It's a matter of analytical interpretation

With regard to the complaint of the Cebu City Anti-Indecency Board (CCAIB) for “obscene publication” against Banat News’ “Wildflower” feature stories and Superbalita’s “From Junquera with Love,” CCAIB’s carping might be so selective as to be discriminatory. While one has not read the two tabloids’ featured items so far, it could only invite one’s curiosity to sample them for reading. And probably, others could be so likely-minded in curiosity.

 At first blush, Banat’s coinage of “Wildflower” per se isn’t “obscene or indecent,” although admittedly, to the prurient clique, the term might conjure greater heights of imaginative possibilities. Superbalita’s “From Junquera with Love” is quite naughtily suggestive of what it intends to rouse. Time was, and perhaps it still is, that pimps, and also their pimping “samples” had lined along Junquera Street in the night with coquettish vulgarity.

 As to what is “obscene, indecent language, and words sexually suggestive” that “serve no other purpose but to satisfy the market for lust and pornography,” CCAIB’s own words, is a matter of degree and opinion… What about TV shows that parade sexy women in scanty get-up, such that, only that triangular God’s “little acre” is supposed to be covered in very skimpy V-shaped dark bikini meant to be more revealing than concealing? Is CCAIB not also targeting such indecently suggestive shows?

 Comparing the lusty suggestive words in print with lewd giveaways in almost actual nudity and sashaying with sexuality on TV or movie exhibitions, is virtually no comparison at all. Likewise, has CCAIB ever tried to raid some honky-tonks, sneaky bars, or saloons, especially during the wee hours of dawn? Obscenity is not merely in words or print, but in virtual intercourse in open petting and necking with the bras flying off in the prelims. Thereafter, the lovebirds get into the love nests. Has CCAIB also sued these honky-tonk and bar operators?

 What about in so-called beauty contests featuring similar giveaway nudity in inviting excuse of bathing suits in come-on-pose and lustful looks as if saying: “C’mon, rape me?” Are these skimpy exhibitions of women’s pulchritude less suggestive and obscene than the printed words, like, the “Wildflower” of Banat and “From Junquera with Love” of Superbalita? C’mon let’s not be more prudish than the prudes of yore.

  The point is, if CCAIB has to champion strict decency in print, let the same advocacy include other, and even more indecent by suggestion, shows or open exhibitions of sex.

 At any rate, since CCAIB has already brought the matter to court, let it be. But as Sunstar editor-in-chief Pachico Seares has cited, CCAIB should have taken heed of the Supreme Court decision that only publication that is “so deprave and corrupt” with no trace of moral redemption or purpose whatsoever is punishable.

 In many decisions of the Supreme Court and lower courts, it appears invariably that the courts found it difficult to delineate the definitive distinctions between what is really an obscene or indecent act from what is not. The courts come to belabor the discussions in so many words and in many subtle analogies and examples. In short, in deference to jurisprudence, there is no exact or definitive distinction between outright obscenity or immorality and what is not.

Perhaps, from the literary point of view or fiction – as one does not have any idea what specific terms or language are being printed – the “Wildflower” yarns may fall under the realm of metaphor, and/or “From Junquera with Love” stories could be more on simile or metonymy. And if so, that complicates the situation further in matters of refinements or subtlety in analytical interpretation, not just mere parsing, or literal word meanings.