Luczon: Delicate skins: soft and thin

I HOPE I am not being offensive, or sounding as one, because I am not... on this.

It has been a while, under my files, when I was developing a script for a film. Rewrites have been tedious, not to mention the other demands of work. But despite the revisions, the premise remains: it involves the police.

I belong to a lineage of police and military officers from my father's side. But years into the field working as a journalist or simply blending-in in communities, there will always be those bad eggs in the service. So bad... they get the attention of the media.

With the recent “dismay” of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) over a soap opera portrayal on television about the police, claiming their reputation was tarnished, in effect it brought a chilling effect on my own script.

How, then, can I write the characters of police without offending their sensibilities? Although, it isn't as brutal as how other filmmakers or TV showrunners are being depicted, but a slight shade on an apparent scene where a gunshot was heard and insinuating some criminals got killed, it might touch their fragile sensibilities.

I also remembered some five years ago, I requested military servicemen, all privates, to do some re-enactment. Their superior inquired what was all about, and insinuated that it better be not about portrayals relating to military abuses or human rights violations. Well, maybe they had a point there, I shouldn't have done that on real soldiers instead I could have hired actors.

Now, how I portrayed the police in the script was quite reflective on what I saw on field, and heard from different accounts, though there were a little tweaks to accommodate creative and cinematic values.

And yes, it's definitely fictional - the same fictional story how that TV soap opera being written. However, in order for these fictional stories to get the connection of the people, it needed to get inspiration from reality. As you can see - art imitates life, and vice-versa.

This is something DILG/PNP should understand, and this is something these agencies need to have a crash course on humanities and art appreciation, including media literacy.

Sometimes, I am thinking that the way DILG/PNP scratching their heads over media's portrayals on soap operas, and not to mention journalists consistently sniffing through police operations that often involving deaths of suspected criminals, is a form of not just an attempt to censor freedom of expression. This can also be rooted on how they were trained or educated in institutions.

Police and military training are tough, it teaches obedience and loyalty. The hardships every trainees or cadets have to go through were intense and sometimes psychologically bending. This may also cause them to be less receptive to any forms of criticisms, especially coming from the public or groups outside their establishment... at least this is my assumption.

So... just as we thought that only the millennials are into the “snowflake” generation (a term used to describe people who easily gets slighted or offended on almost every issues), it appears to be even the senior ones as well. This only justify that we are indeed living in the “snowflake” era.

(Nefluczon@gmail.com)

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