Weaponizing laughter, sex jokes and videochats

Credit to Author: ANTONIO CONTRERAS| Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2019 16:43:30 +0000

ANTONIO P. CONTRERAS

WHEN the forces of the universe conspired to create a happy place, they would have most likely found their mark in the Philippines. Our country is not just a happy place. It is an outrageously happy place with an oversupply of wit and humor that can easily turn tragedy into comedy, and convert a disaster into material for stand-up comedians.

The universe must have been kind to us. After all, with the heavy dose of natural calamities and human-made political and economic
disasters, we could have easily imploded had we not been equipped with the weapons of parody and laughter. We navigate the challenges in our lives with our killer sense of humor. It is because we really typify what politics has become. We have always seen politics as a theater of the absurd, that in order to survive it, we had to defend ourselves by weaponizing laughter to help us fight and survive life’s hardships.

We are probably the only country in the world where people laugh at someone who slips and falls, instead of calling a medic. When the rebel military forces were exchanging fire with government troops in one of the many coup attempts against Cory Aquino, I was asked by curious Americans how it was that there were people watching the firefight. I told them they were enjoying the reality show, which was a lot better than watching action movies.

We really know when to have fun, whether it is in the middle of a coup attempt, or amid floodwaters, or even in the aftermath of a deadly killer typhoon. Despite the flooding brought by Ondoy, people still managed to celebrate birthdays. CNN’s Anderson Cooper stood in awe at the resilience of the people of Tacloban who found time to wave their hands and smile at the camera, play basketball and laugh in the midst of the devastation brought by Yolanda.

And this is in contrast to how images of flooding in other places are presented. While we see panic and desperation in some countries, where we witness people desperately at a loss on how to cope with rising waters, Filipinos find ways to navigate the flooded streets to reach their destination or to escape. Floods even become opportunities for children to play and for resourceful and enterprising people to earn extra cash, by constructing makeshift bridges or by carrying stranded people on their backs. And through all of these, ours are not the faces of panic, but of those who are trying to survive by making the best of what we have or can do.

And the political arena is not exempted from this unique social landscape dominated by humor and parody. It is befitting our predisposition towards laughter that we have a President whose colorful language may ordinarily offend but, to the chagrin of the elite moralists, instead elicit laughter. Where on earth could we find a President who boasts of his virility by making reference to the size of his sex organ, and apparently gets away with it? This is partly an outcome of a culture that ordinarily talks about sex and body parts in the context of banter.

One need only commune with the hoi polloi to realize that people talk about sex and sex organs freely, and liberally. Only the elite with their
Victorian sensitivities would find this offensive. Nudity is scandalous only among those living in private spaces, but is normalized among people who do not have the luxury of living in structures that provide for much privacy. Authorities have to ban women wearing short shorts, and men roaming shirtless, simply because these are already normalized behavior. Ordinary people’s behavior now need regulation because they become offensive to the not-so-ordinary elites.

We have a sense of humor that also tends to convert a person’s tragedy or misfortune into an opportunity for social control, if not to exact vengeance on the strong, or the abuser. Rumor and gossip have always been effective weapons to make fun of the elites. And the manner in which rumor and gossip spreads is not couched with malice but steeped in parody and a healthy dose of vengeful laughter. In popular culture, a gossip is often imaged not as a malicious evil character but as a comely person that could easily provide comic relief.

In the age of social media, gossip and rumor — and their relative, character assassination — have been provided a virtual platform where they can easily turn viral. Social media has become a convenient and conducive venue to propagate derisive laughter through memes and parody that exposes the elites and their flaws to public ridicule. Gossip, rumor and character assassination have all turned digital.

This is the misfortune that befell Jim Paredes. Actually, what happened to him was a serious assault on his privacy. It is an embarrassing injury not only to him but to his family. It would have been easy to commiserate with him. No one deserves to be humiliated the way he was exposed for all the world to see.

Yet, Paredes’ nightmare was turned into material for comic relief. He became a caricature that was whipped and lashed by an unforgiving crowd in social media who seized the moment to exact vengeance on him, by making fun of his misfortune, by mocking his secret perversion.

Every Duterte supporter and Marcos loyalist that Paredes has demeaned has been given the ammunition to use to humiliate him.

Some say this is cruel. Others would ask where our morals are. These are from people who do not laugh and are offended when sex jokes are being cracked. But it behooves us to ask which one would be worse. Someone who publicly boasts of the size of his manhood, or someone who publicly excoriatse those who would do so but is in the habit of performing private acts of perversion.

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