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Friday, February 10, 2006
Yap: Ultra
By Januar Yap
Meanwhile
IN class, we’re taking up Latin American writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s story and suddenly things take flight as some naughty kids blurt out sociopolitical readings. On our platter is “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings.” In another we have postmodernist writer Donald Barthelme’s “The School.”
Excited, they say, because from these stories we can draw a straight line from the magic realism and absurdity of the Ultra stampede.
Marquez in his story sends forth a fallen angel—an old one, sickly, losing teeth, introvert and incapable of doing miracles into poor fishing village. The foster family who finds him face down in the muck keeps him in a coop with the stinking fowls and collects money from the curious public. The family gets rich, until some talking spider-woman from the barn-hopping carnival shows up and steals the crowd from them.
“It’s like warring TV networks, sir,” says a student. It’s a poor town and people are looking for entertainment, I said. You can’t blame them.
“Or maybe the toothless angel signifies government and the spider-woman, Kuya Willie?” somebody from the back row asserts. “Really? How come?” I said. “We turn to the spider-woman for instant gratification! You know, like winning in Wowowee?”
Another draws out a Marxist reading. “In the postmodern world, sir, the television is the opium of the people!”
Wait, wait, I’d have said, do you mean Budoy, our good friend, has turned himself into an opium monger? I’d have thrown a right hook but you know, Pinoy ako, Batang Edsa. “How can you say that, you’re so young, you’re supposed to be stuck on MTV?”
“Cueshe, sir, makes me throw!” he said. I couldn’t quarrel with that.
And finally, the scenario: Budoy’s tattooed arm coiling around Toni Gonzaga like a miraculous boa constrictor. Hands up, sir, TV is the opiate of the people.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (February 10, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here.
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