Just
as the nation felt the relief of lowered gas prices for a week or two,
conditions in the Middle East just as quickly started raising crude oil
prices anew, with the Philippines bracing for new oil price hikes this
week. These fluctuations came at a time when Philippine “King of Comedy”
Dolphy’s long drawn-out health battles and subsequent demise dominated
the airwaves. Despite the entertainment icon’s much-deserved accolades,
I still wonder why a lot of coverage is being devoted to this when an
entire national economy is dying because of unresolved problems in
energy supply and price stabilization.
With mainstream media placing
so much importance on the life and times of the screen and TV legend, I
wonder: Are the hard times best assuaged by comedy instead of serious
realism and problem-solving?
Indeed, comedy may lighten the burdens.
Comedy may even provide the needed distraction. But the truth is,
comedy can never solve our problems. And as reality persists, every
moment of distraction only eats away at the opportunities to solve these
problems.
I watched my share of John en Marsha as a kid; but as I
had often preferred to play and do other things, our yayas were the ones
left to watch it. I did wonder over the years how he had one woman
after another. I later learned that as the masa spend a lot of money on
comedic distractions, which Dolphy was a master of, such artists become
so fabulously rich that their innate charisma is magnified to the hilt.
Thus, in Dolphy’s case, with his string of romances, he also sired
quite a number of children, some of whom, unfortunately, turned to
murder and arson for self-expression.
When I became oriented to
economics as I am today, and contemplated on what such kind of comedy
has really contributed to Philippine society, I found that the benefit
accrues mainly to the elite. It’s not that they follow Dolphy’s work;
but it’s rather due to the distraction of the masses from potential
thoughts of dissatisfaction and rebellion.
When egged on for
political candidacy Dolphy once joked, “No way. I might win, then what
do I do?” So why is the country taking him so seriously when he has
never taken himself half as seriously?
Some types of comedy require
a lot brains, like stand-ups. Charlie Chaplin once said, “All I need to
make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.” Although
Chaplin had serious social and political commentary in his later
features, with some saying the same for Dolphy’s John en Marsha or Home
Along da Riles, it seemed to me that the latter dwelt more on
self-deprecation and a come-what-may acceptance of the depressing lot
faced by lower classed Filipinos, instead of making them think about its
causes.
So how seriously should audiences take comedians? Saturday
Night Live’s Dennis Miller said, “I’m a comedian, for God’s sake.
Viewers shouldn’t trust me. And you know what? They’re hip enough to
know they shouldn’t trust me.”
Sadly, comedy and entertainment are
extolled to the extreme in profit-seeking societies because they are a
business; and as Steve Martin says, “Comedy may be big business but it
isn’t pretty.”
Exploitation in the entertainment industry is as bad
as it is in the regular capitalist economy, though there are efforts by
industry Samaritans like Erap to establish welfare projects such as the
Movie Workers Welfare Fund (Mowelfund); still, it cannot be doubted that
a greater number of support actors and cast retire into poverty while
only a few live in the opulence of movie potentates.
Let me pick a
quote again from another renowned entertainment icon, Sholem Aleichem,
writer of Fiddler on the Roof: “Life is a dream for the wise, a game for
the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.”
And life
will always be this way if comedy and entertainment become the focus of
Philippine society instead of, as I would prefer, watching the tragedy.
As Aldous Huxley once said, “We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we
only look.”
It’s time to get serious and demand such headlines as
“Government approves six months oil buffer stock” so that the country
could tide over periods of manipulated high oil prices with stocks of
low-priced oil; or “ERC (Energy Regulatory Commission) total revamp…
Consumer protectionists appointed;” followed by “New ERC investigates
sweetheart deals,” uncovering 900 percent overpricing in the tens of
thousands of power transformers and substations a power company has been
buying from its sister company all the past decades; or better yet,
“ERC cuts Meralco (Manila Electric Co.) rates by 50 percent.” Now,
wouldn’t all these elicit euphoria and a genuine comedy in the sense of a
“happy ending?”
None of these can ever happen if the nation is glued
to comedy day in and day out, which, in a sense, even the shows of
Willie Revillame are. Only when the nation gets serious about its
crisis and tragedy can it be galvanized into action.
If the
progressive countries of today such as China, Singapore, Venezuela, et
al. had spent their days indulging in comedy instead of revolution, they
would certainly have ended up like the Philippines today.
Laughter
is not the best medicine when you have cancer; it is radical
intervention with all the means at one’s command. And in a country such
as ours which is in the midst of a socio-political and economic cancer,
even a healthy dose of comedy wouldn’t amount to much.
(Watch Destiny
Cable GNN’s HTL edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m.,
with replay at 11:15 p.m., this week on “Consumer Updates: Water and
Power Scams;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com)
There
are many reasons Charter change is not likely to fly even under the
Noynoy presidency, and Sen. Miriam Santiago’s reasons are pretty sound.
A
