dahil dito, nagkaroon siya ng pagkakataong makapanayam si June. Sa loob ng tatlong buwan, lahat na yata ng bagay ay naitanong na ni Marvin kay June kahit ang karamihan dito’y wala nang kinalaman sa documentary. Minsan nga sa kanilang pag-uusap ay nasambit ni Marvin, “Malamang theft o drugs ang kaso mo.Imposibleng rape. Imposible talaga,” sabay iling at ngiti. Walang imik si June habang nakatitig ito kay Marvin na hindi maupos ang ngiti sa labi.
Naging malapit sa isa’t isa ang dalawa. Bumaba narin ng bumaba ang mga marka ni Marvin kahit pa ito’y consistent dean’s lister at napakatalinong estudyante dahil sa madalas na pagliban nito sa klase. Ang dahilan: immersion daw sa locale ng documentary.
Noong birthday ni June ay nagkaroon ng kaunting inuman sa selda nila. Pumunta roon si Marvin ng may dalang T-shirt na nakabalot pa ng gift wrapper na blue, paboritong kulay ni June. Sabi ni June, matagal na raw itong hindi nakakatanggap ng regalo kahit noon pang nasa loob ito ng piitan. Pagkaraan ng isang oras, dahil sa hilo’t pagkalasing, hindi na sigurado ni Marvin ang kanyang ginagawa. Hindi naman kasi talaga ito umiinom. Dahil nakahalata si June sa mga ikinikilos ni Marvin mula pa noong sila ay nagkakilala, at dahil narin sa lakas ng loob na naidudulot ng alak, ipinuwesto niya si Marvin sa kanyang kama sa posisyong hindi ito makakapalag. Ni-rape nito si Marvin. Humulagpos ito gamit ang kanyang buong lakas ngunit wala itong nagawa. Nang bumalik ang mga kaselda’t guardia, nakita na lamang nilang sinasakyan na ni June si Marvin, na duguan na ang may bandang likuran nito, na kitang-kita sa puting uniporme ng estudyante. Si Marvin ay halos wala ng malay sa mga sandaling iyon.
Dinala ng ambulansiya ang bata papalabas sa Camp Sampaguita at si June naman ay sa maximum security. Huli na noong malaman nitong attempted rape pala ang kaso nitong si June, ayon sa mga balita sa TV, sa kanyang nakababatang stepbrother noong siya’y kadedese-ocho pa lamang at ang kapatid at walong taong gulang.
We left Pines Hotel this morning and took up residence in a government bungalow. It is a compact little building, made of wood and some sort of thick canvas material—the latter giving it a very fragile appearance. It looked almost like a Japanese paper house but for the corrugated iron roof…par1
The first essential, after dumping down our baggage, was to get a fire lit in the kitchen gate. I essayed to chop fire-wood, and, after nearly slicing off my toes, gladly relinquished the job to two native Igorot boys who offered their services. They chopped wood, lit the fire, cleaned the dirty dishes, fetched distilled water from the neighbouring depot, and all for ten centavos each (roughly twopence half-penny): labour is cheap in the Philippines.par2
These Igorot tribesmen fascinate me. They are dark brown in colour, with shapely limbs, but their faces are scarcely handsome—flat-featured, broad-nosed, eyes far apart, and lank black hair. The general aspect of these gentry is fierce and forbidding, as befits their head-hunting reputation, and yet their voices are strangely soft and musical. As to their dress, it is reduced to the minimum, at any rate in regard to the men. They seem to find clothes irksome, specially when they are at work, and so (to Vera’s embarrassment!) we sometimes come upon stark naked brown men, whose only concession to decency is a narrow strip of embroidered work (reminding me of a piece cut off an old-fashioned bell-pull) suspended from the waist. The dress they more usually adopt is a curious blend of western civilization with Igorot savagery—to the waist a singlet, and then, from there downwards, nothing! To see an Igorot walking through the streets of Baguio, as I saw one to-day, clad in an abbreviated vest, a Bill Syke’s cap stuck rakishly on his head, and carrying a mackintosh over his arm, but with not a shred of trouser-cloth to cover his lower nakedness, makes a man wonder whether he is wide awake or merely dreaming dreams and seeing visions! And yet these unclad folk go about quite gaily and unconcernedly, and no one seems to mind…par3
The walks in the neighbourhood are gorgeous, and the interesting glimpses one gets of native life are most fascinating. Here you see an Igorot woman, heavy featured, wild-eyed, clad in native cloth, stripped in vivid colours, staggering along with a heavy basket hanging on her back and kept in place by a strap across the forehead. These baskets are of the type used by the peasants in Switzerland, and so possibly they got the original design from these far-distant islands. Another Igorot damsel passes with her arms laden with ornaments—coil on coil of glittering brass—and the flesh thickly tatooed from the hands up to the elbows. The little children are attractive in their naked simplicity, and some of them have winsome faces, and great, dark, lustrous eyes…par4
Sunday morning is the great time for this [Baguio] market, it is then that the natives from all the outlying districts come in to buy their week’s provisions. I have seldom seen a more animated or more entertaining sight. A sort of corral had been formed by bullock carts in the open space outside the covered market, and here all sorts of stalls had been erected and a roaring trade was going on. Here native dress (and undress!) could be seen in every shade of colour and variety of material. Some of the women wore curious white turbans, which looked as though a towel had been twisted rope-fashion around the head. Many of them were smoking enormous cheroots; some of them had the gauzy crinoline sleeves of Filipino fashion; others had their limbs laden with brass ornaments.par5
“The up-to-date Filipino,” so runs the local guide book, “mingles with the scantily dressed Benguets, Lepantos, Bontocs, Ifugaos, and occasionally Kalingas… In one corner sturdy natives of the hills will be buying the piece-de-resistance of a coming feast—a dog—which will probably have four or five days hiking over the mountain trails, carefully guarded by its purchasers, before its miserable existence is brought to an end. A little further down a fashionably dressed visitor will be buying curios; across the way, squatting on the ground, smoking a cigar a foot long, will be a native woman haggling over the price of rice or camotes; and next door one of the Baguio housewives will be buying locally-grown strawberries and cabbages; and so on without end.” par6
Some of the men were of ferocious aspect. I induced one to stand before my camera while I snapped him—he had nothing on except a girdle and a hat, and his arms and chest were heavily tatooed.par7
After tea we went for a walk and saw a typical Igorot dwelling. It looked rather like a large beehive on stilts, and its outward filth suggested an interior that must have been verminous to the last degree. Close by was another house—decidedly novel from an architectural point of view, for its walls were made entirely out of kerosene tins!8
On returning home two visitors called to see us—one of the masters of the school, whose chapel service we attended this morning, and a missionary-person whom he introduced to me as an authority on the Igorots (apparently he runs a mission school for them in Bontoc, the Igorot metropolis). From him I gleaned quite a lot of interesting information about these wild tribes. He assured me that head-hunting has by no means died out; to his own knowledge several natives had literally “lost their heads” during the last few days; but, to console their pleasantries to their own dark-skinned brethren.par9
Their mode of burying the dead notables of the tribe is curious for the bodies are smoked and preserved for many days before the final interment takes place. Some of these dried-up corpses are to be seen in a cave near Baguio.par10
The Igorot children have small knowledge of what family life means, for when six years old they are separated from their parents, and all the girls of the tribe have to sleep together in a dormitory-hut called an “Olag,” while the boys spend the nights with the old men in a building of their own. The children may have meals with their parents, but they must not on any account sleep with them.par11
The “Olag” is as much a mating-house as a dormitory, and here the young men come when they want a wife. They believe in experimental matrimony; the girl is taken “on appro.,” so to speak, if she bears a child, well and good—the marriage is then regarded as binding: but if she proves barren, she is returned to the “Olag” as unsatisfactory, and another damsel is taken in her stead. It would seem that the one motive governing marriage among these wild men of the mountains is “procreation of children”—what we know as “love” has little to do with it.par12
They hail you as their morning star Because you are the way you are. If you return the sentiment, They'll try to make you different; And once they have you, safe and sound, They want to change you all around. Your moods and ways they put a curse on; They'd make of you another person. They cannot let you go your gait; They influence and educate. They'd alter all that they admired. They make me sick, they make me tired.
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
MIXED NUTS! UP MA Language and Literature Students with "Dyosa".From left: Gonster, Ekid, Carl, Goddess Prof. Delima, Miko, Jerico.
This is such an interesting group: 2 Tarlaquenios (one of them speaks latin and the other is French Major), 2 Ilocanos (but one speaks Pangasinense and the other can speak Spanish and Cebuano), and 2 Cordillerans (and coincidentally, neighbors: the goddess and the psychologist).
"First time mo?" said Nicole while she sat beside me.
Was I to say no when one of the dancers from "Double O" (a strip club along Magsaysay, Baguio City) asked me the question that could jeopardize my entire masculine ego in her blooming nakedness (well, almost) while sipping her cocktail and nibbling on a cheese stick my friends order for a staple.
"Regular ako sa Q-Ave.," I said so obviously lying, while I gulped the almost half-filled bottle of RH. My new friends, backing me up, said, "Di papasa ang mga kasama mo dito... Ang mga tini-table niyan, Maui Taylor at Angelica Panganiban!"
While Nicole isn't exactly my type (so are Maui and Angelica, anyhow), she's the hottest stripper the club has to offer. Well, I've been to Baguio Angels and Pick-a-boo, but Nicole is different from all of them. I think she's smart, although, she wants to appear as though she's not. I was so wanting to ask if she likes what she's doing, but I thought it'd spoil the night. But now, I still wonder.
One of my friends told me that Nicole is Asero's girlfriend. That's why I remember Asero being hesitant upon entering the club. I felt I betrayed a buddy. I didn't know. Nobody told me. Around 3 in the morning when we went home to the dorm, everybody was so loud and teased. And happy, so I thought. But... I think I did a terrible mistake.
I just learned that Nicole went back to Taytay after Asero broke up with her that night. They both were so devastated when Asero ended everything between them after the clubbing, Ton told me (one of the tropa) in the morning. I didn't do anything out of the usual, I didn't even take advantage of the situation that night when I was so pumped up and stuff. I even wanted to table Nicole all night so she didn't have to sit with maniacal bastards anymore. But I wasn't about to explain myself to anyone, either. The place demanded a certain behavior, and I acted appropriately. I'm sure I did, I wasn't that drunk.
But then again, I learned something. Never dine it in. Take it out. Especially when someone's watching.
The Racial Affronting Apparatus of “In the Land of the Head-hunters”:
A Postcolonial-ish Analysis
First of all, I would like to note that I’m writing this final paper in english (therefore, from English) in contrast to my previous papers to make a statement that we, Filipinos, can write and discourse in the language. Meanwhile, I'm aware that my usage will be quite different from that of the native speaker. Nonetheless, I won't apologize for anything in my tradition of the language however erroneous others might find it to be. This is not being arrogant, but being authentic. Everything I wrote here is intended to be it, and exactly it. But this should not be taken very seriously because, in reality, I do not know what I’m saying.
“In the Land of the Head-hunters, Being an account of a summer holiday in Baguio, 1924” appears to me as a racial slur. However we (in class) are advised not to use this term in criticism, this is the best time to use it to refer to this kind of a writing which exceedingly sucks. This does not go without any elaborate explanation and qualification why it’s that and I will point out the reasons one by one in the succeeding paragraphs.
The miseducated British traveler exoticized and insulted the natives of Baguio all throughout her/his travelogue. In her/his first paragraph, s/he immediately stated that the government bungalow where s/he was sheltered is little. At first glance, this seems like an accurate description of the edifice s/he’d stayed. But if we’re to qualify what “little” is for an alien from a supposed superior culture, whose architecture s/he considers “advanced”, there rests now the problem. What is little is easy to build. What is little is cheap. What is little is not grand, and therefore, something that is and should be looked down on. What s/he sees here is not just the house but as extension of it—everyone/thing in Baguio—nothing but small things (to mean in the Filipino context: maliit and, consequently, its verbalized form maliitin). This claim, again, will be supported in the following paragraphs.
S/he went on to say that aside from its smallness, it’s also made of “wood and some sort of thick canvass material—the latter giving it a fragile appearance” with “a corrugated iron roof”. This is another seemingly innocuous statement but greatly constitutes to the label that is the “Orient”. Corrugated iron, a noun, meaning: sheet iron bent into a series of alternate ridges and groves in parallel lines giving it greater stiffness . Small, fragile and stiff. Aren't these the usual depiction of the Asians in Hollywood movies, say Jackie Chan in Rush Hour and Kal Penn in Van Wilder in contrast to the big, macho West, like, say Clint Eastwood and Harrison Ford?
In her/his second paragraph, s/he narrated how s/he tried to chop wood but nearly sliced off her/his toes until s/he “gladly relinquished the job to two native Igorot boys...” There is something at work here: the alien is saying that s/he's not used to chopping wood, why? And who did s/he hire to chop it? Although s/he is not explicitly saying, s/he is implying that manual labor such as chopping wood is not fit for somebody like her/him (because perhaps, s/he's a writer and/or an academic) so s/he let the native Igorots who must have chopped wood all their lives do the job. Binary opposition is doing its job in this instance in illustrating what kind of people these Igorots are (being other-ed) by showing what s/he is not (the Self) and vice-versa. S/he continued to enumerate what else the natives did for her/him: they “chopped wood, lit the fire, cleaned the dirty dishes, fetched distilled water from the neighboring depot...” These things reinforce the point I raised earlier, and only to conclude by saying, “all for ten centavos each (roughly two-pence half-penny): labour is cheap in the Philippines.” The alien narrated the entire thing as though s/he had tricked the natives by just paying two singkong duling. Regardless of how much these natives really charged the alien, in effect, s/he was saying that the natives are easy to trick through the manner s/he had worded the narrative. What are the implications of this? First, s/he put them in an equation where the smarter intended readers of this travelogue including her/himself is above these cheap laborers from the much exoticized Baguio, Philippines. Another is that, s/he was opening Baguio to conquest and exploitation because anyone who'd want cheap labor could avail of the Igorots: a case of commodification. To a certain extent, s/he was implying that the Igorots will do anything for much greater amount—and to qualify “anything” here may mean from house chores to infinity. And lastly, it affirms the idea of the “third world Philippines.” There is the “third world-ing” apparatus here, entailing that manual labor is cheap because many of the Filipinos are just manual workers and are illiterate and dumb (?). And up to now, because of this ideology, Filipinos have become marketable domestic helpers abroad, and again, in extension, caregivers, nurses, teachers, sex workers (?) and the like. Now that I've mentioned this, to examine the etymology of what they call “third world” in contrast to the highly civilized and industrialized countries is something that must be brought to the fore: the mere invention of the phrase explains how far we are from becoming equals. We are, again, here, determined, defined and reified by means of our economic status by those who are powerful and wealthy. Of course, this merits a longer discussion, but let me go back to the travelogue before I digress even more.
To justify my statement that the alien's travelogue sucks is exemplified in the third paragraph. “These Igorot tribesmen fascinate me” is then followed by “their faces are scarcely handsome”. This statement is then reinforced by a spectrum of derogation: “flat-featured, broad-nosed, eyes far apart, and lank black hair.” Should the natives be happy about this description? To a point, this is true, but these descriptions wouldn't be so insulting if there we weren't aware of the west's notion of the beautiful: fair-skinned, small nose, small feet, tall, slim, shiny hair and so on. This just merited important and glaring focus because what the traveler is doing here, in fact, is maligning the Igorot's physical appearance.
In the same paragraph, the alien made fun of the Igorot clothing saying that it's “reduced to the minimum” plus shamelessly added:
They seem to find clothes irksome, especially when they are at work, and so (to Vera's embarrassment!) we sometimes come upon stark naked brown men, whose only concession to decency is a narrow-strip of embroidered work (reminding me of a piece cut-off an old-fashioned pull-bell).
The power of the “Other's gaze” on the other is being epitomized in this quotation and I have to say many things about this. First, saying that the Igorots find clothing irksome is almost directly saying that these Orientals are primitive and uncivilized. Second, it gave me the impression that the alien is fetishizing the naked brown men they seldom saw, which made me think/explore of the many possibilities of the meaning of the word suck than I have previously used many times over in the earlier paragraphs. Third, that the length of the clothing is directly proportional to one's decency. And to underscore this, the alien stated, “And yet these unclad folk go about quite gaily and unconcernedly, and no one seems to mind.” Reading in context, the alien is generalizing that all of the inhabitants of Baguio must, to an extent, be indecent to be letting these almost naked men walk along the streets without any apprehension. Lastly, to bring to mind an old-fashioned pull-bell upon seeing a bahag is crossing the line from tasteful to distasteful description. Are these culture-sensitive? Are these the workings of a proclaimed civilized and cultured person? Aren't these manifestations of narrow-minded judgments and Bush-isms, with all due respect to the American president (s)?
The continuation to the above quotation is even more fascinating (deja vu?). S/he said:
The dress they more usually adopt is a curious blend of western civilization with Igorot savagery—to the waist a singlet, and then, from there downwards, nothing. To see an Igorot walking through the streets of Baguio, as I saw one today, clad in abbreviated vest, a Bill Syke's cap, stuck rakishly on his head, and carrying a mackintosh over his arm, but with not a shred of trouser-cloth to cover his lower nakedness, makes a man wonder whether he is wide or merely dreaming dreams and seeing visions! [emphasis added]
These are very heavily laden statements. First is the direct opposition between “western civilization and Igorot savagery”. The alien here was representing the natives “as less civilized or less capable and as needing western paternalist assistance ”, with the mention of Bill Syke’s cap (alluding to “Oliver!”) and mackintosh, which are identified with the west, to make it appear as though the Igorots are little English wannabes who are so wanting to adopt the western living. I am theorizing that the alien just sweepingly assumed that the rainwear the native was carrying was really Mackintosh, parallel to the case of the Portuguese naming the Aztecs “Indians” and the Spaniards naming the Filipinos “Indios” despite the fact that what they’ve separately reached weren’t in fact India but other archipelagos. And to paraphrase Professor Michael Coroza, in our Filipino Literature class, commenting on the misnomer: They’re the more hilarious fools, in retrospect. Second among the slurring in this quotation, because of the appearance of the native clothing, the alien was saying that the native must be hallucinating or something to that effect, because he was walking ‘round town without covering his “lower nakedness”. Why should this be a big issue to the writer? Why should s/he be repeating this fact over and over again? Did s/he have issues that we apparently do not know? I was not about to say that, perhaps, dark-skinned, petite, and nearly naked men are her/his fetish, but even fetishizing the Igorots is a form of Orientalism.
In the fourth paragraph, it’s the Igorot woman and children who were caught by the traveler’s gaze. By mere describing the Igorot woman as “heavy featured, wild-eyed, clad in native cloth, stripped in native colors, staggering along with a heavy basket hanging on her back and kept in place by a strap across the forehead,” she is already objectified as a barbarian who carries a peasant’s basket, whose design was derived from some far-distant land like Switzerland, to make it, in effect, not original and authentic. In short, the Igorot woman is painted as a peasant barbarian who is nothing but a copycat, who wears scanty clothing. There is no other way of reading it but that, confirming my previous conjecture that the alien has no knowledge whatsoever in what s/he was talking about making her/him appear obtuse. On the other hand, there were the little children who are “attractive in their naked simplicity, and some of them have winsome faces, and great, dark, lustrous eyes [emphasis added].” How very normal and neutral descriptions this time, you might tell yourself. But then again, only if you’re Jessica Zafra or Bob Ong, to a certain extent. This is clearly a working of exoticization: making an “other” out of a beautiful yet foreign object. According to Professor Cesario Minor, Jr. in our oriental literature class in explaining the concept of “the exotic”, the standardization of western notion of beauty put exoticas under its subordination. If exoticas have to be beautiful in a western fashion, they have to be appropriated under the homogenizing tactics of the west. The little, naked, Igorot kids now became exoticas without their knowledge. The sad part is that, the traveler who was watching them was contentedly attracted (being the verb form of “attractive”, which the alien used to describe the, again, naked “objects”).
The fifth paragraph describes a scene one Sunday morning at the marketplace. The natives going about their busy and practical living entertained the foreigner. She accounted seeing colorful native dress (and again, undress, with an exclamation point [this is really becoming very curious]) which comes in different materials (maybe from a dog’s skin or dried human flesh (?) because of the head-hunting reputation of the inhabitants of Baguio, who knows what s/he saw), white turbans which look like towels, smokers of enormous cheroots, brass-ornamented limbs, and all that weird jazz, Igorot style, which according to the alien was all an “entertaining sight”.
Even local guidebooks are complicit to the scheme. Edward Said posits, according to Hans Bartens, that “through seemingly factual descriptions, and through claims to knowledge about Oriental history and culture, form a Foucauldian discourse—a loose system of statements and claims that constitutes a field of supposed knowledge through which that ‘knowledge’ is constructed” . In the sixth paragraph, the alien quoted a guidebook which apparently labels the scantily dressed natives as dog-eaters. The picture—smoking foot-long cigars, then “haggling over the price of rice and camotes” and other produce—presents a much calloused image of Baguio women. Such depiction, “although seemingly interested in knowledge, always establish relationships of power…The West’s representation of the East ultimately work within a framework of a conscious determined effort at subordination…This Western discourse about the Orient has traditionally served hegemonic purposes” .
Paragraph seven, yet again underpins my supposition of the alien. S/he apparently took a photograph of a native with nothing on him except a girdle and a hat. He went on to say, that the Igorot’s arms and chest are heavily tattooed. Doesn’t it sound like a Tommy Lee or something? He wasn’t just photographed, he was pornographed! Obscenity is in the eyes of the beholder. Why in the world would one take a picture of a nearly nude man? While it was almost established in the prior paragraphs that the alien has a curious liking to these native exoticas, I wasn’t about to give a conclusion about it.
While I’ve already given everything racist in the entire essay, I hope I already made my answer clear whether this writing is Orientalist or not, and that if it, in fact, sucks or not.
So what if the natives’ houses are made up of kerosene tins? Don’t they have houses in Britain as novel as these? What if they are head-hunters? So what if the children go to Olag at a certain age? So what if their idea of marriage is based on procreation and not what the westerner’s funny idea of love being the giddy feeling, the sensation one gets when his ass is being tickled or to that effect? What if the world is suddenly infested with cockroaches and there’s a world-wide brownout, what will happen to these spoiled bratty racist races? What if, due to the impermanence of everything (well, except change, as my teacher in elementary English likes to repeat over and over again) the economy of Britain like America drops to rock bottom, and everything falls apart? What will then become of the notion of the Orient, the Orient who can survive the harshest of conditions, like the Africans and the other-ed others? What if everybody dies? But of course, who would want that?
As Prof. Minor wrote in one of his blog posts, others are others depending on the perspective, especially when it’s the west seeing the non-west. But if this has to be modified to see things in an objective manner, it’s easy to see that we really are different, not just by race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, language and identity, but it will also be easy to see that everybody’s equal. No one should emerge superior. Consequently, no one should be other-ed.
Ironically, although not really, I’ll quote Eleanor Roosevelt as an ending statement not because she’s of high distinction or because she’s from America, but because I know that I can quote her as freely as she can quote me, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Other is in the eye of the beholder, but then again, is it a requirement to other?
Works Cited Bartens, Hans. Literary Theory: The Basics (Routledge, 2001)
Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Michael, eds. Literary Theory: An Anthology (Blackwell Pub., 2004)
***
Professor Delfin Tolentino's Comment:
What a frenetic essay! And I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense.It is this kind of involvement that makes for interesting reading.Many important points are raised here, in language calculated to affect the reader. Some professors do not like this kind of writing, but I think that sometimes, when the material demands it, we do have to go against the strictures of academese.
"Kyogre, get over! You don't need another of that to Russia [emphasis added]."
-O.Kim, Tropa Muse
It's very uncharacteristic of the new me to be emo. This isn't my project, to be postmodern about it. I want to build a facade, a coherence, some sort of protection.
But I guess, when I'm alone on my soft bed that almost drowns me, I can not but tell the truth.
Chubby, goofy, currently a creative writing major at the University of the Santo Tomas while teaching English and Literature at the University of the Philippines, and a newbie at DOTA.
I am currently not looking for anything right now, but in case you are, I might be him.
