Monthly Archives: July 2008

Cheeseburger

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This will be long.

I could – if I wanted to, so I will – write a stretched and overwrought “semiotic analysis” of the McDonald’s “pa-cheeseburger ka naman” meme.  In “The McDonaldization of Society,” the sociologist George Ritzer outlines four elements in the McDonald’s model that permeate modern capitalist society:

  • Efficiency: the optimal method of finishing a task, translated to the fastest possible route to accomplishing it.
  • Calculability: or simply put, “quantity above quality.”  Think of “Go Bigtime” meals that aren’t really big, but are “big” nonetheless.
  • Predictability: it can also be put as “standardization.”  To use a cliché, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
  • Control: everything becomes automatic, dehumanizing, and standardized.  If you work in outsourcing, you know this all too well.

On the one hand, you can stretch the semiotic to its extreme by saying that cheeseburgers placate Filipino society: no omnivorous Filipino will ever say no to a free cheeseburger.  “Cheeseburger” is the social version of Noni Juice (I don’t know where that thing went, either).  I don’t care if you’re on a diet, or if you’re for worker’s rights at McDo, you won’t pass up a chance at a free cheeseburger.  The process of making, eating, distributing, and meme-ficating a McDonald’s cheeseburger is efficient, calculable, predictable, and controlled.

Do I hate being asked for a cheeseburger for some absurd reason?  Yes.  Do I hate the cheeseburger itself?  No.  As a matter of fact, the lowly cheeseburger is one of my favorite food-like objects at McDo.  The real ingredients of the patty, much less the cheese, are best left to theory and speculation.  The consequence is much more strange, profound, and even irritating.  Upset stomachs, anyone?

Like I wrote earlier, cheeseburgers – metaphorical or real – placate Filipino society.  There are many examples of “cheeseburgers” in Filipino society.  Take the MRT: never mind treating your fellow person with respect by not invading his or her personal space by forming a queue, you would just cram yourself in with the same efficient, calculable, predictable, and controlled pace of cramming yourself into the train.  Or there’s my favorite “cheeseburger” of them all: not caring at all.

*     *     *

The SONA has come and gone, and there have been a lot of ranting all over the World Wide Internet on the matter of this strange, profound, irritating… efficient… calculable… predictable… controlled… line:

Before you start complaining and criticizing the government, you should first criticize yourself.  You always jump to conclusions.  Why not support the President?  You do nothing but criticize and criticize but you do nothing for this country.

That’s a précis, a paraphrase, and a summary of a lot of comments I’ve been reading for the past 30 minutes.

I admit that yes, there’s a lot of inconvenience in people like myself who challenged a (for all intents and purposes) McDonaldized society and Government.  To be honest, I don’t have to write about politics and what I think is wrong with This Government.  I don’t have to do anything, either.  All I’m doing, much less forcing myself to do (which is a tragedy in itself), is when I live up to the basic demands of being a citizen:

  • The moment I buy something, I automatically am a taxpayer.
  • The moment I first raised my hand to recite Panatang Makabayan, I automatically pledged my allegiance to this country “sa isip, sa salita, at sa gawa.”
  • The moment I write “Filipino” on any – and I mean any – given form that requires me to write down my citizenship, I automatically affirm my being a Filipino.

If there’s any self-criticism to be done, it is by those who don’t act and do their share as citizens with rights guaranteed by the Constitution.  I bet a cheeseburger you can’t even criticize yourself since you’re so apathetic, so I guess I’ll do it for you.

There’s a little about “self-criticism” that I learned back in the day, and that’s you criticize yourself because you acknowledge that you, an individual, are part of a whole.  You criticize yourself because you’re part of something bigger than yourself.  There are a lot of things that happen to be your business as a taxpayer, as a citizen with guaranteed rights, as a Filipino, and not the least of which is the faults of The Government you put into power anyway.  Sure, the day-to-day affairs of The Government are “none of my business,” but the day-to-day things that bring about things like Garci tapes and NBN-ZTE happen to affect me, my taxes, and my flag.  So yes, they happen to be my business, your business, and certainly everybody’s business.

I’m not going to apologize for what follows next.

When you try to step on a cockroach, it will retaliate.  A protist, when disturbed from its peaceful state, will deliberately destroy its host.  A virus, when programmed with enough bullshit, will infect a living cell and wreak havoc.  It is only an apathetic, uncaring human being with absolutely no sense of civic duty that will do nothing.

It’s a tragedy when things like “citizenship” and “civic duty” become so alien and strange to us, but we do understand a cheeseburger meme.  If there’s anything worth giving cheeseburgers for nowadays, it’s not for the hatak crowd in whatever rally there is; it’s for people who actually do something, like stand up for their rights when they’re stepped on, and demand a bit of accountability and transparency from The Government.  Yes, you – Apathetic Filipino-By-Technicality – are lower in the evolutionary scale than a common roach and a flagellated protist, and viruses are better than you.

Kaya… pa-burger ka naman!

Fashion By Trinoma

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If you’re wondering where I am, I’m at McDonald’s.  I have a full view of KC Concepcion’s posters for BAYO, and a full view of my least-favorite species in the animal kingdom: Homo sapiens sapiens.

I have zero fashion sense: I’m just a jeans-shirt-jacket fellow.  The only way I know how to “spice up” my usual non-fashionable self is when I wear boots, which are very impractical when you’re aboard the MRT and you’re walking from the Shaw Boulevard platform to Ortigas Center.  However, my jologs fashion sense had me developing a rather keen eye for the fashion sense of other people.

Like Makati City party girls who wear ultra-short miniskirts and shorts even if they have ensaymada dough for legs.  Or old women who think that glutathione makes them look less like Jason Voorhees… although they look like Michael Myers.  Leatherface, even.  Rather than make women look like movie stars, glutathione and whitening agents have the opposite effect.

And then there’s the fashion sense of fathers everywhere: the collared, short-sleeved polo shirt.  Nothing speaks more of corporate fatherhood than wearing a Lacoste polo shirt, jeans, and leather loafers.  I think the inventor of the Daddy-Do should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for changing the way we look at fatherhood in general.

Or that annoying trend of today, Abner Mercado’s abel Iloco scarf.  I don’t know what’s up with that, and I certainly don’t know what’s up with emo kids wearing it with their skinny jeans and Paramore t-shirts.  Then they take pictures of themselves at comfort rooms at Gateway… I just hope they don’t go to Recto.

Which begs the question… who the f**k is Paramore?

Counting Applause

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Philippine Mainstream Media has this rather absurd habit of reporting about the State of the Nation Address, in that they count the number of times the President is applauded during a speech.  I like to think of blinking “Applause” signs hanging under the rafters of Batasang Pambansa, where on cue, the audience will clap.  I think of it as a rather Pavlovian reaction: the gallery applauds the lies and incompetence of the President’s nationwide PowerPoint presentation.

There’s nothing about a SONA that (to use a favorite phrase) strikes me as strange.  In an ideal world, the SONA is supposed to be a truthful, transparent presentation of the ills and the problems of the Philippines, and what The Present Government is doing about it.  A SONA by Gloria Arroyo, surprisingly, does not depart too much from that ideal: a SONA is a truthful, transparent presentation of the ills and the problems caused by The Government that’s running the Philippines, and what The Present Government is not doing about it.

Truthful… by virtue of implication.

I have to disagree that the SONA is the rhetorical device used by the incumbent Regime to placate the Filipino people; that distinction goes to relief goods and crisp P500 bills you get at Landbank as a “subsidy” if you’re poor.  The SONA is a forum where, once a year, we celebrate lies with the intent to dupe the Filipino people into thinking that we have a functional government and a “Strong Republic,” that we feel the progress.  We don’t have to experience or acknowledge progress, ladies and gentlemen: we only need to feel it.  Besides, rhetoric requires that you know what’s going on.

I’ll be counting applause.

Dark Knight

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After weeks, I finally got to watch “The Dark Knight.”  Me and my friend Dette watched it at Gateway, and we left the theater in a state of speechlessness and awe.  It certainly lived up to the hype, and then some.  I’m firmly convinced right now that the “dark knight” in the movie is not actually Batman, but The Joker.  And I’m going out on a limb in saying that “The Dark Knight” was the best movie the late Heath Ledger starred in, and deserves an Academy Award for it more than he ever did “Brokeback Mountain.”

I suppose that everything has already been said about “The Dark Knight” and how everyone loves The Joker, but I’d like to pay some odes and dues to Two-Face.  As a “Batman” fan, I never really developed a kind of affinity for Harvey Dent, but I now think that Two-Face deserves more than what we usually give him credit for.  I really liked about the bit with chance being fair.

Man, was I riveted to that Lamborghini Reventon cruising along Gotham City!

I think I won’t pollute the blogosphere with too many rants about “The Dark Knight” anymore.  Often, the best compliment to a movie is not – at all – to review something that damn good.

The Hungry Man at Ortigas Center

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I saw him yesterday, clutching his stomach near the parking lot at The Podium.  Moments ago, I saw him seated at a flight of stairs near Robinsons’ Galleria.  Tomorrow, I think I’ll still see him in that faded white Crispa shirt, blue shorts, worn slippers… and still clutching his stomach.

I see scenes like this all the time, but never in the seeming opulence of a place that’s supposed to be the headquarters of multinational corporations and agencies.  Here you have San Miguel Corporation, the Asian Development Bank, JG Summit, call centers.  At every corner, there’s a MiniStop, a 7-Eleven, or a Starbucks.  Nowhere else in the Philippines – not even in Makati – would you see the kind of wealth that speaks of class and sophistication.  Yet nowhere else would you be so maniacally depressed to see scenes like that hungry man sitting there, pale and sunburned, wondering if there is any salvation to be met in starvation and sheer exhaustion.

I kind of wonder if class structures are meant to be oppressive.  The truth is, they’re not.  Much about the harmony of society is defined and made possible by the fact that we are unequal.  Your economic standing is the Noble Lie of capitalist society; you’re meant to be in at least one of the many different striations of “rich,” “poor,” and that arbitrary substrate called “the middle class.”

It is when these structures start to become oppressive, when their blatant obviousness slaps you in the face, that you see what injustice is made of.  It is when you start to contrast what was once taken-for-granted – and see the stark difference between the haves and the have-nots, that injustice is supposed to move you.

Too bad, it doesn’t have to.  It doesn’t have to be moving, considering that this hungry man is not alone.  Millions of Filipinos are just like this man, only they’re not surrounded by skyscrapers and opulence and coffee-swilling underpaid employees of corporations.  It doesn’t have to be obvious when his image is drowned by business suits and crisp polo shirts.  It doesn’t have to be unjust, when there are so many other injustices in the world to piss you off besides his grumbling stomach and his pale, lined face.

But then again, what can I do?

Virtual Inanity: Marocharim Goes To WordCamp

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Last night I frantically packed up my laptop and headed off to some wi-fi hotspot – I could care less where – to download iTunes. Ever the ignoramus when it comes to personal gadgetry (you’re talking to a guy who doesn’t know how to use unlimited texting), I forgot that for an iPod to work, it has to be synced in a suitable program (i.e., iTunes). Now I can listen to the guilty pleasures of the Dixie Chicks and Utada Hikaru.

Uh… whatever. I don’t know what “Itsuka darekato mata koi ni ochitemo” means, either.

Since I got the feeling that I’m stuck here, I decided to register for WordCamp Philippines, sponsored by MindanaoBloggers. I think that much about a blogger is defined by how much he or she knows about a blogging platform. While much about WordPress can be self-taught (hey, that’s how I survived almost one year of Marocharim.com), I think I need to know more about this platform before I can give you cool themes in black-and-red. More than that, WordCamp gives me a great opportunity to meet with other bloggers with similar interests in blogging, writing, and politics.

Heck, it gives me a much, much needed break from the humdrum of making a living.

WordCamp Philippines is sponsored by the good people of:

WordCamp Philippines

Judging the President

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Leave it to Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita to make the “impassioned defense” for the belaguered President (Inquirer.net report, 7/20/08).  The defense comes following the Social Weather Stations survey where Gloria Arroyo was the most unpopular President since Ferdinand Marcos.  The Executive Secretary, who strikes me as a fanciful name for the Presidential stooge, says:

“We must always do what is right, we must act … in a way that will address the problems of our countrymen, and not what is necessarily popular because one can be popular but it does not necessarily mean that what one is doing is right.”

Pardon my ignorance and my impertinence, but I always had this idea that the Presidency is supposed to be a popularity contest.  We live in a popular democracy where the President is the one who gets the most votes.  Last I checked, it was the fact that Arroyo probably did not get the most votes in the 2004 national elections that became the continuing question to her mandate.  I know it’s an old issue, but it’s an old issue that begs answers; one of the reasons why we find it so difficult to oust GMA is because there is reason to believe that she is not actually the President.

I have to agree with Sec. Ermita that the people, not surveys, judge the President’s worth.  Again, pardon my ignorance and my impertinence, but the last time I checked, the Social Weather Stations (or any survey company for that matter) does not ask questions to galunggong swimming around in a bucket, asking politically-inclined fish about their opinion of the President.  The survey is a tool to gauge the impression people get about the President.  It makes for a good social experiment: someone has to go to the queues for NFA rice, the MRT, or to those banks that release P500 subsidies to the poor and, well, ask them.

Come to think of it, you can turn Ermita’s defense on its head.  While one’s popularity does not necessarily lead to right decisions, the right decisions actually make for a popular President.  It’s easy to explain why Arroyo is not popular: she hasn’t exactly been the poster girl for making the right political and economic decisions, which makes her not the poster girl for popularity.

She does make for a poster girl for everything else, in the literal sense of the term.