Pronouns and parodies

Some days, I swear, when I open my Facebook feed, I’m tempted to immediately switch it off, drowning in a flood of vexatious opinion certain to trigger my worst reflexes. Much as I’m tempted to respond, I rarely do, knowing that FB comments don’t really soften hearts and minds, but only make them harder. Also, I’m not the witty sort with one-liners that will go viral; my thoughts and words like to ramble, stray and even go wrong, but at least you know it’s not AI or the “Forward” button at work.

Two topics did get me a bit worked up last week, and I’m going to use this column to write the kind of long social-media comment I never make. You’ll recognize both of them instantly if you haven’t been living under a rock.

The first was that picture of a seated gay “personality” (I’m never quite sure how persons become “personalities”) lecturing a waiter standing at parade-rest, reportedly for two hours, on gender sensitivity, all because he called her “Sir.”

There’s a part of me that understands how and why that happened. Some will call this silly wokeness, but in UP, we take our students’ preferred pronouns and names seriously as a sign of respect for the person.

But what I also know is, when I teach, I stand, and my students sit. That’s not to emphasize my authority, but so they can relax, listen and hopefully imbibe what I’m telling them. I realize that The Lady said she invited the waiter to sit down, but I also understand why he declined. Staff don’t sit for a chummy chat with customers. And imagine this: if I (an old man, dirty or not) were the customer and I felt poorly served by a female employee, and I asked her to sit at my table for two hours while I educated her on the fine points of etiquette, would or should she oblige? And I hate listening to or giving long lectures. If I can’t get something across in 20 minutes max, then I’m a lousy teacher.

There’s politics which can be good and right – and people who may not be. Some of the most politically savvy people I’ve met have also been, as some would say, that part of you where the sun don’t shine.

The other hot topic, of course, was the “Last Supper” tableau at the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Paris, which allegedly mocked the Lord and Christianity itself by replacing Jesus and his apostles at the long table with a raft of drag queens and other presumably degenerate characters. I never saw so many Christians and especially Catholics (some of them my good friends) come out of the woodwork to profess their outrage at what they took to be willful blasphemy. And predictably, like wolves sniffing out red meat, many more friends from the other side piled on the “offendees” with mini-lectures on Bacchus and bacchanals, pagan elements in Christian ritual, how to look at art, the French mentality and sensibility and such other topics worthy of dissertations.

Now, as I’ve often confessed in this column (maybe losing five readers and FB friends every time I bring it up; in this context, maybe more), I’m not much of a churchgoer, and have had issues with the religion I was born into – and with all of organized religion for that matter, despite growing up in Catholic school. I have nothing against people who stay in the fold, who go to mass regularly and devoutly, who daily post proverbs on Viber, and who believe in the Bible as the one and only true source of, well, truth. If their faith keeps them whole and happy – and I can see in many cases that it does – then well and good for them and for me, because I prefer the company of happy and motivated people. Some of them may be hypocrites, but I’m sure many or most aren’t – and there are hypocrites as well (and worse) among apostates and non-believers.

But back to Paris. What I’m not going to say is, “You shouldn’t have been offended.” If you were, you were. Even if you later changed your mind after listening to all the learned explanations (to some, I’m sure, excuses), the fact is, you saw something you didn’t like. (I just have to wonder – how many people responded directly to the tableau itself, and how many were nudged into seeing it and later objecting by another post screaming, “Hey, you have to see this! Look what they’ve done to Jesus!”? It works the same way on the right and on the left: a meme cascades swiftly down the internet, and people react viscerally even before they can think.)

Sure, the “Last Supper” is only a painting by one Leonardo da Vinci, that smart Italian fellow who also imagined flying machines, tanks and other wonderful contraptions – so why not Jesus’ last meal? (I don’t think there’s an exact record in any of the four Gospels about how the scene was blocked for 13 characters, except that Christ very likely sat in the middle for better reach, and certainly nobody knows who sat next to whom and leaned over whom. Some depictions down the centuries don’t even use a straight table but an inverted U, or have everyone reclining on mats and pillows, or sitting in a circle.) But even images and objects have symbolic meaning and power, so it’s easy to get hopping mad if someone, say, spits on a painting of your grandmother, or turns it into an unflattering cartoon.

So, I do share the consternation over why a hyper-expensive and risky global enterprise like the Olympics would risk alienating half of France and a third of the world (presuming all Christians took umbrage at the Blue Guy) by deliberately, premeditatedly and maliciously mounting a patently anti-Christian production for the whole planet to see. I know the French eat strange things like sheep testicles and raw beef sweets, but really now, the Last Supper?

Given all of that, my only question is, where was all the outrage when that president was joking about raping captive nuns and cursing the pope? And speaking of the Renaissance and the power of representation, remember that Pieta-like photograph of a grieving mother cradling her murdered son at the height of that same president’s tokhang campaign, that president who called Catholic bishops “gay SOBs?” Where was all the righteousness? But maybe we’re just getting started. There’ll be FB accounts I’ll be checking in on, the next time something truly repulsive happens.

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Email me at [email protected] and visit my blog at www.penmanila.ph.