This bird has flown

© Joselito Briones

Just as Eric's representation of a perfect world can be found in a Mall, an SM Mall to be specific (he observed that it's the one chain-mall consistently well-maintained), I suspect partly because his current buying power in these places sufficiently compensates for all the times he felt underprevileged in the past, Itay’s is his caged birds.

What Itay (literally, Filipino for "father") is trying to compensate with, I can only guess. Let's see, he's the head of a big family with a lot of male members, and he's aging. He's even made a request (albeit jokingly) on how he wants his funeral to be when he dies. It's getting more and more difficult for him to show power and insist his will on others. Gone is the time when his word meant the law to everybody else. I think it started with Norie, in California. She's the eldest among my siblings, and most willful too. He must've felt rather powerless when it came to dealing with her, and as a result they were always at odds with each other. Now that he's gone back to the Philippines, it's the same show-of-will game, only now it's with his grandchildren. Hit hardest are Joie, who's gone so far as to now avoid going to the family house altogether, and Jaycee, who recently snobbed the family Christmas party. If only my dad would realize that he's respected no matter what, and that he doesn't need to show his power anymore, the atmosphere within the family would be a lot more peaceful. But maybe boring, too. I say let the man be who he is.

Oh yeah, the birds... they're always happy and singing as long as you feed them, and they don't care that they're kept in a cage.


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P.S.



Today is Jose Rizal day - the day of his execution by the Spanish who occupied Philippines during that time, and against whom the revolution started 110 years ago today. Dr. Jose Rizal is the national hero of the Philippines.

© Joselito Briones

I flew to Hong Kong today. The photo above shows the view from the window of the plane. The body of water shown is the Pasig river, one that prominently featured in Jose Rizal's novel, "Noli Me Tangere".

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Borat!

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (20th Century Fox)

Roxy time!

Wow... record number of viewers in the cinema. There must've been at least 20 people in the audience. Pop culture rules. (Hm... hello? It wouldn't be called so if it doesn't, would it?)

By now of course, the novelty that is Sacha Baron Cohen is already somewhat worn out. Good thing is, throwing mud on people is still very much in, especially if the aforementioned people are just asking for it... As in his Ali G personna, the best thing about Borat is the way he brought out the true character of the people he encountered and recorded in the movie. Thinking he's someone they don't have to be politically correct with, they blurt out things they wouldn't normally say in public, much less in film. Now, one can argue that they're just trying to be agreeable with him to avoid confrontation, a human trait, don't ask me what it's called because I don't know, which has been thoroughly documented. The thing is, though, it's easy to tell that he wasn't feeding these people the words, he just makes them careless or carefree enough to actually say what they think. And what they do say, sadly, is what everybody else suspect to be their real sentiments all along. The way a man strongly agreed with him when he said something about beating up everything in Iraq including its lizards, and the shocked face the woman next to the man had when she saw his reaction... these are expressions no actor has yet to muster, so any suspicion of these scenes being staged with good actors can be safely put aside.

Another good thing about Borat? The way he doesn't discriminate against whom he supposedly unknowingly discriminates. Jews (Cohen is himself jewish), gays, blacks, minorities, politicians, religious fanatics. Everybody's fair game.

Eventually though, what he failed to do is to learn from what he discovered (or more probably, knew all along) in making this movie. That is, that there's really a lot of people who are stupid. Stupid in the fixed-in-my-own-ways-don't-bother-me-with-any-attempt-to-get-educated kind. The same people who can understand the satirical nature of the movie are those who are capable of understanding to begin with, and to these viewers, this movie is nothing more than reaffirming light entertainment. To the rest, those who are not even aware that this is meant to be mocking and ironic, yet see this as light entertainment nonetheless, would naturally see everything in this movie face-value and have this as something to fuel their own prejudices and stupidity.


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