Monday, February 19, 2007 The art of disrespect By Miguel Antonio N. Lizada Kuya's chair
DISRESPECT moves the world.
There is something gained in being disrespectful; there is beauty in disrespect. In fact, disrespect is human nature. The world, both for better and for worse, is founded by disrespect. As a literature major, I have spent my college days burying my nose on books on literary, philosophical and even political movements that have swept the world and turned it upside down.
One prevalent theme, which seems to strike across all these movements, is that they have all been disrespectful. Feminism is a form of disrespect - a rejection of the discrimination and the dominance of patriarchy. My list can go on: Indie Films vs Hollywood films.
The Reformation of the Christian Church. Women's suffrage. Shrek vs traditional fairy tales. An Inconvenient Truth. Super Size Me. Michael More and Bush. The Da Vinci Code. EDSA I, II and III.
Now, complementing the importance of disrespect is our idea of scandal. Scandal and disrespect go hand in hand. We are scandalized because an etiquette, a code of conduct has been violated and disrespected by an individual.
Moreover, scandalous acts have two important functions: On the one hand, they expose limitations; by showing "what should not," disrespectful acts show "what must be."
If I start picking my nose in class, I am actually showing proper public etiquette by showing something outside the etiquette. On the other hand, scandalous acts also open the possibility for new things to emerge; it challenges the norm. Feminism for example opened new ways by which women ought be treated and represented.
What is actually more dangerous is not our inherent nature to be disrespectful but our inclination to respect something we ought to be scandalized about, to consent and follow the logic of what is supposed to be illogical.
Consider then the poem by Albert Alejo SJ, "Sanayan Lang ang Pagpatay." Here, the persona discusses how the act of killing is something that people will just get need to used to, much like the way we are used to killing butiki and other animals.
The last lines of the poem are as haunting as they are to an extent true: the killing, the constant ebb and flow of immorality is fueled precisely by our consent, our respect for the whole enterprise of killing, our solidarity with the economy of injustice.
At the risk of moralizing, I will ask these: Are we not scandalized by the things that are happening in our society? The graft and corruption? The poverty? The continuous and cyclical killing of people who do not share the ideologies of the Center?
In light of the coming elections, we might find the same story again: The dagdag-bawas, the violence, the bribery, the lies. Just last night, I received a text message from my thesis mentor and literature professor Danton Remoto, saying that Ang Ladlad, the party list of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transexuals, cannot run as a partylist because they were not credited by the Comelec as "marginalized." Does it have something to do with the fact that Ang Ladlad was leading in the race, next to Bayan Muna?
Or have they become a norm? Or have they become a norm? Are we the ones Alejo's persona addresses in his poem? Sanayan nga lamang ang pagpatay? People say the production of art is a difficult process. It is not simply a matter of creativity; it is also a challenge, a process of going beyond the existing conventions to produce something new. The artist is challenged to not only question what has been established but also to forge something new.
Disrespect then is an art. It forces us to see a norm for what it truly is, evaluate it on a critical level and locate potential ways by which we could innovate or even challenge it. Disrespect as form of art engages the artists in us; it challenges the critical power of our eyes and the creative potential in our hands.
The usual metaphor for the first step to change is an opening of the eyes, an awakening. That is true. But sometimes you also have to slap the very first thing you see.
