Jose Rizal has a definite presence online. A simple Google search yields close to 4M sites that mention him. Even among intellectuals, he has more than 4,000 articles and books written about him, according to Google Scholar.
“Weblogs.com.ph” monitors the use of Rizal on websites. Some websites are institutional blogs (such as “joserizal.ph”), some personal (such as “JoseRizal.info”). Some use Rizal to sell things such as tours, coffee beans, shopping or tote bags, and shirts. Of course, before the Web, Rizal was used to sell cigars, matches, stamps, even funeral services (as satirized hilariously by the movie “Bayaning 3rd World”). Speaking of movies, there is no end to Rizal as hero or subject of movies, starting from the earliest movies made in the Philippines to such modern classics as “Jose Rizal” and “Rizal sa Dapitan.”
A useful post was done by someone named “twentyfive,” who listed the most common controversies surrounding Rizal, namely, “His real name, Retraction, Marriage to Josephine Bracken, Francisco his alleged son, Resurrection, Adolf Hitler, and Mi Ultimo Adios.” My brief summaries of the pros and cons of each of these issues amused my audiences in Germany and Australia, even those extremely serious in their veneration of Rizal.
A post was done last February on the “secrets of Jose Rizal’s family.” The blog post started with a teaser: “In the year that he died, 1896, Jose Rizal made his family tree. Interestingly, he left out the branches leading to his mother Teodora Alonzo. What was he trying to hide?”
What Rizal was trying to hide, according to award-winning journalist Howie Severino, were “stories about betrayal, children out of wedlock, family quarrels, and an attempted murder charge that landed Teodora in jail for two years when Rizal was a child.”
Most sites are not as iconoclastic. “Shadowness. com,” for instance, artistically renders Rizal’s face. “Virtually Yours, Rizal” on “Firefly 360’s Blog” uses virtual reality technology to introduce Rizal to young people.
Most inspiring among the sites is one done by young people themselves. The video blog “lnchsrizal. wordpress.com” tells the story: “Selected students from Lopez National Comprehensive High School conducted a special research and video blogging activities to honor Rizal. The videos blogged feature how students generally regard Rizal as a hero or idol, a source of inspiration and something else.” As Generation Z knows, blogging using only text is so, well, 20th century. In our century, bloggers use video.
It is not only on the Web that Rizal continues to have tremendous impact. Rizal is now an app! Blackberry users can read “La indolencia del Filipinos” and even “Noli Me Tangere” on their cellphones. If you prefer tablets, there are the eRizal tablet computers now being used instead of textbooks in public schools in Laguna. (Think how easily classroom teachers can correct the thousands of errors in public school textbooks by simply asking their students to correct the mistakes themselves on their eRizals.)
We now have the software and the hardware, and we will soon even have our own operating system. A newspaper item last June went this way: “Rizal will someday run your mobile phone, music player and laptop. Filipino technology firm BiTMICRO Networks Inc. is in the design phase of the Rizal processor, a chip envisioned to become the first commercial all-Filipino made processor that would run a multitude of devices.” Who needs Apple, Google, Intel, and any other non-Filipino company? We can run everything using Rizal.
For those that want to read their books directly on the cloud or on any of the hundred or so tablets now available on the market, there are the old reliables, namely, Project Gutenberg, Amazon Kindle books, and best of all, “Filipiniana.net” (the last mentioned contains or will contain all the works of Rizal). Vibal Foundation even has interactive Rizaliana books.
Why is Rizal used, misused, and/or abused by so many in our digital age? Harold Augenbram, the best translator into English of Rizal’s novels, has this answer: “The ‘use’ of José Rizal is a never-ending pastime, from the international, multichapter organization Knights of Rizal to leftist university professors in search of tenure. ... Nowadays an incorporeal José Rizal floats through the Philippines and its diaspora, his very nature hovering somewhere between man and spirit, an ineffable essence permeating the history of a renewed Philippines. ... Whoever he was then, he is now a prisoner of his own legend.”
In my lectures, I proposed a reason for Rizal’s continuing relevance today. Among the lessons we learn from reading his novels, are the following: Literature must not only mirror, but change society. The binaries “revolution/reform” and “violence/non-violence” are simplistic and must be deconstructed. All humans are complex (e.g., Maria Clara is a suicidal bastard who will go to hell, according to the theology of that time). Everyone writes their own José Rizal.
A close reading of a passage from “Filipinas dentro de Cien Años” could show that Rizal predicted the Web, Facebook and social networking, the diaspora and OFWs, and climate change. (That woke up my audiences!)
These were my exit lines: José Rizal created a country by imagining and writing it. Through his works, he continues to create the world we now live in.
On Dec. 30, as we commemorate his death, let us celebrate Rizal’s life on the Web, our cellphones, and our tablets.