Ceremony issues

“That those aggrieved feelings exploded on a song which had more to do with nostalgia for a hometown than with questions about inclusiveness or politics was unfortunate.

In a broad sense, Mr. Duterte’s daughter Sara can be excused for spotting the irony and for subsequently protesting the playing of Hotdog’s classic ’70s pop ditty “Manila” during the parade of the Filipino athletes.

In the same broad sense, too, many can be excused for being blind to the point the opening suite and other suites of the spectacular opening ceremonies of the Southeast Asian Games (SEAG) was a “grand protest” by the show’s creators against some policies of the Duterte government.

Giving excuse is but fair here because that’s what public spectacles do. And since everybody agrees the SEAG opening ceremony was a public spectacle, one can excuse the “spectacular rebelliousness” of Ms. Duterte and of the creators of the spectacle themselves.

In other words, a spectacle, by the very nature of its political agenda of striving for unity, also carries in its very bowels the spirit of rebellion.

Our meaning and intentions become clear by seeing the SEAG opening ceremony as still a reflection of our own polarized society.

Using the insights of French theorist on spectacles Guy Debord, the SEAG opening ceremony, like our present society, “is at once united and divided. The unity of each is based on violent divisions. But when this contradiction emerges in the spectacle, it is itself contradicted by a reversal of its meaning: the division it presents is unitary, while the unity it presents is divided.”

These broad strokes become even clearer by a closer look at Ms. Duterte’s protest against “Manila” and of the opening ceremony itself.

On Ms. Duterte’s protest, Floy Quintos, the opening ceremony’s creative director, said the objective behind the song choice was for the whole audience to sing when the Philippine team entered the arena. “We just really needed a song everyone could sing,” he said.

But it was in that precise moment, in that hope for Filipinos uniting “if only for a moment” through song where the seed of divisiveness lay.

This is clear when Ms. Duterte objected in her infamous Instagram post: “… Di po ba dala ang Filipino flag? Why would you play the song Manila? …We should be inclusive when we want Filipinos to cheer…”

Many quickly reacted to Ms. Duterte, largely interpreting her diatribe as a misplaced knee-jerk reaction. But the reactions came off somewhat superficial since many also did acknowledge Ms. Duterte had reason to feel slighted — she, and many others of similar mind, could not reject outright their feelings about “imperial Manila” as it is a key idea informing their politics.

That those aggrieved feelings exploded on a song which had more to do with nostalgia for a hometown than with questions about inclusiveness or politics was unfortunate.

Still, Ms. Duterte’s protest clearly showed she, and many others like her, had no private nostalgia for the country’s capital city. A detail which brutally encapsulates the divisiveness in a particular historical moment we are all caught in, even among Ms. Duterte’s political allies.

Going to the show itself, other than striving for a momentary unity among Filipinos, Quintos and his crew also saw the opening ceremony as a “chance to showcase aspects of our culture that many modern Filipinos know little about or take for granted, buried under our divisive neglect and lack of concern.”

To particularly do this in the context of the Filipino athlete, Quintos in a lengthy Facebook post on the eve of show wrote: “I felt very strongly that the show should be inclusive of our Animist, Islamic and Pre-Hispanic peoples. All three represented in a series of Warrior dances that trace the vigor, physicality and skill that is in the DNA of every great Filipino athlete.”

“Thus, the opening suite, ‘Ugat ng Ating Lakas’ (The Roots of our Strength) is a series of “Power” dances from the Bagobo, the Kalinga, the Maguindanao and the pre-Hispanic Bisayans. Since physical power and skill isn’t always manifested in forceful and aggressive movements, why not cap the suite with that most controlled and demanding of Maranao courtly dances, the Singkil?”

Quintos could not, however, honestly deny our indigenous peoples are also at present in difficult circumstances and his choices on whom among our many indigenous peoples to represent the Filipino athlete were emphatic.

He wrote: “To my mind, these choices pay homage to the most marginalized and neglected of our indigenous peoples: the Lumad of highland Mindanao, the Maranao and their great ruined city of Marawi, the Kalinga who fought for their ancestral lands. More than just a ‘cultural showcase,’ I hope this first suite serves as a reminder of the enduring nobility of the marginalized and their current struggle for survival.”

Quintos’ admission of the struggles of the indigenous peoples as well as their rocky relationship with government was not lost in the fanfare, even if many saw the indigenous dances as mere entertainment.

In the microblogging platform Twitter, [email protected] fool, saw Quintos’ choices as a form of protest against government and a protest done right under the noses of its officialdom.

[email protected] wrote: “The choice of the Lumads, Kalingas and Maranaos are not accidents. The three biggest clashes of the Duterte government with the indigenous (people) are with them,” he noted, further adding “the killings/bombings of Mindanao’s Lumads; the Kaliwa Dam being built without prior and informed consent; and the destruction of Marawi and its continuous neglect.”

He also pointed out that the segment about street children and the games they played was an oblique reference to “children killed in the ‘drug war’ as ‘collateral damage.’’’

For his part, Quintos also took pains to emphasize one particular moment right at the start of the show — the indigenous version of the “kyrie eleison” chant.

Responding to a journalist critic who branded the whole spectacle as “perya sa probinsiya” supposedly for ignoring ballet in the dances, Quintos had this say: “The dance was set to the chanting of the ‘kyrie eleison’ from National Artist Ryan Cayabyab’s ‘Misa.’ Baka gusto niyo din i-Google yung ibig sabihin nun. Salamat po.”

“Kyrie eleison,” which is Greek, means “Lord have mercy.”

One deep, powerful sense of chanting mercy here is that “mercy does not refer so much to justice or acquittal… but to the infinite loving-kindness of God, and his compassion for his suffering children.”

In short, invoked was God’s compassion on a land suffering needlessly from indifference, intolerance, injustice and squalid political delusions.