Trends of the week

MANILA, Philippines - The country commemorated the 29th anniversary of the EDSA People Power celebration this week by closing parts of EDSA and causing the greatest traffic jam of the year so far. This is symbolic of a lot of things — the post-EDSA mismanagement of the country, among other things, as Twitter was quick to point out — but my biggest takeaway from the fiasco is that EDSA has now been thoroughly reduced to a metaphor. People Power is no longer a thing that actually happened that had actual stakes and immediate effects. It is now a talking point. For some people, it was the last time the country pulled together and did something truly important. For others — and by “others” I mean “Marcos revisionists” — it was the start of the country’s decline from an imagined golden age. EDSA only becomes real now as a life-paralyzing experience, a claustrophobia heightened by condo buildings and billboards, a clustermuck that leaves everyone forever late and angry. Except on every 25th of February, when it becomes a metaphor for everything else that is wrong with our lives.

Sen. Cayetano is the kid you hated most in school

STAR/Albert Calvelo

From the very first moment I saw him open his mouth on television, Senator Alan Peter Cayetano has struck me as the entitled chubby rich nerd who annoys the living crap out of his whole high school. That guy who always insisted on carrying the teacher’s things, who always raised his hand eagerly as if the answer was perpetually about to explode from his body, the one who always tells on his classmates even when the teacher doesn’t seem to care, who always has ideas on how to do everything properly — homework, class projects, school plays.

That kid always had his butt kicked (it’s called “bullying” now, but back in the day, it was just called “high school”). But Sen. Cayetano is no longer a chubby little kid, even if he still looks like one; he’s now a senator of the land. He now gets to do all the butt-kicking, as this week’s Senate hearing on the Mamapasano clash reminded us all. The lesson is clear: you give those little twerps too much power and they grow up to be grandstanding politicians capable of singlehandedly derailing peace talks. You have been warned, parents and educators.

Daniel Orton calls

STAR/Andy Zapata Jr.

Pacquiao’s PBA stint ‘a joke,’ PBA proves him right

PBA franchise Purefoods, not content with the league fining its import Daniel Orton for comments critical of Manny Pacquiao, sacked the ex-NBA player this week, adding yet another bizarre chapter in Pacquiao’s increasingly bizarre stint as player-coach in the PBA. The move seems excessive, considering that Orton merely said what was already obvious. But team governor Rene Pardo was incensed, claiming that Orton’s statement was like “(if) he went to the United States and insulted the name of Martin Luther King.” Yes, a guy that runs a professional sports franchise just compared a boxer to a civil-rights martyr. It was a sweet gesture from Pardo, virtually asking all of us to leave Pacquiao alone and focus on his joke leadership instead.

New racially-diverse emojis bring the inner-racists out of people

Apple has created new emojis that feature a wider array of skin and hair colors, purportedly to promote ethnic diversity in our ability to wordlessly communicate irony. The problem with representing races through what are essentially caricatures is that people will think you are representing races through caricatures. Consider, for instance, the yellow-faced default emojis, which many angry people online mistook as “Asian.” On the one hand, it was an easy mistake to make, what with all the emojis for black people and lighter-skinned people. On the other hand, it showed how the false stereotype of Chinese people having yellow skin is still something many would instinctively jump to and how all Asian people are still assumed to be Chinese. Apple just tricked the entire Internet into being complete ignorant racists.

‘Boyhood’ saved from Oscar ignominy

Boyhood is a movie that successfully captures what life actually feels like: no real narratives, full of surprising turns, largely uneventful, and intrinsically moving. I really love the movie, which is why, all throughout the 87th Academy Awards that I followed exclusively on Twitter, I was nervous. I really wanted the movie to lose.

“Academy Award Winner For Best Picture” is a label no self-respecting movie should aspire for. It’s certainly no longer a distinction associated with transformative and life-affirming cinema. It is a label we use for Chariots of Fire and not for Raging Bull; for Dances with Wolves and not for GoodFellas; for A Beautiful Mind and not for Citizen Kane. The Oscars may have gotten it mostly right in the ‘70s, but there have been far too many Driving Miss Daisies, American Beauties, Chicagos, The King’s Speeches, and Crashes for the past three and a half decades to still take the award seriously.

So, when it was announced that Birdman won, I was so thrilled. I was filled with a vicarious euphoria that I imagine people who still value the Oscars feel when their favorite movie wins Best Picture. Boyhood is not an Oscar-winning film. Everything is right in the world.

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