Trojan horse
Trojan horse
Posted 11:47pm (Mla time) Mar 01, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the March 2, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
THERE are five -- yes, five -- bills pending in Congress attempting to stop what, to go by their sheer preponderance, they reckon to be a scourge of the land. Which is pornography. The bills range from the almost apologetic to the openly apoplectic. One is positively apocalyptic, invoking the wrath of God to fall on those human creations that do not extol His glory.
These bills are: HB 445, "prohibiting the publication of lewd photographs and sex stories and articles in tabloid and broadsheets," by M.E. Zamora; HB 2838, creating a "local print media monitoring board in all municipalities and cities to prevent the proliferation of obscene publications," by Dodot Jaworski; HB 1278 "prohibiting the publication, sale or distribution, production, importation, and exhibition of obscene and pornographic materials and the demonstration, performance or exhibition in public of indecent and sexual acts" by Emmanuel Villanueva, son of the preacher man, and would-be president, Eddie V.; HB 2031, same as the last, by Eileen Buhain and Alan Peter Cayetano; and HB 2887, still same as the last, by Bienvenido Abante Jr.
The bills variously try to pin down what constitutes "lewd" or "pornographic" to a level of detail that almost makes you think their authors spent a great deal of time dwelling on it or are engaged in some kind of vicarious self-flagellation, projecting their fantasies and prescribing punishments for them. I can almost picture their research assistants watching strip shows intently in dark joints and telling grinning acquaintances who espy them in scornful tones, "In aid of legislation, pare.”
But this is the sort of seemingly trivial thing that has not very trivial consequences. You can't afford to dismiss it blithely. I can appreciate how some parents might feel at having the frail sensibilities of their children assaulted by ads in newspapers, TV and billboards that show women (and men) in a state that little improves on the one they got launched into the world in. Though while at this, surely the frail sensibilities of those children stand to be more ravaged by ads that ask them to change the color of their skin through skin whiteners? Yet no congressman has thought to protest this. But these bills do not make things better, as decency goes, they make things worse. This is one cure that is patently worse than the affliction.
At the very least, it poses a danger not to pornography but to art. One would think our experience with the old MTRCB, which banned "Belle Epoque" and X-ed "Schindler's List" would have taught us a lesson in caution. Indeed, one would have thought our experience with "Live Show," a perfectly reputable work about a disreputable subject, would have taught us a lesson in manners. Pornography is not an easy animal to identify. I had thought several court rulings in the past had settled the issue, which is that naked bodies, particularly as locked in the exchange of body fluids, the thing that particularly stokes the wrath of the authors of these bills, should be interpreted in context.
The five bills themselves, vying with one another to ferret out evil and cast it into eternal fire, are a surefire guarantee of a plunge to an artistic Stone Age, where only "The Sound of Music" can be shown. Maybe not even that, as some idiot can always say there is something ungodly in Julie Andrews' choice of a widower to a nunnery.
More than to art, the bills pose a clear and present danger to freedom of expression. Or indeed to freedom of the press. This is not something only tabloids should be protesting against, all of media should. Jaworski's bill is especially frightening in that respect. It orders "all publishers of periodical publications, including newspapers, tabloids, magazines, comic books, and other similar printed materials (to) furnish all the Local Board complimentary copies of all their publications." The local board consisting "of the Municipality/City Mayor as its ex-officio Chairman, the Municipal/City Legal Officer as its ex-officio Secretary, the President of the Liga ng mga Barangay, the President of the Pambayang Pederasyon ng mga Sangguniang Kabataan, and a representative from the women sector of the locality as its members."
Can an idea be more insidious, or idiotic? That is a throwback to the days of the Bureau of Standards for Mass Media, which Marcos created immediately after he imposed martial law to police the media. You'll still find it in countries like Malaysia where a board of bureaucrats and ass-lickers -- that is pornographic -- sit in judgment over the media.
And finally, these bills pose a danger to the society itself. I don't know if this is part of a plan to shift gears toward authoritarianism, but plan or not, it can be used to shift gears toward iron-fisted rule. It is all of a piece with the rhetoric and practice of anti-terrorism and with calls for emergency measures to meet all sorts of threats for the most part of government's own making. Anti-smut has always been the Trojan horse of fascism. It was so in Germany, when Nazi youth raided cabarets and Jewish synagogues alike, proclaiming both to be obscenities. Ironically, the cabarets became the last bastion of defense, in the form of satirical revues, against the coming of night.
Give bureaucrats and ass-lickers power and they are not going to stop at pornography, they are not going to stop at anything. The point is not to choose between the five bills, to embrace the one as more reasonable than the other. The point is to reject them altogether. The job of policing the ranks of media belongs to media, however they have often been remiss in it. That is so for all excesses of media, from lack of sensitivity to lack of taste.
The alternative is more than worse, it is disastrous.
Posted 11:47pm (Mla time) Mar 01, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the March 2, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
THERE are five -- yes, five -- bills pending in Congress attempting to stop what, to go by their sheer preponderance, they reckon to be a scourge of the land. Which is pornography. The bills range from the almost apologetic to the openly apoplectic. One is positively apocalyptic, invoking the wrath of God to fall on those human creations that do not extol His glory.
These bills are: HB 445, "prohibiting the publication of lewd photographs and sex stories and articles in tabloid and broadsheets," by M.E. Zamora; HB 2838, creating a "local print media monitoring board in all municipalities and cities to prevent the proliferation of obscene publications," by Dodot Jaworski; HB 1278 "prohibiting the publication, sale or distribution, production, importation, and exhibition of obscene and pornographic materials and the demonstration, performance or exhibition in public of indecent and sexual acts" by Emmanuel Villanueva, son of the preacher man, and would-be president, Eddie V.; HB 2031, same as the last, by Eileen Buhain and Alan Peter Cayetano; and HB 2887, still same as the last, by Bienvenido Abante Jr.
The bills variously try to pin down what constitutes "lewd" or "pornographic" to a level of detail that almost makes you think their authors spent a great deal of time dwelling on it or are engaged in some kind of vicarious self-flagellation, projecting their fantasies and prescribing punishments for them. I can almost picture their research assistants watching strip shows intently in dark joints and telling grinning acquaintances who espy them in scornful tones, "In aid of legislation, pare.”
But this is the sort of seemingly trivial thing that has not very trivial consequences. You can't afford to dismiss it blithely. I can appreciate how some parents might feel at having the frail sensibilities of their children assaulted by ads in newspapers, TV and billboards that show women (and men) in a state that little improves on the one they got launched into the world in. Though while at this, surely the frail sensibilities of those children stand to be more ravaged by ads that ask them to change the color of their skin through skin whiteners? Yet no congressman has thought to protest this. But these bills do not make things better, as decency goes, they make things worse. This is one cure that is patently worse than the affliction.
At the very least, it poses a danger not to pornography but to art. One would think our experience with the old MTRCB, which banned "Belle Epoque" and X-ed "Schindler's List" would have taught us a lesson in caution. Indeed, one would have thought our experience with "Live Show," a perfectly reputable work about a disreputable subject, would have taught us a lesson in manners. Pornography is not an easy animal to identify. I had thought several court rulings in the past had settled the issue, which is that naked bodies, particularly as locked in the exchange of body fluids, the thing that particularly stokes the wrath of the authors of these bills, should be interpreted in context.
The five bills themselves, vying with one another to ferret out evil and cast it into eternal fire, are a surefire guarantee of a plunge to an artistic Stone Age, where only "The Sound of Music" can be shown. Maybe not even that, as some idiot can always say there is something ungodly in Julie Andrews' choice of a widower to a nunnery.
More than to art, the bills pose a clear and present danger to freedom of expression. Or indeed to freedom of the press. This is not something only tabloids should be protesting against, all of media should. Jaworski's bill is especially frightening in that respect. It orders "all publishers of periodical publications, including newspapers, tabloids, magazines, comic books, and other similar printed materials (to) furnish all the Local Board complimentary copies of all their publications." The local board consisting "of the Municipality/City Mayor as its ex-officio Chairman, the Municipal/City Legal Officer as its ex-officio Secretary, the President of the Liga ng mga Barangay, the President of the Pambayang Pederasyon ng mga Sangguniang Kabataan, and a representative from the women sector of the locality as its members."
Can an idea be more insidious, or idiotic? That is a throwback to the days of the Bureau of Standards for Mass Media, which Marcos created immediately after he imposed martial law to police the media. You'll still find it in countries like Malaysia where a board of bureaucrats and ass-lickers -- that is pornographic -- sit in judgment over the media.
And finally, these bills pose a danger to the society itself. I don't know if this is part of a plan to shift gears toward authoritarianism, but plan or not, it can be used to shift gears toward iron-fisted rule. It is all of a piece with the rhetoric and practice of anti-terrorism and with calls for emergency measures to meet all sorts of threats for the most part of government's own making. Anti-smut has always been the Trojan horse of fascism. It was so in Germany, when Nazi youth raided cabarets and Jewish synagogues alike, proclaiming both to be obscenities. Ironically, the cabarets became the last bastion of defense, in the form of satirical revues, against the coming of night.
Give bureaucrats and ass-lickers power and they are not going to stop at pornography, they are not going to stop at anything. The point is not to choose between the five bills, to embrace the one as more reasonable than the other. The point is to reject them altogether. The job of policing the ranks of media belongs to media, however they have often been remiss in it. That is so for all excesses of media, from lack of sensitivity to lack of taste.
The alternative is more than worse, it is disastrous.
posted by Dante at 10:37 PM
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